January 16Th: Community Hot Topics!

[CrendKing]

Here is my thought about the pure damage mods and generally all mods: making them all corrupted mods.

 

My rationale behind this is that there is nothing that provide benefit without any drawback. Want a faster car? The engine will consume more fuel. Want larger magazine for the weapon? That will be heavier to carry, which reduces accuracy, consumes more stamina and less sprint speed.

 

Generally every mod should be self and independently balanced. Since every mod has drawback, no mod will be auto include. Using a mod only because you value the specific benefit more than the drawback. If the drawback is so great that one cannot tolerate, add "counter" mod to mitigate that drawback.

 

The corrupted mods for frame are very good examples. None of fleeting expertise, blind rage, transient fortitude or overextend are auto include. Only those benefit most for the frame's ability will be used. On the other hand, intensify or streamline are auto include mods. They are not included only because there are not enough slots or capacity. If DE releases primed intensify or primed streamline, they will likely to be auto include. So please don't make these primed mods.

 

So back to the topic, I suggest to remove serration and promote heavy caliber. Currently some weapons are not affected by heavy caliber's accuracy lose. For example the Corpus continuous rifles. I suggest make another +damage -ammo efficiency mod. Want more damage? Be ready to also install ammo mutation or run out of ammo. These tough choice would make modding challenging and interesting.

 

Same concept applies to hornet strike or pressure point. Also applies to other regular +X mod. For example, fast hand could be +reload speed -magazine size. Fury could be +attack speed +stamina consumption.

 

It will be big project to turn everything into corrupted mod, and even tougher to make good balance. But I believe this will truly make modding real modding.

[descolada512]

just a idea, but how about having serration type modes be a passive bonus for your weapon.Having the damage scaling according to the level of the weapon. so the max damage with serration would be the equivalent to how it normally functions with the weapon currently... same with Warframes intensify.... you are able to unlock its fully potential the more you lvl it ... and of course resets back again whenever you forma.

[[DE]Momaw]

Mobility

I don't feel like any major changes need to be changed. While coptering and sliding and lunging off walls may not make much as far as physics, they are so effective at enhancing the game that they have contributed to its identity. Aerial melee was a welcome addition for even more options.

 

More my concern with mobility in the game is that in most missions you really don't have any reason to fight or loot along the way, which leads to experienced players with strong/evasive frames that can dash through the entire map without engaging while less experienced players or more fragile frames are forced to a snail's pace because they are effectively solo'ing after  they get left behind.  Mobility is nice, but ideally there needs to be a.) better training regime to get newbies up to speed (pun intended)  and b.) some kind of incentive for the team to stick together.

 

Pickups

No objections to having to pick things up.

 

Health orbs are in a sad place. Currently the only time they become relevant is if you have a Nekros or Oberon spamming their powers to force health orbs to drop everywhere.  They need to drop off of enemies as a relatively common thing like they do in archwing missions. Plus they either need to give a scaled amount of health based on how big your health pool is, or possibly more interesting, they could give a small amount of health then start a regeneration mode that continues as long as you do not take any further health damage.

 

The only thing I would change about ammo pickups is to make ammo restore pads cough up boxes of ammo instead of magically refilling your reserve. This lets ammo restore pads be useful without standing directly on top of them, prevents wastage when you get full, and allows ammo mutation to work properly with them.

 

It might be nice to see some weapons gain some degree of a passive ability that function like Ammo Scavenger, increasing the amount of ammo regained per pickup. This would allow them to be rapid-fire without actually sacrificing ammo economy, two things which currently are opposite ends of a sliding scale. Flexibility in design is good.

 

Damage and scaling

As the game stands now, we NEED raw damage mods in order for our weapons to be relevant past very low levels.  I am open to the idea of removing these mods to increase variety since they are so universally required that they edge out anything that is a non-damage mod. Opening up slots to specialize how our weapons behave on "soft stats" instead of being forced to spend every point on damage would be a good thing.  However, you must then provide some kind of way to match our firepower to the enemy at hand or normalize and hard cap enemy scaling at some not-insane level.

 

Grabbing and grappling

As an additional mechanic on top of all the other options we already have, I think it's unnecessary. However...If you added a new "unarmed" style of combat that specialized in things like this...

 

Abilities and energy 2.0

I don't find frames that rely on AOE nukes to be particularly interesting. I find Sonar and Molecular Prime to be more interesting than Radial Javelin or Miasma.  But I do tend to focus on only 1 or 2 of a frame's abilities, because most of them do not offer level-agnostic utility. And once I have specialized my mod loadout to amplify the things a frame is really good at....well, the others tend to not work well.

 

Will take a look at the linked threadnaught...

[Rapid]

Sliding, Coptering, and/or Wall Flinging is what makes the movement of Warframe more interesting than the generic 3rd person shooter. Why would you want to make that aspect worse?

[unknow99]

DE senpai noticed me :o this made my day!

Congrats man you deserved it. :)

 

You're lucky for getting their att...MOTHER OF LOTUS!! My thread too?!!! :D

 

I didn't expect this one to be featured(more the one talking about Ledge mechanics, which is more important imo :

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/355484-moves-20-ledge-mechanics/ ),but I'm glad I get some support for this little variety in gameplay! Thank you!

 

I went with a Crowd Control/survivability mind for it : CC because of a guaranteed ragdoll if you throw your target at other people, & survivability because you can stop enemies fire without compromising your own shield & damage someone at the same time! (shooting with your sidearm while grabbing someone : see point III,where Volt is shooting his Lato when holding the lancer.)

 

Of course, it has to be FAST. you grab someone quickly,throw him/her/it quickly(if the AI didn't manage to release itself).

