"Formation Bravo" ...among other things...

[Apple303]

So let me open this by asking a question. Is 'Formation Bravo' also known as 'We don't actually have any other formations'? It seems like that to me.

This is a very small gripe that I'm sure will be fixed eventually, I just think they should say different formation names or only say that when the AI has chosen a certain maneuver because it's starting to get silly.

On a more important note I would like to point out (not sure if it's been said before but it can't hurt) that the view seems rather jittery and jumpy. At first I thought it was lagg but after playing solo for a while and getting the same big jumps while turning it became apparent that it wasn't a connection issue. Often when I'm trying to aim at something or turn right/left I end up looking at something a few feet further than intended because the view goes from rotating to sudden jumps at random inervals. This has gotten me killed once or twice when I ran out of ammo and tried fighting something but instead put my back to it and stabbed a wall.

This brings me to another issue I've run into using the sword (and a similar problem with the guns). If I'm at even a slightly higher or lower elevation than whatever I'm trying to stab the sword will go right through them and deal no damage at all. For the most part this wasn't too big of a problem, but I primarily play solo and this killed me during my first boss fight because the elevation issue doesn't seem to affect the NPC's meelee attacks, only mine.

As for the gun issue I mentioned a moment ago, due to the viewpoint being third person I occasionally find myself shooting a wall or the staircase/ramp I'm on because I don't realize that the gun isn't actually high enough/over enough to shoot over/past whatever I'm taking cover with. I haven't had too many issues as of yet with the ammo (aside from my rifle) but the 4 - 6 shots that hit the wall and not the enemy go a long way. This could be a simple fix, I saw someone else already mentioned laser sights which seems like a fantastic idea to me.

Moving on I should mention the movement itself. For the most part it seems to work fine for me, I only have a few instances where it makes me roll when I'm sprinting downstairs and that's all tolerable but I do notice my character getting snagged and stuck on what end up appearing to be absolutely nothing pretty frequently. But alltogether I do like the movement system as is.

Now having mentioned my combat issues however I must voice another issue I have. While it can be fun to blitzkrieg through an entire map of weaklings with my bad-&#! space-ninja, such joy doesn't really last more than a few minutes before it gets repetitive and boring. I like my superior battlesuit but being that there isn't a difficulty setting (to my knowledge at least, I could just be a fool) my normal gameplay tactics of cautios/defensive movement utilizing the cover actually tend to be completely unwarranted and actualy more of a negative trait in the end (wasting ammo in the staircase or wall) and less gain comes from it. My first game I accidentally joined other players instead of playing solo and apart from having no idea what was going on, I think I totalled 1 kill and 2 assists or something. I also revived a guy but that's not really important, what was important was the sour taste it left in my mouth.

I don't know if they knew much of what they were doing but there was no exploration, they bum-rushed the objective and completed it/killed everything in seconds. I couldn't keep up and before I knew it the mission was over. I didn't get to explore the ship and the only pseudo-teamwork that was involved was pretty accidental between my allies, occuring more as a result of having the same pool of enemies and the same objective location and less from actually working together. I got out of their lobby as soon as I could and put it on solo to replay the mission so I could figure out what it was about and actually shoot some bullets. I've since finished the first area of the star-map completely solo as I find it more fun to explore and have a (VERY) minor challenge than to have to compete with 3 other people (who all seem to have much better gear than I) to kill 1 guy or even see the objective before their sprinting the other way to evacuate the ship.

Considering that I'm only now player level 1 with a level 5 or so Loki Warframe, I don't think it should have been so easy for me, my only failed mission so far was because I had to stop playing and I got beaten to death by those zombie things while I was away. If there is to be no implimented diffuculty levels, I believe that the game should be more difficult or at the very least the public matching system should pair me with players of similar levels (the 3 people I played my first game with were levels 1-3 respectively, with me being lvl 0 so they've obviously played quite a bit more) so as to not have OP people doing everything while I sit around wondering what happened, I'd also hate to end up matched with someone new, now that I know how to play and end up killing their first experience in a similar manner to my own. I have the same problem with this game now that I've had with other multi-player experiences like the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer which I also play exclusively solo or with friends.

Now that I've gotten through that, I would like to explicitly state that I AM indeed enjoying this game, I love quite a few aspects of it and I'm certain I'll get days of play into it so don't think I'm just hating on everything now. So, in accordance with that, let me state a few of the things that I think were done rather well.

