The issues with reworks

[Ar0ndight]

Not my first thread on reworks but I’ll just try until I see a reaction I guess.

Once again, disclaimer : I’m not here to bash. I love you guys (DE), I gave you both money and time without counting. You did many things right lately. The Second Dream is awesome, Ivara is super fun, the new star chart once polished is great, the rift system is much better than the void system. I’m really grateful for all your amazing work.

The thing is, I’m also really tired of seeing the same situation over and over. To the point where I don’t really feel like investing as much time or money in the game. 

Let’s get to it then.

With the latest (mostly positive) Nekros changes and the ensuing frustration with, in particular, Shadow of the Dead I thought it would be a good time for me to talk about the issues with all the latest reworks. I would really appreciate it if DE could maybe read this but considering how feedback on reworks isn’t really used I won’t get my hopes too high.

 

1.  They are only half done.

These frames were reworked because their kit were outdated, inconvenient, eclipsed by one ability or too powerful in specific situations (looking at you shield polarize). The goal with the reworks should obviously be to solve these issues and make sure the reworked frames are functional, with 4 useful abilities that are up to the new standards. But that’s not the case.

 

• Saryn’s molt remained untouched and is still outdated, way too squishy to provide the survivability she obviously needs. This ability by itself shows that Saryn is still a work in progress, but there hasn’t been any progress for a while now… Plus, if you want to be useful to your team, you’re forced to use weapons like the Ignis, Lanka, Staticor etc. Without them you’re really not bringing much to the table. That should not happen after a rework and I didn’t even mention Miasma.

 

• Volt’s ult has some very real issues caused by its damage cap, causing its CC to be unreliable as some enemies will barely be stunned. His shield’s added mechanic where you can pick it up is great, except it drains way, way too much energy making the addition gimmicky at best. The worst part ? It was added because players suggested it so I’m sure DE wanted to please us, but the end result is just not what people wanted.

 

• Mag’s the worst case. Polarize was simply destroyed. It is useless after lvl 30. Magnetize is her new useful ability, and it has so many issues. She used to be the corpus killer, she is now unusable on any map with many nullifiers. Crush is so outdated, yet it was untouched. It still has its horribly long animation and its horribly insignificant effect compared to many other abilities that are not even ults. I won’t talk about the shrapnel gimmick, it does very little. Once again, none of this should be the case after a rework.

 

• Now Nekros. I personally like the changes to desecrate. I won’t bother talking about some issues with the numbers. Sadly I’m used to saying “good enough” now with reworked abilities. The main issue is SotD. We were told the duration would be removed. Turns out, DE decided to test that after promising us the change. And for “balance purposes” duration was added back, in an even worse form. I love you guys, but this kind of things really makes me question the trust I have placed in you. SotD is now a babysitting game and makes Nekros another one of those frames that needs all stats to work.

All reworked frames besides the lucky favourites Excal and Frost suffer from that last point. You need a lot of everything. That simply doesn’t work with 8 mod slots. These reworks are great concepts crudely translated ingame with very obvious issues that are never fixed. Basically, the reworked frames still need a rework or at least a bunch of tweaks.

 

        2. Feedback is ignored

Go into the warframe & abilities feedback section of the forum. At any given time the biggest thread is the one for a frame’s rework where DE asks us for our feedback. That’s great, we can now all work together to solve the issues with the reworked frames and find these small tweaks that would make things so much better ! Except that’s not what happens. These threads are containment threads. That’s where all your complaints about a rework go to die. Because I might have missed something I won’t say none but very, very little of the useful things said in feedback threads end up in the game. Once DE releases the rework, it will be tweaked the following week to solve the bugs and then, it’s done. It’s not touched again. Obviously not everything said in these threads is a good idea. Probably a lot less than half of the ideas are actually usable. But for all the issues I mentioned above, solutions were provided in feedback threads : Saryn’s molt dies too fast ? Give it the iron skin / frost globe treatment ! Volt’s damage cap is messing things up ? Let’s remove it, it’s not like it’s one shotting everything anyways. Let’s lower the shield energy consumption too after all Volt likes to go fast so why penalize him for moving ? Nekros’s SotD drain is too high ? Let’s tweak the numbers a bit ! Mag… well too many things to mention, too many potential solutions. All these fixes were proposed in those feedback threads. None would make the frame OP.