 

Sliding, Coptering & wall flinging : Coptering doesn't need to disappear, but it has to be toned down (& get a proper animation maybe). Same for air melee : it was first intended to let us hit ospreys, but now the launch is too big : some people don't use walls anymore because of it... :/

Parkour 2.0, hopefully, will address our overall movements,to get a better flow/transition between actions(side dodges feel too clunky, & we can't shoot during it. Same for the back handspring : at least let us shoot during the second part of the move.) & avoid to many locks.

 

I still remember Rebecca trying to chain a air melee with a wallrun : it was not so ninja-ish,unfortunately...(she didn't succeed) :(

 

Sprinting could be faster,because the zorencopter crowd uses this tool in substitute.

[Im_All_In]

dont change serration please,i wasted tons of time,cores and credits to get it up to max rank,im telling you 264 R5 cores are not easy to get at all

[Ordel]

3rd poll - Serration should be built in with all weapons, just like abilities are now tied to the frame, not the mod. I've NEVER seen a finished build that doesn't use serration. Same goes for hornet strike and pressure point. They're basically part of the gun/melee weapon, so why not change it to reflect that and save us a mod slot? Also, primed serration is a stupid idea.

 

Im just hoping that if you guys DO make serration innate that we'll get some cores.

 

Grabbing enemies - That's just another Tiberon to me. Aesthetic but doesn't serve a definite role other than for fun. You'll die too quick to make it useful in high levels. The only way I'd actually use it would probably be to grab capture targets, to be honest.

 

Sliding, coptering, wall flinging - Lots of people are gonna be mad once this get changed. But still, if anything the only thing that really makes sense (in giving you momentum) would be the wall flinging, but not NEARLY as much as it does currently. Although, coptering is the only thing I use my melee weapons for anymore. 

 

Pickups - I think HP orbs should give you 25 hp + a regen boost for X% over X seconds of your max hp (current, not base). Equilibrium would stay the same as current. Maybe add some mods that increase your orb gain?

 

Ability usage - Depends how lazy I get. Or the difference between farming a boar prime barrel vs. a nyx prime blueprint.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Ordel

[7grims]

Do you think Sliding, Coptering, and/or Wall Flinging should be changed in some way?

 

I'm a rusher, so I depend on coptering.

Been revisiting all my melee weapons, specially my heavy ones, and even with the new air melee move, heavy melee still aren't playable for the non-endless mission types and their tile sets.

This also made realize that nowadays, exca's 3rd ability, super jump, it is now truly useless since we have the air melee move.

 

To finish I recommend the devs to watch random videos of ppl playing warframe, its ridiculous, ppl press crouch every 3 seconds, like obsessive compulsive freaks, just in an attempt to bypass the low stamina system.

 

 

Would you grab enemies if you could?

 

More arbitrary animations that do arbitrary damage, just like the melee 2.0 system?

Doesn't sound great.

Or maybe you finally realizing the animation combos isn't a good system, since we totally loose control of the fight during the arbitrary animations.

 

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

 

We do need to get original builds, or non mandatory mods.

But when you remove serration, everyone will use max heavy caliber, and keep on using multishot, and even if those are gone the players will just jump to the most and more useful mod existent... how do you break that cycle?

 

 

 

 

 

------------

Once again, and again, and again, why do you keep hiding, or, not give any stage-light to community hot topics?

They never are in the front page, they never stay in the recent dev posts.

Edited January 17, 2015 by 7grims

[RIOT]

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

except also take away the corrupted mods that increase damage (heavy cal / spoiled strike etc etc)

 

or increase the accuracy loss

Edited January 17, 2015 by RIOTx

[DeMeritus]

Coptering and flinging:

 

I feel that coptering might be a little more useful as a mobility tool if when you're close enough to an enemy you don't suddenly get stuck on their hitbox and end up just sitting there like a lemon, waiting to get shot at by what might be a crowd of enemies surrounding you.  When coptering, I'd assume you're doing it for mobility, and usually aren't looking to smack into an enemy , do some damage and get stopped dead in your tracks.  having so much forward momentum, you'd expect to at least knock down an enemy or the like.  Anything to expedite getting the heck away if you're rushing to get someplace else.  More than once I've had the experience of trying to rush to extraction when life support is at zero, coptering to try to expedite things, and then suddenly doing a... stealth finisher on an enemy... who is surrounded.  While I'm at zero shields and 5 HP.

 

Pickups:

 

Ammo might be a little nice to have given a percentage of your total ammo pool or a fixed amount, depending on which is greater.  Or perhaps have each weapon have a statistic for how much ammo is restored per pickup.

 

Energy seems okayish.  Health though... 25 HP from an orb?  Given how rare the things are compared to everything else, and how enemies don't drop them unless there's a warframe ability involved... maybe a buff is in order?

 

Damage mods:

 

I'd love it if weapons gained stats as they levelled up, like warframes and kubrows do, up to a predetermined max.  And serration and similar mods stack on top of that.  Steady, gradual progression is nice.  A new player trying to do mastery rank up tests with the starter gear and no clear explanation of how damage related mods and upgrading works is a recipe for frustration and non-returning players.  Built in upgrading would help ease that a bit.

 

Damage mods are an expensive resource sink and focus for players to work on to improve performance.  They have their place and their role, a lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into that.  Keeping them as is and adding built in slow upgrading to a weapon leveling up would be the best of both worlds.

 

Would LOVE it if every weapon had some unique little perk/tweak ro set of tweaks to it that gets stronger, akin to how warframe abilities unlock/upgrade at certain predetermined levels.  That... would be amazing.  Would make even the crappy starter weapons worth using, if they had some unique, and useful quirk/gimmick to them.  Icing on the cake, and would make each weapon something other than just mastery fodder to be leveled and then thrown away.  Having to decide if you *really* want to get rid of a weapon just to get mastery for another would be... interesting.  Much moreso than the current setup.  Look at the syndicate weapons and weapon mods as an example.

