Who do you think is the most poorly designed frame so far?

[RealPandemonium]

Bad opinion bait-thread, but Limbo is probably the most fundamentally flawed design, especially when you consider its awkward interaction with other parts of the game.  

[Awazx]

I see here many who say it is Limbo. However, Limbo is a god-frame; the fault is not Limbo, it is the bad players.

To answer OP: I think the problem is not a concrete framework; is a scalability problem: all damage skills are useless sooner or later.

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, yles9056 said:

For me, it's Zephyr. She is disappointing. We expect Zephyr to be a true flying frame or at least a frame with good maneuverability in air, but she is not. 

I don't like the design of Tailwind. It does not make Zephyr fly. It only turns her into a bullet. The vertical jump causes you to either bump into the ceiling or fly outside the height limit.

And having Dive Bomb as one separate ability is unnecessary. It's also hard to hit enemy unless you keep spamming it on the ground which makes the whole "dive bomb" concept pointless.

Zephyr was never meant to be a flying frame (in fact no frame is meant to be a flying frame, even the upcoming Titania uses an ability to become a micro-archwing instead of flying). The more people stop trying to make her a flying frame, the quicker DE will get to a proper re-work. Rant below.

Spoiler

 

She's an aerial frame, yes, reduced gravity, control over air, but just because she looks like she has a beak doesn't make her a bird. Certainly not a hummingbird that can hover in mid-air.

There are dozens of re-work threads on her, my own included, because she definitely needs a re-work.

But. She's designed well visually, she's themed well as an air caster (because Tailwind, Turbulence and Tornado are Air manipulation), her Tailwind is an additional mobility skill in a world where you have only bullet jump and a double jump on everything else (no matter where you're going, a Zephyr can get you there nearly as fast, if not faster, than a Volt can), and her Turbulence is one of the best damage reduction abilities in the game. Myself and many of my acquaintances on Warframe can, and will, take her to hour long runs in Void survival, and enjoy playing as her in any mode where the enemies have guns. Zephyr is a well designed frame that was, unfortunately, limited by the programming technology of the time and so isn't as useful in the game anymore. A new 2 ability and an update to how her Tornado works is all she really needs to be brought up to date.

The one thing I will always point out about Zephyr, though, is that flying won't make her better. I can do anything a flying Zephyr could do without actually flying, and you'd be wasting an ability to do that. It's way more sensible to give her an actual ability (by combining Tailwind and Dive Bomb into her 1st), like a wind-based CC or a team buff ability, as her 2, instead of wasting huge amounts of time and effort to make her fly.

 

In short, Zephyr is better designed than Limbo, since Limbo was designed with a specific set of abilities in mind, the Rift, that he then uses poorly. 

Zephyr falls into the same category as Banshee, a well designed frame that people don't actually need, but occasionally still want.

In a similar fashion to Limbo, Oberon was designed to be a combination of offense and healing, a sort of druid or paladin style of character with an offensive base for his 1 and 4, but a way to heal and remove debuffs from team-mates with his 2 and 3. He does these things poorly. That makes Oberon a badly designed frame, although because his abilities actually do what they're intended to do (if not as well as many other frames), he's not as bad as Limbo.

Hydroid was designed to control Water and be a CC frame, his 1 is actually pretty random for a direct damage ability, while his 2 and 4 are pretty decent, but then... he turns into a puddle. A puddle of water. That enemies fall into. I... I don't even know what to say about that.

As for Nekros... as designed originally, he was perfect. The game has left him behind, though, and it's only now that his augments have made things a little more interesting, that he's back to being a solo-capable frame that's actually fun to play as. I wouldn't put him on this list as others have.

Back to Loki...

12 hours ago, bubbabenali said:

Oh, how wrong you are, good sir.

He turns enemy AI nearly off at up to 50m range and can be out of sight of any enemy forever, also he has extreme mobility.

Doing any type of mission alongside a Loki (in the hands of a merely capable player) makes the run at least 50% easier, if not trivial.