Instead I have yet to see someone from DE even interacting with the players in these threads. The only time we get an answer from DE it’s when it’s time to make room for the next rework/frame. “Thanks for the feedback guys now this thread will disappear and your good ideas will remain just that, good ideas xoxo.” To me, DE feels both very close to the playerbase when I watch devstreams and prime times, and very far away whenever things like reworks happen, where we never get the impression the devs actually care about what we may think.
Maybe my standards are too high but when I hear a frame will be reworked, I expect it to be the proof DE is getting so much better at designing frames. So much that they need to make sure their older creations don’t stand out too much in a bad way. Instead they’re the proof DE never finishes what they begin. The year of quality never happened and the business model is still to rush new content without ever looking back.

I know I sound very salty. But please understand I was hyped for Saryn’s rework, then hyped for Volt’s rework, then hyped for Mag’s rework then hyped for Nekros’ small rework. Every time the devstream made things look great, but reality turned out different. You know how you define madness ? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By this definition, me even caring about reworks makes me crazy as I’m always disappointed by the way things are so rushed and then left behind. Because I love DE’s work so much, I can’t help but be hyped when I hear something like one of my favourite frames will be reworked. But every time it’s a let down.

Please DE. Finish your reworks. Listen to us. Show us you actually care.

(I would like to point out that the video game community people would consider one of the most toxic and hard to please, the League of Legends community, generally loves the reworked champions. LoL suffers from the same issue as Warframe, with some older kits becoming obsolete, cheesy etc. The difference is their reworked champions are undeniably better designed than they were before, regardless of how powerful they end up. That’s something I just can’t say with Warframe. And if they’re wonky at release, the follow up is great and Riot fixes them on a very regular basis. Approval from the majority of your player base IS possible.)

Thank you if you read all this.

TL;DR : Reworked are half way done and feedback is ignored.

Please no DE bashing in the comments, I want a discussion not to burn anyone at the stake :)

 
 

Edited August 13, 2016 by Ar0ndight

[Hammahness808]

Upvoting you wasn't enough. I had to post to say that I agree with you. I used to enjoy thinking about how to fix frames because it exercised my creativity and thoughts. I'd go to the forums and see what other players were thinking about and imagined what would happen if the frame was actually reworked that way. I got really excited about the Saryn rework and how they were going to touch Valkyr up. I gave multiple posts of feedback in that 150+ page thread, along with so many others. That Saryn still needed to be tweaked. After watching the recent stream and seeing how SotD would have no duration, making it a very viable build in my book, they took it back on release. The only thing that's worth looking forward to is the new power creep weapons that come out, additional lore, and new frames - as the reworks keep being half-assed.

[GrimAtrament]

reworks are not for reworking an entire kit there are meny games out there that rework only 2 or 3 abilities in kits. also polarize is super useful past 30 you clearly don't use her enough if you think that. sortie bosses get completely pulverized by its armor shred.

as for saryn

have you never heard the term dont fix whats not broken molts perfectly fine how it is its not supose to last forever otherwise it would not explode dealing toxic damage and spreading the spores even more when detonated by the enemies.

iv never liked volt to begin with and his rework did nothing to change that tho its a bit better than before.

iv not tried the new nekyros yet im waiting for the prime to releases so i can forma him and run tests 

tho i will agree that crush and miasma are out of date 

Edited August 13, 2016 by hazerddex

[Ar0ndight]

20 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

reworks are not for reworking an entire kit there are meny games out there that rework only 2 or 3 abilities in kits. a

According to who, though ?

Reworking means taking something old and making it up to date.

I won't argue about Mag, this is not the subject.

About molt, did you ever take Saryn on a lvl 40-50+ mission ? It dies literally instantly. I can take a video if you don't believe me, but I suggest you just go and try it yourself. And Molt IS supposed to last for a while, otherwise her augment wouldn't heal you over time. So it is broken, and it should be fix.

Glad we agree on Miasma and crush though :).

Still I would like to say this thread isn't about which change needs to happen but more about the whole rework process of "release rework, fix the bugs next week, then forget it ever happened and ignore feedback".

[CaustiCat]

Well I guess OP post sums it all pretty great. 

