How To Make Warframe A Better Game: A 8000+ Words Post

[Davoodoo]

1st thing, dont mistake "hard" with "tedious"

Hard requires you to overcome some challenge

Tedious requires you to do same thing multiple times

 

Imo i wouldnt mind keys being hard to get and prime parts being hard to get but that would require parts to move from behind grindwall into challenge category.

 

I keep seeing cooldowns come up, but they will never happen.  DE played with the idea very early on and they didn't like how it effected game play(slowed down play, people waiting for cooldowns before entering rooms etc..).  Limiting ability use to much would ruin the game because ability use is one of the things that makes the game fun, otherwise it would be just another shooter. 

Thing is that in their attempt they created energy which did exactly same thing early and after introduciton of efficiency which fixed this problem it simply shifted into another angle now allowing ridiculous amount of spamming to the point where using abilities actually became dull and not rewarding.

 

If ppl were waiting in the rooms for cooldown/energy regen then it means only thing, you failed at creating pace.

[alexmach1]

I keep seeing cooldowns come up, but they will never happen.  DE played with the idea very early on and they didn't like how it effected game play(slowed down play, people waiting for cooldowns before entering rooms etc..).  Limiting ability use to much would ruin the game because ability use is one of the things that makes the game fun, otherwise it would be just another shooter. 

 

But this doesn't stop people sitting around waiting for energy to regenerate from Energy Siphon or standing on an energy regen pad. You say cooldowns slow down gameplay, but for players who actually use powers the current energy system is a boon. Energy regen pads are almost mandatory, since energy orbs are an RNG drop, meaning that you will rarely be rewarded energy for using energy.

 

I think that DE can rework energy to be a cooldown itself.

 

What if energy orbs were simply removed and each frame had a set energy regen rate, like 15 per second? This would allow caster frames to use their basic ability every 2 seconds and, if they hold off for a few seconds, their 4th ability every 7 seconds. With a few tweaks, this can easily be treated as a cooldown itself, where players can spam their normal abilities OR save up for their 4th ability simply by waiting a few seconds for their energy to cap off. With an endless stream of energy, players don't have to worry about gameplay slowing down while also being able to cast their abilities freely, while players who want to use their 4th ability don't have to scrounge for energy orbs and can simply wait for their energy to hit 100.

 

To balance this around, frames that do heavy damage for all of their abilities might have slower energy regeneration than frames that rely on power spam, such as Saryn. They can also change around energy costs for each ability, making 2 abilities both cost 100 energy to widen the gap between them.

 

Of course, with this change there'd be a need to rework plenty of other things, especially Quick Thinking. I feel that, if DE were to test this out, it would be a definite improvement on the current system we have which relies on RNG drops or purchasing regen pads.

Edited December 27, 2015 by alexmach1

[Vuli]

2 Things I STRONGLY disagree with:

 

- LOOT DROPS EVERYWHERE: Absolutely not, I do not want Diablo 3 in my Warframe. Game-wide RNG is a lazy, incredibly infuriating design. Targeted drops HAVE to stay. Change to drop rates or places would be nice, but an absolute no on the everything-drops-everywhere idea.

 

- CD's: As many others have pointed out, nope nope nope. Diablo 3 also made this mistake.

 

Other than that I mainly agree with you.

[Davoodoo]

2 Things I STRONGLY disagree with:

 

- LOOT DROPS EVERYWHERE: Absolutely not, I do not want Diablo 3 in my Warframe. Game-wide RNG is a lazy, incredibly infuriating design. Targeted drops HAVE to stay. Change to drop rates or places would be nice, but an absolute no on the everything-drops-everywhere idea.

 

- CD's: As many others have pointed out, nope nope nope. Diablo 3 also made this mistake.

 

Other than that I mainly agree with you.

Rng is lazy design...

Having stuff dropping everywhere actually allows you to play whatever game mode you want and if devs want to make it work they need to make every game mode appealing on actual mode and not on loot it drops(yes im looking at you interception, thing that ppl ever play only to get t4 keys), but i guess having more stuff to do makes it lazy??

 

Then diablo 3 made mistake with cds?? Skill system in diablo 3 is actually best thing blizzard alchemists brew.

Instead of having generic spam ability a and generic spam ability b with buff a and buff b and having to spam mana pots to fuel it you actually now have a proper build with utility being on cd and 1 generic spam ability creating resources and another generic spam ability expending resources 

 

But yeah imagine d3 without cds.

seven sided strike, 1 of coolest abilities in the game, wouldnt exist, it wouldnt ever be put into game or it would be removed because of how broken it would be.

Berserker wrath?? boring 10% based buff which you need to refresh every so often, btw it changes your looks so youll see your epic loot only when cast a buff. Sounds like fun.

Utility would need to be nerfed and you would just buff yourself then spam single button over and over.

Hard cc?? nope, hp management?? nope, build variety?? nope, magical explosions orgy?? nope.

Wheres the joy in that??

Edited December 27, 2015 by Davoodoo

[(PSN)Tego818]

But this doesn't stop people sitting around waiting for energy to regenerate from Energy Siphon or standing on an energy regen pad. You say cooldowns slow down gameplay, but for players who actually use powers the current energy system is a boon. Energy regen pads are almost mandatory, since energy orbs are an RNG drop, meaning that you will rarely be rewarded energy for using energy.

 

I think that DE can rework energy to be a cooldown itself.

 

What if energy orbs were simply removed and each frame had a set energy regen rate, like 15 per second? This would allow caster frames to use their basic ability every 2 seconds and, if they hold off for a few seconds, their 4th ability every 7 seconds. With a few tweaks, this can easily be treated as a cooldown itself, where players can spam their normal abilities OR save up for their 4th ability simply by waiting a few seconds for their energy to cap off. With an endless stream of energy, players don't have to worry about gameplay slowing down while also being able to cast their abilities freely, while players who want to use their 4th ability don't have to scrounge for energy orbs and can simply wait for their energy to hit 100.

 

To balance this around, frames that do heavy damage for all of their abilities might have slower energy regeneration than frames that rely on power spam, such as Saryn. They can also change around energy costs for each ability, making 2 abilities both cost 100 energy to widen the gap between them.

 

Of course, with this change there'd be a need to rework plenty of other things, especially Quick Thinking. I feel that, if DE were to test this out, it would be a definite improvement on the current system we have which relies on RNG drops or purchasing regen pads.

 

Reading through this thread, I came here to post exactly this. Feel like it maintains a lot of the freedom, and has what you'd want to accomplish with cooldowns. Wouldn't mind seeing every restore but ammo removed as well, and them making more support frames instead.

 

I think some of the teamwork that could come out of this with new specific / support frames could be pretty interesting, and as much as I dislike camping, this is the aspect of it I appreciated. There hadn't been this type of coordination before, for the most part everyone just picks who they want and do whatever they feel like.

[SkippyDodley]

But this doesn't stop people sitting around waiting for energy to regenerate from Energy Siphon or standing on an energy regen pad. You say cooldowns slow down gameplay, but for players who actually use powers the current energy system is a boon. Energy regen pads are almost mandatory, since energy orbs are an RNG drop, meaning that you will rarely be rewarded energy for using energy.

 

I think that DE can rework energy to be a cooldown itself.

 

What if energy orbs were simply removed and each frame had a set energy regen rate, like 15 per second? This would allow caster frames to use their basic ability every 2 seconds and, if they hold off for a few seconds, their 4th ability every 7 seconds. With a few tweaks, this can easily be treated as a cooldown itself, where players can spam their normal abilities OR save up for their 4th ability simply by waiting a few seconds for their energy to cap off. With an endless stream of energy, players don't have to worry about gameplay slowing down while also being able to cast their abilities freely, while players who want to use their 4th ability don't have to scrounge for energy orbs and can simply wait for their energy to hit 100.