You seem to forget that this topic is about 'badly designed frames'. All you're coming up with are reasons why he's actually well designed. If a frame with no damage, no kill ability at all, a frame that is all about evasion, hiding, and debuffing the enemy to help his team... if that frame can be used so well as to trivialise much of the game content for other players, then he's very well designed indeed.

Better than Ash, where people spam his 4 to deal around 20k damage to 18 enemies at a time, killing quite a lot of them up to very high level, and building up a melee combo counter at the same time to keep a crit-build weapon going, easily trivialising much of the game's content for anyone else (there's a reason they call it an Ash-hole build)...

[Blood_Poppy]

10 hours ago, AKKILLA said:

You hit it on POINT!

Those are My 4 least used!

Id put Hydroid on top and Limbo second cuz Limbo is actually My Spy frame Sometimes

Hehehehe.. I use them.. But i dislike their Gameplay Mechanic though..

[yles9056]

3 hours ago, Thaylien said:

-snip-

Yes, Zephyr is beautiful. And yes, her abilities fit her theme well. Even if she's never meant to be a flying frame, there are other problems with her kit. All of her abilities have some annoying issues.

 

Tailwind:  It's hard to control. There should be an easy way to cancel it. Also, Zephyr gets stuck often. When she bumps into something, she will not stop, but stick to it until the duration ends like an angry bird trying to break the wall.

The vertical jump is annoying sometimes. As I said, it causes her to bump into ceiling often or sends her outside height limit. And sometimes I just want to fly forward, but I'll have to leave the ground first to do that. The vertical jump should be moved to Dive Bomb. It will be more convenient and it makes sense.

 

Dive Bomb: Hard to hit enemy due to small range and vertical dive. And the hit detection seems buggy.

 

Turbulence: In Grineer missions, Zephyr's fate is decided by RNG. Otherwise, Turbulence is fine.

 

Tornado: The tornadoes don't go where you want them to go. And they cannot be deactivated earlier. Plus, they block your own bullets.

 

Zephyr has the potential to be a fun and great frame, but the way her abilities work disappoint me. She may not be the "most" poorly designed frame, but the execution is not good. I really hope she can be better.

Edited June 20, 2016 by yles9056

[vinx909]

there are quite a few that are badly made, like hydroid who just lacks power, wukong who can only survive but is useless otherwise. but the one i think they failed the hardest at at this point must be nyx. she is still good and way better then a lot. but her passive so doesn't go with her skill set. she is based around turning the enemies strength against them, but her new passive makes the enemy weaker. not the worst or even a bad frame, but design wise currently the worst put together.

Edited June 20, 2016 by vinx909

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, yles9056 said:

-snip-

Exactly, there are a ton of re-work threads, but all the most likely ones I've seen to actually get implemented actually have really simple fixes. 

Spoiler

Like the AI on Tornado being re-worked so it doesn't wander off, doesn't scatter loot and enemies, has more of a zone-denial kind of aspect to it and that standing in the area of it then interacts with her other abilities.

Dive Bomb, as another example, people always want to combine it with Tailwind; Tailwind itself would be fixed in one way, by giving a very gentle 'follow the cursor' aspect so you can go through doors, not into the wall, and a wall-recovery on hard angle impacts instead of fire-working into the wall until done, while Dive Bomb would be how you cancel your movement mid-air, a half second charge time would cancel out your movement and then dive, or just release to drop, parkour, re-tailwind, anything.

Turbulence has always been about RNG, they've balanced that, but need to fix the bullet tunnel bug so that going straight up doesn't get us hit regardless. Although the synergy with Tornado would be nice, maybe if you're in the range of the Tornado casting zone it knocks down enemies that come within a 1.5m of you for melee finishers.

And a new 2 would be needed after this. There are two that I've seen that work; a CC-based ranged attack that gets stronger as it goes, so at short range it staggers, at longer range it knocks down a single target and staggers those in range, and at longest range it ragdolls the target and knocks down the rest in range. In addition the damage, while small compared to other abilities, would be finisher damage, since 'air' can find and cut into all the weak points in armour. The second is quite good, a team buff that gives everyone 'raptor vision', giving everyone enemy radar and highlighting the crit points (the regular crit points, like heads) of enemies, and then granting buffs to the things Zephyr needs, like increased damage and range when in the air, or (my favourite) encouraging use of other abilities by 'marking' any enemies hit by Zephyr's abilities the same way Nezha's 2 does, so she can dive on a group of enemies, and all of them are then marked for a small bit of life steal, a fixed digit so it's not too overpowered. (Also, putting that delay on Dive Bomb would help to balance this, meaning you couldn't just spam it over and over with Heavy Impact, you would have to get height, charge it and release it every time to get the most out of it.)

