Energy Ressource Management With Skills

[TenStorms]

Hi there,

 

till now i managed to level Excalibur, Excalibur Prime, Banshee to lvl 30 and now got Rhino half the way down to 30. I noticed, that i just use their first and ultimate ability...

 

Maybe my personaly playstyle, but i keep asking myself, do i something wrong...do i not recognize the other skills usage ?

Maybe some veteran can lighten me up, but i was very effective (mostly be top or second damagedealer while doing always hacks an teamobjectives).

 

My conlusions so far:

 

The reason for not using the other abilities is that the "weaker" abilites uses the same ressource (Energy) at an increased cost. so it seems to me not rational to use them in dangerous situations.

 

Excalbur + Excalibur Prime:

Radial Blind => nice CC Ability, but for 50 Energy i will always Slash Dash 2 times (25 Energy) out of the danger zone OR deeper into Enemys threatening me. Attack is the better defense instead of doing no Damage at all with Blind.

Possible solutions that would work for me=> 

- Nerf Slash Dash (please not i love it :) )

- Reduce Blind cost dramatically.

- Change the ressource form energy cost to a timed CD limited ability, like 45 sec fixed CD. This way i will not sacrifce a slash dash for blind.

 

Banshee:

Same as Excalibur, just using Skills 1 and 4 for the same reasons.

Sonar:

Do not see any use for Sonar (Enemys will fire at me, thats eneough to notice them, so i dont need to see them before).

Silence:

Should work on a stealth character but did not feel the banshee as a stealth warframe.

 

Rhino:

Same as obove, Still using Rhino Charge to escape or get me in an kill things. Using ultimate to if enemys surround me. All fine.

I read in other threads something about give Rhino aggro control Abilities because he is some sort of tank.

Aggro abilitys => I dont know if giving the player the aggro control would take away massive fun...if i can blind shoot at enemys because of no danger of being shoot back, i think this game would loose something.

Iron Skin:

Could be a life savier, but would still prefer to charge out or in the enemies to get rid of danger. Seems to me like a "i can stand at a boss and dont care", but that use is very limited...

Radial Blast:

Too similar with the ultimate.

 

My conlusion is:

if the "weaker" abilities (ability 2 and 3) get another ressource pool (like fixed cds, or maybe draining your shields a little or even life or stamina ?) then i would actually use them. But always i said to me, why should i blind, if i can charge and kill ? Currently i use the mod slots for other passive bonus mods (at increase cost because of polarity, but still better than be "dead" slots).

 

Suggestion:

Maybe change 1 slot to a "can be turned on or off without any cost" ability like hunter mode or tech armor in Mass effect 3 Online. Example:

Acitvate triple jump will let you always jump that high until you turn it off.

Sonar "wall hack",

Radial Blast...maybe a constant pulsing light ae damage aura at the cost of 25, or 50 % of his shields as long as its on ?

 

Already wall of text, time to get to hunt :).

And again that are just my personal experiences. Could be that a missed something with all that 2 and 3 abilites :).

 

[Tetsmeha]

No cooldowns. No on wants to play the waiting game.

 

And there is a reason to use the other skills. Stuff like Nyx Mind control and Excalibur Radial blind are extremely useful in stunlocking bosses. Sometimes straight up damage isn't the best. People say the best defense is a good offense, but a good offense is also a good defense.

[NotaCobra]

Some abilities are situation.

 

As a sniper, primarily, for solo play, mag's "Bullet attractor" is utterly worthless.

Yet, with teammates using grakata and gorgon against a boss with a quickly regenerating shield, it becomes invaluable.

 

That said, there are many abilities that are borderline useless;

Saryn's molt doesn't draw aggro well at all and is fragile as a paper house.

Banshee's Silence is virtually useless, it doesn't even stop enemies setting off alarms, it just makes killing already unaware enemies a tiny bit easier.

 

There definately needs to be work done, no doubt as stealth mechanics improve, silence will become more valuable, likewise sonar which allows players to be aware of where enemies are to better sneak up on them.

Other abilities just need their effectiveness increased.

 

I guess I can't say you're utterly wrong, but neither do I agree with you.

[Lord.Finster]

There are dozens of other threads about this topic...just saying.

 

Making some skills passive though might be a solution to your problem.

I see no reason why Excalibur shouldn't always jump 3 times as high and far.

Or maybe we could have them tied to certain key combos like in a brawler game.

Tapping jump once will let you jump and tapping it twice would make you super jump.

[TenStorms]

Oh sorry i dont wanted to state, that i have a Problem with that warframes :).

I like them und playing with "only" the 1 and ultimate abilities is absolutetly fine to me.

 

I just wanted to state, that rather wasting mod slots on the warframe for abilites with nearly no effect (in comparison to the other abilites or way too situational) we could brainstorm, how to improve that kind of thing.

 

I like the tapping jump once for normal jump or to times for triple jump idea....

[Tsukinoki]

@Ten_Storms
What you are suggesting is a way to treat some of the symptoms without treating the real cause.

The real cause is that some abilities just aren't worth it, even with a CD system.  Take super jump: jump 3 times higher.  Why would I want to waste mod points equipping it instead of say more shields or health?  Or Ash's Teleport.  Same deal.  Even if they were on a separate mechanic there is still no good reason to waste some of my 60 mod points to equip such an ability.  And even less so if you only have 30.

