Vacuum: Discussions Post Devstream #80

[WMan22]

I've been much more than a little upset at the very idea of splitting vaccum into 3 mods. Like, at that point, I'd actually prefer no change because the "Best" case scenario we're looking at otherwise is 3 more mandatory mods all likely at 7 mod cost each (An ENORMOUS forma and slot investment that should never be there to begin with), and said 3 mandatory mods will probably be a bad experience to farm unless they're super common, and it makes no sense in terms of game balance considering the goal is to remove mandatory mods, not add more.

But I have a weird idea, and I'm not sure how good it is considering I haven't slept in a while.

What if you made an entire rebindable button with settings attatched to it dedicated to innate vaccum on warframes? It would even add to the movement system as well because it would take skill to use in the middle of a bullet jump, which alleviates the absolutely stupid notion some players have that vaccum is "Lazy". It should start at the same range as carrier and it's range would increase beyond 12m while airborne not only to keep the pace up but to prevent AFK players from abusing it and to encourage fast play. I really don't want to encourage more mandatory mods, but if you're going to insist upon adding mods to this idea, they should be exilus mods only.

On top of this, making it a button would also make it a decision that you would have to make in the middle of combat that keeps you on your toes. "Do I want my Energy/Health conversion to activate now or later for this?"

Above all though like, even if you don't go for this idea, whatever you do, for the love of whatever deity you believe in, do NOT split it up into 3 mods. That would be the worst idea ever, and cause far more problems than it would solve. Like, a lot of the playerbase is absolutely perplexed that it was even a consideration; It makes 0 sense, it's an actively bad idea.

[Lantesh]

Since this is a big topic, I'd like to add in my voice as a newer player. I've had this account for some time now but only really started playing after the Solar Rails update.

As a new player, I needed every single credit, polymer bundle, and mod that dropped as I didn't have anything to work with and needed them to begin building up my arsenal. The problem was that I needed to go over and pick it all up. Since gathering all this stuff was a priority, I ended up not bothering with learning the parkour system. Mainly because using the parkour meant that I was missing out on my loot. So what I ended up doing was just running through the levels more like a traditional third person shooter. No jumping, bullet jumping, sliding, or rolling around. Just sprint then shoot and loot. It was rather boring, but I badly needed all that loot as I had practically nothing. So parkour was ignored.

And then I got carrier.

Getting carrier was quite literally a game changer for me. I wasn't having to scrape the floor for for bits and pieces of loot. It wasn't until I got carrier that I starting using the parkour system and realizing just how fast paced and action packed this game can really be. I could bullet jump across the room and then glide aim to shoot that grineer in his stupid face and not having to worry about picking up anything he dropped. The movement and combat systems together is where this game truly shines. But it only shines when I use carrier.

So I'm now firmly in the camp of just making vacuum an innate ability of all warframes.

I don't feel it would work just being on sentinels or pets. Now that I'm farther along on the star chart, the amount and power levels of enemies has gone up. That means when the action heats up, my poor carrier often gets smashed into pieces. Without him, I'm right back to where I was with having to scrape the floor for loot that I have already earned. That's right, earned. The enemy has been defeated. RNG has rolled and determined what it shall grace me with in that moment. But I don't get the loot that I earned unless my badass space ninja goes over there and touches it with his feet. It's rather silly and totally breaks the flow and pacing of the game. 

Breaking it up into 3 mods is not a good idea. Making it for sentinels or even all pets isn't going to help new players at all since it still takes time to progress far enough to get those pets. It needs to be an innate function for all warframes. It doesn't need to be "balanced" or have some sort of trade off. It needs to be a core function of the game to keep player focus on the main draw of the game - the space ninja action.

 

[rohcQaH]

tl;dr of my post: IMHO the focus system would be the perfect place to let us earn true passive abilities like vacuum.

Current state:

Slapping all useful passives onto a sentinel mod seems wrong. Vacuum, Sanctuary, Guardian, Animal Instinct are all abilities centered on your warframe, so why are they on a sentinel? They just increase mod slot pressure and remove diversity from companions.

The sad state of the focus system is that most players use either Zenurik energy regeneration or Naramon invisibility/crit. 3 out of about 50 abilities seems like a waste of an otherwise interesting system.

