Fully Customized Warframes

[Kyte]

How much energy would that combo require?  If i'm not mistaken it would chew up all available energy meaning that you can use the move once if playing solo.  So you take down 1 enemy.. you are then left with no energy and have a pretty weak frame due to spending all your points on that combo..

175 energy sounds like a fair trade to one-shot almost any boss in the game. With Flow and perhaps Streamline you could throw two or even three Radial Javelins during the duration of Bullet Attractor for guaranteed murder. It'd make Exca the boss killer.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Kyte

[Jax_Cavalera]

450 energy max costing 9 mod points.. meaning you could use the move 4 times in a row before running out of energy.. 4 enemies assuming streamline is in use.

javalin costing 8 mod points

bullet attracter costing min 24 points

streamline costing 9 mod points

 

this gives 50 points in cost there.. with little remaining.  this is of cause a rather unbalanced result still, so it would require further tweaking.. however I am much more inclined to think that a "Drone" warframe solution is the best alternative and would better serve the intended goals.

 

I will wait to see further feedback on this new alteration to the concept and if it seems to be a generally preferred variation then I will amend the Opening Post to reflect this.

[Makeshift]

i like having non clas specific skills to add in. maybe 2 slots (key 5 and key 6) for non class specific skills.

 

i dislike making all skills non class specific. i would never want to see the game get to a point where ppl are saying "use this frame with these skills anything else is wrong" i mean every game gets there, and in time specific frames will have specific "best" builds but at least the way it is now frames are unique enough that we can have debates like loki vs ash. debates like that imo is a good sign that theres no 1 correct build and if u allow ppl to pick and choose it makes individual frames less unique.

[Jax_Cavalera]

If there were to be non class specific skills, what kind of skills would these be?

 

Also, do you think that having a new frame that handles all skill mods but with 300% mod costs and no ability to polarize would make for even further debate and build options.

 

The ideal goal is to find a way to let the player create their own fighting style or gameplay style using the existing skills without removing the purpose of unique frames or creating a platform for a new OP frame.  If the penalty's are high enough or the drone frame simply can't polarize, and all skill mods are capped at half their usual maximums, this should achieve such a goal where a player wanting an existing fighting style. can just pick the dedicated existing warframe.. and players wanting to invent a new fighting style can pick the drone frame which has no clear advantage, it simply is another alternative.

 

The option of only allowing 2 skill mods into the frame was brought up, and after considering things further.. I don't think this is necessary if the drone concept is used instead of the currently discussed concept in the opening post.

[Tsukinoki]

@Jax_Cavalera

All that it would take to really balance a 'drone' frame, IMHO, would be the following:

-Cant use forma to get the '=' polarity for abilities, meaning that they can polorize for everything else but not abilities

-Abilities have a small reduction to skill effectiveness. While they can use any skill they cant use it as well as the frame it was made for.

Those two alone would balance it if everything else was kept equal. No need to grant it pentalties, no need to make abilities cost extra or anything.

They would be able to create their own builds of whatever skills they want, but each skill individually wouldnt be as good, it would more rely on how the skills combo and synergize to make up for the slight drop in effectiveness.

[Makeshift]

i agree that reduction in effectiveness is key. i really dont like the drone idea cause once again it feels kind of like ur taking from the uniqueness. i mean they could have done that from the start, just made one frame and a bunch of skills. i just cant see this balanced. either noone will use it or everyone will use it.

 

if anything, i still think having non-class specific skills mixed in would be best. there could be unique ones, but to start off they could have nerfed versions of skills that already exist.

 

so say you want to turn invisible, well now theres a non-class specfic skill called...idk...Disappear or something...basically this one has different animations and maybe more power cost, less duration. give like the worst of ash and the worst of loki. that way its still usable for a defensive panic button but not nearly as effective as the other 2 unless u really time it right.

 

Basically instead of just going across the board with all skills this would let them manipulate skills individually, give them individual penalties,give us new animations, and allow them to still restrict which skills become usable, that way u dont take away everything that makes a specific class unique. like maybe loki will always have decoy. we take shock from volt but he will always have speed (or vice versa)

 

the down side for this would be that. that these would be even more mods and we wouldnt be able to just grab the skills we've already fused up and start tossing it on random frames.