The next issue is trying to suggest a CD system.  DE tried that way early on in CBT and felt that it slowed down gameplay far too much so moved to the current energy system.  Think how much longer missions would take if people sat outside of every single door in a map for the 30+ seconds it took for all of their CDs to refresh...I dont think anyone wants to play a waiting game like that.
CDs generally encourage you to find a corner and hide until you can use your abilities again.  And before you bring up that it encourages using your other abilities, it doesn't really.  It more forces you to use them while the abilities you actually want to use are on CD.

Sure some abilities are highly situational, but in those situations they are great.  An example would be radial blind against the initial massive rush of infested in an infested exterminate mission, especially if they have more than a few ancients in the mix.  Shuts them down long enough for you to get some room and take care of the big guys.  Also works great as an escape from the middle of huge herds of MOAs.  Works even better with continuity. If your slash dash cant kill enough, which happens in the later levels, then use radial blind.

Iron Skin is one of the more OP abilities.  You get max continuity and streamline and you can easily go invulnerable through entire missions without much of a challenge.  It's also great to give you a way to safely revive team mates before they bleed out.

What DE has to do is sit down and start going over the abilities and how to make them more universally useful and worth the cost of energy and mod points.  That is really the only way that they are going to see people use more of the abilities that their frames have.  While moving away from an energy system might see a small increase in other ability usage it wouldn't do much and would have too many draw backs.

The only way that I can see incorporating a CD system is in a hybrid energy/CD system.

Basically here is what it would look like:

Slash dash has a 25 second CD.  That means that every 25 seconds Excalibur can use slash dash for free, during its CD it costs its normal energy cost.  Every use of the ability resets the CD timer.  Same with all of the other skills just longer or shorter CDs respectively.

The benefits of this over a pure CD or energy system?
-Helps to avoid the waiting game.  If your abilities are still on CD you can still use them if you need to.
-Makes people feel they aren't wasting energy on a situational skill when they could save it for their ultimate.
-Keeps the spamability of the current system, which rewards people who specced into max energy and streamline.
-Keeps in the resource management.

And quite a few more those are just the big ones.

[TenStorms]

Great answer Tsukinoki, thx :).

 

Completly agree, didnt know that DE already tried the fixed CD mechanic.

But reading all answers, it look to me everybody reads only "CD" and think i want all abilities to have fixed CDs.

Was never my intention.

 

I wanted to state:

- leave abilities 1 and 4 as their are at the moment...energy costs works just fine to me

- change 1 slot to maybe "comfort" skill that can be turned on and off (like jump triple or a pimped sonar) with no costs at all

- change the last situational slot to fixed cd mechanics, or even better use the suggestion of Tsukinoki the mixed mechanic.

 

That way i would use even the weaker skills in their current state.

[Tsukinoki]

@Ten_Storms
I can understand wanting some abilities to be passives.  You level them up and equip them like a normal ability but they are always in effect.  And in some cases I think that passives would be the way to go, such as super jump.  I just think that they need to come up with more passives for each frame before looking into having passive abilities.  Essentially you would be giving up a slot to constantly have a small effect on your character.  Such as a super jump passive that increased your jump high from 1.5x to 2x, since its passive and affects every jump it only stands to reason that it would be lower as a balance, or Volt's speed ability.

Or it can be like some abilities in GW2.  They have abilities that you can use them for a certain effect, but as long as they are not in CD they grant a passive bonus to you.  Such as the passive of super jump being 1.5x to 2x while the use having you jump 3x to 3.5x.  I like how they implemented the mechanic in GW2 because it gave you the choice of having a passive buff or an attack of some sort which made it a more tactical skill.  It just requires a bit more balancing to avoid things becoming OP, as well as make it attractive to use the ability in certain situations without just using it passively.  In the mixed system its use would always cost energy because the CD achieves something different and shouldn't be used for a free casting.

The last thing I will say is that having what seems to be arbitrary abilities, especially to new people, have different mechanics would just get too confusing, beyond passives.  Such as if you some abilities on CD and others on energy it'll confuse new people as to which one is which and why that is the case.  IF they are going to implement something other than an energy system they would really need to apply it to everything and not just a random sampling.

[SnokyoDrift]

My conlusion is:

if the "weaker" abilities (ability 2 and 3) get another ressource pool (like fixed cds, or maybe draining your shields a little or even life or stamina ?) then i would actually use them. But always i said to me, why should i blind, if i can charge and kill ? Currently i use the mod slots for other passive bonus mods (at increase cost because of polarity, but still better than be "dead" slots).

 

You're playing against low level enemies. Nothing wrong with that, but you're not seeing the entire scale of balance for these abilities and frames. Excalibur's damaging skills fall off quite quickly against infested (but remain pretty good against grineer). Banshee's useful skills are reduced to sonic boom and sonar, while sound quake is reserved only for a last ditch attempt to delay death. Rhino's skin and stomp are his only skills worth using energy on. Every single charge reduces the number of iron skins you can cast.

 

See a pattern here? Any skill that does damage becomes less and less useful at high levels. Both slash dash and rhino charge can get you killed if you're not careful with them, limiting their damage potential to hit fewer enemies (charging out into a group is suicide). Banshee's ultimate is a great way to find yourself surrounded by toxics and disruptors at the end of it, and it costs 2 sonic booms and a sonar to cast.

 

Play against level 100+ enemies and you'll quickly change your skill usage and play style.