Suggested goal:

Split all focus trees into two parts: modifiers to your active focus ability, and true passive abilities. The active ability is determined by your primary school. The true passive abilities work all the time, across all schools (unless deactivated). Convert each school's three existing passives into true passives (maybe rebalance a little) and add one or two new passives per school. Here are a few suggestions:

• Naramon: the tactician school gets a passive enemy radar, to replace half of Animal Instinct.
• Zenurik: is about resources, so it gets the other half of Animal Instinct (loot radar) and vacuum for health/mana orbs.
• Unairu: the tanky school will get the replacement for Guardian. If shield gates are ever a thing, they could be a passive in this tree.
• Vazarin: countering the enemy. Turn your death into defense (Sanctuary), turn their deaths into offense (ammo vacuum).
• Madurai: swift fighters don't stop for loot. mod/endo-vacuum here.

Advantages:

• the focus system gives a natural progression toward useful goals again. All schools are worthwhile, and veterans have an incentive to keep progressing even after unlocking the three mandatory ones.
• companions are freed up again, players can mod them for their stated purpose instead of survivability and passives. It's going to be easier for DE to balance companions and give them their unique feel.
• vacuum has to be earned. New players retain the joys of picking up their first drops without wondering why stuff keeps flying at them. Yay, progression. Also, vacuum can still be disabled, which a universal passive wouldn't allow.
• important passives no longer disappear just because your sentinel ate a bombard rocket. No more suicides just to revive a companions, followed by frantic pleading in the squad chat to please stop reviving.
• Since true passives are available from the beginning of the mission, and cannot disappear, they can now be relied on for builds. No more being useless for the first two minutes of a mission because your focus ability isn't ready.
• A working focus system is an opportunity for further additions. Instead of dumping every idea into a random mod, now there's an option to choose between two systems, and use the one that fits best.
• People can finally use skill 5 for the skill, not just to activate passives. Splitting the active from the passive focus skills makes it easier to balance the active parts. Both are requirements for making the active skills useful, balanced and fun.

How to get there:

As a short-term bandaid, just remove Vacuum's binding to carrier, and give carrier a new ability. Community is happy. Communicate the long-term plans. Start working on the focus system when U19 is out the door, and retire the vacuum mod (as well as guardian, animal instinct, sanctuary, ..) once the new focus passives are in place. Consider giving players a one-time chance to respec their focus points.

[Rolhn]

Is it me or did someone hit Steve upside the head with a dumb-dumb hammer because no one said to split Vacuum into three separate mods. We all asked, hell even demanded that Vacuum be turned into a universal mod for not only all of our precious Sentinels but also for our lovely Kubrows and now Kavats. How hard is it for the DE community to even pay attention to what the community wants when it is very much clear of what it needs? First we get an unwanted archwing movement set, and now this garbage? This decision to split Vacuum into 3 mods is almost as bad as the broken mess that was Excavation Sorties.

[WMan22]

2 minutes ago, rohcQaH said:

tl;dr of my post: IMHO the focus system would be the perfect place to let us earn true passive abilities like vacuum.

The sad state of the focus system is that most players use either Zenurik energy regeneration or Naramon invisibility/crit. 3 out of about 50 abilities seems like a waste of an otherwise interesting system.

Suggested goal:

Split all focus trees into two parts: modifiers to your active focus ability, and true passive abilities. The active ability is determined by your primary school. The true passive abilities work all the time, across all schools (unless deactivated). Convert each school's three existing passives into true passives (maybe rebalance a little) and add one or two new passives per school. Here are a few suggestions:

• Naramon: the tactician school gets a passive enemy radar, to replace half of Animal Instinct.
• Zenurik: is about resources, so it gets the other half of Animal Instinct (loot radar) and vacuum for health/mana orbs.
• Unairu: the tanky school will get the replacement for Guardian. If shield gates are ever a thing, they could be a passive in this tree.
• Vazarin: countering the enemy. Turn your death into defense (Sanctuary), turn their deaths into offense (ammo vacuum).
• Madurai: swift fighters don't stop for loot. mod/endo-vacuum here.

 

Please, don't nerf Zenurik or Naramon. Enormous sets of builds rely on them, and to break them would to be like smashing a cog that powers a large machine full of several cogs. More trouble than it's worth. However, the other skill trees do need to be looked at and brought up to that level of importance so it's more of a choice. I'd say that Vazarin would be a good choice for that since the damage reflection ability doesn't really do a lot for you later in the endgame and could be changed to something similar to one of these suggestions.

[--GP--Aintru]

I feel like DE is over-complicating a very simple solution. Just make the mod usable for all companions. Done. Simple. Clean. No further questions or discussions needed.