 

Mk1 weapons perhaps synergize with one another, boosting damage, or affinity gain?  The more of them you have in a party, the bigger the bonus, but only for those also having an mk1 equipped.  Or for everyone, if you're feeling generous.

 

Another gun does more damage the lower the percentage of your shields is.  Or health.

 

Or after X amount of affinity is gained, it gains tempoorary increased/guaranteed crit chance, status chance, whatever for a limited time as a timed buff.

 

Wouldn't even need to change all the weapons at once to have the new capabilities.  Just a few every week or so, gradually filtering them in, giving things time to adjust, settle, and get changed and tweaked.

 

This would avoid the "mega-update" problem that has bitten DE in the ! so many times already.  And give some breathing room to try things out and gradually tweak them.  It would be a bonus, a welcome additional bit of 'yay' for every weapon affected.  Some would obviously be more useful than others in the end, but every weapon would do something neat.  Utility, damage bonus, or even just something entertaining to see visually.

 

Heck, if the spines on Mire would have a chance of breaking off and sticking into enemies, spawning into friendly maggots(with coloration matching your mire's chosen colors) that distract mobs, who wouldn't love that?

 

Grabbing enemies:

 

Eh, dunno how useful this would be.  Maybe if it had some utility to it, like grabbing an enemy and using them as a human shield, thus preventing them from using their special abilities.  Otherwise... meh.

 

Warframe abilities:

 

On low levels, I tend to use all the various abilities.  On higher level content, which is where I usually am, I use utility abilities and the others are left to collect dust, as they're either useless due to doing little to no damage, or an outright liability.  Scaling damage to go up based on average enemy level would be... nice, to say the least.

Edited January 17, 2015 by DeMeritus

[Dead10ck]

I think this thread will explain whatever I would've said here much better- https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/386391-an-easy-realistic-way-to-encourage-build-diversity-in-weapons/

[Innocent_Flower]

Wow, been a while since i got something recognized into hot topics. Now; I'd like you to know I'm an oddity who usually carries several different opinions on him and doesn't really commit to a single Idea.

 

For weapons, I will assume that (the sadly popular) idea of having weapons get stronger as they level up (in damage, specifically) would be terrible. Does it help with Progression and customization? Yes. But It would also hamper balance in that a player cannot scale down his weapon's damage for lower levels. Keeping serration and it's like and chainging the other mods we all whack on just to add damage (multishot,elemental damage etc) would be a fair sollution, but not quite as effective as removing the mods as we know them.

 

 I think that removing serration/pressure point/point blank and hornet strike would be the best choice. Making multishot more of a situation item rather than a 'double everything!' mod would be great.  

 

You'd best remove corrupted damage mods from the vault, Changing them to five ranks at most, and then adding them higher negative values so that the player gets an interesting choice on what rank they use. Lots of interesting +damage -something else mods could add variety, Just make sure players can't increase their base damage by too much or we'll have more false choice. 

(having point blank (the original, bugger prime) a -stat mod that increases damage at the cost of falloff would be interesting)

 

I also came up with a whacky idea in which there were tons of damage mods. Every damage mod would be five ranks, but when it's rank five you get the option to transform the mod into a different version of itself, unranked, with an additional effect. 

 

Buff utility mods to godhood. And add fabulous utility mods. 

 

 

It would also be very good to see elemental mods and physical mods redone, because as they stand they're basically just +damage mods. A mix of ways to do this:

-Convert damage, not add to it. 

-Elemental mods for physical weapons add and increase the severity of the status chance, but not adding any 'elemental damage' to every hit. Enemies material types are changed so that some are more likely to be affected by some statuses than others. 

-Mods that increase an element + status should be changed to either

A-Not form combination elements

B-Do similar, but not quite the same, statuses. Napalm VS thermite kind of thing. 

C-Be the conversion/addition to the addition/conversion of the more common versions. 

- mods that increase an element + something else (blaze,focus energy, ice storm etc) should be changed to improve status chance at the cost of/with the bonus of.. 

- Add up to 30% of a given damage type. 30% being the cap. 

 

And buff those damn single status chance mods!

 

In the case of sliding/coptering/wall launch/directional melee I'd be wonderfully conflicted; I Could worship the tipedo for the way it's changed my movement on the map, but the movement is jaring and i'd prefer a more controlable movement system on the whole. I think I'd like to see

-The wall leap removed, But the player can jump higher/kick from walls harder by holding the jump button down. 

-Coptering... generaly removed from weapons, but some special weapons have abilities that can change the way you move. 

 

 

Grabbing enemies: If we can be batman, we should be batman. 

Edited January 17, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[siboreas]

Sliding, Coptering, and Wall Flinging:

I don't think removing the acceleration from sliding is a good idea. I appreciate how this type of movement allows me to either save or regain some stamina while I'm moving around while adding that little added amount of propulsion (as if I'm taking some force gained by dropping myself down and directing it forward). Moreover, I'd think that most players have already gotten a feel for this. Having said that, I find moving from melee weapon to melee weapon a bit annoying at times because their slide attacks/coptering propel you to such different distances, making it hard to measure and time your attacks with a weapon you're not used to. I would suggest making the distance travelled/acceleration the same across all melees for coptering/slide attacks.

One thing I never use and never see anyone else using is wall attacks. I find it far too difficult to direct/aim this type of attack, and whenever I happen to do it, it's strictly by accident. This, in my opinion, needs some retooling/rethinking.

These suggestions might be a bit better if we had some idea of what Parkour 2.0 is meant to encompass/change/add/improve/remove.