For starters, the control system. The tutorial was ruined for me because of the controls, but in a good way. When I first loaded the tutorial my view was from the right side of my character and I couldn't change it, I also couldn't make him walk right or left, only forward. I figured that was part of the tutorial even though I was having trouble seeing what she wanted me to do. Eventually I completed all the little tasks (which was very difficult as I discovered that I was infinitely sliding to the right slowly) and she told me to kill all the targets. This was the good part, if you were wondering when I'd stop saying things that seem bad, I very poorly was able to aim long enough to kill one of the guys with blades before being overcome and as I started taking oodles of ranged and meelee damage my computer tower started to vibrate violently. It was at this point that I noticed my Xbox 360 controller was still plugged in and resting on top of my computer tower. Picking it up so as to stop the computer from vibrating, I noticed that my screen was now facing forwards.

The reason for all my troubles up to that point was because you bad-asses made this game Xbox 360 controller-compatible and I had no friggin clue. I'm not sure how much of a well known fact that is but it was a pleaseant suprise to me because I play shooters much better with a controller. However, my controller is a bit defective (broken joysticks that INFINITELY MOVE RIGHT when I'm not holding them, for instance) Realizing this, I immediately started aquainting myself with the controller version of the controls (Albeit a bit confusing, B to reload? Really?) and killed the remaining enemies. I would like the opportunity to re-play the tutorial now that I can do it correctly, but this works fine for me. Thank you for that.

The controller works very smoothly with the game and my only concern is that I have to switch to the mouse to hack things (if there's a way to do it with the controller I haven't stopped to play around and find out, I haven't failed a hack yet and I don't want to fail senselessly)

The game looks and feels spectacular so far, I love the look and feel of the map palletes that I've seen to this point (though I can't wait for more to mix things up a bit) and I like the overall art of the game (though I'm not fond of the head on the Loki Warframe).

Overall, keep up the great work, you guys are awesome! ^_^

[gopher]

Holy wall of text, Batman!

Even though I read all of this, most people probably won't. Try adding a tl;dr at the end if you need to post something long.

-maybe Bravo is the formation where they act like idiots and just try to shoot you while occasionally taking cover?

-try turning down some of the settings to solve your view problems, they start of pretty high and in all honesty I find most of the efeects to be more annoying than anything

-the movement snags are a known issue(have you ever tried sprinting up stairs?), as are the hitboxes for melee on enemies

-levels get a lot harder later on, just keep going

-if you don't want to rush, play with people you know that you can communicate with(you can add me, I won't rush unless everyone else is)

-you can switch which shoulder your view is over, I think by pressing "H"

Good luck on the battlefield!

[direcyphre]

I'm fairly certain the AI will get some improvements along the development cycle of beta. As it is, they should definitely have something of a home-field advantage when it comes to terrain, though spaces are fairly CQC most of the time. Lots of bugs related to their hugging crates/walls too.

[gopher]

I'm fairly certain the AI will get some improvements along the development cycle of beta. As it is, they should definitely have something of a home-field advantage when it comes to terrain, though spaces are fairly CQC most of the time. Lots of bugs related to their hugging crates/walls too.

STAY CLOSE TO THE WALLS! Obviously not a bug, they are clearly supposed to do that. :P

[KGeddon]

"Hey, leave my mom out of this!"

I thought they were clones...

[Apple303]

Holy wall of text, Batman!

Even though I read all of this, most people probably won't. Try adding a tl;dr at the end if you need to post something long.

-maybe Bravo is the formation where they act like idiots and just try to shoot you while occasionally taking cover?

-try turning down some of the settings to solve your view problems, they start of pretty high and in all honesty I find most of the efeects to be more annoying than anything

-the movement snags are a known issue(have you ever tried sprinting up stairs?), as are the hitboxes for melee on enemies

-levels get a lot harder later on, just keep going

-if you don't want to rush, play with people you know that you can communicate with(you can add me, I won't rush unless everyone else is)

-you can switch which shoulder your view is over, I think by pressing "H"

Good luck on the battlefield!

I actually did try to write a tl;dr but I couldn't think of one that shortly said everything I wrote.

I had no idea I could switch the camera angle, thanks ^_^

[gopher]

I actually did try to write a tl;dr but I couldn't think of one that shortly said everything I wrote.

I had no idea I could switch the camera angle, thanks ^_^

no problem at all, just trying to help out new-ish players

[Zenatsu]

-maybe Bravo is the formation where they act like idiots and just try to shoot you while occasionally taking cover?

Isn't that what we do too?

