Warframe abilities are getting too complex

[Maevy]

Sup DE,

i wanted to give my oppinion about the recent changes and some of them even reaching further into the past.

First of all YES i agree Mag needed a rework and i love to see that you keep things in motion, however the reworks slowly start getting out of hand.

As i red the changes about Mag it reminded me about the changes of Saryn. I mean lets be honest comparing the new Mag and Saryn to their "old" counterparts are like having basic school degree or a PhD. Like every skill is a huge big wiki entry where u read for 10 minutes for each one and try to understand what intention it is. I am aware of that you wanted to evolve those simple frames into something more but especially Mag is as starter frame. For eg. if i would be a new player and lets pretend be smart in this situation open a wiki and read the difference between Excalibur and Mag the choice between them is obvious.

The BEST rework you did up to date was Ember: Holy moly you did such a good job, its deep in but its simple and cool alike (refering to accelerant mechanics). I always liked Ember very much but everytime keeping in mind "Above lvl 35 you can simply forget about her" now after her rework she is so badass i am playing her A LOT more.

Taking the last statement into consideration maybe it would be much better to press the bar on the level on what you did with Ember or Ivara (complex and simple at the same time) instead making this such deep. I am not the artist so its actually your thing to do, but maybe throwing out some conditions merging it into more damage or something like this.

And the last thing is about Saryn. People can argue with that ofc but due to her skills its actually not that clear if she is a pure melee or range frame. In most cases you either build your frame for melee which takes a lot more stability with itself or you build your frame more on range (consider higher shields etc). The fun part is up to date after playing for 3 years i have actually never saw a melee focused Saryn but thats an argument you can ignore. And now the problem, Saryn has skills which, dive into two different directions melee and range. So basicly 1 2 4 for range and 1 2 3 4 for melee. Since you changed Mag which conducts your idealism of "Mag should be good against grineer too" maybe you can either focus Saryn on one path of change the missing skills , in this case Toxic Lash, to be valuable for range too or completely shut down the range capability of this frame focusing on melee like "spores can only be triggered by melee".

 

So as conclusion of this post pls dont make the Warframe Ability concept so difficult in future we just all wanna have moments like "holy crap did you saw the damage ??" or "wait did you just one shot zanuka ??" or " HAHAHA telos akbolto syndicate proc on Draco"

P.S. Give Trin 100m Bless range <.<

[Zyrgi]

Warframe does not really have the room for complex waframes in which the abilities can be made to synergize with each other. Why? Quite simple - we do not have the energy capacity to cast multiple abilities without bringing up the problem of "Mandatory mods". Sure, press 4 to win is quite boring, but with roughly 200 base energy at rank 30 and abilities that are at all useful vs hordes of enemies costing 75 to 100 energy per cast and more, there are going to be problems. In addition the ability cast times are sometimes pretty long even with Natural Talent equipped, making the transitions between ability cast long, anti-climactic and boring. I'm all for complex abilities and different abilities complementing each other but warframe needs a drastic change in almost everything for that to happen from enemy scaling to abilities etc.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I mostly agree. Abilties have been gotten more and more situational and requiring synergies with other skills. Organic synergies i'm fine with ... as in synergy that occurs naturally by having a skill set that's coherent and that meshes well together, but lately, it feels like more and more frames are introduced with very oddball mechanics and requiring complex combinations of abilities to do stuff frames used to be able to do at the press of a single button... Again, I'm all for frame diversity and having skills that open up new tactics, but when 3/4 of your kit has to be used to deal the optimal amount of damage, it gets kinda tedious.

I get the whole "Press 4 to win" complain... But honestly, isn't the whole problem of "Press 4 to win" caused strictly by DE giving players too many means to generate or acquire insane amount of energy in a short time span anyways ? Nobody would be spamming their ult continuously if the game did not allow it trough Fleeting Expertise / Zenurik Passive / Energy Syphon / Energy Vampire to basically have unlimited energy. Instead of nerfing every frame and their ult to the ground, shoudn't they simply adjust energy management so that ultimates cannot be constantly spammed during a mission... You know, like it was for like 75% of Warframe's life cycle before they introduced the Zenurik Passive ? I guess people would riot or something, but imho, that should have been the solution all along. Drop Zenurik Passive to 1 or 2 energy per second instead of 4 and you get back to pre second dreams ability casting, a time where people actually had to use energy pizzas or a dedicated energy trinity to be able to constantly spam their ult...

 

 

[Misgenesis]

The wikis detailed descriptions make abilities seem way more complex than they really are. Equinox is the most complex Warframe and by a large margin. In the end shes not that complex either.

Mag and Saryn are as simple as Ember.

Edited May 31, 2016 by Misgenesis

[Soulvengeance]

If anything, make skills a 2 parter.  Easy part like they are now.  And more complex mechanics that give large advantages or nich ability augments.  Such as while fire ball frenzy is active on Frost, all enemies suffer Frost burn effect, Setting heat dot on warframe abilities, additionally opening the target to increased heat and cold damage.  Playing off other warframes or comboing would be great in my opinion, but would be a pain to balence.