 

Pickups:

I glanced at the thread, and the biggest complaint seems to be that if I've increased my max health pool, those pickups should give me more health, which to me doesn't make a lot of sense. Health and energy pickups were never an issue that had really crossed my mind before - we have health restores to supplement health loss, and now also overshields to buff us up even more. I am not, and I don't think any other player should be, ever solely dependent on the health drops from enemies. Having said all this, the topic got me thinking of some interesting changes that might still help resolve the issue raised.

What if enemies always dropped health, but the amount of health dropped is directly correlated to the enemy type/strength/health/toughness, and the amount dropped tapers off over time until the health orb itself eventually disappears? This would mean that killing weaker enemies drop small amounts of health, larger/tougher drop more, and to get the most out of the orb would require you to pick it up as quickly possible. To supplement times where you may not be able to pick up disappearing health orbs, perhaps enemies could have a chance of dropping health restores as well (you know those non-team health restores that you never use? Ya, those). This might also help encourage the inner ninja a little more, encouraging players to get in close for melee attacks, so as to get those health orbs, or simply encourage a player to get in close and take damage, knowing that their risk will be rewarded with instant health. Perhaps melee combos could affect the amount of health dropped? A reward for a different type of risk. (This idea is sort of akin to picking up Red Orbs, or demon blood, in oldschool Devil May Cry, where the amount that the enemies drop is affected by Stylish Rank & the enemy type)

With the way energy/powers currently works, I don’t think I would really change anything. Only suggestion might be to have certain enemy types have a guaranteed energy drop chance – like nullifiers or energy leech unit types.

Ammo: I don't know. Never had an issue. Seems fine to me.

 

Damage levels, Powercreep, and Required Mods:

This is a tough issue, so I think I’ll just make some generic suggestions/thoughts.

1) When it comes to weapons, I think certain stats should naturally increase as you rank, much like with warframes (health/shields/powers). As you synergize better with a warframe, certain things get better. As you synergize better with a gun, I think perhaps reload speed should get better. With melee, maybe attack speed. Moreover, these two stats don’t really seem like things that could be affected by the gun itself, to some degree. I mean it’s the character reloading the gun, not the gun reloading the gun, so how does modding the gun with reload mod affect the character’s ability to reload the gun…. Anyway, semantics – not terribly important, but the point is that you can look at these stats as things that might be affected by a player simply getting better with the weapon, explained by using the weapon more – ie. Ranking the weapon means practice makes perfect means certain stats get better. I don’t feel that damage is a stat the fits this idea.

Moreover, let’s say those types of mods were removed from the melee/gun mod pool – you’re mostly left with damage mods. I mean you’ve got status, critical, punchthrough and ammo mods, but those are directly related to damage. (status – my damage does something, critical – I do more damage, punchthrough – I damage behind things, ammo – I do damage for longer) Actually, reload speed affects your damage output as well really. In the end, essentially, modding your gun means just stacking on damage. I think what we really need is just more options to affect how we do damage, such as tradeoff mods, combo mods, attack-specific mods, which might allow certain other weapons to be on the same level as certain others. Eg. I like my Grinlok, but at higher levels, my Boltor Prime is a better choice. However, if I had a mod that added _damage (less than serration) plus critical chance_, I might use that mod in place of serration, thereby giving me a different type of gun that I can use at high levels, and it would be a mod that’s essentially useless on my Boltor Prime. So, I’m not so sure being able to do more damage is an issue, making things too OP, but just that the lack of mods makes it difficult to make certain guns good choices for tougher missions. And, as our equipment gets better, I’d suspect that DE would start bringing out tougher levels/bad guys to challenge higher ranked players.

2) I love the mod system in this game, but it is pretty apparent that there are certain mods you always use. While I think my suggestion above might add some variation to those staple mods, it’s likely that I’m still always going to use Serration, Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion and Pressure Point. It’s also extremely likely that I’m using either one, the other or both of Vitality and Redirection. I really don’t like the idea of removing these types of mods, the reason being that one thing I like about this game is that I can’t rank up certain attributes with a certain piece of equipment, and transfer those attributes to another piece of equipment when I get it. I especially like this because there are some mods that take quite a bit of work/time to get fully ranked, and I’d hate to have to do that for every piece of equipment I get in the game. (eg. Serration, Vitality, Redirection) As a counter example, I decided to try out Hawken a few months ago – seemed like a cool game. You can mod out your mechs using a standard list of mods that you have to earn. I assumed that once I earned these mods I could use them on all my mechs – not the case. You have to re-earn those mods for each mech. So, when I started the game, I was obtaining mods that I knew I’d want to use on my next mech. The moment I got that new mech and realized I had to re-obtain those mods, I stopped playing the game, and never went back.

What might be a better solution than removing the mods is just making a spot for them. I’m always going to want more base damage/strength for my weapons and, generally, my powers (V polarity). I almost always beef up the puncture, slash or impact damage on the weapon – whichever has highest base (Dash polarity). I almost always add shields or health to my warframe (D polarity). Wherever I can, I’m probably always going to add an augment as well (Y/Scratch polarity). So why not do something like the following for every warframe/weapon/kubrow/sentinel/archwing:

Where that group of 4 spots cannot be re-polarized. Perhaps that group of 4 can have some other function as well, perhaps somehow related to the focus system (soonTM). Of course this would mean that everything in the game would need some sort of power/augment mod – maybe make a pool of generic ones to go alongside the weapon-specific ones already in existence. Moreover, the D-polarity weapon mod pool would need to expand as well. (Here’s a D-polarity mod idea: small chance to knock the enemy’s weapon from his hands) Also, I think everything should have some sort of aura/stance mod slot for consistency, but that’s perhaps another conversation.