[Volume]

The whole mercury system is effectively a tutorial/"trial mode" of the different mission types (sabotage, raid, exterminate, etc.)

Once you get to pluto the game will NOT feel as easy. Consider the first few levels of the game are kind of *suppposed* to be easy.

Some other players like to explore and play with cover (it's practically necessary for the later levels anyway, especially against Corpus, considering how fast Moa can eat shields), and you should try finding them and playing with them. It's nice when you have likeminded people to play with, and I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy having someone like you.

[Labcat]

"Hey, leave my mom out of this!"

I thought they were clones...

I love that frase.

[gopher]

Isn't that what we do too?

Good point, I wonder why lotus never tells us to use formation bravo?

[Labcat]

Good point, I wonder why lotus never tells us to use formation bravo?

Because the greener are telling us that.

[Kaiku]

Because the greener are telling us that.

The grineer has been controlling us all along!

Anyway...

That sure is a lot of text for level 5 Loki.

The first time I started to play Warframe I think I didn't stop before I was level 10 haha

I mentioned the laser sights, nice to know that someone else also thinks that they're needed.

If there was matchmaking at this point, you would never find a game. There aren't enough players. But sure this could be a good idea in the future.

Someone has mentioned global chat, this could help a bit.

Once you get to levels 20-30 things get much much easier.

That's why I'd like it if it was possible to make progress by doing first easy missions, and then proceed to see if you can complete a harder one. And this could continue infinitely given how the game works.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Kaiku

[Foxbyte]

Obligatory joke post.

Formation Bravo is when they just sit back, slowclap sarcastically and say 'Braaavoooooo' as you try to pull off a neat jumpflip-ledge-grab.

[direcyphre]

Good point, I wonder why lotus never tells us to use formation bravo?

Because Tenno are all about Formation Delta Epsilon, obviously.

[gopher]

Because Tenno are all about Formation Delta Epsilon, obviously.

What you did there... I sees it.

[Apple303]

The whole mercury system is effectively a tutorial/"trial mode" of the different mission types (sabotage, raid, exterminate, etc.)

Once you get to pluto the game will NOT feel as easy. Consider the first few levels of the game are kind of *suppposed* to be easy.

Some other players like to explore and play with cover (it's practically necessary for the later levels anyway, especially against Corpus, considering how fast Moa can eat shields), and you should try finding them and playing with them. It's nice when you have likeminded people to play with, and I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy having someone like you.

The grineer has been controlling us all along!

Anyway...

That sure is a lot of text for level 5 Loki.

The first time I started to play Warframe I think I didn't stop before I was level 10 haha

I mentioned the laser sights, nice to know that someone else also thinks that they're needed.

If there was matchmaking at this point, you would never find a game. There aren't enough players. But sure this could be a good idea in the future.

Someone has mentioned global chat, this could help a bit.

Once you get to levels 20-30 things get much much easier.

That's why I'd like it if it was possible to make progress by doing first easy missions, and then proceed to see if you can complete a harder one. And this could continue infinitely given how the game works.

I have now played Pluto missions. They are indeed rather easy. The only thing that's difficult is that they have much more health. I level up maybe 5-10 more times and that wont be much of a challenge either.

[Kaiku]

I have now played Pluto missions. They are indeed rather easy. The only thing that's difficult is that they have much more health. I level up maybe 5-10 more times and that wont be much of a challenge either.

At the current state the game it's about as challenging on the highest mission levels with level 30 gear and mods as it is on the low level missions when your gear is level 0.

What would be interesting to see if it was possible to earn xp only from missions that have the same level as you.

This way you couldn't grind on the easier levels and eventually reach max level. You'd have to actually prove your own skills. Kind of.

Edited January 25, 2013 by Kaiku

[Zakalwe]

As for the gun issue I mentioned a moment ago, due to the viewpoint being third person I occasionally find myself shooting a wall or the staircase/ramp I'm on because I don't realize that the gun isn't actually high enough/over enough to shoot over/past whatever I'm taking cover with. I haven't had too many issues as of yet with the ammo (aside from my rifle) but the 4 - 6 shots that hit the wall and not the enemy go a long way. This could be a simple fix, I saw someone else already mentioned laser sights which seems like a fantastic idea to me.

Just like in real life, where soldiers switch shoulders for oppostie corners, press H to make the camera jump to the other side. This will allow you to shoot around a corner.

I like this mechanic, it adds a little depth.

I couldn't keep up and before I knew it the mission was over. I didn't get to explore the ship and the only pseudo-teamwork that was involved was pretty accidental between my allies, occuring more as a result of having the same pool of enemies and the same objective location and less from actually working together.