So Zephyr either becomes a CC frame, with damage reduction, mobility, range and area denial, or an active ability caster and team buffer, where using her abilities more offensively allows her to survive more with that life gain. In either case, we could see her sacrificing a little of her really high shield and health for a little more base energy to move towards casting her abilities more.

But there's definitely a lot more frames than her that need the work sooner.

[Enno69]

8 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Back to Loki...

You seem to forget that this topic is about 'badly designed frames'. All you're coming up with are reasons why he's actually well designed. If a frame with no damage, no kill ability at all, a frame that is all about evasion, hiding, and debuffing the enemy to help his team... if that frame can be used so well as to trivialise much of the game content for other players, then he's very well designed indeed.

Better than Ash, where people spam his 4 to deal around 20k damage to 18 enemies at a time, killing quite a lot of them up to very high level, and building up a melee combo counter at the same time to keep a crit-build weapon going, easily trivialising much of the game's content for anyone else (there's a reason they call it an Ash-hole build)...

You say " if that frame can be used so well as to trivialise much of the game content for other players, then he's very well designed indeed." and use it as reason to praise Loki, then uses the exact same argument to downvote Ash (" easily trivialising much of the game's content for anyone else (there's a reason they call it an Ash-hole build") ... Something's wrong here.

[Chipputer]

As much as he's my absolute favorite and I am using him as my avatar, I'd have to say that Oberon is one of the worst designed.

His concept is messy-- Druid or paladin? Why not both, right? Well, his abilities are directly related to being a Paladin. Meanwhile, they release a premium skin that clearly shows them pushing more toward a Druid design (especially with his passive). What gives?

Then you have his powers. They are useful all over the place, but at the same time so limited in that usefulness that most people just don't care to use them. A heal that has a delay in a game where damage can be instant and huge? A defensive ability that forces you to sit in one place in a game that emphasizes heavy movement and dodging?

His other two abilities are fine, however. Reckoning could use some changes so it's not just, "AoE smite," but Smite is 100% perfect.

[malekas]

My pick, Equinox.

 

Her abilities are piss poor, detrimental to themselves and her overall design, and require augments just to be usable. Maim is the only ability that stands out, and even that isn't that great outside of a niche "two Equinox trading Maims" use.

 

Peaceful Provocation isn't bad, but it requires too much build up and it's easily beaten by M. Prime, Avalanche, and Creeping Terrify.

[PH03N1XUS]

There are many "poorly" designed frames, not just one. But I don't think Ember is one of them. I actually really enjoy her, and she's the definition of hell for infested. So, no, in my opinion, it's not Ember. With the right modding, she's an absolute killer in any situation. Be it Infested or any faction, she never fails me. Well, that's my opinion.

 

Sincerely, 

 

PH03N1XUS

 

[ShardsSuperior]

Equinox and Zephyr aren't poorly designed frames. You guys are confusing "bad design" with "not brainless to use."

Bad design is Oberon's Renewal - it's a skill that's supposed to be reactive, as it does not have any effect at full HP, but with travel time - a mechanic that pushes it with a proactive nature.

Or a skill like Loki's Disarm, which ignores Line of Sight and trivializes every enemy in the game by reducing them to melee meatbags with varying amounts of HP.

Limbo is a different type of bad design - clunkiness. His 3 doesn't *feel* like it has an effect on the battlefield. After all, you're just waving your hand around. Also, the rift's internal logic is weird on whether you can actually interact with various things or not.

[Mak_Gohae]

None are badly designed all are badly played.

People get in their heads how a frame is supposed to be totally ignoring what the frame is.

 

For example, the OP saying Ember is a DD then goes on to point out that late games she is just a stunner.

