7.x Beta Report

[Willhammer]

Warframe is an aesthetically pleasing action game that takes elements from the darksiders/deadspace 3rdps games and combines with common RPG game statistical growth. This bold diversification calls on two different gaming camps to come together, bringing different expectations to the table. Admittedly, I have visited both camps, and find them fruitful and entertaining in different mindsets. The learning curve in dexterity and quantitative growth are indeed separate and usually call for different paradigms of enjoyment, the game displays the needed diplomacy, while not making a new genre, to avoid being identified as leaning toward either camp.

 

While both genres have a story driven plot, using a story that indicates toward the actions needed to meet the learning curve, Warframe foregoes this at the moment and relies on an initial plot element with supporting voiceovers and button queues to meet the criteria objective of grinding to get some of three possible tangible objectives aside from experience; being credits, blueprints, and crafting materials. This is established inside a command economy with absolutely no free market interaction. Players run missions, get credits at the end, and pick up materials from different ‘boxes’ throughout the mission. There is absolutely no way to trade, and player interaction is limited to before, during, and after a mission. These are the parts of the game that can be considered to be lacking. I trust this will become a null-point before the game comes out of beta.

 

The mod system is very rough. You get mods on missions; they go into an inventory and are used to upgrade weapons and frames after the mission. When this system was first released, it was just a pool of mods you could sort in five different ways to decide which ones you wanted to install and which ones you wanted to fuse. This is an interesting system of credential growth that should develop with fodder suggestions for mods you want to fuse, and better statistic effect explanations with the introduction of the dojo. I have several of the big cards fused to max, and would like to see a loadout option where when you equip a weapon, or frame the mods transfer over to the last known good configuration. Let’s face it, no one wants to grow a hornet’s sting card on each of their handguns, and switching over the mods from one to the other is cumbersome and interrupts the flow of the game. You can combine this with a better indication of how the configuration you are using will affect the performance of your frame and weapons, and base statistics of your gear.

 

Once you have this all together and are ready to go, there’s the chat element. You can only communicate in missions and the lobby. If you go into menus, you must rely on the voice chat and hope that your team has it set up to where it can be an effective communication endeavor. The chat element should be improved to include use during mission loading and when navigating menus. While in the realm of social interaction, a party building system that does not join you with a bad ping experience where the p2p host does not have the system specs to make the game at all enjoyable must be implemented. No one wants to play in a game that has four frames a second. When you are in a party, it is important to know who is talking in voice chat, and if anyone needs help. As it currently stands, there is no way of telling who is voice chatting, and to see ally statistics you need to drop everything and press Z, these things need to be worked into the overlay of the game with the option of turning them off. This would make the social aspect of the game much more fruitful.

 

Now that we are in the mission, a few things need some improvement. There should be options to turn on 5.1 surround sound if it’s available; making it so the rear speakers play the sounds of enemies when they are behind you. The AI is improving; the ‘formation bravo’ needs to be an actual firing formation with a few more different ones that players can learn to counter. I have seen this request before, so will assume that it is already in the project planning mix. It would also be nice to see storylines behind the enemies, and have their reactions change according to where they are in the story. Most of the bosses are $&*&*#(%& and easier to fight than anything in the level. I would like to see bosses that are something more than a reason to fuse more mods. Also, if we are paid mercenaries, when ‘this just got interesting’ and there’s more objectives, the reward for the mission needs to increase. This leads to statistical reward suggestion; where the credits for a mission should be based more on kills, stealth, and style, with any bonus being picked up during the mission. No more three minute hydra runs, to get credits.

 

Now I know that PvP is currently impossible, the balancing in frame abilities is a nightmare. Without balancing you would see a bunch of trinities locked in a battle that only ended when one player got sick of link/vampire. Nyx and Saryn would be worthless because of their primary usefulness is making the AI even more $&*&*#(%& than it already is. Ash and Loki would be the death cheaper than that first encounter with the stalker. Rhino and Frost would just stand there and laugh at your attempts to deal with their armor. Overall, the balancing would kill the preexisting fun of the game, but some of the frame abilities should be changed a little. Not totally, but a little, like Nyx using Chaos should result in every enemy coming after him. That way the final ability can be used effectively. Finally, the daily login reward needs to be rewarding, something you can not otherwise get. That is all, this is my beta report, hope it helps. Now I am going to play something else while I wait for the response.

 

Cheers ^_^,,

 

[tl;dr]

Good:

Intuitive control scheme

Graphics

Learning curve

 

Bad:

 

Storyline

Economy

 

Needs Improvement:

 

Mod System

Weapon/Warframe Loadouts

Performance statistics

Weapon/Frame Specs

Chat

Party Building

Ally statistics

3D sound

AI

Level difficulty

Enemy variation

Bosses

Bonus Objectives

Credit distribution

Frame abilities

Daily login reward

[Willhammer]

The new Moa looks great, and I'm loving the story driving behind it's existence. Thank you for addressing that. Also, changing the colors back on the shockwave moa is appreciated. The global event is a step in the right direction.

 

The next little change could include an option in Trinity's helmet that allows her to constantly see the life level of allies (possibly enemies too). Something that lets us see who is using voice chat would be pretty easy to implement in such a UI intervention.

 

New mods are cool. Could we see a little more ease of use in the fusion system?

 

Thank you for your time with this brief message.

[stacey69]

@(*()$ wall of text crit :( ill read it later it looks informative.

[Willhammer]

Well I haven't really written anything in about a year, so I could be too personalized and bias. Should have just stuck with a list, but felt that a report would be entertaining. Reading through the other post, I can't see much that hasn't already been addressed. Really the custom HUD with ally statistics, and more metric information for the end user are the only things that I have not seen really heavily posted.

[stacey69]

Ok. After the wall of text crit I had to sleep, but I came back to read as I said I would:)

 

Its a nice post and I agree with nearly everything you said. The thing that kept repeating itself to me was "its in beta" "its only a year old". Time makes things o so much smoother and with intelligent feedback from their users it will continue to flourish. You also missed out around 1000 other things that need changing or balancing. This shows how far away Warframe is from completion. 

 

Me and my friends play WF and chat on Skype. Msg me in game if you want to join us sometime. I'm stacey69 in game.

 

Nice post:)