This happens every now and then because people have different ways of playing. Some like to complete as fast as possible, others like to explore. I belong the the latter category. Feel free to add me for co-op, and use the Squad recruit sub-forum to ask for more like minded people.

[Kaiku]

Just like in real life, where soldiers switch shoulders for oppostie corners, press H to make the camera jump to the other side. This will allow you to shoot around a corner.

The camera isn't on the gun. The problem was that you don't know if there is something between your gun and the target.

This happens especially then if want to shoot over of something. The camera is high enough, but the gun isn't.

[Zakalwe]

The camera isn't on the gun. The problem was that you don't know if there is something between your gun and the target.

This happens especially then if want to shoot over of something. The camera is high enough, but the gun isn't.

Try it.

Walk up to a wall and obstruct your gun, and fire. You'll hit the wall, switch the camera and you'll shoot around the wall.

It doesn't make sense as the gun doesn't move, but it does work.

Edited January 25, 2013 by Zakalwe

[Kaiku]

Try it.

Walk up to a wall and obstruct your gun, and fire. You'll hit the wall, switch the camera and you'll shoot around the wall.

It doesn't make sense as the gun doesn't move, but it does work.

Oh crap, you're right!

The "gun" seems to be in center of the screen afterall. It's just the model what is in the hands of tenno...

But I still wouldn't mind me a laser dot on the point where the bullets hit.

Edit: After more testing, I noticed it's not true. The bullets are fired where the gun is, in your hands.

So if there is something between the point where your crosshair points and the gun, the bullets hit the wall.

No matter how you swap your camera.

Edit2: Sometimes the gun goes into the wall, then the bullets go through the wall and hit what you are aiming.

But if you go stand in front of a wall, the bullets are fired from center of the screen.

So apparently the "gun" is moved towards the center of the screen depending on how close to the tenno your target is.

Edit3: Or not, I think the gun points where your crosshair points. This why if you stand your face towards the wall, your gun is pointing sideways.

If the camera didn't collide with objects, but instead went through them, your crosshair could be pointing to a spot that is behind your character. And then you possibly would be shooting behind you.

Edited January 25, 2013 by Kaiku

[Apple303]

At any rate, a way to tell if the gun was going to hit anything BEFORE I fire the weapon would be rather usefull.

[Poopdeck-Pappy]

Pray that you never see Formation Omega. That's where they unleash 20 of those bakugan balls and laugh

[Notso]

So let me open this by asking a question. Is 'Formation Bravo' also known as 'We don't actually have any other formations'? It seems like that to me.

This is a very small gripe that I'm sure will be fixed eventually, I just think they should say different formation names or only say that when the AI has chosen a certain maneuver because it's starting to get silly.

On a more important note I would like to point out (not sure if it's been said before but it can't hurt) that the view seems rather jittery and jumpy. At first I thought it was lagg but after playing solo for a while and getting the same big jumps while turning it became apparent that it wasn't a connection issue. Often when I'm trying to aim at something or turn right/left I end up looking at something a few feet further than intended because the view goes from rotating to sudden jumps at random inervals. This has gotten me killed once or twice when I ran out of ammo and tried fighting something but instead put my back to it and stabbed a wall.

This brings me to another issue I've run into using the sword (and a similar problem with the guns). If I'm at even a slightly higher or lower elevation than whatever I'm trying to stab the sword will go right through them and deal no damage at all. For the most part this wasn't too big of a problem, but I primarily play solo and this killed me during my first boss fight because the elevation issue doesn't seem to affect the NPC's meelee attacks, only mine.

As for the gun issue I mentioned a moment ago, due to the viewpoint being third person I occasionally find myself shooting a wall or the staircase/ramp I'm on because I don't realize that the gun isn't actually high enough/over enough to shoot over/past whatever I'm taking cover with. I haven't had too many issues as of yet with the ammo (aside from my rifle) but the 4 - 6 shots that hit the wall and not the enemy go a long way. This could be a simple fix, I saw someone else already mentioned laser sights which seems like a fantastic idea to me.

Moving on I should mention the movement itself. For the most part it seems to work fine for me, I only have a few instances where it makes me roll when I'm sprinting downstairs and that's all tolerable but I do notice my character getting snagged and stuck on what end up appearing to be absolutely nothing pretty frequently. But alltogether I do like the movement system as is.