Guess what.... Ember is a dmging frame WITH CC. So he perfectly describes whats supposed to be happening.

 

The issue here is not with the frame. It has to mostly be on the scaling and people not adjusting. We all know that at some point your dmg falls off. Ok, adjust and built differently.

[yles9056]

Everyone has different standard when it comes to poorly designed frames.

Some people think a frame is poorly designed if  he/she can't perform well in void missions, especially T4.

And some care about the overall theme.

I personally care about the gameplay experience a frame offers. For example: is this frame fun to play? Are the abilities clunky to use?

Edited June 21, 2016 by yles9056

[(PSN)MrNishi]

Frames that I find are poorly designed for most mission Types even if all Augments could be slotted via Abilities tab : Limbo & Oberon

Why Limbo: any mission that requires object or terminal interaction, anti-loot, and takes my top spot for the single frame that can troll an entire Raid party to wipe/Fail..

Granted people can be courteous and work around Limbo's short comings, but to me he grossly missed the mark for implementation.

(Being allowed to at least interact inside Cataclysm would be amazing. I would even go as far to suggest Banish/Rift-walk allows interaction with Carrying items but with the caveat that if carrying an object while in Rift: energy is drained rather than generated. *With the objective to balance against a Limbo making an entire squad immortal with a simple easy mode, but instead allowing synergy with certain by basically allowing players to utilize Banish Immortality while still running 'carry items' , standing on pads, or hacking terminals but the drain  would count as being Channelled same with Cataclysm...meaning Energy Vampire & energy Restores would not work in Rift)

 

Oberon needs another look or for Renewal to be exempt from channeling drain.

 

Ember ....should have been given a Channeled version of Overheat so that she had scaling damage and some protection, IMO

 

Hydroid, Nekros, Zephyr, Mesa, Mag, and others would be worthwhile if a player could slot Augments on Abilities tab rather than consuming a Mod slot:

Hydroid being able to cleanse Procs, Heal, and increase  loot would be great  if those 3Augments didn't consume mod slots

Likewise, Nekros having Despoil synergize with his Passive , being able to use his energy pool to Range revive with Soul Survivor, and protect his Shields/Remaing Health with Shield of Shadows; would be amazing if those 3 Augments did not consume 3 Mod Slots.

 

I am enamored with Banshee, but if I could slot all 4 Augments so that I could use those mod slots accordingly; that would be most sapid!

[HAYABU5A]

nezha and wukong

literally copy and pasted their cookie cutter designs directly from mythology textbook with no originality or inspiration, unlike the rest of the entire frame lineup / design ethos  

[Epsik-kun]

Oberon. He's designed not for this game.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Epsik-kun

[Plushy]

1 hour ago, HAYABU5A said:

nezha and wukong

literally copy and pasted their cookie cutter designs directly from mythology textbook with no originality or inspiration, unlike the rest of the entire frame lineup / design ethos  

This is kinda why I hope they don't make another frame like that. 

[RealPandemonium]

15 minutes ago, Epsik-kun said:

Oberon. He's designed not for this game.

I view it the opposite way; the game's design has gone to S#&$ so demand for S#&$ty designs is high while reasonabe designs are panned.  

Edited June 21, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[AzyWng]

On 6/19/2016 at 6:09 AM, Futurehero said:

For my last couple of posts I brainstormed some reworks for Nova, Ash's ult and Ember.  I think that's enough productive feedback for a while, so let's have a thread where we just complain about bad design. 

So who do you think is the most poorly designed Warframe as of now ? By poor design I mean gameplay, stats, visuals , whatever you want !

For me it's got to be Ember. She's a glass cannon frame who is supposed to be a damage monster but due to her skills not scaling, she ends up endgame as a stun-bot. Also, despite being squishy, she has  3 abilities that are point-blank AOE, so she needs to be surrounded by enemies to maximize their effects. AND even though her skills don't scale in damage, when they do hurt, she is completely brainless to play and has 0 interaction. Her ultimate could literally be called "Fire and Forget".  

Are you going to propose we remove Ember or Limbo?