 

To balance this around, frames that do heavy damage for all of their abilities might have slower energy regeneration than frames that rely on power spam, such as Saryn. They can also change around energy costs for each ability, making 2 abilities both cost 100 energy to widen the gap between them.

 

Of course, with this change there'd be a need to rework plenty of other things, especially Quick Thinking. I feel that, if DE were to test this out, it would be a definite improvement on the current system we have which relies on RNG drops or purchasing regen pads.

 

Including both the notions that spamming is bad and that cooldowns are potentially not a realistic option for Warframe, this is probably one of the best idea I have seen so far. Like you said, it would have to come with significant modifications to the whole ability infrastructure and balance, but it just seem like a natural fit for Warframe. Rogues in WoW and energy champions in LoL both work this way, and they do have generally pretty fast-paced gameplay. I think that a system similar to this would have all the benefits of cooldowns with only a portion of the backlash, if correctly implanted.

[Vuli]

Rng is lazy design...

Having stuff dropping everywhere actually allows you to play whatever game mode you want and if devs want to make it work they need to make every game mode appealing on actual mode and not on loot it drops(yes im looking at you interception, thing that ppl ever play only to get t4 keys), but i guess having more stuff to do makes it lazy??

 

Then diablo 3 made mistake with cds?? Skill system in diablo 3 is actually best thing blizzard alchemists brew.

Instead of having generic spam ability a and generic spam ability b with buff a and buff b and having to spam mana pots to fuel it you actually now have a proper build with utility being on cd and 1 generic spam ability creating resources and another generic spam ability expending resources 

 

But yeah imagine d3 without cds.

seven sided strike, 1 of coolest abilities in the game, wouldnt exist, it wouldnt ever be put into game or it would be removed because of how broken it would be.

Berserker wrath?? boring 10% based buff which you need to refresh every so often, btw it changes your looks so youll see your epic loot only when cast a buff. Sounds like fun.

Utility would need to be nerfed and you would just buff yourself then spam single button over and over.

Hard cc?? nope, hp management?? nope, build variety?? nope, magical explosions orgy?? nope.

Wheres the joy in that??

Yea...you can play wherever you want....but you have a massively smaller chance of getting the item you are looking for. At least with targeted drops you know you'll get the part sooner or later. Why do you think d3 instituted kadala/cube? Because RNG loot everywhere was one of the top complaints about the game. They had to put in "targeted drops" in the form of kadala and the cube to fix it.

 

Both games have the same problem with endgame, power creep. CD's will not do anything to fix this.

[Davoodoo]

Yea...you can play wherever you want....but you have a massively smaller chance of getting the item you are looking for. At least with targeted drops you know you'll get the part sooner or later. Why do you think d3 instituted kadala/cube? Because RNG loot everywhere was one of the top complaints about the game. They had to put in "targeted drops" in the form of kadala and the cube to fix it.

 

Both games have the same problem with endgame, power creep. CD's will not do anything to fix this.

I guess you havent been here during golden era of xini farming?? No obviously you havent.

 

Chance at reward every rotation instead of waiting for rot c, each cache with chance for reward, abiility to use all keys instead of few rare ones, no more ridiculously rare drops from ridiculously rare enemies like vengeful revenant.

Sorry but dilution would be godsend for efficient farmers.

 

Youre not familiar with time window buffs in d3 then?? But regardless, d3 is about farming, endless possibilities to upgrade your character alllowing you to go higher in endlessly scaling grifts and since blizzard doesnt profit from grind they are willing to introduce features which reduce grind like stat rerolling and cube.

 

Ill give another example.

Borderlands 1 had rng everywhere. So you just run your favorite spot and got alot of random good loot.

Borderlands 2 on the other implemeneted specific drop locations, now you run same miniboss/boss over and over again until you get 1 S#&$ you want, then you proceed to another boss to get 1 specific drop it has and it goes on resulting in much higher farming times.

Even "0101" with 100% chance for 1 of 8 drops helped only for a while.

 

Warframe got problems not only with powercreep but also with balance itself.

Cd will fix problems with cc abilities reducing enemies to this

Which already increases challenge immensely.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Davoodoo

[Eminem2420]

I’m not entirely surprised most players are against the idea of adding cooldowns, I am surprised, however, that they cannot see the many advantages that having cooldowns would offer. I am having difficulties understanding what’s so great about having no cooldowns. Personally, I don’t find myself needing my abilities at every encounter with enemies. In fact, my most powerful tools are usually my firearms.

 

 

Concerning customization, I do think that giving each frame a more personalized gameplay via passives would differentiate them ever more, which would encourage players to swap more often, assuming they have varying need for varying missions. For example, I play frost in defenses for the immense power of Snow globe and I play Mesa in survival because of the insane firepower. Since I am already playing those 2 different frames within 2 different scenario based on their respective strengths, I think it is pretty fair to assume that reinforcing those strengths via passives, which would make those distinction more significant, and that it would also encourage players to choose those frames based on their assessed specialties. On top of that, passive aren't only about making each frame more unique. It is also about making their gameplay more interesting outside of their 4 abilities. However, I do agree that passives need to be implanted carefully, since the resulting power from an ability that is technically always active can snowball out of control.

 

As for cooldowns, I am having trouble understanding how Warframe is the "ultimate freedom" game. Of course, the players have a lot of freedom, but they are far from having unlimited freedom. In fact, it is precisely because they have so many restrictions, and therefore not unlimited freedom, that the game is fun. When the players move around a map, they are restricted by gravity, speed, walls, ceilings ,pitfalls, enemies with disabling abilities, a limited set of moves and many other small things. Of course they are very mobile, but they do not have access to ultimate mobility, and it is that balance between what the player can do and what he cannot do that dictates how much fun he can have based on what he has to do. The player also doesn't have unlimited freedom during gunplay or combat. Some weapons will run out of ammo very fast, so weapons take a very long time to reload. Some weapons are obviously better against some enemies, some weapons are very unwieldy for some situations. Some weapons can even possibly kill the player if improperly used. Those are all limitations that the player must take into account when using his weapons, and like I previously said, limitations are essential to fun in video games. Playing a game with all cheat codes enabled is barely more fun than playing a game that is obviously too hard based on the complete lack of tools available to the player.

 

It could be argued that the energy system should normally enforce those limitations, and that Trinity simply happens to break the whole metagame by herself, but I don't think that's correct. Even if energy gain is somehow normalized properly, the notion that energy should be the only factor that limits the usage of abilities is very dangerous when it comes to future content and general balance. If you gate all the cost of the abilities toward the energy cost alone, anything that disrupt the energy costs and gains will disrupt the balance of every abilities in the game, since everything hinges on a single normalizing system: the energy. This is precisely why Trinity is such a big problem right now. If cooldowns are added, both energy and cooldowns could work together to balance and normalize the abilities of the game. Whenever the importance of one of the two system would be disrupted, the other system could still maintain a semblance of balance in the whole metagame. Consider the following scenario as an example.

 

Let's pretend that Trinity never existed before and that she just got added to the game. Everyone would absolutely find her to be the most imbalanced frame in the whole game. Suddenly everyone have as much energy as they want (on top of invulnerability)? That's complete insanity. In that scenario, if the game happened to have cooldowns, Trinity wouldn't break the whole metagame on patch day. Of course it's great that she gives a lot of energy, but since there's also cooldowns to consider, the whole system doesn't suddenly break since everything happens to hinge on the perfect balance of energy. Also, since Trinity would also happen to have a cooldown on her energy vampire, infinite energy would simply never have the chance to be a problem in the first place.