To answer some questions directly: Do you think Warframe would be too difficult without mods that increase damage? Yes, especially with endless mission types. Do you think these mods are fine in their current form, or would you make any changes at all? I wouldn’t make changes to the mods, but add more mods. Would a “Primed Serration” be game breaking in your opinion? I don’t think it would be game breaking, but it’s certainly not a necessary mod. Are these mods only too powerful when combined with certain weapons? Because of the % increase mechanic used in the game, high base damage will more or less always equate to highest modded damage. However, there’s potential within the system to make trade-off decisions, but not enough mods to support making those difficult decisions (eg. crit/status). Imagine a gun mod that increased the chance of nearby enemies to the initial target getting hit with a small percentage of damage when the target is hit. Imagine another mod that gave low incr. damage + this “splash” effect. Imagine a mod that increased “splash” at the expense of crit chance. Now I’m forced to consider making decisions concerning crowd control vs single target damage. Just another idea.

 

Grab and Throw Mechanics:

Any answer given to a “would you” question should always be interpreted as “Until it’s in the game, I have no freakin idea whether I’d use it or not”. I might. I might not. I don’t know. Is any new mechanic such as this generally cool to imagine being in the game? Sure.

 

Abilities and “Energy 2.0”:

Firstly, I don’t think the energy system really needs any changes.

Second, I think this is way too generic a question – here’s some examples off the top of my head. I love using Loki, but he’s a frame where all his powers synergize really well together. I go invisible, switch teleport into the middle of a large group, disarm everybody, throw out a decoy and proceed to kill everything around me. I consistently use every power with Loki. But, Nekros, I desecrate like there’s no tomorrow, and occasionally call on a mini army – on occasion I might scare everyone away, but I’m more likely to just call up my army. Power 1? Never use. Rhino – 2 always, 4 when I can, 3 when I think it’s useful. 1, just to get to extract… maybe. Frost – 3 and 4. I honestly have no idea what his second power is. In general, I think usage goes 4 the most, 2 and 3 come next – which depends on the frame – and the first power, only use when I’m ranking the frame, and then eventually almost never. In acts of desperation, with low energy, I miiiight think of using power 1, and I think that pretty much goes for most other players. I’d rather save that energy for something more useful, and just use my weapons to do what most power 1’s do – damage against a single target.

I think it would be neat to see something happen to power 1 when you reach rank 30 with your frame. Eg. Instead of having syndicate augment mods for it, just automatically give power 1 that syndicate augment when you reach rank 30 with that frame. Next, make that ability interchangeable, and only that ability. Make power 2, 3 and 4 stuck to the warframe, but as soon as you reach rank 30 you now have an ability you can use on any frame – how sweet would that be? Throw some generic power 1 abilities into the mix as well. Tie it in with the focus system somehow. I think these things would bring some glory and usefulness back to power 1.

Another thing to keep in mind with this question is that most people mod their frames in such a way to maximize the effectiveness of one or two abilities. So, if they do that, they’re going to use certain powers less as such. Therefore it’s less of a question of whether I’m using them or not, and more whether I’ve designed my loadout for them to be useful or not. If I’m a Nekros built to maximize desecrating, power 1 is just gonna tickle the enemy – why would I bother wasting the energy?

 

As usual, best of luck to DE on making the best decisions. Hope my spitballing inspired some ideas.

Edited January 17, 2015 by siboreas

[(PSN)Switchloki]

The wall running and wall flinging need a little changes making them slightly more realistic and more accurate in terms of where the person wants to land. 

[MechaKnight]

Wow am I late. I may as well post something.

 

Sliding, Coptering, and Wall Flinging:

Sliding is fine. Wall flinging is okay. Coptering trivializes whole tilesets, but the real problem with this is that they act as an enabler for radial damage spam.

 

Pickups:

Health orbs are not common enough. Blue orbs are very common. Ammo mostly feels okay. The only time players notice it being restricting is when not using a rifle or pistol, since shotgun and sniper ammo drop less frequently.

 

Damage Levels, Powercreep, and Required Mods:

I may as well quote myself.

 

Whatever they decide to do with straight-up damage mods (like Serration), it will definitely incorporate a healthy look at how damage scales and how enemies scale so as not to have changes break the current system.  I'm all for a removal of Serration and stacking base damage increases on rank, but they haven't set anything in stone just yet.

 

 

As for the rest of our little back and forth, most of us are just miffed at the fact that it has gotten so out of hand.  I think the biggest culprit is the augments that allow skills to do extra damage.  I didn't beef my xcal's damage at all and I was in a Draco PUG with some Oberon who used the Smite Infusion augment.  Man I could wail on their junk like no tomorrow.  We got up to round 4 and stopped at the key but we could have kept going.  There was no signs of a slowdown.

 

I think its safe to say that DE should balance the damage output around what they consider to be balanced content.  If they want decked-out frames to be able to nuke rooms until level 40, they're going to have to consider balancing content beyond that point.  The simple fact that your can press a button and clear everything demands that players seek a greater challenge for greater rewards.  And they do.  But they seek it in what isn't considered balanced content.

 

 

The team synergy augments are neither a problem nor are they necessary--this kind of killing spree was possible before syndicate mods. I can stack three power strength mods alongside Corrosive Projection to gain the desired effect. What's really the problem is the amount of damage enemies can take before they die versus the amount we can dish out, as well as how we dish out damage.

 

We can gain a level of power on our weapons and abilities most things in the solar system are not able to handle. Let's look at a few quickly thrown together builds to understand the problem.

 

Experiment Section

 

The Weapon Conundrum

Balance between new players, old players, and the effect of base damage + multishot

I will only be comparing burst DPS

 

Mk-1 Braton with no mods: http://goo.gl/TVJdVx ; 140.40

Mk-1 Braton with ideal mods: http://goo.gl/ay8UlQ ; 8442.60

Mk-1 Braton missing base damage and multishot mods: http://goo.gl/1S1y4N ; 1033.44

Boltor Prime with no mods: http://goo.gl/pqtu05 ; 577.60

Boltor Prime with ideal mods: http://goo.gl/aQlOYw ; 34725.60

Boltor Prime missing base damage and multishot mods: http://goo.gl/kIRuK4 ; 4250.56

 

I only used the Boltor Prime as an example of a decent "end game" weapon that mods similarly to the Mk-1 Braton. It is by no means the best or worst example, simply the easiest to translate. I made three builds for each: no mods, ideal mods, and the same "ideal" set, with the core cookie cutter mods removed.