Also if there are two things that i hate the most that would be: 

a) denying the fact that something is broken or requires a serious change,

b) last minute, half-assed changes OR changes that were not shown to us on purpose.

Just to back up my words You will find both of these stated in this video (starting at around 1:50 mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMofgHsGwk8
 

When Volt rework was presented to us it looked near perfect. Of course the fact that DIscharge had a damage cap or that the shield carrying had a energy drain were not mentioned at all. Same thing with Nekros again - during the live showcase there was no health drain from SOTD. It's the second time this happens. 

Pointless last minute changes or deliberate concealment ? 

I'll let You decide it. 

[Magnulast]

I disagree on one side, and agree on another.

1: DE should not reply on certain threads.

2: Reworks are near perfect, but they are scaled to a lower level. So you actually use guns and melee weapons.

The only thing I truly dislike, is how abilities scale.

They don't scale by %, they scale by a flat #. I understand that, since you can easily spam a ability, again and again.

Molt is a counter offensive ability not a sole defense ability. I don't take augments towards a 

Also, I think nekros' SOTD heath drain makes sense, since you don't have to mod of strength only.

In other words, modding towards one ability.

Mag's polarize is well, meh, the armor chipping off is something I don't really care about. I'm just getting tired that it never scales.

[(PSN)salovel1991]

1 hour ago, Magnulast said:

I disagree on one side, and agree on another.

1: DE should not reply on certain threads.

2: Reworks are near perfect, but they are scaled to a lower level. So you actually use guns and melee weapons.

The only thing I truly dislike, is how abilities scale.

They don't scale by %, they scale by a flat #. I understand that, since you can easily spam a ability, again and again.

Molt is a counter offensive ability not a sole defense ability. I don't take augments towards a 

Also, I think nekros' SOTD heath drain makes sense, since you don't have to mod of strength only.

In other words, modding towards one ability.

Mag's polarize is well, meh, the armor chipping off is something I don't really care about. I'm just getting tired that it never scales.

The main problem is that if not modded for them to have more health they die faster due to having less shadows. Also power strength punishes your shadow more. Where as earlier power strength at 130% added 2 shadows, which added 12% damage reduction. Now we see that when using Intensify, 6*1.3= 7.8. That means each shadow takes a 2% damage increase with one power strength mod because we have less shadows to push the damage across. Also the health and damage multipliers have not changed to reflect having less shadows. Also modding for duration to keep his shadows alive and only faintly balancing out the others is a form of modding towards one ability. 

[Gurpgork]

Ugh, I can't upvote this enough. If Nekros was released today, I'd still say he needs a plethora of adjustments to be where he needs to be. But he's been in the game for literally years, and he still feels half-baked at best. 

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I guess DE is perhaps drowning in player feedback to the point where they ignore most of it, at least that's the justification I tend to make to explain how player feedback is ignored ... Which indeed sucks because most of the time I see really sound and intelligent suggestions that would fix 99% of the issues with very little effort, provided someone passed on these feedback solutions to the dev team.

Call me crasy, but I think sometimes it's best to listen to your fanbase ... And I also think that sometimes, you're better off tweaking stuff that doesn't work instead of reworking stuff that mostly worked and actually making it worse / less appealing in the process... Especially if you do multiple huge reworks in a short timespan without really asking for player feedback or showcasing a real desire to go back on some of your allegedly bad decisions.

I mean, in the last few months we had a perfectly functional star chart scrapped in favor of a pretty mess that's hard to navigate and understand, we had a void system that made up most of the endgame destroyed and turned into an uninspired void fissure minigame that's no longer endless, many has had their favorite frames turned into lesser versions of their past selves...

And when your fanbase clearly states ,for example, than the new void is bland and booring, that they miss endless missions, than the new starchard is much harder to navigate and less intuitive, that sorties are useless and they need some form of token system, that their favorite frames are fine and do not need to be nerfed while the ones sitting in their arsenal need reworks, perhaps the playerbase are on to something. They are your playerbase, you know, those that play thousand of hours each year and pay real money to support the company.

I guess my main gripe with most reworks is that it always feels like "two steps forward, five steps back". Take specters of the rails, even after 15 or so hotfixes over numerous weeks, the map is still extremely unreadable ,while the new void is still as unnapealing... Which makes me sad and gives me the feeling we're stuck with it regardless of whether we like it or not.. Which is the opposite of what would happen if constructive feedback was passed on and applied to fix said issues for good.