 

 

I completely agree that the means to acquire energy are currently not very fun or balanced. The idea of energy 2.0 is certainly one of the most interesting solution, and done correctly, it could certainly limit the player without actually enforcing hard limits like cooldowns. The energy costs could grow bigger as more energy is used, which would effectively place a soft-cap on ability usage. Since it seems most players are apparently completely averse to the idea of cooldowns, this could potentially be a more realistic solution.

 

However, I’m still having so much trouble understanding why everyone hate cooldowns so much. Based in the points in my second post, I can only conclude that cooldowns could only make Warframe better. They simply have to be tailored specifically for Warframe. Obviously, cooldowns in Warframe shouldn’t be 1 minute long like in most MOBA; fast cooldowns for a fast game. Still, I am quite curious. What exactly do you guys find so great about the absence of cooldowns? Especially when you take into account the many upside to cooldowns concerning the metagame and general tactical depth normally associated with abilities.

There were cooldowns in Warframe at one point but they were removed. It didn't solve any of the problems it was supposed to address. All it did is greatly slow down gameplay and turn Warframe into another generic shooter.

Edited December 29, 2015 by (PS4)IIIDevoidIII
Removed Removed Post

[Lightsmith]

Actually I believe that the Focus system shows how much cooldowned abilities could add to this game. Imagine if you could use radial javelin only once every 2 minutes, but it'd be a scripted instakill against everything within 100 meters. It would be an awesome OH-S#&$-Button, but it wouldn't trivialize gameplay because of its high cooldown. Things like an oh-S#&$-button do not exist in warframe currently because of the non-existing cooldowns outside of focus.

I disagree, other than their passives (one use per match passive) I find them worthless.

[-InV-igo95862]

I stopped reading after you mentioned cooldowns on abilities. Which is a horrible choice as it was previously in the game before.

 

Slow and not fun.

 

Focus is already a cooldown based ability.

[faiyde]

I agree with almost all of OP, main difference being cooldowns.

I'm more fond of an overheat system, a soft cooldown as it were,

You can use abilitys as much as you want, but too often and they start loosing effect and gaining energy cost. Abilitys like fireball being almost uneffected, abilitys like radial disarm you cant cast more than twice back to back before it starts only affecting half the enemys, and things like invis and hysteria loose their 100% protection if your in them too much of the time.

On the plus side if your mostly cooled down abilitys could cost less then at the moment, or even have argument-like extra effects.

[Xriborg]

Cooldowns may have been in Warframe a long time ago, but that doesn't mean they were done well, or that the experiment is even relevant anymore. Warframe is a VERY different game from what it was when cooldowns were experimented with.

 

The cooldowns don't have to be done aggressively either. Obviously, it'd have to be done on a per frame basis, but you could do a few seconds for first abilities, and more like 30 seconds for ultimates.

 

Warframe's difficulty curve is completely out of whack, and a lot of the problem is the spammable nature of powerful abilities. Pulling back on these abilities is going to be a painful change for players, but it's a necessary one. I don't know if DE has the guts to go through with it considering huge backlash it'll probably cause.

[Minion135]

I'd rather farming and abilities work as they do now. I like being able to focus farm and use abilities as I see fit. Putting cooldowns on abilities punishes people who want to build their frames specifically for ability usage as opposed to survival and using aura mods for increased weapon damage.

[Kai_Shiba]

Focus is already a cooldown based ability.

There are reasons why it is. I'm not talking about focus ability, I'm talking about the four base abilities that you have.

[Mr.Lube]

I stopped reading after you mentioned cooldowns on abilities. Which is a horrible choice as it was previously in the game before.

 

Slow and not fun.

Lots of games have cooldowns in abilities and that is what makes them fun and challenging. Just because DE didnt do it right the first time doesnt mean that the idea is totally flawed.

[Davoodoo]

Just because DE didnt do it right the first time doesnt mean that the idea is totally flawed.

Best thing is that no one posting in this thread can even remember cooldowns, i checked, earliest user is dspite at february 15, 2013 while https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/2803-update-53-blazing-embers/ from january 10, 2013 already mentions "Balancing changed for Energy Siphon cards, Mods with shield, energy, and health bonuses will be additive for more sane stacking."

 

No one here remembers how cooldowns were, yet so many say that they were terrible...

 

Also tbh im not even convinced that there were ever cooldowns since no patch notes mention this significant change.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Davoodoo

[Mr.Lube]

Best thing is that no one posting in this thread can even remember cooldowns, i checked, earliest user is dspite at february 15, 2013 while https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/2803-update-53-blazing-embers/ from january 10, 2013 already mentions "Balancing changed for Energy Siphon cards, Mods with shield, energy, and health bonuses will be additive for more sane stacking."

 

No one here remembers how cooldowns were, yet so many say that they were terrible...

 

Also tbh im not even convinced that there were ever cooldowns since no patch notes mention this significant change.

I have heard Scott talk about cooldowns briefly on devstreams in the past. So they did exist and they were removed, but I still fail to see how they will slow down gameplay. It will allow the devs to be more creative with their abilities since they dont have to worry about it being spammed.

[Mr.Bibbles]

 

The game punishes the player way too severely for not playing. Most free-to-play games include a system that rewards the player for playing consistently. When it comes to daily logging rewards, Extractors, random alerts, Baro Ki’teer and Kubrows, that’s mostly fine. It doesn’t truly harm the player experience in the long run and he can always catch up one way or another. Even alerts that reward the players with catalysts/reactors and very rare mods are still fair, even if they are very frustrating to miss. It does become a problem, however, when the player can miss some content that can potentially never be acquired otherwise. If an item becomes impossible to acquire within the game itself, that item must only have luxury value or have an objectively equivalent alternative. In this case, luxury pretty much means aesthetically and visually unique. I think it’s pretty important to mention that, in most MMO-y games, even when the impossible to acquire items are purely luxury with no actual impact in the game, some players will get incredibly irritated at the missed opportunity. Warframe takes it to a whole other level with things like with event weapons and arcane helmets, who offer very tangible advantages despite being unobtainable to players anymore. I absolutely understand that DE wants some players to possess some very exclusive and rare things, but that is not the right way to do it. Arcanes helmet are one of the most frustrating, incoherent and unfair thing I have ever seen inside an MMO game, and I see absolutely no positive outcome if they kept inside the game as they are. Event mods, too, feel extremely bad for players who missed them, even after they learn what content they will have to grind for 3 days straight in a couple of months when the mods will finally be available to all players. It just feel like the game tell the players “That’s what you get for not literally playing every day, now a take 50% off platinum rewards daily reward and go buy that mod from another player”. This is not fair and it punishes new players, which will reduce their interest in the game.

 

 

I completely agree with this. While playing this game from a company who relies on the funding from the playerbase, I was always irritated about exclusive items. It played a part as to why not only myself, but other friends as well, have walked away from Warframe only to play it every once in a rare while. With the understandable exception of the Founder's pack, take the Prime packs, for example; Here we have packs that cost a relative amount of money which players are willing to spend, right? And I'll speak for myself here. There have been a couple of times where Prime Packs actually had my interest, but due to financial limitations, I was unable to afford them. Now, my finiancial standing has gotten better, but I no longer have the option to purchase those packs, and I'm left watching others enjoy what I was unable to obtain at the time. Not only is DE screwing itself out of money that its fans are willing to spend, but it leaves players, who may not have the time or money during that period of their lives, stuck with the constant feeling of having missed out on something when it may have been beyond their control.