[hukurokuju5]

I think they are not complex enough, although alot of warframes' kits are badly designed.  Another factor is the lack of detailed skill info ingame.  DE also seems to be stuck in the 25/50/75/100 energy cost framework which probably limits their design choices quite a bit

Edited May 31, 2016 by hukurokuju5

[tnccs215]

2 hours ago, Zyrgi said:

Warframe does not really have the room for complex waframes in which the abilities can be made to synergize with each other. Why? Quite simple - we do not have the energy capacity to cast multiple abilities without bringing up the problem of "Mandatory mods". Sure, press 4 to win is quite boring, but with roughly 200 base energy at rank 30 and abilities that are at all useful vs hordes of enemies costing 75 to 100 energy per cast and more, there are going to be problems. In addition the ability cast times are sometimes pretty long even with Natural Talent equipped, making the transitions between ability cast long, anti-climactic and boring. I'm all for complex abilities and different abilities complementing each other but warframe needs a drastic change in almost everything for that to happen from enemy scaling to abilities etc.

Than the problem is not abilities themselves, its he energy system.

I enjoy "complex" abilities. They require thought, and reward accordingly. One should be rewarded by making careful and precise use of abilities, instead of being reduced to spam X, whenever, wherever.

 

Additionally, OP: Ember is awfully boring and deadbrain. She's mostly run around with your 4 active.

Unless, of course, you want to go to high levels. THAN: You'll have to use her smart.

Additionally, while most abilities seem complex... They are not. They just aren't single faced. Saryn's easy, New Mag is quite simple-- but very tactiacally valuable- herself, and as someone said above, Equinox-- which is "the most complex frame around"-- is quite simple herself. Personally, I think any Equinox complexity is born from a not-so-great design. In particular, being unable to change form without loosing all her powers and build ups. That doesn't mean you have to be tactical, that means you have to predict with minutes of advance what will be needed-- so that you can build up your 3 accordingly-- and that is simply impossible in such a fast game as this.

Edited May 31, 2016 by tnccs215

[-Temp0-]

Saryn is not that 'complex'. She's just been changed from press 4 to kill to press 2, press 111111 and use your weapon on your 2. Literally nothing cnanged from the fact you need to do more "work" to achieve the same effect and waste precious time for doing all the bs instead of directly killing enemies. It's just her abilities do seemingly nothing unless modded more or less properly and they deal damage over time (even slower than Equnox's maim and with less visual effects I suppose) + if not modded more or less properly, effect mostly will be seen only on low level enemies or infested. And majority of people deal often only with the corrupted and grineer so that makes it harder to understand what the hell is even happening.

Same thing with Mag. To kill enemies now you just need to press more buttons in specific order and waste more energy for it. That's the whole "rework" and whole "synergy".

[Birdframe_Prime]

Complex abilities vs simple... hmm... I can see your point. On the other hand you say that about the Mag rework, but I counter your argument with the Volt Rework. You have a warframe that shoots electricity, makes electric shields that it can charge up by shooting electricity, charges himself up with electricity to be faster (and leaves a charge for his team) and then charges everything else with electricity, that he can shoot more electricity at, that shoots electricity at everything else in range... I fail to see how that's complex.

Some frames are complex by nature, some frames are simple. I doubt there's a much more simple frame than Atlas, released this year, too. Even Nezha is simple, he sets his feet on fire, wears a hula-hoop shield and impales things on spears, the only complex thing is that he chucks a hoop at enemies, if they get hit and he kills them, he gets life steal, if he misses he can warp to the hoop for mobility and confusion.

Nyx is simple, and she's one of the best frames in the game, while Hydroid is simple, but he's considered less so. Equinox is complex, with seven abilities and one of the best in the game depending on your play style, while Saryn is considered difficult to get the hang of since a team will mow down the enemies you're using to set up your combos (combos that are needed to have the best damage) faster than you can exploit the abilities.

[CrudShuzKong]

As someone coming from MOBA games: Bwahahahahahaahaaaaaa..... >100 Characters, >4 Abilities each, >100 Items, all interacting weirdly with each other.... Warframe is so simple and easy compared  

[Casval_Rouge]

I don't think complex is really the word here.  Bad synergy is what I would use, forced synergy is another,  clunky encompasses the rest.

For the Sayrn rework, she's mostly fine.  Spore and Molt have good synergy between each other.  They naturally combo well together in combat, my only complain would spore itself seems pointless to cast only enemies and pop them, when I can just cast Spore on Molt.  Toxic Lash and Miasma are the bad ones.  Toxic Lash is just a weird power.  Sayrn is not really a melee frame, nor she really a tank.  She has high HP, but that doesn't mean she works well at close range, not when she has no damage mitigation.  Also using Toxic Lash to regain energy is an interesting idea, but it just seems tack on to justify the power's role in her kit. Miasma is just a badly design power in my opinion.  It's bad without comboing, that's forced synergy.  

I would argue Accelerant is a band aid rework.  Hmm Ember has no damage and no proper stun?  Let's just make a power that does both, done!  What would make it good is to have it do something on its own besides simple damage amp and stun, Fire Blast technically already does that, just not at all consistent for no good reasons.  Accelerant alone is a very lackluster power, and that's the problem.  