[Ar0ndight]

Just giving this thread a small bump, I posted it during the weekend so maybe nobody at DE saw it... Not saying they need to see it but I'm still hoping :).

[(PSN)salovel1991]

On 8/14/2016 at 0:01 AM, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

I guess DE is perhaps drowning in player feedback to the point where they ignore most of it, at least that's the justification I tend to make to explain how player feedback is ignored ... Which indeed sucks because most of the time I see really sound and intelligent suggestions that would fix 99% of the issues with very little effort, provided someone passed on these feedback solutions to the dev team.

Call me crasy, but I think sometimes it's best to listen to your fanbase ... And I also think that sometimes, you're better off tweaking stuff that doesn't work instead of reworking stuff that mostly worked and actually making it worse / less appealing in the process... Especially if you do multiple huge reworks in a short timespan without really asking for player feedback or showcasing a real desire to go back on some of your allegedly bad decisions.

I mean, in the last few months we had a perfectly functional star chart scrapped in favor of a pretty mess that's hard to navigate and understand, we had a void system that made up most of the endgame destroyed and turned into an uninspired void fissure minigame that's no longer endless, many has had their favorite frames turned into lesser versions of their past selves...

And when your fanbase clearly states ,for example, than the new void is bland and booring, that they miss endless missions, than the new starchard is much harder to navigate and less intuitive, that sorties are useless and they need some form of token system, that their favorite frames are fine and do not need to be nerfed while the ones sitting in their arsenal need reworks, perhaps the playerbase are on to something. They are your playerbase, you know, those that play thousand of hours each year and pay real money to support the company.

I guess my main gripe with most reworks is that it always feels like "two steps forward, five steps back". Take specters of the rails, even after 15 or so hotfixes over numerous weeks, the map is still extremely unreadable ,while the new void is still as unnapealing... Which makes me sad and gives me the feeling we're stuck with it regardless of whether we like it or not.. Which is the opposite of what would happen if constructive feedback was passed on and applied to fix said issues for good.

If they added forma back to the void while taking them out of relics, added core packs, and high tier keys this would be great for endless void. Then just keep the relics for prime parts. I mean who wants a dang vitality for completing 5 waves of a level 40 defense. That is literally less rewarding than the star chart. It inspires people to do endless again to get things they need. Like he said re works feel half baked good ideas are useless when no one listens. 

[Cortanis]

On 8/13/2016 at 0:51 PM, Ar0ndight said:

Go into the warframe & abilities feedback section of the forum. At any given time the biggest thread is the one for a frame’s rework where DE asks us for our feedback. That’s great, we can now all work together to solve the issues with the reworked frames and find these small tweaks that would make things so much better ! Except that’s not what happens. These threads are containment threads. That’s where all your complaints about a rework go to die. Because I might have missed something I won’t say none but very, very little of the useful things said in feedback threads end up in the game. Once DE releases the rework, it will be tweaked the following week to solve the bugs and then, it’s done. It’s not touched again. Obviously not everything said in these threads is a good idea. Probably a lot less than half of the ideas are actually usable. But for all the issues I mentioned above, solutions were provided in feedback threads : Saryn’s molt dies too fast ? Give it the iron skin / frost globe treatment ! Volt’s damage cap is messing things up ? Let’s remove it, it’s not like it’s one shotting everything anyways. Let’s lower the shield energy consumption too after all Volt likes to go fast so why penalize him for moving ? Nekros’s SotD drain is too high ? Let’s tweak the numbers a bit ! Mag… well too many things to mention, too many potential solutions. All these fixes were proposed in those feedback threads. None would make the frame OP.

That's right on the money. I specifically don't play most of the reworked frames anymore due to these issues. I can work around mag, but she takes a lot of getting used to and her play style doesn't really go with most of the game now.