 

I understand if they hold special events with unique rewards that are promoted, because its something players had to participate and earn. However, ff you're going to make items available for purchase via real money, all of your customers should be given the option to buy it whenever they want.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Echo7492

[Davoodoo]

I have heard Scott talk about cooldowns briefly on devstreams in the past. So they did exist and they were removed, but I still fail to see how they will slow down gameplay. It will allow the devs to be more creative with their abilities since they dont have to worry about it being spammed.

Tbh till i started this check i thought the same, but now i have my doubts.

Even assuming there were cooldowns then i see no balance changes around them and there were very few ppl testing.

It seems like they were scrapped because devs didnt like the idea and no one even attempted to make them work if they really werent.

 

Do they slow down gameplay?? hell no, they establish hierarchy of abilities, spammy weak abilities and limited powerful nukes and utility.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Davoodoo

[SkippyDodley]

Quite something for a first post! I can't say I agree with everything, but here are my points.

 

Mission Related Issues:

More missions should reward good mobility: This has been an issue long addressed, but one reward for mobility I would like to point out is that enemies have a much harder, near impossible time to hit mobile Tenno. The real problem with defense missions, however, is that they’re one of more efficient methods to farm resources and prime parts, which is why they’re played so often.

 

On Secondary Objectives: This system seems like it would encourage running away from the group to search for these objectives even more, though. This is something important to consider when suggesting/designing these objectives. While it doesn’t matter much in low pressure Sabotage, it’s much harder to condone running off on your own in Survivals.

 

Options for Reward and Challenge: DE recognizes the problem. Hopefully, Starchart 3.0 coming soon(™) should help fix this.

 

Nightmare Mode: Ugh, agreed. There was a time where I left a single node in every planet system incomplete so that Nightmare missions didn’t override the normal missions, because you could not pick the normal mission underneath the nightmare. Nightmare missions should be kinda like Sorties, where you know what challenge you face and can gear up accordingly. I don’t mind so much as “taking a tool away” because it is the wide variety of tools we have that invalidates any challenge we can get from a mission.

 

Drop Locations: DE tried to fix this with the Codex, but then some mods don’t drop from enemies, leaving a ??? on the drop location.

Years ago, mods dropped per faction. On the contrary of simply playing the game to get mods you need, you ended up not being able to get essentials like Hornet Strike and Serration until you were far into the game. I remember having Hornet Strike drop in the first week of playing, but not getting Serration until about 200 hours in, because of drop table dilution.

The other note about giving lots of options to obtain a single reward is that you either need a lot of nodes, leaving some nodes to be become “ghost nodes,” where nearly everyone has gotten the reward from that node, or a few nodes with rampant drop table dilution, where, no matter where you go, you have only the miniscule chance of obtaining that drop. Sure, there’s variety, but with mission lengths so segregated into sub-5 minutes and 20+ minute missions, you’d either run the fastest node if it’s an end-mission reward, or the longest node if it’s a drop from an enemy.

 

Orokin Void

Prime component Acquisition: I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Without luck, you could be farming for months without luck. I’m still running ODD for that last Dual Kamas part, which is frankly ridiculous. It’s not easy to obtain prime gear. However, I agree with you that it should be more interesting. Another problem with your idea that no player should feel like he has to default to Prime equipment is Prime Access. Unfortunately, DE has backed themselves into a corner with the way Prime Access works. That is, DE has to make it feel somewhat more powerful than the normal gear to be worth the $50 - 140 USD for each pack.

 

Unknown Mission types in the Void: This, I have to disagree with. I feel like having random secondary objectives pop up out of the woodwork defeats the purpose of making the game challenging, yet fair. At best, they would become a mild nuisance to deal with quickly At worst, the response to these objectives would be “screw this, abort and retry key”

 

Reward Format: You just transfer the measure of success from time spent to rewards obtained. I feel like the Defense and Survival already do this “get as much treasures as possible before limiting parameters of mission forces” them out. Your “being able to wait 60 minutes instead of 40 minutes” ignores the rush of facing those one-shot bullets and wall of Bombard missiles. However, you don’t face those in non-endless mission, which is where I keenly feel your problem of unrewarding gameplay.

 

On Drops: Once again, you would run into problems with drop table dilution. I would much rather run one or two single missions with a decent chance of getting what I want, instead of a lot of diverse missions, each one with a 0.1% chance of dropping what I want. It would make the game more grindy, with a longer time to obtain the newest Prime gear, regardless of the mission variety it offers.

I like your reasoning that it would give everything the same value one the market, but it is patently untrue. For example, the Ankyros Prime is nearly impossible to get, but the parts rarely go over 25 plat, while new prime parts, even if they have a relatively good drop chance, will go for over 100 plat.

 

Key Sink: With the current system, I also never feel like I’m being rewarded useless keys, because I know there’s a chance that the next Prime part could drop there. The other thing is that “challenge” doesn’t automatically mean “not grindy” because over the repeated times of doing the mission, it becomes grindy. Take the Ivara farm. I used to really like Spy missions because I wasn’t completely familiar with the rooms, so I would creep forward slowly and watch for traps. They were challenging. However, having done 50+ of the high levels ones, I know exactly when to stop and wait and exactly where the cameras are, etc. It became rote, and thus grindy. The missions didn’t change, just that I had done them too much. Under your proposed system, you would have to do a net increase of the same mission. Regardless of challenge, it WILL become boring.

 

Collection Related Issues:

Grinding, Farming, Collecting + Organization & Consistencyy:  You compare Warframe to other MMOs that don’t say “use weaker equipment to gain levels.” The difference is that Warframe weapons are so much more gimmicky. When’s the last time a straight up hitscan machine gun was released? I believe that’s way back with the Prisma Grakata. The real problem is that some weapons are straight up better than others. Think Dakra Prime vs. Broken-War, which is basically Dakra Prime(+50%). And the new sorties reward players with a diverse inventory, with Sniper-only challenges, shotgun-only challenges, etc (I haven’t seen many of those recently. :/).

Also, the great things about Arcanes is that they are not absolutely required for normal gameplay (I’ll define normal as T4D/S up to first rotation C, because those are the last unique rewards you can get), so that is why they make complete sense dropping in endgame content if they are only really needed in endgame content. It’s not a MMORPG dropping Amulets and Rings; it’s them dropping… I don’t know any good parallels, but amulets and rings are much more comparable to mods than Arcanes.

 

Resources: You have to take a step back and think of a new player getting into the game. It’s much better that some items are too easy for veterans, who have already made commitments to the game, then too hard for new players and scare them off. Hence the inundation of Serrations, elemental mods, Redirection, etc.

And the rare resource BP were a terrific idea. You can get them in Nightmare raids, and if you’re participating in Nightmare raids, you’re way past the point where a Nanospore build requirement means anything to you. They’re an extra sink for unneeded resources that was quick and easy to implement, and doesn’t require you to do anything extra to grind for Neural Sensors or Neurodes.

 

Punishment for not playing: Old event mods are slowing being filtered back into the game, through Vor, Spy, Baro Ki’teer, etc. Of these, Baro Ki’teer has the same problem. Eventually, I hope DE will put mods into places that stay permanently. Perhaps they could be a permanent addition to Baro Ki’teer, or given out by Focus rewards, etc.