 

as for the animations, just to get it started they could reuse the animations, but just like someone else mentioned something about a fighter throwing fireballs. eventually they would change the animations to these non-class specific skills so that they are visually class neutral

 

as for the penalties, anything said in this topic could work, just...not across the board. make each released neutral skill customly penalized and of course dont make all skills neutral. classes need their niche

[Jax_Cavalera]

I've taken a bit longer to reply this time as I've been considering all these points made carefully.  I think there is a key solution here that will make this work.

 

Concept ;

 

1. Have a Drone Frame that starts with 4 polarized slots that are a 2 x DUAL DASH, 1 x SINGLE DASH & 1 x TRIANGLE

 

2. Allow it to handle any skill mods from any existing frames EXCEPT  FOR  UBER  SKILLS  the number 4 UBER SKILL will remain specific to it's original frame only and can NOT be installed onto the DRONE frame.

 

3. Create 2 or 4 skill mods that could be used for any of the frames including the new drone frame that may be used as an uber replacement.

 

Things to consider :

 

Ideas for neutral Uber style skills would need to be thought out and voted on by the community of cause... it may end up being just 2 or 1 skill..

 

Possible skills :

 

Currently there isn't an uber skill that straight out instant team revives.  so if team mates are in a radius of you and you use it, they get revived if they were killed.  it might be handy to really juice up the cost of such a skill from say 100 energy to like 250 ensuring that it would only be usable for a rank 30 frame and only really used 1 time before more energy was required to keep things rolling.  it would also have a reasonably short radius.. not the entire map of cause.

 

it could be more of a reach booster skill where all your team mates and yourself get a 20 second window of time where your other skills / abilities range, power and duration are multiplied by a maximum of 30%   keep in mind this is an UBER replacement skill so it's going to cost default 100 energy.. max is likely a 5 times in a row repeat lasting 1 minute 40 seconds.

 

could be an ammo recharge skill or a clone skill where it takes the abilities of whatever you target friend or foe (EXCLUDES BOSSES) and applies a BASE VERSION  tier 1 unranked version .. to your frame for 1 minute. though that seems more like a skill you would actually have exclusive to the drone frame now I think about it.

 

I'll adjust the opening post and am keen to see your thoughts on this.

[Makeshift]

i feel like you completely ignored my post as you didnt touch base on anything but w/e.

 

Drone type frame makes things too customizable, your ideas oversell the drone way too much. to make it like that would make almost no reason to use the original frames. you need balancing and your suggestion doesnt have it.

 

to say its balanced just because they cannot use the skill 4 doesnt really fly. I don't use loki's ulti at all. infact the main reason i use loki over ash is because i get invisibility AND clones. if you do this...why would i ever need to pick up a loki frame? why would i want to use volt when i can just take his shield and super speed and replace his ulti with something that isnt so faction dependent?

 

A classes bad skills and or limitations are what balances out the good skills and ulti isnt always the good skill. Now if you want the drone to just be able to use bad skills thats fine,..but you cant just say that it cant use ulti across the board and assume that ulti is the good skill.

 

You idea lacks balancing. infact it doesnt just lack balancing within itself but it could throw all the other frames out of balance. This is why i suggested having specific debuffed skills that make other frames more customizable instead of making a new frame that was fully customizable.

 

Theres only 2 ways i can see this working. either the drone only gains watered down versions of the skills (see my older post for examples of a watered down skill) that way it cannot outshine the original frame that it stole the skills from.

 

or turn this into a gamble frame. like the random select choice in fighting games. when you start the mission skills 1 through 3 are randomly chosen. you can reroll with skill 4 and it cost a lot of power. that way the frame gets full use of other skills, and potentially can have all the best skills, but also can end up with horrible skills. the player must master all frames to truly master this gambling frame. its not pretty but its balanced. for the mods you have 4 skills still, 3 are question makes that just say skill 1,2,3. these can be upgraded and the upgrade extends to w/e skill you end up copying. skill 4 is the gamble ulti which decreases in cost or cooldown depending on what the limitation is set at. to further extend this idea, what if gamble skill is a channel type skill. tapping it rerolls skill 1, holding it down for 1 second rerolls skills 1 and 2, 2 seconds its 1,2,3. that way starting from 3, the player...if they are adiment about it...can reroll 3 until he find the right skill, then 2, then 1, and depending on how lucky you are or how long you are willing to spend doing it...u can actually get y our dream frame, but its still balanced because you would have to do that every mission.

[Jax_Cavalera]

i feel like you completely ignored my post as you didnt touch base on anything but w/e.