^{Having to go backwards and walk over loot to pick it up when your entire game is predicated on speed and agility is NOT FUN. Why else do you think Carrier is so dominantly used? It's certainly not because it's the "best" companion, it's because all the other options require us to do something we don't enjoy doing. Changing Vacuum to anything but universal just shows a complete lack of fundamental understanding of how your game is being played.}

[SpadaNgDios]

Give all Companions Aura Slots
Make the Vacuum mod into a Companion exclusive Aura

Create variations of the Vacuum Aura

• Vacuum in it's original State - approx 12m pull
• Energy Vacuum - 15m pull for energy drops, 7m for the rest
• Health Vacuum - 15m pull for health drops, 7m for the rest
• Ammo Vacuum - etc

Have more Companion Aura types for players that want the option to pick up drops manually

• Aura to Heal the companion like Rejuvenation
• Aura to increase companion health
• Aura to Amplify Companion weapon /  attack damage
• Aura to increase Range/ decrease cooldown for certain abilities etc

Give Carrier/ Carrier Prime the ability to increase your ammunition reserve/regenerate ammo for holstered weapons keeping it's "Carrier" function

This would open up more options for loadouts
And also address the issue with Pets only allowing 1 type of build if you want to max all the mods by increasing mod capacity
Also start bringing in more Prime Sentinels!

[Rhundis]

Honestly, if you gave every sentinel a vacuum ability it would defenetly cause people to choose other sentinels besides carrier. Every sentinel has its click and if they all had a vacuum ability I'd defenetly take more time into considering who I'd bring into battle with me.

[main_antagonist]

Just enable it for your warframe innate and we can bring what ever sentinel or pet we want simple. Plenty of games do it warframe would be the first for me that makes you have to equip something to have the vacuum effect

[junkTzu]

I'll just add my comment to the pile here.

It seems that one of the most popular requests is the innate "Universal Vacuum" on warframes.  To me this is the best option since this functionality already exists and the primary change would simply be increasing the radius.  I would think this would have the least amount of testing overhead and smallest potential for unintended consequences.

Adding a mod or innate vacuum to the kubrows/kavats seems like the most work as far as under the hood implementation and thus would require more testing to ensure that it works correctly and is not exploitable.  I'm just guessing, since I'm not familiar with the architecture of Warframe, but often when you have something that's old (i.e. sentinels) and something that's newer (i.e. kavats/kubrows) it can be a pain porting functionality between them and increases the chances of bugs being introduced.  Also, as others have mentioned here, kubrows and kavats can get stuck which is just begging for a flood of complaints about people not getting mods/health/etc due to their stuck pet.

 

 

[Achievement-get]

Not mine, but I feel it explains the want for Universal Vacuum pretty well. Not Vacuum split into 3 mods, UNIVERSAL VACUUM. ON FRAMES TOO.

 

Have you ever played the "card game" 52 pickup? It works like this: I take a deck of cards and toss it into the air. You pick it up off the floor while I laugh at you. Fun right?

No. No it isn't.

How about this. We take all the resources you need to progress in the game, and we scatter them around the floor. You have to stop playing, spot them and pick them up one by one. While under fire. Fun, right?

This is why 90% of players use Carrier, and this is why people want universal vacuum.

[FierceRadiance]

Am I the only one thinking that.......if the VAST majority of players are using the vacuum ability.........WHY BREAK IT?

Put another way, how will making vacuum less useful and more cumbersome improve the game?

I like vacuum.  I'm one of the many players who use it all the time.  Why is this so wrong, it has to be broken?

Am I missing something?

Edited September 20, 2016 by FierceRadiance

[CrazyFisher]

Just add a Vacum to all Companions.

[Insizer]

@[DE]Rebecca

What about turning Vacuum into a "weapon". It has no offensive value, but does as Vacuum does. I'd be ok with scrapping my sweet Sweeper Prime in favor of Vacuum. Heck, I have a build like that already.

Edit: Also, if y'all are doing something about Carrier in order to make more sentinels viable, then are y'all going to address the stats of other sentinels. Carrier and Carrier Prime have some of the best, if not the best, defensive stats of all sentinels. I still wouldn't other sentinels because of that.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Insizer
added a bit

[robbybe01234]

3 minutes ago, Insizer said:

@[DE]Rebecca

I what about turning Vacuum into a "weapon". It has no offensive value, but does as Vacuum does. I'd be ok with scrapping my sweet Sweeper Prime in favor of Vacuum. Heck, I have a build like that already.

sorry man, that contradicts the purpose of opening up vacuum to other sentinels/companions.  If the diriga would need to equip the vac as a weapon what would be the point as its primary purpose is combat based.