 

Gameplay related issues:

Situational Problem: I’m not sure where you’re going. Are you saying we should have *less* Oxium Ospreys and less Nullifiers? Besides, Nullifiers accomplish their goal handily. They stop players from just camping and spamming abilities.

 

Special Encounters: They’re revamping them, aren’t they? The Stalker already has the Sentient armor feature.

The problem with Vor running away is that often, we’ll just ignore him. After all, I already have all the drops. Why bother chasing him?

 

Too mobile: This is one of the more ridiculous points you make. Warframes’ mobility and quick pace is what places it above other third-person shooters, as you note. Reducing mobility means that we are required to cower behind protective structures in order to face enemies. It turns the space wizard gameplay to a slower paced cover-based shooter. Also, even if being fast is detracting from it tactical value… it’s adding to the game’s fun and challenge, which is infinitely more valuable in a fast-paced shooter than being “tactical.”

 

Customization Related Issues

Differentiating features: I like your passives idea. But I disagree about its absolute necessity. Because the frames use their abilities so much, there is inherent difference between a Mirage and Nova, even if they both buff damage..

 

Mods: This problem is extremely important, simply because of the linear thought process of using a weapon. However, there are some choices, such as reload mods and fire rate mods that are up to personal preference. Overall, though, I agree that the weapon mod system needs an overhaul.

 

Ability Related Issues:

Cooldowns: There is the incredible adversity against cooldowns because of the idea that it would slow down gameplay. DE had originally designed ability to have cooldowns, but that was scrapped when players would just wait in a room until all the cooldowns are up and then rush the next room.

History aside, though, cooldowns don’t belong in a game designed in the way Warframe has. Think about all the games that have abilities with cooldowns. Mostly, I think of MOBAs like League and Smite, and some TPS games, such as Firefall. The difference, though, is that these games have a limited number of enemies, capped by a respawn timer or mission design. In MOBAs, you have ~5 opposing players to use your cooldowns on. In Firefall, you have a set amount of enemies designated by the mission’s spawns rates. There are no endless hordes. That is, the next time a fight is likely to happen, your cooldowns are likely to be up, without any need to wait around. In Warframe, though, there is ALWAYS a fight, so you need your abilities to always be up. And the way the energy system is designed so the enemies give energy so you can keep casting if you can defeat those enemies is good design.

However, Trinity presents an energy loophole that says, whatever, you can keep casting without even caring. It would be like a Champion that resets everyone’s cooldowns instantly, including her own cooldown to reset more cooldowns. But proposing a Trinity nerf is actually impossible. It’s like trying to pass gun control in the US Congress, for a similar reason: Players are too attached to her and the playstyle she espouses. But if you could get her energy loophole fixed, you can basically balance the entire rest of the game, without needing to add Cooldowns. If nerfing Trinity is like proposing gun control, then adding cooldowns is like ripping up the Constitution.

 

Honestly, including this bit in your post was a mistake. You make good points about a lot of other stuff, but now the resulting discussion will solely be about cooldowns.

 

Abilities Scaling: The real problem is that abilities, because a lot are huge AoEs, are the de facto most efficient way to kill enemies, if they die to them. Then, suddenly, they fall off, and weapons are definitely more efficient. Though, I think DE’s newer abilities tend to scale like weapons, so that they are more and more relevant as the game goes on.

 

Ability Modding: There’s been a definite trend towards abilities that like to use every stat, which does kinda help this problem.

I personally don’t like your system. It encourages players to focus on just one ability that they think shines above the rest, which results in the spamming style of gameplay.

 

(I think you meant) Kits that don’t make sense: To each their own. I personally think that frames shouldn’t fit in archetypes as cleanly as you seem to want them to. But Banshee has the best weapons scaling in game, not Mirage. Mirage is tied with Limbo for second.

 

In summary, some parts of your post had interesting ideas, but some probably wouldn't have your desired effect. Also, you lit a live rocket when you included Cooldowns in your discussion.

 

This is certainly one of the most interesting response this discussion had so far, since it raises so many good arguments. I took a bit of time and constructed a good response in hope to clarify my position on some of those points. Hopefully everything is in the right category.

 

Mission Related Issues

More missions should reward good mobility: I don’t think defence mission are inherently bad, since most players are obviously quite fond of this type of mission. However, for a game that calls itself fast-paced, Warframe’s iteration of a purely defensive scenario is far from fast-paced. It could obviously be better; there is no question about it. We must also point out that, while players like defences, they also like survival mission and other similar unlimited modes as well. I think that many players like those types of missions because they have less downtime when compared other missions. A player could run a couple of capture or exterminate in the time frame of a single survival, which would continually send him back to his ship, forcing him to potentially reform another group, then restart the mission, which also entails another loading time. In infinite missions, you don’t get interrupted by all that. You can just play until you want to leave, and that most likely result in more rewards overall, like you pointed out. Potentially, all modes could have “infinite” alternatives, since uninterrupted gameplay might just be what the players actually want. Survival is essentially an infinite version of an exterminate mission, if you think about it.

 

On Secondary Objectives: Players already don’t stick together most of the time, mostly because most missions do not pressure them into doing so. What’s great about this kind of liberty is that spreading out or grouping becomes a tactical decision based on objectives, difficulty and circumstances. If a group thinks that they can afford to risk spreading out, that is their decision, and if they assess that they must group to survive, they will group based in their situation, not a general sense of “how you must play Warframe”. Enforcing 4-players groups would be boring and just strip players of their freedom in a game about freedom. Ultimately, more decisions that give the game a higher skill-cap based on the “high risk, high reward” formula are usually a good thing. Also, from a personal stand point, finding caches in an Orokin sabotage is the most fun I had in Warframe in a while.

 

Drop locations: There are going to be “ghost nodes” no matter what. There are so many different missions, and a lot of them are essentially the same. Maps are procedurally generated, after all, which means that two exterminate on the same planet are virtually the same. There is simply no reason for player to actively play all missions, since a player will always have some preferences. A player should play a specific mission because he enjoys that mission, not because it is the only mission that offers a reward he desires. For example according to the wiki, Lethal Momentum only drops from Tyl Regor. If someone doesn’t enjoy farming Tyl Regor, which I would wager is the case of many players, their options are limited. Without brutally altering how the drop system works, I think that a good solution would be to drop the mod from more missions on the same planet, and at least from one infinite mission, since the players obviously really appreciate this kind of stuff. One could argue that the drop system is probably too random and needs to be remade entirely, but that is another story.

 

Orokin Void related Issues

Prime component acquisition: Maybe it would be better to make drops really unspecific and not completely random, but both ideas are similar when you compare them to our current system. Yes, players would be farming for a very long time for most pieces of equipment. Whether that’s a good or bad thing really depends on your opinion on healthy pacing for a game like Warframe. Prime gear is supposed to be luxury, and their abundance and ease of access strip them of this status. Also, I think you are neglecting the fact that since the drop locations would be so unspecific, a player would actively be farming every prime gears in the game at once for months, not just one.  Some of the sets would complete themselves at one point or another along the way. You could say that this doesn’t help the fact that most players covet very specific prime gears, and that farming everything at once doesn’t help their endeavours, but we must not forget that trading is extremely important in Warframe and that it is not going anywhere. Most players are already relying on trading to acquire a great deal of prime equipment, and that would remain the same with this new system. Since a player would always have access to such an immense and random pool of prime components, he would be guaranteed to have access to the trade system. I should also point out that three very successful games by Valve are currently using a similar system: Counter-Strike:GO, Dota 2 and Team fortress 2. The concept is simple: drop everything at random and let the player trade how they wish. Obviously I am not saying that some things should be worth exorbitant prices like in Counter-strike. Everything should be normalized for Warframe, since the drops serve a different purpose than in Counter-Strike. I do agree, however, that the Prime access system complicates the whole thing immensely. I cannot comfortably propose ideas on how DE should monetize their game, and as such, I cannot balance the Prime access system with my ideas.