 

Drone type frame makes things too customizable, your ideas oversell the drone way too much. to make it like that would make almost no reason to use the original frames. you need balancing and your suggestion doesnt have it.

 

to say its balanced just because they cannot use the skill 4 doesnt really fly. I don't use loki's ulti at all. infact the main reason i use loki over ash is because i get invisibility AND clones. if you do this...why would i ever need to pick up a loki frame? why would i want to use volt when i can just take his shield and super speed and replace his ulti with something that isnt so faction dependent?

 

A classes bad skills and or limitations are what balances out the good skills and ulti isnt always the good skill. Now if you want the drone to just be able to use bad skills thats fine,..but you cant just say that it cant use ulti across the board and assume that ulti is the good skill.

 

You idea lacks balancing. infact it doesnt just lack balancing within itself but it could throw all the other frames out of balance. This is why i suggested having specific debuffed skills that make other frames more customizable instead of making a new frame that was fully customizable.

 

Theres only 2 ways i can see this working. either the drone only gains watered down versions of the skills (see my older post for examples of a watered down skill) that way it cannot outshine the original frame that it stole the skills from.

 

or turn this into a gamble frame. like the random select choice in fighting games. when you start the mission skills 1 through 3 are randomly chosen. you can reroll with skill 4 and it cost a lot of power. that way the frame gets full use of other skills, and potentially can have all the best skills, but also can end up with horrible skills. the player must master all frames to truly master this gambling frame. its not pretty but its balanced. for the mods you have 4 skills still, 3 are question makes that just say skill 1,2,3. these can be upgraded and the upgrade extends to w/e skill you end up copying. skill 4 is the gamble ulti which decreases in cost or cooldown depending on what the limitation is set at. to further extend this idea, what if gamble skill is a channel type skill. tapping it rerolls skill 1, holding it down for 1 second rerolls skills 1 and 2, 2 seconds its 1,2,3. that way starting from 3, the player...if they are adiment about it...can reroll 3 until he find the right skill, then 2, then 1, and depending on how lucky you are or how long you are willing to spend doing it...u can actually get y our dream frame, but its still balanced because you would have to do that every mission.

 

 

I think if you read my response carefully you will see that I have in fact taken your post into strong consideration, I also see that you are making a very good point regarding the Ultimate power not always being the preferred power for a frame.  That was a bit of an assumption on my half and I am happy to adjust this concept as you have pointed out.  What really needs to happen is the community get together and vote on which 2 powers from each existing frame .. the Drone frame would be allowed to use.

 

The main theme that I took from your post was that there are certain powers that make each frame unique or preferrable to some players.  So I made a (now I realise) blanket rule for all ubers to be blocked from the drone with the goal being that they keep their uniqueness but the utility powers can be shared.

 

I figured that if frames were similar to the Mag, then they only really have crush and shield polarize  the other 2 powers are relatively meh.. but perhaps if combined with other frame utilities could make a more interesting frame.

 

Also, the idea of a penalty for using foreign skills does strike me as a good idea, but as to how penalized.. that is a good question.  I definitely agree that the Drone would not be able to perform skills as good as the frame they were designed for.

 

What are your thoughts relating to the neutral uber skills, or the optional skill for a drone frame that let's it temporarily replicate the powers of NON-BOSS entities.  Might even be that it just morphs into the frame of whatever it targets and becomes it for the duration of the ability.  Considering it's power would be limited to a base rank of any skills the targeted entity has loaded, it's going to be reasonably circumstantial.  could be nifty though.

 

I think that pursuing that concept too much further would take the topic off topic so I'm just wanting to see if that type of skill set for a new frame would be preferred to the actual concept being discussed here of having neutral skills  or a drone frame that debuffs other frame skills .

 

I hope that this clarifies things better

 

That last idea you had for a skill reroll power is also pretty cool, that would be a good 2nd power so you can either target for temp power or re roll for 2 random powers costing all available energy.. and locked to 200 ish energy so you can't use it till you are a higher rank than 5ish without flow being installed.  It does seem like we are thinking similarly on this

 

Well I just wanted to mostly confirm that I had taken your response into strong consideration as your input into this topic has been most valuable and appreciated.