 

The result: the full kit of mods we can apply to a generic non-crit damage gun will multiply damage output by 60x. However, if the base damage and multishot mods were removed as developers were intending--being cookie-cutter mods with no variety--the damage multiple would only be increased 7x. Clearly, our mods are an amazing factor in the damage dealt between players using the same weapon. As for "bad gun" compared to "good gun", the Boltor Prime is 4x better in dealing burst DPS than the Mk-1 Braton. Overall, when comparing a min-maxed Boltor Prime to a new Mk-1 Braton, experienced players tend to deal around 247x as much damage as a fresh beginner.

 

Despite being a shooter game, Warframe balances like an MMO. The trouble with Warframe is, while MMOs tend to separate players heavily across different world regions and only entice them back to farm craft materials they could buy from other players on the market, Warframe throws all kinds of players together into alerts and missions. The solar system has some sort of separation, but it can easily be defeated by taxi'ing players past it all. Alerts also host a wide range of players, and are also susceptible to the taxi. This means Warframe has to struggle to accommodate so many ranges of player strength per mission. In general, it just means letting highly powered veterans stomp content without any difficulty+reward scaling.

 

Radial Conundrum

For our nuke ability, I will propose Excalibur's Radial Javelin. One calculation with Overextended, and one without. Both are assumed to use Stretch.  I will apply Intensify, Transient Fortitude, and Blind Rage rank 2 into the calculation. Unless specified, assume all mods are maxed.

The below are simply damage calculations. I will also use the radial circular area expression area = pi*r^2 to give an idea of the relative theoretical killing capacity of each configuration. This area will be multiplied by damage.

 

With Overextended: 1520 damage in 58.75 meters ; 16.48 million damage capacity

Without: 2120 damage in 36.25 meters ; 8.75 million damage capacity

 

It's a no-brainer that despite the damage disadvantage given by Overextended, it's practically an auto-include into nuke builds because it increases damage potential by nearly double. This is simply because range is an exponentially important component to a nuke. The damage is secondary. There's currently no penalty for spamming radials through walls with infinite punchthrough.

 

 

Enemy Durability

For our test subject, I will propose a Grineer Bombard unit. It will start at level 40.

 

I will calculate its stats using this figure: http://imgur.com/gt3Tjc0

 

Health: 5832

Armor: 1322.72

 

Using the equation here http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Armor

Effective health = nominal health * ( 1 + net armor / 300 )

 

Effective Health: 31545.68

 

The below comparisons are not factoring Damage 2.0 modifiers.

 

At maximum effective health, the heavy unit would not even last against one whole second of damage from an optimized Boltor Prime. This "high level" enemy is fodder to us veterans.

 

The same Bombard would last less than 4 seconds against a maximized Mk-1 Braton. It goes in line that the Boltor Prime is 4 times as good as the Mk-1 Braton. The enemy is still barely noticeable though, and this is a heavy unit of a level you'd find on planet Ceres.

 

Against an unmodded Boltor Prime, said enemy would last 64.6 seconds. Far too long. However, just removing the base damage and multishot from the ideal build, the enemy would last against gunfire for 7.4 seconds. Maybe the developers have a point about Serration and Split Chamber. This is long enough to experience the enemy. Maybe even long enough to see it do something. The Mk-1 Braton would probably take 4 times longer to be around 30 seconds of shooting. Pretty long time. In general, new player weapons are perhaps too weak compared to the usual weapons. I mean, the Lato is terrible. Perhaps alongside the mod and damage tweaks, bad weapons can be brought within a closer margin of good weapons. So I don't need to feel like I've betrayed someone every time I try to invite a friend to this game.

 

Now for abilities. Let's assume Overextended is being used on the Radial Javelin build I mentioned.

Since the enemy at level 40 has an EHP of 31.5k, it would take quite a few Radial Javelins to down it. Twenty one of them. That doesn't seem like the "Press 4 to win" I was talking about. However, what about Corrosive Projection. Four of them. Well, now the enemy has no armor. The Bombard's EHP is only it's calculated HP on its level now. That's just less than 6k HP. This only requires 4 Overextended Radial Javelins to kill. This is the strongest enemy that will spawn on non-scaling missions on the highest planet node.

 

What does this mean though? Considering we generally run maximum efficiency to carry around 6 canned nukes without the need to refill on Warframes not using Flow as well, we can easily clear a room with no trouble regardless of how many enemies are in it on the highest non-infinitely scaling node in the solar system. If we kill anything at all (which we will), and pick up any energy orbs we see (which we will--or not with energy packs and syndicate buffs), we can clear maps forever. In any non-scaling mission, even on the "hardest" difficulty.

 

At least, that's how it is for grineer, the durable enemy in the solar system. We used to farm Corpus on Viver before those pesky nullifiers came along. They didn't have armor. Just apply the no-armor logic in our grineer experience and it's easy to see how trivial the corpus were.

 

 

 

With the above summed up, we understand the game is not challenging for veterans even on the highest level nodes in the solar system and void, provided infinite scaling is not in action. We also know how much the "cookie cutter" core mods of the weapon contribute to our imbalance between new and old players and make balance difficult. Radial damage nukes really do win everywhere except infinite content. Grineer are indeed insanely Ruk'ing durable compared to everything else, but we can still trivialize them. What are possible solutions?