 

Unknown mission types in the Void: Some games, akin to roguelikes, manage to stay new and interesting for so incredibly long by managing to always surprise the players with unforeseen turn of events. The maps in Warframe are already randomly generated, why not add a few extra things or make the whole thing truly unpredictable? Those random events do not have to be only negative for the player. Some of them could also represent a bonus reward or a rare occurrence that the players would love to experience. The players could never be truly sure of what awaits them in their generated map, and by the time they completely explored the map to find out, it would already be too late to abort the mission, since they would have “completed the objectives” already. The game simply has to instil curiosity in the players and they would always have the creeping thought that “that awesome event” could be just around the corner.

 

Reward format: I think you may have misunderstood my point. Allow me to clarify exactly how my suggestion differs itself from the current system. Firstly, yes, I do transfer the measure of success from time spent to reward obtained. Last time I informed myself in this matter, most people did not like to wait, especially in video games. It is way more fun to actively seek your rewards than just wait on the game to dispense them at a very slow and arbitrary rate. One other way to highlight the difference is to point out that a really good player cannot wait faster than a less experienced one, so there is no significant way he can perform better and be rewarded accordingly. Being allowed to wait for a longer period of time simply isn’t “performing better and being rewarded accordingly”. The problem with the current system is that the game measure how well the player performs by measuring how long he can wait until he gets forced out. The player cannot be proactive about it. They cannot actively seek more rewards while the clock is ticking. Currently, the clock doesn’t (mainly) limit rewards. The clock is the reward. In other words, the amount of loot acquired is linear and equivalent with the time spent in the mission. Those two things should be the two opposing factors that the player plays against one another to gage how well he is doing.

 

On drops: I think I made my point in the Prime component acquisition paragraph. However I find this point of yours very interesting. You pointed out that you are “still running ODD for that last Dual Kamas part, which is frankly ridiculous”, but you also said that you “would much rather run one or two single missions with a decent chance of getting what I want”. I am getting a sense of disparity between those two assessments of the system, but that’s beside the point. Here is my little anecdotal experience on the drop system.

 

When I attempted to acquire Ash Prime via the Orokin void, it became very clear that the most difficult part to acquire was the blueprint itself, which only drops from T3 defence. I ran more than 20 “T3D 40 waves”, with a single painful 60 waves mission, before I finally acquired a single blueprint. Fun times. Along the way, someone told me that the drop rate for the blueprint was a very low figure, which I didn’t really find hard to believe. I dropped a considerable amount of worthless junk that were obviously only present in the drop table for the sake of dropping themselves instead of the real reward: The Ash Prime blueprint. Not that nobody wanted those other reward, but there were obviously many player that were running T3 defences only for the Ash Prime component.

 

Now, depending on your stance on how well the drop system is currently working and what it should aim to be, you potentially have a wildly different conclusion than me, and that’s fine.  Mine is that it would have been way more fun to constantly drop rewarding and non-repetitive loot and therefore make all the 20+ defence mission rewarding in themselves, instead of only making that one last mission that dropped the blueprint rewarding. My overall Orokin proposition aims to accomplish this by modifying multiples interlocking aspects of the void that promote repetitive gameplay. Yes, I know perfectly well that my suggestion would make it so that getting a specific component could potentially very lengthy. You can ignore or acknowledge the fact that is it already very lengthy to acquire numerous components in the current system (due to very frustrating drop rates), and that many players already rely on trading to get what they desire. In my system, whether you would drop something you want or not, you would feel joy regardless, since it would be a valuable treasure, not another piece of junk that dropped 20 times already. This new system wouldn’t be rewarding because you could effectively get exactly what you want in a timely manner, it would be rewarding because you would almost always acquire something that would feel valuable and unique at the end of a run, which is way more satisfying in the grand scope of the game. In this new system, you play the missions you enjoy and trade for the gears you want, it is that simple. Lastly, as you pointed out, some components will always be worth more than others. There is little we can do about that. Some weapons are stronger, some frames are more popular, and that’s how things are by nature. However, what really matters is that the game at least tries to make it so that no things are worth less than 1 platinum. “Offer and demand” is often hard to normalize properly, but right now, Warframe is actively sabotaging the market by making so many items basically worthless for the sake of making some components rarer. I completely understand that DE wants to make some items rare, but they doing in the most unproductive way possible by making it so that acquiring loots isn’t as fun as it should be.

 

Key sink: I can certainly see your point and why some players might find the current key system functional, but functional is far from ideal. Allow me to ask you a few questions, to which you already know my personal answers. Do you currently have more keys than you could realistically expend if you didn’t actively try to burn them all, which would mean a fairly normal usage rate and usually one key per four players?  If you could acquire anything you wanted from T3-T4 missions at a faster rate, would you consider only running those more challenging missions? Do you think that, since keys are so central to the game, both mechanically and thematically, a key crafting system would actually very fun if implanted correctly? Path of Exile has a similar “Craft your endgame” system with “maps” items, and while it could be argued that it could be better implanted, the whole idea itself is pretty interesting.

 

Regardless of your answers, allow me to illustrate the benefits of the system I propose. The reason you currently don’t find T1 keys useless is, as you pointed yourself, is because “the next Prime part could drop there”. The very point of my suggestion is that you wouldn’t only get that “next prime part” in T1 missions, because any prime parts would drop from any mission type or tier. You could potentially get that Prime part you desire in any Orokin mission of your choosing, including the ones you enjoy the most, based on difficulty and mission type. That’s the whole point of my suggestion. Higher tiers would simply happen to dispense those random prime parts are a slightly faster rate, while being more difficult. As I stated in my first post, giving the player the ability to choose challenging missions is really important, and I think we both agree on that matter since you pointed out that DE needs Starchart 3.0 to fix this issue. Lower tier keys aren’t the problem in themselves. The real problem is the fact that the game forces all players, regardless of skill level, to play some lower level missions for some gears.

 

As for the relation between repetitive gameplay and difficulty, well, while I think it is obvious that a challenging experience will inherently be less repetitive, allow me to show you why that is. Whenever a player faces a challenge in a video game, he has to reach a certain level applied skill and general performance level to actually triumph. If the performance level required is too low, some player won’t feel tested while others will find the easy gameplay sufficiently satisfying. If it is too high, some player will deem the gameplay too hard for enjoyment, while some player will see a challenge in the task. All players have different skill levels and expectations concerning difficulty. The difficulty level that is the most appropriate for a specific player will vary wildly depending on the player himself. But usually, the sweet spot is where the stakes are the highest, also known as a “high risk, high reward” scenario. Players enjoy looking at defeat in the eyes, but actually triumphing in the end. For veteran players, T4 have a moderately high reward, but usually a low risk. That low risk, as we covered earlier, is both due to the strange balance and progression curve. Not that those things are especially easy to maintain properly, I must admit. If you want to make the game less grindy, you actually have to make failure a very real possibility, on top of other small things.

