Game feedback after 50hrs of play time.

[nzzero]

Hello there. After having spent some reasonable time in-game i though i would like to share my thoughts on what i think is still lacking in the game. There is a lot i love about warframe and i think it has potential to be a trully amazing game. All it needs is feedback from players to steer it in the right direction, cause i have faith that DESteve and other devs will get us there. So without further due:

LEVEL DESIGN

Level design is pretty amazing considering its a random 3d puzzle. I think it’s the first 3d game ive seen that has randomized levels working that well. Even though we are fighting in the same group of rooms, devs managed to achieve a different feel to each race’s missions with lighting effects. Still, some tweaking may be required.

More tilesets needed.

Self explanatory, one tileset can get boring pretty quickly.

Tiles need to be “themed”, generic corridors and hallways are boring.

It is much more immersive to be able to identify the part of the ship you are fighting in. We need more rooms that have meaning to them than generic rooms that serve no purpose. Hydroponics, Cable connectors, Engine bay, Weapon systems, Shield controller, Bridge, Prison, Docking bay, Fuel storage, Hibernation room.

Levels should be more interactive.

Adding jump pads, moving objects, light switches, destroyable cover, etc.

More environmental hazards.

Right now the only envi. hazard we have is the fire that is sometimes placed on floors. Some exploding pipes, pools of molten metal, electric discharge on walls, falling objects that you have to be aware of and can be used to fight enemies with would be awesome and add variety.

Empire specific hazards.

Similar to corpus laser walls and turrets, we need more features that make fighting each empire different. Think marines filling room with thick smoke, disabling players’ vision, infested having floor covered with slimy eggs that instantly hatch when disturbed, or having dead infested cover the floors, rising when they are least expected.

Tiles have to stress spaceship design Sometimes the levels lose their space-shipy feel. Need more windows in huge rooms/outside walkways, debris floating an area where gravity is disabled (unacessible to players, lets not make it too complex in the beginning) and space-ship themed rooms ive mentioned before.

GAMEPLAY

Warframe’s gameplay is solid, fast paced, but most of all – fun. Still,

The endgame has to be much harder.

There has to be a hard to reach goal, that takes multiple tries and best teamwork to achieve. Have a level “impossible” to pass . Its going to take a long time, but someone will finaly beat it. There should be no situation when a group of rank 14 guys that started playing couple hours ago can steamroll through most difficult sector in the game. With the randomized content its fairly easy to provide missions for casual players, as well as high risk/high reward challenges for experienced players.

Difficulty has to scale better with players.

Right now the game is really hard when trying to solo, but with 4 people the only difficulty is getting to enemies before other 3 players kill them. Part of the reason for that is the next issue.

Game is too easy in multiplayer because of bad AI and lag.

Ive seen coutless situation when I beat down 7 marines standing next to each other with Furax, and not one of them even blinks at their buddies intestines splattering over ther visors, because they are all busy shooting another player standing 100m away behind a cover. Hordes of infested run past me, getting showered with bullets, because they all have their tunnel vision set for a poor guy breaking a barrel two rooms away. A grineer marine runs away from me, shooting burst after burst in my direction, but because of lag no bullet even leaves his gun. Then the host disconnects and a smaller group than the one ive devasted alone a minute ago guns me down with perfect accuracy in a blink of an eye. Those issues have to be solved.

The game needs more of sense of progression.

It is easy in rpg mmos when you see your gear change every couple levels, enemies look tougher, missions are more and more epic, from "get me 5 chicken eggs" to "slay ancient fire drake" Its not the same in warframe, when you start at rank 1 , you fight the same enemies with the same looking weapons and armor as when you fight at rank 30. The numbers behind the weapons change, but thats not really something that makes you look at the work you did to get there. Sadly, i dont have a fix for that yet.

MISSIONS

More missions needed.

This is self explanatory, and it probably is going to be resolved during the development process. Game needs more content to have a sense of progression.

Have an endless defense mission with all three races attacking.

Something to have a challenge and way to test yourself after completing all the missions.

Give players an option to play “nightmare” version of every mission after completing the game.

With max level enemies and higher rewards, higher drop rates etc. Diablo style, it effectively helps the game maintain some sense of progression for almost twice as long.

More environment-specific missions.

Going in the direction “overload the reactor” mission is going, players could be given the task to burn down the hydroponics, destroy the weapon systems, hack vessel’s shields, open the cargo bay, etc. Something to both make players feel like they are doing an actual task and stress the fact that they are on the space ship.

An option to start a new online game in a level that already has active squads.

Sometimes the only host you can connect to is terribly laggy, so just start a new game and wait for others to join

ENEMIES

More articulated racial differences.