[Insizer]

1 hour ago, FierceRadiance said:

Am I the only one thinking that.......if the VAST majority of players are using the vacuum ability.........WHY BREAK IT?

Put another way, how will making vacuum less useful and more cumbersome improve the game?

I like vacuum.  I'm one of the many players who use it all the time.  Why is this so wrong, it has to be broken?

Am I missing something?

They are doing something about Vacuum because the vast majority of players use it in place of other sentinels and their abilities. They want to give people a reason to seriously consider using other sentinels for more than half a second.

[GStonez]

It can be a passive for sentinels and attachment for companions like how the kubrow collar is however now that means we need to find another ability for the chesa kubrow

[Insizer]

2 minutes ago, robbybe01234 said:

sorry man, that contradicts the purpose of opening up vacuum to other sentinels/companions.  If the diriga would need to equip the vac as a weapon what would be the point as its primary purpose is combat based.

I don't see the contradiction, you get support or offense. Yes, it would be inconvenient, but it seems fair to me. The bigger issue is that Kubrows and Kavats couldn't use vacuum.

I was just throwing the idea out there to see the response, not completely advocating for it.

[Rolunde]

Just adding my opinion to get lost in the mix here.

Of all the things the one I am favor of the most is the idea of making "universal vacuum" innate to the Warframes, not the Companions. 

To fill that out even further what I'd really like to see there is for Mods and Item drops (so basically blueprints and parts) all just automatically dropped into our end of mission reward table.
So if Mod-x and/or the blueprint for Despair "drop" we don't have to pick them up (or not pick them up! "because issues"),
they are awarded to use upon successful completion/extraction from the Mission. 

Then things like Ammo drops and Orbs, etc. could be drops that could be "vacuumed" up by the Warframes but wouldn't need an inane amount of AoE to make it work. 

Part of my own Negative Experience here is that I've seen plenty of mods "drop" in places that I just can't get them from without Carrier there to vacuum them up. 
(it's also possible that this has happened to blueprint parts as well but hard to really say there I guess, it's equally possible that the Assassins and Death Squads are just super stingy on their specific drops!)

Some of those crashed ship floor tiles and such where it seems there must be multiple levels of terrain texturing, the mod can fall thru the decking we walk on and get suck underneath where there is literally no way to get to them, but if you had Carrier with you he'd just snag it for you.

Same goes for smashing Containers in the Void behind walls that don't open but they're close enough to still break.

I've also had plenty of Alert Defense missions end with mods just "right there!" where Carrier would hopefully have sucked them up in time but there they are as we're whisked away instead.

Anyhow, that's my 2 plat.

Cheers!
~R~

[Insizer]

2 minutes ago, GStonez said:

It can be a passive for sentinels and attachment for companions like how the kubrow collar is however now that means we need to find another ability for the chesa kubrow

I'm fairly sure that's a given already.

[(PSN)Kosis181]

4 hours ago, rohcQaH said:

tl;dr of my post: IMHO the focus system would be the perfect place to let us earn true passive abilities like vacuum.

-Snip-

As a short-term bandaid, just remove Vacuum's binding to carrier, and give carrier a new ability. Community is happy. Communicate the long-term plans. Start working on the focus system when U19 is out the door, and retire the vacuum mod (as well as guardian, animal instinct, sanctuary, ..) once the new focus passives are in place. Consider giving players a one-time chance to respec their focus points.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

THIS.

All my THIS.

For the love of platinum, THIS.

If the Lotus really loves us, THIS. 

My birthday is on the 30th. Please? I can haz THIS?

All I want for  [INSERT PREFERRED WINTER HOLIDAY] is my two front THIS.

One for all, and all for THIS.

One THIS to bring them all, and in the vacuum bind them.

THIS is, This is... I have no more words for THIS. Not even borrowed words.

Thank you, Agent double-ohh-THIS.

In case you can't tell, I really like THIS.

 

...and "THIS" totally doesn't look like a real word anymore.

 

[Fylas]

10 hours ago, Fylas said:

Why not make it A short ranged base value of 5 meters radius, we know you can do that because archwings have a innate item vacuum range. Then the 3 mods can be Utility, Aura, Companion variants that top up the range of item vacuum. the 3 mod limit never said it will be 3 mods it could also be 3 types of mods. By making the Companion variant general like Animal Instinct  EVERY pet can shine be it sentinel, kavat or Kubrow The real question is what happens to the Carrier and kubrow looting precept?