 

My overall Orokin solution also includes the “random events” idea, which, from my understanding, you didn’t wholly disagree with. Changing the Orokin mission from being a five-minute-race/waiting-room-with-a-loot-dispenser to my proposed format would make the whole thing a lot less grindy since every new mission would be a new set of events. Like you said yourself, the moment a player is too familiar with the challenges he faces, they become increasingly boring. Therefore, the best way to make the game less predictable, which we both seem to find detrimental to the game, is to make it so that no two mission is structurally the same. If a mission is a random chain of events, rooms, challenges and rewards, it will take a lot longer before the player experience everything this one mission has to offer, since procedural combinations of event can amount of astronomical numbers of different variations. Let’s not forget that dynamic problem solving is a skill in itself, and players enjoy mastering the simple skill of adapting to each different challenges offered to them.

 

Collection Related issues

Grinding, Farming, Collecting + Organization & consistency: From my personal experience, “Gimmicky” generally carries a negative connotation within the subject of video games, since gimmicks usually lack coherence with the mechanics of a game and are generically superfluous attempts at implanting more gameplay, on top of usually only being fun superficially. For example, I personally think that melee combos are a gimmick within the scope of Warframe, but that is only my opinion. On the topic of weapons, I agree with you that a lot of them are gimmicky. Many weapons in Warframe are very gimmicky, on top of obviously being completely imbalanced. While some weapons are great and offer a lot to the metagame, some other weapons seem to only exist for the sake of being different. DE obviously wants combat to be very flashy and creative with a very wide scope of interesting weapons that offer many playstyle, and that’s absolutely great, but I certainly hope that DE realise adding more elements to a metagame also makes it harder to balance. And as we know, Warframe’s whole balance environment is far from healthy. Even if I do not really like the current “account level” system that levels based on levelling new gears to level 30, I must admit that it is mostly functional with minimal issues. Players aren’t immensely punished for not levelling gears they don’t like, but it still feels rewarding to do so. My problem with the problem is that trying out weapons is never the same as actually using them, since a level 30 weapon is a catalyst and 4 Formas away from actually being fairly tested. But ultimately, I think the system works fine.

 

As for Arcanes, I think the simplest solution would simply to introduce weaker arcanes outside of Trials so that they are properly introduced to the player. I still think that adding stats boosts to the space scarves/capes is somewhat superfluous and incoherent in the whole itemisation environment, but it’s hard to go back on game content once it’s implanted. Whether they are necessary or not is irrelevant when you consider that most tools available to the player are theoretically optional. In fact, most tools available to the player are probably not even necessary for anything at all, even the endgame. The real problem with Arcanes is that they provide more unnecessary power while offering little actual gameplay. For example, it could be argued that sentinels or melee weapons are optional for a lot of content, including even the endgame. However, since they provide the players with so much gameplay and customisation, sentinels offer way more fun to the player than arcanes. When a sentinel does something, you can see it happen, and you can appreciate it directly and visually. When an arcane helps you do something, how much can you really appreciate it? How much is that extra damage actually helping you when you are overkilling all those enemies by such a large margin? Even when their stats are actually helping you, it offers such little feedback and interaction when compared to things like sentinels. The real issue with arcanes is the fact that they offer little interaction for the power they provide, while most other gears in Warframe provide a good amount of interaction and gameplay value, regardless of power level. Let’s not forget that, in the context of a game like Warframe that obviously highly value the interactive and creative nature of the tools available to the players, Arcanes enhancements really feel out of place when you compare them to the frames, weapons and sidekicks that aim to offer interesting ways to play the game.

 

Gameplay related issues

Situational Problem: Allow me to clarify my point. Like you, I think that Oxium ospreys and Nullifiers are a great addition to the game and they make them game slightly more fun to play due to their fight mechanics. I also think the game should add more enemies like them. While some would argue that nullifiers could be tweaked to be less annoying, I think they are a step in the right direction. Glad we agree on that point.

 

Special Encounters: In my example with Captain Vor, I think that most players would actually bother to chase him down if he had an extended and more interesting loot table, like I mentioned in my post. If those loots were akin to the ones in the caches in sabotage mission, I think he would be a very interesting option for most players.

 

Too mobile: Yes I know perfectly well that reducing the mobility of the player in Warframe would probably be a bad idea. That is exactly why I acknowledged the importance of the mobility in Warframe in the beginning in my initial post, and that I also stated that the best solution would probably to change nothing in the other paragraph about mobility. I think you are being somewhat unfair in your assessment of my point, or maybe you accidentally skipped over some information. Regardless, you cannot ignore the fact that even DE recognise this situation, otherwise they wouldn’t have greatly reduced the speed of the players in the Conclave in hope to make it somewhat playable. Like most things in life, once you have too much of a thing, it becomes hard to really appreciate that thing, and that is quite possibly the case with mobility in Warframe. Ultimately, I do agree with you and I think that Warframe should most likely remain as it is currently concerning mobility. I just wanted to point out that DE absolutely needs to build everything they implement into the game around this extreme mobility, which also means conclave will always have some serious issues, and that anything that somehow needs to be even faster than Warframe’s default speed will reach dangerous levels of speed that could be somewhat be too fast for some players, which is probably the case for frames like Volt and Zephyr.

 

Customization issues

We mostly agree on those points, from what I understand.

 

Abilities related issues

Cooldowns: As for cooldowns, if you think that sparking a dialogue about cooldowns is a mistake, you must have a radically different opinion on the functions of a forum than me. A few really good ideas have already been brought up and they actually changed my mind on what would be the best solution. I do not wish to re-write the same arguments I brought up in my second and third post, so feel free to have a look at them. My conclusion was that, while it was true that typical Moba-style cooldowns would ruin Warframe, implanting cooldowns tailored for the fast paced gameplay of Warframe would much better results. Besides, what you claimed is not entirely true. There is not always a fight in Warframe. Defenses are the obvious example. Most other missions will often have significant intermissions in-between fights. I can safely make this claim based on the fact that, in a game like Warframe that provide most of its fun with crowds of victims, any period of time that doesn’t provide sufficient quantities of enemies will rapidly become very apparent and noticeable. Those pauses in the action happen quite often, especially in survival missions, and the scale of some fights will not always require a full arsenal of abilities. Far from it in fact. After all, weapons are arguably the most efficient and convenient mean to dispose of enemies, and they are always available. Abilities are mainly important when you need something a little bit more widespread or powerful, but they are far from mandatory. A player has weapons, four abilities with their respective cooldowns, and three teammates with weapons and abilities themselves. The idea that four players need everything ready at all time to progress is simply ridiculous. Otherwise, why would some nightmare mission remove all energy? Why should some enemies be allowed to remove all your energy with magnetic damage? Why would some builds allow players to expend all their energy in just two or three abilities? Why are energy drops so incredibly unreliable inside a metagame that probably shouldn’t make supports mandatory?. Why are all these scenarios allowed to exist within Warframe if the player cannot play without all his abilities available? There are currently a lot of things in Warframe that slow down the pacing of the game immensely without providing remotely as many benefits as cooldowns.

 

As for Trinity, well, I do not quite understand how DE could so recklessly implement something that horribly overpowered. Considering Trinity used to be able to make her whole squad permanently invulnerable, on top of energy capped, I sometimes really doubt in DE’s ability to properly balance a game and its metagame. But let’s not dwell on that. You seem to think that Trinity, in an analogous scenario with cooldowns instead of energy, would effectively be able to refresh the cooldowns of her teammates. The problem with that claim is that this cooldown-refreshing ability would itself have a cooldown, which would prevent her from allowing the spamming we are experiencing. In analogy to that scenario, Trinity would probably be a lot weaker by not gaining energy from her own abilities. This brings us to the main issue: Trinity is obviously overpowered, and changing nothing about it will only create more problems in the long run. I am not entirely sure whether you are right in your claim that Warframe players are truly enjoying this broken metagame that is obviously too easy, but if you are correct, the problem is fundamentally unfixable. Regardless, assuming DE leaves Trinity like this, where does the metagame go from there? Can DE release another support with similar energy mechanics, or do they have to try to avoid making the problem more complicated? Do they avoid implanting more challenges that are too easily beaten by infinite energy, or do they reinforce the idea that Trinity is mandatory?  I was under the impression that DE wanted players to swap frames often, but the necessity of a Trinity in most scenarios doesn’t seem to follow the same design philosophy. Like you said yourself, the whole energy system would have to be revised in conjunction with her nerf, so I think we agree that it would be possible with a significant effort from DE.