[Makeshift]

neutral skills i do like. but for me i think um...2 things. 1 i am not particularly happy with swapping out the original 4 skills. if a skill is bad i think its intended to balance out its other skills. and if a frame is bad...then that frame probably needs a rework. personally if we are going with neutral skills i would prfer it to be more like league of legends. u have your 4 skills, then you have 2 neutral skills that u pick from. so then a frame would have skills 1-6. otherwise im not sure how it would work i mean you could end up with 3 4 skills. also on that subject, if there was a drone skill i think another limitation might be that u cant stack skills that belonged to a specific button. so u are still limited to having 1234 not 1224 or 4244 or stuff like that. anyways over i think neutral skills should be 5 and 6 type. idk why...it just makes more sense that way to me and since i see it in those terms, i find it a little hard to imagine replacements for skill 4 (since, im not advocating replacement at all). with the right balancing however i dont see a problem with 5 and 6 skills being powerful enough to be alternatives to 4 though.(so in a sense yes neutral 4 skills...just as a seperate skill)

 

I'm not sure what type of powers you meant by non-boss entities, maybe a couple examples please?

 

also, new worry to me about the drone frame is that skills are not the only part of balancing. stats are also part of it. with the ability to polarize a frame, i would not want to see someone just stick all the same skills from one frame onto drone just because drone has better stats. a little technical and im sure theres work arounds but i think the issue needs to be considered.

 

i still like my old idea of having non-frame-specfic skills that are similar to the originals because that gives the devs FULL control on balancing. anything short of this would be like you said "blanket" rules and that doesnt work with a game that has such diversity amoung the frames. with that said....what do you think about this. add in hand picked debuffed universal skills. add in skill slots 5 and 6. then limit all other frames to only being able to use 2 of these. then add in a droid that has no skills. but 6 slots for these universal skills and modified stats to accompany the debuffed skills.

 

basically it would end up with a drone that has costomizability but will rounded. and can tap into all other frame playstyles without ever outshining its predecessors.  kind of like an advanced excalibur (excalibur being the poster boy for average)

 

also i think it should be up to the devs in terms of what skills to rebuild. if we vote you will end up with ppl just voting on skills they like without consideration for balance and that would just make the whole thing irrelevent.

 

Edit: just got back, realized i didnt thank you for taking the time to clarify so thank you btw. anyways further insight as to some of the positive effects to having these neutral skills as 5 and 6 instead of replacing 1-4... still an unrefined thought but let me try to paint an example. the current challenge is trying to give other frames abilitys without making the frame you took it from useless...well lets say you took the super speed from volt. that to me is one of volts greatest skills. even if we did pull skills off characters and remake them as neutral skills....this would definitely be a skill that imo sits on the fence. on the one hand giving that to everyone would be AWESOME...but....if u did, then the original frame would be underminded. BUT look at it like this...if its a 5 or 6 skill then volt can stack his super speed with the generic super speed. he will be the only frame that can, and thus he is still the fastest frame! maybe thats too fast and so they need to put in a hard cap...but volt would still be the only one who can reach that cap so he maintains his uniqueness while other frames get to dip into that boost (and remember the generic version wouldnt be as powerful.). in that same sense what if a generic stealth skill stacked duration BUT not with itself. that way ash and loki could double their stealth time and thus they still maintain a lead on frames who just use the generic version. we still cant make EVERY skill available, but this opens up more freedom and more skills that could be used without making the originals less appealing.

 

also, more insight, if someone did not want to use their original 4 skills they could still remove them from the mod slot which is essentially the same as swapping 1 skill for another. my thinking here tho is that the generics are treated as additions instead of alternatives. this also gives the drone more uniqueness as it wouldnt be bound by the 1 generic skill limitation. and of course it could have free range of the generic skills so it alone could essentialy have multiple skill 4s but the penalties and or costs + lack of utility would be what keeps the users using multiple types of skills

 

last thing i wanna edit. in retrospect i think just 1 generic skill would be nicer then 2. its less buttons, the choice of which generic to take is riskier and has a bigger impact, plus it makes slightly more insentive to use a drone since he gets 5x the choices as opposed to the 2-6 which is only 3x in terms of proportions. that would mean every frame has a total of 5 skills, 4 personal, 1 generic. the drone could have 5 generic skills and once again add in average stats across the board.

 

anyways let me know what you think. i know i kinda started out with seperate ideas and i intended to keep it that way but some how they kind of all merged into one long concept lol, pick it apart and let me know

Edited June 28, 2013 by Makeshift

[Transient_Tiefling]

Heres a easy balance fix:

 

Randomize it.