Loot bonus for the kubrow kills? A silent AOE pulse of X size that does 1 damage to objects? that would give carrier the ability to destroy containers in a big area while stealthed or speed running so it wouldn't lose that loot character completely  speaking of loot, that Looter precept is utterly broken, its loud, it doesn't work when stealthed, and it is utterly slow no matter what weapon is used so its borderline useless save for bragging rights :<. Carrier takes 4-5 seconds to kill ONE container and that only if it hits properly which attracts everything in 30 meters even if silenced...

Other ideas:

If the 3 Loot mods are mod types like Aura, utility, companion it allows for variants later on like corrupted mods or nightmare alert mods that penalize a stat in return for twisting universal loot into something different. If it's a general Base value there is nothing that speaks against adding modifiers to mods that affect other things like loot amount/ ammo conversion etc in return for changes in loot range :O!

Ammo Matrix: The sentinel converts unused ammo into the currently active or if full (or melee) the other weapons ammo type with a weaker conversion rate then dedicated ammo conversion mods. if Equipped in tandem with the actual ammo mutation mod the boost is added to the converted amount. Example 10 sniper ammo  sentinel  mod = 50%, non primed rifle ammo conversion : 150%  so sentinel gives 5 rifle ammo or 20 if used together with rifle ammo mutation.

Short sighted greed: Corrupted mod type, Reduces base vacuum range to zero on max in return for loot like credits and ressources up to X percent, if below 100% rare ressources are unaffected  1.75 orokin cells stays 1 cell etc. so that you either have to manually or burn further mod space for utility aura or companion slots to replace the lost vacuum range. Resulting in more specialized less powerfull farm builds :O

Self Damaging Gluttony : Inverse of scavenger auras, greatly increases loot range in return for penalized ammo pickups,

 

PS: if it becomes a Universal base thing can we just call it Loot range or something? O_o?
 

 

 

nobody read my post :<

[FierceRadiance]

56 minutes ago, Insizer said:

They are doing something about Vacuum because the vast majority of players use it in place of other sentinels and their abilities. They want to give people a reason to seriously consider using other sentinels for more than half a second.

So "extremely popular" does equate to "broken"??  And I don't use Carrier in place of other sentinels, I prefer Carrier over other Sentinels - because of vacuum.

Unfortunately, at least on it's face 'give people a reason' seems to look more like 'we put these other assets in the game, we want to encourage/force players to use them'. And I'm not sure at all that I like that approach.

Is DE proposing to put vacuum on all 'floaty' sentinels (nothing with 4 feet) at no additional cost to players and then yadda yadda something-something I-don't-care-what to replace vacuum on Carrier/Carrier Prime? That at least would make a kind of sense to me...

Edited September 20, 2016 by FierceRadiance

[(PSN)Kosis181]

5 minutes ago, FierceRadiance said:

So "extremely popular" does equate to "broken"??  I'm not sure I agree with this approach.

Unfortunately, at least on it's face 'give people a reason' seems to look more like 'we put these other assets in the game, we want to encourage/force players to use them'. And I'm not sure at all that I like that approach.

It comes across to me as more of a:

"we can't afford actually put in any new resources for x position, because nobody would bother to use them over vacuum. Total honesty guys: if no one thinks the new stuff is worth using, no one is going to think our work is any good. If you don't think our new work is any good, you all will think we've jumped the shark and stop playing. Which means you stop buying plat, which means we're out of a job."

honestly, overuse of a single mod/companion/equipment is an indicator that things are unbalanced. People shouldn't be forced to use ONE asset to do something as basic as pick up loot, when another asset might be better suited to their build.

Edited September 20, 2016 by (PS4)Kosis181

[Insizer]

1 minute ago, FierceRadiance said:

So "extremely popular" does equate to "broken"??  I'm not sure I agree with this approach.

Unfortunately, at least on it's face 'give people a reason' seems to look more like 'we put these other assets in the game, we want to encourage/force players to use them'. And I'm not sure at all that I like that approach.

I'm sure anyone is saying Vacuum is broken rather it is suffocating diversity. I don't see what's wrong with trying to address this. You can certainly argue that DE wants people to utilize assets they made, and I believe that is certainly part of why they are doing this, but I also believe that they are doing this because of community feedback.

Also, don't forget that DE has actually been holding off on this issue for a while now, brushing it aside with comments like "only newbs use carrier" and such.