 

Ability scaling: While Warframe could potentially go the Diablo 3 route, which would mean that weapon power would dictate ability power, I personally think the best way to approach the problem is to allow abilities the same level of customisation as weapons. Primarily because some players like the idea of being space wizard more so than the idea of being a space warrior, and that funnelling everything to weapon damage to determine damage would both be thematically restrictive and over-simplified. If DE is currently trending toward weapon scaling abilities, that is only because they themselves recognise that normal-scaling abilities are both lackluster in the sense that they are weaker than weapon, and less fun to customize. It is good that they are trying to offer all frames tools to participate in longer games, but I think that this is a very poor solution to a very fundamental problem.

 

Ability modding: I do not understand how you can conclude that my proposed system would highly encourage player to only spam a single ability, but that the current one doesn’t. The current system does exactly that: it encourage the player to mod their abilities so that 1 or 2 abilities are pretty strong, while the others are unusable due to completely gimped stats. How is this not encouraging the player to only use a portion of his available abilities?  Of course, a player can avoid corrupted mods so that all abilities are usable, but corrupted mods are the only thing that allow player to truly customise their playstyle when it comes to abilities. Whenever an ability becomes weaker than its default status, it automatically become less fun to use. My system is way better in that regard since it doesn’t downgrade abilities; it only upgrades them, which feels way better to the player. It’s much harder to enjoy an ability when you know that its power level is not only sub-optimal, but also under the default level.

 

Kits that don’t make sense: I guess you could call them kits, but usually “kits” entail the notion that the abilities have some sort of synergy between them so that their potential is much stronger when combined. I really doubt this is the case in Warframe since the game encourages the player to sabotage half their abilities to make their other half stronger. The problem with making it so that most frames can do most roles is that it becomes harder to salvage unwanted portions of a skillset to fit a specific role. Let’s not forget that Warframe supposedly want the player to swap frame often, so making all frame more specialised make sense in that regard, since a frame that can effectively do everything will overshadow the other available frames. But you may be right in the sense that all frames should thematically feel somewhat versatile. My complaint stems from a somewhat personal opinion of what a skillset should provide to the player, so it may not be that relevant.

 

Alright, I hope that helped to clarify my points and possibly even change your mind on some of those topics.

Edited December 31, 2015 by SkippyDodley

[alexmach1]

Another issue with Warframe is how ammo economy is handled; ammo drops are RNG, there are 4 different ammo types with varying drop chances, and they only give set amounts of ammo. Weapons like the Supra will always suffer because you need at least 9 rifle ammo drops to refill a single magazine or 5 and 10 for Soma and Soma Prime, respectively. Using guns with low damage but high rates of fire such as continuous weapons or LMGs will always put you at a disadvantage unless you are willing to sacrifice a precious mod slot for the Mutation mods, which don't really help the problem all that much anyways. DE should experiment with different methods to solve this problem, like Overwatch with its infinite reserve or TF2 where every kill drops universal ammo. If they want to keep the different types of ammo drops around, then they'd have to remove the RNG element or shift the amount picked up for each weapon, like rifle ammo granting 10 ammo for the latron but 100 for the supra.

[Mr.Lube]

Tbh till i started this check i thought the same, but now i have my doubts.

Even assuming there were cooldowns then i see no balance changes around them and there were very few ppl testing.

It seems like they were scrapped because devs didnt like the idea and no one even attempted to make them work if they really werent.

 

Do they slow down gameplay?? hell no, they establish hierarchy of abilities, spammy weak abilities and limited powerful nukes and utility.

Ability spam wasn't really a problem until corrupted mods came around and #*($%%@ everything up.

[Davoodoo]

Ability spam wasn't really a problem until corrupted mods came around and #*($%%@ everything up.

I remember 500 waves defense runs using ev trin.

Sure there was no draco, but there was cc/utility spam bordering with ridiculousness.

 

Then i still remember mag and banshee being best 4 spammers at some point.

Edited December 31, 2015 by Davoodoo

[Burnthesteak87]

I mostly agree with SkippyDodley points.

About Mobility:

Maps aren't upgraded for Parkour 2.0 and make bad use of the Vertical Axis (there is no need to climb up or down), also they don't suit the combat or restrain it (Do anybody saw any Obstacle courses? Efficent traps? Paths hard to travel? Those were in old Void Raids, which have been removed long ago.)
Enemies aren't upgraded for Parkour 2.0 and no enemy is able to catch up with your speed, neither special units, this garants a sort of immortality, as somebody stated. (Unless you're in a lv 80 mission in open field)

I WANT MORE HYENAS IN NORMAL MISSIONS.

About Energy:

Too much Energy.
I'd say Energy should stop dropping from enemies killed by abilities.
Instead, players should gain Energy through alternative actions.
Example:
Easy solution:
- Combo counter as melee, every tot Kills you get your energy globe;
- Specific enemies hard to kill dropping energy;

Elaborated Solution:
- Syndacate AOEs-like effects recovering Vitality and/or Energy after executing melee combos;
- Focus system or passive system allowing the player to get energy through precise actions and playstyles... Stealth kills, Headshots streaks... ETC.

No lame Passive regeneration, lets' promote Active Interactions.

Also Ammos can be considered Weapons' Energy and suffer similar kind of problems.

About Cooldowns and Abilities:

The Diablo system looks the most appealing. Maybe let's have the #1 skill being the spammable one with no CD, while others would have a consistent CD basing on balance.
Or alternatively let's introduce also Orbs reducing cooldowns.

Abilities lack smart design and synergy.

About Gameplay:

Enemies outside of Nullifiers and Ancient Healers, are just dumb damage dealing-bulletsponge AIs. There is no need to use brain into fight, just spamming CC/Invisibility/Immortality/Decoy, shooting and slaying random targets.

Assassins are terrible. Even the Stalker now is easier than before. They also shouldn't go away after killing you, this is an incredible disappointment.
There are nice events like Recovery (Zanuka Hunter), which could be a nice consequence from losing to assasin squads, but it's developement has been discarded.

Gunfight is poor, 200 weapons which are almost the same, poor secondary fires, poor usage. At this point I'd be for less weapons with more identity and funny playstyle.
Melee fight is flawed and too much situational, doesn't merge well with the gameplay.

I agree about the Itemization, Equipment and Modding System. It's way limitative and deeply flawed, it doesn't really promote customization.

About Mods:

Don't forget the actual problem about weapons viable only through modding for max damage.

And to conclude..
The main problem with Warframe is: in most of its features it doesn't require any skill nor brain usage.
If this is the meaning of "Fast Peaced" game...

In the end, so many flaws have been rooted in the basement of Warframe for so long that I don't think they will ever be fixed.
Can you people imagine how would be fixing cooldowns/energy-problems/rebalancing 28 Warframes together?
Or 50+ Weapons?

(I've been reading all the past posts for the last 2 and half hours, so at the moment I can't come out with anything better)

Edited January 1, 2016 by Burnthesteak87