For every race, the enviroments, the units and tactics they use should be as different from the other as possible.

For example, infested should walk on walls, have more limbs/ spikes/ ooze coming out of them to show their horrendous mutations. They are too humanoidal at the moment. They should never wait in the open for you, but come from the ceiling, vents, from underneath the floor, etc. They have to be unexpected, and they have to be quick

Marines on the other hand, should show their advanced military tactics. Smoke granades, creating new cover by deployable shield, dropping soldiers through ships windows, engineers setting down turrets, etc

There should be “mini boses” in each level.

A small group of named monsters with player-like skills, similar to each other.

USER INTERFACE

Introduce in-game bug report feature

that is accessible in-game. Press esc>report a bug>window pops up where you can describe the bug and its category, click send, the bug and game settings/system specs are automaticly reported.

Make whole level map accessible.

With a simple key press players can find out how far they have to go to find the key.

Friends health/shield/energy visibility toggle.

In a team game, info like that should stay on screen all the time, but give an option to hide it for the purists.

More visible shield break effect.

Something like screen edges flashing bright blue + distinctive sound effect to make it easier to spot the shields failure.

List of active effects visible on leveling screen.

There should be a list of total shields, health, shield regen, energy efficiency, etc provided by mods visible on the leveling screen. Both in the case of warframes and weapons.

Tabbed inventory management system.

The game needs an option to sort the mods you need. Maybe im saving some mods for later use, maybe some are for frames and some for weapons, I don’t want them in the same screen space as the one ive just got. There should be a way to divide mods into custom categories.

Visual mod identification.

There should be a way to identify the mod type just by looking at its icon.

An option to see entire solar system without disconnecting from current session.

If I want to suggest my team take on a mission in a different sector, I don’t want to have to play the maze game to find the connection via squares on the sector map. I want to press Esc, go to the solar system map, click on the planet, click on a mission.

Alert missions need to show their level before you start them .

Foundry should be divided into available blueprints/Active jobs for sake of simplicity of use.

Add an option to level up foundry by using credits/materials.

Higher level forge would work faster and could have more active jobs at the same time. Forge level should not be required for crafting, just its effectiveness should improve. Forge upgrades could obiously be bought for platinum.

Materials should be moved to foundry screen, they only clutter the inventory screen.

ITEMS

Mod strengths need to be adjusted.

The strength of each mod should be brought to a level where there is not only one clear better mod. For ex. Shield mod vs sprint mod of the same level. It should not be 100 shields or 10% sprint speed. Sprint speed needs to be raised until it is viable as an alternative.

More different item types need to be added to leveled drop lists.

One use items, powerup-like items, etc.

Introduce recoil-dampening mod for more personal gun calibration

DESIGN STYLE

The design style of the game is pretty original and the game should stress the direction proposed by the concept/art style as much as possible. This means holding on to the space ninja/samurai theme, with elements like that “worth test” every level, the character sitting over the solar system like shogun-protector of its kingdom, stylized drums in the soundtrack, etc.

The art style of the game needs to be consistent with the original living metal/biosuit/organic inspired/ancient look. The bolto pistol, the gorgon, skana swords, they all look amazing and original. Fragor and the Scindo disappointed me a little, they head into the “usual futuristic” kind of look, with classic medieval shape.

The environment design on the other hand, should (and does, in a very good way) stress the different origin from the Tenno. The tileset we have at the moment has a little of a dead space/mass effect feel to it. This contrast is a very positive thing, and future design choices should reinforce the feeling that tenno are strangers to those enviroments.

Thats it from me. Please, join the discussion by posting your opinions on my suggestions, or maybe some more ideas!

[ACRONYNJA]

Good stuff!

[Dolmur]

Great feedback! I agree with most of the stuff you're talking about there. Rest assured that we'll be getting more variation in enemy types, more tilesets, more faction-specific behaviors/hazards, etc, it just takes time.

I'm actually working on a system right now that I believe will be great for endgame and those seeking a challenge, but that's still a little ways out.

Lag is definitely an issue. We're doing our best to cut down on network traffic to make the game run better in bad conditions and this is an ongoing battle, but in the end it will always be possible for a host with a crappy internet connection to make the game run terribly. Maybe someday we can get dedicated servers for all!

[nzzero]

Thats some great news Dolmur! Im looking forward to that and definitely holding thumbs for you guys!

[Solvite]

Why does a shooter need a feeling of progression?

[Solvite]

Great feedback! I agree with most of the stuff you're talking about there. Rest assured that we'll be getting more variation in enemy types, more tilesets, more faction-specific behaviors/hazards, etc, it just takes time.