 

Have all 4 powers be a slot like on slot machines, when activated at the start of a mission, it randomly chooses one power of the same slot from another warframe. IE: Slot 1 could only be Slash Dash/Tesla/Fireball/etc. So on and so forth. the Power lasts for 5 minutes and bam, roll that die again.

 

I know people here hate "rolling the dice" in this game, but honestly, even after seeing the tier list it barely matters what warframe you play or what weapon you bring. The point in the end is fun.

[Makeshift]

Heres a easy balance fix:

 

Randomize it.

 

Have all 4 powers be a slot like on slot machines, when activated at the start of a mission, it randomly chooses one power of the same slot from another warframe. IE: Slot 1 could only be Slash Dash/Tesla/Fireball/etc. So on and so forth. the Power lasts for 5 minutes and bam, roll that die again.

 

I know people here hate "rolling the dice" in this game, but honestly, even after seeing the tier list it barely matters what warframe you play or what weapon you bring. The point in the end is fun.

_______

or turn this into a gamble frame. like the random select choice in fighting games. when you start the mission skills 1 through 3 are randomly chosen. you can reroll with skill 4 and it cost a lot of power. that way the frame gets full use of other skills, and potentially can have all the best skills, but also can end up with horrible skills. the player must master all frames to truly master this gambling frame. its not pretty but its balanced. for the mods you have 4 skills still, 3 are question makes that just say skill 1,2,3. these can be upgraded and the upgrade extends to w/e skill you end up copying. skill 4 is the gamble ulti which decreases in cost or cooldown depending on what the limitation is set at. to further extend this idea, what if gamble skill is a channel type skill. tapping it rerolls skill 1, holding it down for 1 second rerolls skills 1 and 2, 2 seconds its 1,2,3. that way starting from 3, the player...if they are adiment about it...can reroll 3 until he find the right skill, then 2, then 1, and depending on how lucky you are or how long you are willing to spend doing it...u can actually get y our dream frame, but its still balanced because you would have to do that every mission.

That last idea you had for a skill reroll power is also pretty cool, that would be a good 2nd power so you can either target for temp power or re roll for 2 random powers costing all available energy.. and locked to 200 ish energy so you can't use it till you are a higher rank than 5ish without flow being installed.  It does seem like we are thinking similarly on this

 

there, now your caught up anima

[Moomabo]

I am against this. Rather than re-balancing the game to make mixing and matching skills balanced I would like to see more new and unique warframes released. This kind of system creates the potential for balancing problems with each new skill that is released. It means that the development team would have to spend more time testing each new ability to make sure that it was balanced when used in EVERY combination of skills possible on this drone frame. Currently there are 39 non-ultimate skills in the game and there are more on the way. This means that depending on which skills were made available to "the Drone" there would be between 20,475 and 101,270 combinations that would need to be individually tested and balanced. That is simply to much work for the staff at DE to handle on top of all the other work that goes into making a game. It should also be noted that DE would have to do this balancing work twice, because they will have separate balance tables for PVE and PVP once PvP is added to the game.

 

I really wish we could have fully customizable warframes but in a multiplayer setting it would be practically impossible to balance any of the methods you two have suggested. That being said I really like your ideas =).

[Mazimer]

slash dash on a vauban

op

nuff said

[ZWarhammer]

NO. ^^

[Jax_Cavalera]

I guess the situation we are in right now is the preference of most players, I do think that skill mods should be removed from the drop table as these skills can be boosted with other mods and cores  (and usually are anyway) and with them in the drop table, it just pollutes a relatively clean table of mod drops with "junk".

 

Unless we are going to make a purposeful use for allowing skill mods to continue as part of the drop table which this idea does, they aren't necessary.

 

So looking at Moomabo's added perspective on the topic, we need to find a way in which the addition of the skills to a warframe will not require large efforts of work, but will extend out the duration of play-ability awarded to Warframe.

 

Things we now know :

 

Players do not want to see an existing warframe running around using some other warframe's powers but are comfortable seeing a new warframe that has this ability.

 

Players do not want said new warframe to be able to perform any existing power "awarded" to an existing warframe performed to the same high standard as it is not Native to the new warframe.

 

One key advantage to the game currently being in Beta is that they would be able to spread the workload out between all the players of the game and just see where things went and which powers (WHEN USED ON THE DRONE) need to be de-buffed.  This would become apparent quite quickly from watching reports of Drones being far too OP etc.. when using certain skill mods together

 

Are there any other key points to note that we can use to re-work a concept that fits the shoe we are trying to construct?