But the overall problem is just that some of the new reworks don't actually encourage interesting playstyles and builds, they just combo with each other because the code said so.                 

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Casval_Rouge said:

For the Sayrn rework, she's mostly fine.  Spore and Molt have good synergy between each other.  They naturally combo well together in combat, my only complain would spore itself seems pointless to cast only enemies and pop them, when I can just cast Spore on Molt.  Toxic Lash and Miasma are the bad ones.  Toxic Lash is just a weird power.  Sayrn is not really a melee frame, nor she really a tank.  She has high HP, but that doesn't mean she works well at close range, not when she has no damage mitigation.  Also using Toxic Lash to regain energy is an interesting idea, but it just seems tack on to justify the power's role in her kit. Miasma is just a badly design power in my opinion.  It's bad without comboing, that's forced synergy.  

Juuust going to pop my opinion in on this one, can't help myself, please don't let me de-rail this ^^

Before the rework Toxic Lash really was useless, but now I feel that it actually has merit. The combo with Spores is the most important thing to her when you don't have Zenurik on, and even then it's pretty important.

Any hit with a Toxic Lash melee spreads the spores, pops one guaranteed and will spread your infection further. Yes killing an enemy will spread them too, but not as efficiently as popping multiple spores off different enemies. Comboing between two heavy units, for example, can just keep proc after proc going, infecting wave after wave of enemies. Meanwhile a drop of Molt every now and again forces them to re-target and for you to go ham for a while.

Now, by no means is it a perfect ability, but the extra Toxin damage is deadly to Corpus fleshy units and helps with Grineer armour, but most importantly before you know it, a burst with Miasma will deal quadruple damage, right after whatever explosion damage came from your molt, to enemies that are all suffering from viral procs to be at half health...

Providing your team-mates don't just mow down everything with their weapons, Lash is the key to setting up big numbers, and I like it for that, even if it does breed that risk/reward strategy that's not so easy to pull off with Saryn these days.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

On 5/31/2016 at 8:31 AM, Maevy said:

Sup DE,

i wanted to give my oppinion about the recent changes and some of them even reaching further into the past.

First of all YES i agree Mag needed a rework and i love to see that you keep things in motion, however the reworks slowly start getting out of hand.

As i red the changes about Mag it reminded me about the changes of Saryn. I mean lets be honest comparing the new Mag and Saryn to their "old" counterparts are like having basic school degree or a PhD. Like every skill is a huge big wiki entry where u read for 10 minutes for each one and try to understand what intention it is. I am aware of that you wanted to evolve those simple frames into something more but especially Mag is as starter frame. For eg. if i would be a new player and lets pretend be smart in this situation open a wiki and read the difference between Excalibur and Mag the choice between them is obvious.

The BEST rework you did up to date was Ember: Holy moly you did such a good job, its deep in but its simple and cool alike (refering to accelerant mechanics). I always liked Ember very much but everytime keeping in mind "Above lvl 35 you can simply forget about her" now after her rework she is so badass i am playing her A LOT more.

Taking the last statement into consideration maybe it would be much better to press the bar on the level on what you did with Ember or Ivara (complex and simple at the same time) instead making this such deep. I am not the artist so its actually your thing to do, but maybe throwing out some conditions merging it into more damage or something like this.

And the last thing is about Saryn. People can argue with that ofc but due to her skills its actually not that clear if she is a pure melee or range frame. In most cases you either build your frame for melee which takes a lot more stability with itself or you build your frame more on range (consider higher shields etc). The fun part is up to date after playing for 3 years i have actually never saw a melee focused Saryn but thats an argument you can ignore. And now the problem, Saryn has skills which, dive into two different directions melee and range. So basicly 1 2 4 for range and 1 2 3 4 for melee. Since you changed Mag which conducts your idealism of "Mag should be good against grineer too" maybe you can either focus Saryn on one path of change the missing skills , in this case Toxic Lash, to be valuable for range too or completely shut down the range capability of this frame focusing on melee like "spores can only be triggered by melee".

 

So as conclusion of this post pls dont make the Warframe Ability concept so difficult in future we just all wanna have moments like "holy crap did you saw the damage ??" or "wait did you just one shot zanuka ??" or " HAHAHA telos akbolto syndicate proc on Draco"

P.S. Give Trin 100m Bless range <.<

What are you talking about with Ember? Are you talking about the patch/fix she got a long time ago, or something new? I genuinely do not know.

[Briareos_Hecatonchires]

I think varying complexity is really a good thing for the game. I agree that some of the new frames can tend to look bloated, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There should be some frames that require a certain mastery and understanding to play at a higher skill ceiling. Conversely, there should be some frames with a low skill floor that you just hit some buttons and they are all sensible (ember was a good example of this.)The danger of simplicity is polarization. If we make a frame that's really straightforward at doing something, there's a good chance you are limiting what can actually be done with the frame in regards to playstyle. Perhaps that is good, perhaps that is bad. You could easily argue different frames warrant different play styles. You could also say that each frame should have the ability to be played with versatility (building for specific abilities as a method of altering how they play.)