I'm actually working on a system right now that I believe will be great for endgame and those seeking a challenge, but that's still a little ways out.

Lag is definitely an issue. We're doing our best to cut down on network traffic to make the game run better in bad conditions and this is an ongoing battle, but in the end it will always be possible for a host with a crappy internet connection to make the game run terribly. Maybe someday we can get dedicated servers for all!

I always assumed the lag came from all world regions being matched together. That's part of all CBTs when the population cant support Euro/Asian servers.

[Decusatim]

I had to comment some of your ideas ^^

Materials should be moved to foundry screen, they only clutter the inventory screen.

Or even better, sort ALL mods within a category of their own. It's a total mess atm. Need categories/filters for warframe mods, secondary weapon, primary weapon, melee and crafting materials.

An option to see entire solar system without disconnecting from current session.

If I want to suggest my team take on a mission in a different sector, I don’t want to have to play the maze game to find the connection via squares on the sector map. I want to press Esc, go to the solar system map, click on the planet, click on a mission.

I find this annoying as well... Should be fixed asap.

The design style of the game is pretty original and the game should stress the direction proposed by the concept/art style as much as possible. This means holding on to the space ninja/samurai theme, with elements like that “worth test” every level, the character sitting over the solar system like shogun-protector of its kingdom, stylized drums in the soundtrack, etc.

The art style of the game needs to be consistent with the original living metal/biosuit/organic inspired/ancient look. The bolto pistol, the gorgon, skana swords, they all look amazing and original. Fragor and the Scindo disappointed me a little, they head into the “usual futuristic” kind of look, with classic medieval shape.

This ^

I deeply hope that this style will be kept through the entire lifespan of Warframe... Don't do like TF2. I don't want silly weapons or warframes. The organic-looking frames are just perfect as they are! Excalibur is my very favourite design <3 The only reason I decided to try this game was because of it's original look, as I started playing I realised it was even more awesome than I thought.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Ecfor

[ShadowKaino]

A room with zero (low works too) gravity would be awesome.

[FreshJB2]

Great stuff! One thing i would add is there needs to be a cutoff point from which you caan join a game in session. All to often, plaayers end up joining a mission that is over or all of the objectives have been completed. This is escpecially unfortunate when the mission is an alert. I'm not sure if the cutoff should be time-based or objective-based, but there needs to be one.

Also, the gear slots (for health, ammo,...) need to be reworked. I was thinking that each slot could be assigend to a number to allow quicker use. The current system, press inventory button, then use mouse, is cumbersome. Items that are the same should stack in the same slot with a limit on how many stacks you could have. The number of slots could then be lowered to four or five.

Edited January 22, 2013 by FreshJB2

[cypherhalo]

Great ideas and I agree with just about all. Have to disagree with mini-bosses in "every" level, that strikes me as too much. More mini-bosses, I could get behind that.

I'm not big on endgame either, at least, I've never been the kind of person to sit down and crank out my way to the endgame in a few hours. How people do it, beats me. To be fair, I'm not at the endgame yet so I can't speak much to it. There should be things to do but honestly this game seems to have such a grind that I know it will be quite some time before I reach the endgame.

Not sure about lvling the foundry either, the game seems to have enough resources and various tickets to keep track of and bars to count and things to lvl up. Not sure adding another will help the experience any.

Yes on seeing teammate health info. Yes on a more visible shield break. I know there is one but it is easy to miss. Adjusting difficulty for solo vs group play is also a yes. To be fair, since you can always drop in/out, I get why they may not have the difficulty adjust dynamically. However, if I put myself in solo queue, can we please adjust difficulty to account for this? To be fair, using items like the ammo box and health restores does make solo play a lot more viable so you could see it as a "cost" of going solo in a game meant for co-op.

Yes yes yes on more enemies, tilesets, hazards, all of that. I'm sure it is all in the works.

I would add to the list, please differentiate the ammo so I don't keep running over sniper ammo trying to refill my rifle ammo. Also, make it more clear how to get artifacts, orokin catalysts, and reactors. From the forums, I gather you have to play alerts, but this is not clear in-game.

Definitely yes on inventory management but I'm pretty sure I saw in another thread that they are working on this.

Big yes on anything that can add to your sense of progression such as new enemy types. Seeing the numbers change just isn't very exciting so any kind of new effects, powers, hazards, enemies, visual upgrades to my suit, etc. Anything and everything that SHOWS me that I am progressing not just TELLS me (via stats changing) is a great addition.

FWIW, I haven't had any lag issues in my time playing, which hasn't hit 50 hours yet for sure but I've been playing for a little while now.

So, overall a very good game that I am greatly enjoying. Keep up the great work devs.

Edited January 22, 2013 by cypherhalo