Now having mentioned my combat issues however I must voice another issue I have. While it can be fun to blitzkrieg through an entire map of weaklings with my bad-&#! space-ninja, such joy doesn't really last more than a few minutes before it gets repetitive and boring. I like my superior battlesuit but being that there isn't a difficulty setting (to my knowledge at least, I could just be a fool) my normal gameplay tactics of cautios/defensive movement utilizing the cover actually tend to be completely unwarranted and actualy more of a negative trait in the end (wasting ammo in the staircase or wall) and less gain comes from it. My first game I accidentally joined other players instead of playing solo and apart from having no idea what was going on, I think I totalled 1 kill and 2 assists or something. I also revived a guy but that's not really important, what was important was the sour taste it left in my mouth.

I don't know if they knew much of what they were doing but there was no exploration, they bum-rushed the objective and completed it/killed everything in seconds. I couldn't keep up and before I knew it the mission was over. I didn't get to explore the ship and the only pseudo-teamwork that was involved was pretty accidental between my allies, occuring more as a result of having the same pool of enemies and the same objective location and less from actually working together. I got out of their lobby as soon as I could and put it on solo to replay the mission so I could figure out what it was about and actually shoot some bullets. I've since finished the first area of the star-map completely solo as I find it more fun to explore and have a (VERY) minor challenge than to have to compete with 3 other people (who all seem to have much better gear than I) to kill 1 guy or even see the objective before their sprinting the other way to evacuate the ship.

Considering that I'm only now player level 1 with a level 5 or so Loki Warframe, I don't think it should have been so easy for me, my only failed mission so far was because I had to stop playing and I got beaten to death by those zombie things while I was away. If there is to be no implimented diffuculty levels, I believe that the game should be more difficult or at the very least the public matching system should pair me with players of similar levels (the 3 people I played my first game with were levels 1-3 respectively, with me being lvl 0 so they've obviously played quite a bit more) so as to not have OP people doing everything while I sit around wondering what happened, I'd also hate to end up matched with someone new, now that I know how to play and end up killing their first experience in a similar manner to my own. I have the same problem with this game now that I've had with other multi-player experiences like the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer which I also play exclusively solo or with friends.

Now that I've gotten through that, I would like to explicitly state that I AM indeed enjoying this game, I love quite a few aspects of it and I'm certain I'll get days of play into it so don't think I'm just hating on everything now. So, in accordance with that, let me state a few of the things that I think were done rather well.

For starters, the control system. The tutorial was ruined for me because of the controls, but in a good way. When I first loaded the tutorial my view was from the right side of my character and I couldn't change it, I also couldn't make him walk right or left, only forward. I figured that was part of the tutorial even though I was having trouble seeing what she wanted me to do. Eventually I completed all the little tasks (which was very difficult as I discovered that I was infinitely sliding to the right slowly) and she told me to kill all the targets. This was the good part, if you were wondering when I'd stop saying things that seem bad, I very poorly was able to aim long enough to kill one of the guys with blades before being overcome and as I started taking oodles of ranged and meelee damage my computer tower started to vibrate violently. It was at this point that I noticed my Xbox 360 controller was still plugged in and resting on top of my computer tower. Picking it up so as to stop the computer from vibrating, I noticed that my screen was now facing forwards.

The reason for all my troubles up to that point was because you bad-asses made this game Xbox 360 controller-compatible and I had no friggin clue. I'm not sure how much of a well known fact that is but it was a pleaseant suprise to me because I play shooters much better with a controller. However, my controller is a bit defective (broken joysticks that INFINITELY MOVE RIGHT when I'm not holding them, for instance) Realizing this, I immediately started aquainting myself with the controller version of the controls (Albeit a bit confusing, B to reload? Really?) and killed the remaining enemies. I would like the opportunity to re-play the tutorial now that I can do it correctly, but this works fine for me. Thank you for that.

The controller works very smoothly with the game and my only concern is that I have to switch to the mouse to hack things (if there's a way to do it with the controller I haven't stopped to play around and find out, I haven't failed a hack yet and I don't want to fail senselessly)

The game looks and feels spectacular so far, I love the look and feel of the map palletes that I've seen to this point (though I can't wait for more to mix things up a bit) and I like the overall art of the game (though I'm not fond of the head on the Loki Warframe).

Overall, keep up the great work, you guys are awesome! ^_^

Wow you can write so much regarding one single formation? I expect to see a detailed explanation of how to perform "combat formation bravo" if I were to actually read this... Oh wait.

Actually, I would have read this, but I need to finish the integration problem I'm doing lol

Edited February 28, 2013 by Notso