General Gameplay Feedback

[Guest InfluenceDevice]

Some general feedback after a couple of weeks' play. Overall, I love the game; It's the kind of entertainment I like. So why am I only posting negative things? Because it's easier for me to express what I feel breaks the continuity of entertainment since everything else (and there is a lot) keeps me immersed in it.

 

None of these are game breakers. Except the guy that runs ahead and pushes the button to take the 20 second lift journey on his own. Whilst his team clear up the mess he just ran through. That guy can french kiss his own Stalker.

 

 

General game
There should be clear bonus damage for attacking from stealth, regardless of weapon. However, it makes it hard to get repeated stealth kills when you don't have a one shot kill-stick. It is also impossible since most team combat is about is moving through the level, generally engaging every mob at close range.

Judging the damage it does to mobs, standing next to an exploding barrel when it goes up could pretty much knock you down for revive in one go. It should, at the very least, knock you over.

For private or online games, I feel rank 20+ missions should scale harder to require more teamwork. Some of the bosses are spot on, but the mobs are just trivial at that point.
Shield Ospreys are the best example of co-operative mobs that make your Tenno life harder. More of these. Perhaps an infested alpha charger that gives a "slash through shield bonus" to its brethren in range? A laser designator sentinel for Grineer that makes their weapons fire more accurate?

I don't disagree with pier-to-pier games per se, as I am used to the "good times" offered to me by the performance of the client/server PC game. Being able set a maximum ping/response for a pier-to-pier host would be a good thing. I'm sure we've all seen some truly atrocious lagfests with some PCs that should not be hosting or should be playing on another server.

Warframe does not seem to be truly multi core. Most of the load is on one core, especially when running as the host. Obviously, it will slow some systems down. Also, on a heavily overloaded host, mob AI also suffers badly - sometimes to the point of them just standing still - making the game extremely easy. I hope you can offload the mob AI or pier-to-pier server load to as many cores as you can. My i7 copes well enough - most of the time, it has stuttered on a couple of occasions.

 

To "gently" encourage more close team play, players that are miles out on their own should be subject to karma swarms. After all, if your sensors identified a lone Tenno with no  backup, wouldn't you want to take it down first?

Bosses or mob kills should be required to unlock certain weapons. Completing Everest's Councillor Vay Hek gives you access to...you guessed it, the HEK. Killing a corprus sniper allows you to unlock the SNIPETRON (/facepalm on the name) etc. Okay, commercially you will want to have the option to buy them outright with platinum.

 

Mob AI
Improved attacking AI on defence missions, especially infested. I find it a nearly orderly conveyor belt mob grinder, most of the time. It is probably needs a kickback to level design to add more less obvious "stealth" attack routes. Maybe add wall running to infested runners and see how that goes :)

Early Grineer and Corprus mobs throw plasma/shield sapping grenades. They should do this more frequently later on but seem to do it less often in favour of changes in class to Grineer Seekers and Corprus Prods.

 

Grineer Shotgunners are still trying to snipe. Remind me to buy shares in the shotgun ammo factory.

 

Game content
My stalker frequently commented about avenging a boss that I had not seen yet. It has even tried to avenge a "Mining Machine". 10/10 for persistence, but lay off the heavy chemicals, yes?

Since the Stalker is immune to Warframe powers, cloaking, Loki clones and Saryn skin should not fool the Stalker. There is also the question of Ash and Nyx's skills, as well as Rhino's "Iron Skin", Trinity's "Link" and the invulnerability from "Blessing" (and probably others). However, there should be a way to counter it by playing well. Wall running, better ways to block and dodge, or another game mechanic that gives players a fighting chance. Staggering the Stalker by blocking his melee attack would be a good start. At the moment, most just people (including myself) follow the headless chicken approach and hope their team downs it before it downs them.

Multimission repetition - Prevent things like the "re-route this ship" navigation hack mission happening twice in a row. Stuff that makes little sense. I would like to see more dialogue from Lotus to indicate that she understands that this is a requirement change, e.g. where you've just collected 4 datamasses and have to collect...another 4 datamasses. Or re-route this ship and then...we're blowing it up. A simple "We were too late, Tenno.", or, "The navigation re-route has failed. This ship cannot remain operational..." rather than making you want to hit Lotus's repetitive dialogue generator with FRAGOR until it stops being funny.

I'd endorse repeat play lockout on some drops - you can't repeat a mission after completing, aborting/dc'ing for a small time period, but I think this would alienate some players. Commercially, whether they are the sort of people that pay for platinum in enough numbers to keep the game running, is another matter.

 

 

Enjoying the venture. Interesting use of NoSQL. I wish you continued business - luck usually runs out too soon :)