[RealPandemonium]

2 hours ago, HAYABU5A said:

nezha and wukong

literally copy and pasted their cookie cutter designs directly from mythology textbook with no originality or inspiration, unlike the rest of the entire frame lineup / design ethos  

Nezha ended up being pretty fun as well as strong due to his versatility and flavorful passive.  

Wukong's powers are boring and could stand to be fleshed out.  He's also relatively sluggish (movement speed, cloud walker speed, exalted staff combo animations) compared to the agile trickster that most people were probably expecting.  He is pretty strong, though.  

Edited June 21, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Futurehero]

4 minutes ago, AzyWng said:

Are you going to propose we remove Ember or Limbo?

Yes

 

 

[RealPandemonium]

30 minutes ago, Futurehero said:

Yes

 

 

The Limbo proposal is wtfoverpowered and also proposes to make Limbo (and potentially teammates) unable to roll, which is really wtf.

The Ember thread is hilariously off the mark and misses the point of Ember completely.  If you don't like the core design of the frame and never will, then play another frame.  Ember's design works and is actually a lot of fun outside of brainless always-on WoF.  

Edited June 21, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Birdframe_Prime]

20 hours ago, Enno69 said:

You say " if that frame can be used so well as to trivialise much of the game content for other players, then he's very well designed indeed." and use it as reason to praise Loki, then uses the exact same argument to downvote Ash (" easily trivialising much of the game's content for anyone else (there's a reason they call it an Ash-hole build") ... Something's wrong here.

You missed my point; I specifically said 'If a frame with no damage, no kill ability at all, a frame that is all about evasion, hiding, and debuffing the enemy to help his team' is able to trivialise game content, vs Ash who is currently the last of the Press 4 To Win crowd. I also mis-phrased my wording on Ash; he doesn't trivialise, he makes it boring, uninteractive, and uninteresting.

The point is you do have to play Loki half decently and even then you're not even scratching the surface. Loki can, and does, make game play easier. That doesn't make him a bad frame. Loki does not kill everything in the room, in fact his abilities can't kill anything unless you drop them off a cliff with Switch Teleport, his specialty is CC and radial Debuff. Should that be quite as strong? I'm not sure if the line-of-sight rule may come into play here, but unlike other single-cast radial abilities it only debuffs enemies, it does soft CC those enemies if re-cast, but it's better to drop a Decoy and hope it draws more aggro than your team, or the pod. Meanwhile recasting Invisibility every time it drops, constantly aware of where you are, where your team is, what the mission status is...

It takes a modicum of skill to play Loki effectively. It takes a great deal more, plus situational awareness and team awareness, to play him excellently.

Meanwhile any guy with a trip to youtube can build Ash for Bladestorm and use him to wipe out rooms of enemies with one button, denying his team the kills and affinity while providing little to no actual support for his team and basically making the game uninteractive for any of them.

This latter is the mentality that DE wants to remove, not the former. The former may need to be better balanced (line of sight, maybe), but the design is already far better, and has been since inception, than many other frames, which is why Loki has remained practically unchanged since... well, ever.

[MacabreHaze]

Out of frames I have

Nekros - As much as I love playing him, Its only for one reason. To pound the heck out of my 3 key and get all the loot.

Soul Punch's damage is laughable, and eventually only becomes good to knock enemies away from control panels or interception panels. 
 

Does Terrify actually do anything? Sometimes it seems to work, other times it just fails. 

Defile - I've got despoil as well, and this is the one thing I'm really happy with when using neckros. But the more we get things that vaporize enemies, the less effect this will have as fewer bodies will be around. 

Shadows of the Damned - I think Duke nukem forever came out faster than this. It wouldn't be so bad if it was a bit faster and could be used in such a way that you could pick and choose. Oh and they didn't just up and die when they ran into a nullifier. 

Appearance wise, I like most of nekros. Except Those handles around the back of the upper arms, and leg


Oberon 

I don't get the whole 'paladin' thing, especially with the whole deer aspects of the character. The healing ability might be a little better if you could like, perhaps see the HP of other frames. Of course there is also the tendency for tenno to go from 60 to 0 really fast.