 

Well, change is possible, so many solutions can be considered. Devstream #44 looked promising, as did the overview.

 

Well, assuming the speculated damage, enemy, status, and weapon rebalances take everything into account with precision we can only dream about until we see it, player weapons and mods should first be balanced to have less of a gap between their ability, with more viability in choice between everything; weapons, mods, elements, anything you can remember. Next, use this standardized expectation of applied power to balance the durability of enemies across the solar system. Current Grineer armor scaling needs to be scrapped, it's pure madness. Once these elements are targeted, gameplay can start taking a form where we actually do feel more challenge across the solar system's many planets. Also, rewards need to be scaled upwards for challenge. There is seriously no incentive for going to higher level planets--we're practically making easy mode the best option unless the dropped void keys differ between nodes.

 

What about abilities? This is an abilities thread, and one of the game's largest facets are abilities. Our concern is mostly behind radial (spherical) damage abilities, especially "ultimates", usually ability #4. There are many ways to solve that situation. Considering how similar most instant-damage radial abilities are in comparison to each other, they could be made more unique by trading a portion of damage for unique custom statuses and effects (offensive/defensive/supportive). As powerful as Nova is, her participation in the game is no longer as game-breakingly destructive as it once was. Alternatively, abilities can keep their original stats, and be balanced more closely to the game by tweaking the values of abilities mods which work with said abilities. Yet another choice is to just balance ability stats along with the rest of the heap, while making a choice as to whether they are powerful yet limited, or more average within the kit and just as unlimited as before. Even better, bump all #4 abilities to #5 abilities, and implement something balanced for the new #4. Make now ability #5 run off something that is not energy. A completely different limitation that is more suitable to an epic room-clearing mega ability.

 

In short, level 40 heavy grineer units (Bombards) typically die within less than a second of gunfire from a decent weapon. If you're using the same build on an Mk-1 Braton, it will only take 4 seconds. Radial Javelin and other nukes can still clear any and every non-endless mission with max range and max efficiency.

 

The issue is either powercreep, imbalance, or the game isn't big enough to accommodate veterans and needs an expansion. Even then, veterans are constantly going to run missions in low level content, so implementing only an expansion is not the solution.

 

The major issue with powercreep is that there ceases to be any meaningful obstacle in gameplay. The only challenge to be seen in the game is playing past an hour in T4 Survival, hence why even though developers say that "infinite content is not a balanced benchmark for content", that really is the only time we are not effortlessly clearing all enemies and obstacles in less than a second.

 

That said, from my above quote, I can see gameplay being feasibly balanced with the removal or merging of core mods such as base damage and multishot mods.

 

Abilities and "Energy 2.0"

Regardless of what that poll says, we both know any time an instant damage radial nuke ability is present on a warframe (Excalibur, Oberon, Saryn, Mag, others), a large majority of players are going to mod for efficiency and strength almost exclusively, at the cost of their other abilities and augments. Between trivializing all content in non-infinite missions, and being the only thing keeping us alive in infinite missions by stunning enemies, the game is poorly balanced by both being trivialized by the damage of these abilities, yet almost necessitating them for long-term survival in infinite scaling.

[ViralN9]

On Serration and like mods:

 

 

If you ask me they should be made easier to level up.

[Cyv001]

If damage mods were removed, I'd want most of them removed - serration, primed point blank, hornet strike, etc. However, corrupted damage mods, elemental mods, and damage type mods should be kept.

The removal of "normal" damage mods would need compensation like fusion cores, but please - I don't want a billion unranked common cores to be given back. Either R5 cores or legendary cores. It'd also need compensation in the performance department - make all weapons have an innate damage buff everytime they rank up. Primary weapons would gain a 5.5% damage gain per level (165% at max), secondaries would gain 7.33% per level (220% at max), and melee weapons would receive 4% per level (120% at max). If this kind of system can be implemented similarly to ability rank up, i'd prefer it - frees up space for other mods.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Cyv001

[Mr.Lube]

Why are people so afraid of losing coptering and wall flinging? They look dumb, broken and ruin the feel of the game for me and many other players.

[Rakshal]

Why are people so afraid of losing coptering and wall flinging? They look dumb, broken and ruin the feel of the game for me and many other players.

...don't use it if you don't like it. All it seriously needs is an animation update.

[Archwizard]

Sliding, Coptering, and Wall Flinging:

The first melee weapon I picked up after my Skana was the Dual Zoren. I'd always mentally toyed with the idea of learning how to use throwing axes, and picked them up for looks rather than stats. I was sort of unimpressed by the stats once I tried it out, but a few hours later I looked at the wiki and found out about coptering.

The Zoren immediately graduated to the irreplaceable top weapon in my arsenal, regardless of anything I have picked up since. Coptering was part of what really sold the game for me.

I do like the Wall Flinging mechanic - there are a handful of areas that players probably wouldn't be able to get to without it, such as the top of the central pillar in Relays, or a test of skill to get to the hovering pads at the top of my clan's Grand Hall - although I understand that it's probably made from a bug in the physics programming. My only gripe with it has ever been that it can sometimes make you phase through walls if you hit a corner.

 

Pickups:

Health orbs only restore 25 health apiece, which is less than a tenth, usually a twentieth, of my health at a given time; they also don't normally drop from enemies, which can be a huge pain to only have a finite number on a map if we don't have a NekrOberon or I don't have Life Strike. I've always felt when I was running over an orb dropped from a locker that it could perhaps clear a status or kickstart my shields when I'm under fire, though.

 

Damage levels, Powercreep, and Required Mods:

I feel like this topic ignores the obvious solution of baking the damage bonuses right in.

I know that a lot of people invest a lot into these mods, but I wouldn't shed a tear if the damage was baked in and the mods reworked.