On 8/13/2016 at 0:51 PM, Ar0ndight said:

Instead I have yet to see someone from DE even interacting with the players in these threads. The only time we get an answer from DE it’s when it’s time to make room for the next rework/frame. “Thanks for the feedback guys now this thread will disappear and your good ideas will remain just that, good ideas xoxo.” To me, DE feels both very close to the playerbase when I watch devstreams and prime times, and very far away whenever things like reworks happen, where we never get the impression the devs actually care about what we may think.
Maybe my standards are too high but when I hear a frame will be reworked, I expect it to be the proof DE is getting so much better at designing frames. So much that they need to make sure their older creations don’t stand out too much in a bad way. Instead they’re the proof DE never finishes what they begin. The year of quality never happened and the business model is still to rush new content without ever looking back.

Again, right on the money. At any given point DE at large will keep tabs on these threads to an extent. They acknowledge them and even in some cases comment on some of the ideas, but they have yet to ever go back in and revisit changes in any real way. This has almost ruined many of the frames and their usability as noted with Saryn and Volt. Yet, feedback is just ignored and presumably the undercover boss play is being ignored in this as well as noting appears to be changing at all in the first place. As noted, the devs just seem to ignore any critique on rework. I'd even suggest they're almost salty about it... that people don't seem to appreciate the work.

You're standards aren't too high ether. I've long since and actively call out DE as having the worst case of developer ADHD I've ever seen. They regularly start something and then run off distracted by another project. Case in point, look at Dojo's, the landing craft air supports, Kubros & Kivats, companions in general really, the syndicates and related items, landing craft customization, and I'll call out the Umbra's too at this point. It pretty much says it all in their trade mark sayings... Soon..... everything is "soon" for them or "it's coming."  How about the next set of patches just be fixing the reworks? >.>

[SinergyX]

The hard part still remains, those who dissagree will have themself heard on the forums, those who are ok, just continue to play.

Look at the feedback stuff, EVERYTHING is about 'bad this, bad that, should be this, should be that', with a bunch of back and fort over how playstyle may vary.

Then it comes down to what you liked, what may be destroyed, or what you didnt like, is still not changed/fixed.

Nekros was a good example, majority yells out for the HP drain, i only care about the crappy AI they have.

With a 1000 players, 1000 voices, you cant please all and you can ignore all.

[Ar0ndight]

On 8/19/2016 at 0:17 PM, SinergyX said:

The hard part still remains, those who dissagree will have themself heard on the forums, those who are ok, just continue to play.

Look at the feedback stuff, EVERYTHING is about 'bad this, bad that, should be this, should be that', with a bunch of back and fort over how playstyle may vary.

Then it comes down to what you liked, what may be destroyed, or what you didnt like, is still not changed/fixed.

Nekros was a good example, majority yells out for the HP drain, i only care about the crappy AI they have.

With a 1000 players, 1000 voices, you cant please all and you can ignore all.

 

The thing is no one would miss something like Nekros' shadows drain. No one. So why not just change it ?

Edited August 23, 2016 by Ar0ndight

[(XBOX)Skode]

All those listed are viable abilities for entire star chart - that's job done really. It's sorties or trials where issues really arise (and endless high lvl missions). Question should DE balance for those or not? There's already a feeling some abilities are simple far too good for the bread and butter of the game (star chart)... in fact even under rated abilities like say Rumblers are ukillable in star chart... outside if direct counters like nullifiers.

We rate reworks/new weapons/new frames all on high tier viability - that's not the way to look at it. 80% of the game is not end game, I think at least to me that's why the reworks have been great and are "finished" in the common sense. In fact newer players will feel like walking gods in new Mag or Volt. Still any buffs welcomed I say - molt is a bit too weak vs say unwavering assault of infested but short of spreading debuffs I never use it to really tank, if anything I use it more for regenerative molt.

[plexus_brachialis]

correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems to me that most of the big reworks have roots in introduction of syndicates - ie. vivergate - a system that had horrible implementation and drove players to seek best and fastest methods of aquiring reputation. it was fixed after a while, and caused some knee-jerk nerfs and changes and brought our beloved nullifiers to life - but then DE repeated the same thing with focus system.

both of which are tied to affinity, yet DE is actively working to discourage us from farming rep/focus by reworking nuker frames, changing spawns in non-endless missions so that we can't effectively keep up stealth multiplier, ie. deception, and killing endless void missions, where you could get all your daily caps + decent rewards. 

they only go back to reworked things/fix implemented systems if the uproar is big enough. it took them 4 major updates to do any significant work on archwing (introduced in U15, reworked in U19), focus has been touched only once since implementation and so on.