 

Grab and Throw Mechanics:

Should've been the Rip Line augment.

 

Abilities and "Energy 2.0":

I try really hard to use all 4 abilities when I have reason to, but there are some cases where a button is worthless, forgettable, or painful to use.

Like Psychic Bolts, or Contagion, or literally any part of Nekros' kit other than Desecrate, respectively.

Ember's problem until literally today's Dev Workshop was that her abilities all focus on dealing flat amounts of damage; any Ember would simply use Accelerant and the most efficient attack for their build, which usually left Fire Blast as the least used skill in her arsenal. It's the same issue that plagued Oberon when he came out (all of his attacks were flat damage, even his heal was flat damage). Scott claims that he wants damage to give way to utility in the late game, but when you have frames whose kits are dominated by damage skills... you boil down those frames to their simplest form, which means some abilities lose worth and evaporate. When you all you end up with is 3 different stuns, you tend to spam the biggest AoE.

It would help if frame abilities were built to interact with each other to the same degree that Loki's do - master race and all; all of his abilities have a clear and unique purpose from the others in his kit, so even his most niche skill still sees frequent use.

Failing that, at least make direct-damage skills (ones with flat amounts like Fireball or Shock) deal a percentage of the target's health as damage instead, scaling with Power Strength/rank.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Archwizard

[Repligon]

Damage mods

 

The problem is not in Serration, problem is in how ridiculously damage scales with mods. Right now modded guns can deliver more than 100 times more damage! Everything on a starchart just gets oneshotted. Even T4 gunners die in couple shots from my Secura Cestras. But buffing enemies tankyness is not a solution either. This will tremendously increase gap between players, damage increase mods will become even more mandatory and ranking them up will become a much more difficult task since there is no other place for credit/core farm other than hight level missions.

 

So the solution that we need should down damage difference between unmodded and modded gear. Of course removing damage from mods alltogeter along with scaling difficulty by adding new types of enemies rather than buffing old ones would be a perfect solution. Difficulty would be determinated by skill rather than by difference between gun damage and enemy health.

 

But this is impossible because of how much invetements damage mods needed to be maxed out.

 

I'm trying to sit on two chairs here but I think best solution in this case will be to leave direct damage mods (mulishot, serration/hornet strike/pressure point and corrupted counterparts) and make a special energy free slot for them (so you can install only one at a time) but remove additional damage from elemental mods. Make elementals change physical damage so damage bonuses multiply and ranking up elemental mod will increase proc-related stuff like chance/range/power/duration/whatever.

Now guns only scale up to ~X4 damage instead of ~X100. Modded guns are not godlike on low levels but still powerfull, unmodded are not pea-shotters on highter levels. Maybe even preinstall damage mods in all newly bought/crafted guns so players don't have to rely on RNG to get them.

All investments in mods are not doomed, market is not blown up by legenday cores.

Can install +damage mod in rank 0 gun and use it at harder levels right away.

Player has a choice between damage mods: serration, hornet strike and others for raw damage buff; multishot has less raw damage buff but better for crits and procs; corrupted mod gives highter damage buff but has downside.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Repligon

[kennylagenz]

i would really like to see more fluid movements in the launching and sliding, maby more movements to add on top of the slide melee, they just seem incomplete to me like i should be able to launch in more ways than now currently in game.

[yles9056]

Pickups definitely needs some revision:

- 25 health restore for a health orb is a pretty low consider their rareness.

- It would be great if some rare or special resource like Orokin Cell, Argon Crystal, Neural Sensors, Oxium, and Neurodes have different appearance from other common resource.

- Ammo pickups are fine but ammo system is not. I'm talking about Castana and Angstrum sharing sniper ammo with primary weapon.

Edited January 17, 2015 by yles9056

[(PSN)ZMPr0wLer]

One must have mods half them and the other half by weapon lvl and someone said at some point the mod cost gets cheapper. I have always seen mods as experience that carries over from other things.

Pick ups first fix the drops from the enemies by dropping some health this should be adding to the energy not in instead of if we have to have health oreanted frames there needs to be health drops or that frame needs s healing mechanism.

Ammo needs to be fixed don't know how but, if not fixedit will destroy this game. Example is penta, ogris, opticor and other weapons like this need to use sniper rounds. After 40 mins a penta should be also running out of ammo.

Parkour 2.0 this pleased me greatly in that sprinting would hope to be good as or better than copptering or other things and wtf galitane flys across map big heavy weapon, dakra prime slightly more than excal super jump. One fix is the player has to be targeting enemy.

Abilities this is sad excal traded one ability for another, and many other frsmes are neglected i love seeing other frames oter than rhino, nova, necros, and the few other frames that are pulled out to do that one mission. Ok, this brings me to the agment mod for the frames so i rarely see nyx or nyx prime after every one mastered him and on top of it loki's has a better chaos than the girl that mastered it.

The big problem that this game has is efficiency is key. Humans are just that and if it is we will find it look at rep farming lol hell 4 players can finish the cap in 3 to 4 missions if this is not efficient what the hell is? If you build inefficiency in the game people will let you know. Ok, 2 to 1 weapons are stupidity

The best thig to do to fix this is one thing make everything more efficient than the previous stuff and people will praise it. The ship looks good and is super efficient i have yet to hear a bad thing.

[Fundance]

I would love to see a revision of the energy system. Specifically, reduce the RNG! Powers are a huge part of your Warframe's identity, and I feel like they could strongly benefit from being something you can rely on having access to without having to use Energy Siphon or efficiency mods.

Make your energy charge based on hitting or killing enemies. Make it restore slowly over time for all frames, give some skills cooldowns to prevent them getting spammed to encourage strategic, smart use and buff them accordingly to compensate, etc.

But please, just remove those random orbs. I want to be rewarded for taking action and playing well, not getting lucky.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Fundance