Energy Regain Rework: Energy For Fighting

[MJ12]

Right now, energy is mostly regained from randomly dropped orbs. These orbs drop no matter what.

 

This creates a situation where ult-spam becomes extremely powerful and low-level attack abilities, which should be the bread and butter of a caster-type Warframe's offense, are used very rarely because you can save up for an Ult. Even when those low-level abilities provide a ton of damage (like Venom) they're generally used less often than the ults because you want to save energy up.

 

Why? Because of the standard 'hoarding' response gamers tend to have. If you have stuff you can't replace easily, you tend to hoard it as much as possible. Attempting to eliminate the hoarding is part of the reason for mechanics like regenerating health (so people don't spend 10 minutes backtracking for a health pack) or regenerating energy/etc. Now, the problem with regenerating energy or cooldowns is that it encourages hiding behind a wall and waiting for your cooldowns to refresh/your energy bar to refill. I'd like to suggest something that gets the same benefit (people know how quickly they can regain energy, more or less) without the negative consequences (hiding until your cooldowns refresh).

 

Tenno should regain energy for fighting and killing enemies. Think about it. It means that the only way you can regain energy to use your powers is to keep fighting, meaning that as long as you're in a fight you have your powers available. The harder the fight, the more energy you have available. It rewards aggressive combat instead of retreating to break open containers to regain energy. You might also have to change how energy siphon works significantly, but I think that'd be worth it to have reliable energy regain during combat, as it'd let people use abilities more often instead of simply hoarding.

 

For example, assume these energy regeneration figures:

 

Dealing any damage: 1 energy (this can only trigger once every second)

Taking any damage: 1 energy (this can only trigger once every second).

Killing an enemy: 2 energy (this can trigger an unlimited number of times)

Melee killing an enemy: 3 energy (this can trigger an unlimited number of times)

Slide killing an enemy: 3 energy (this can trigger an unlimited number of times)

Headshot killing an enemy: 2 energy (this can trigger an unlimited number of times)

Killing a heavy (Corpus Tech, Fusion Moa, Grineer Heavy, Ancient): 10 energy (this can trigger an unlimited number of times).

 

As you can see, if you're killing one guy a second with guns, headshotting half the time, you're regaining 3 energy a kill and probably getting 2 energy a second beyond that for a total of 5 energy a second giving you the ability to use a 25 energy ability every 5 seconds. However, if you use your ult and kill 20 enemies instead, you only regain 20 energy plus an additional 1 for dealing damage, which means although ults are powerful you need to fight in the middle of them to regain energy.

 

These numbers are obviously not actually balanced and need work, but they should show you exactly what the results are: A more dynamic game where ability use, gunplay, acrobatics, and so on are strung together in a better-flowing whole.

[TheGambler_BR]

How exactly would that stop ulti spam?

 

Killing a lot of enemies refill a significant amount of energy, and you could hoard energy all the same (kill him, kill him, how much energy do I have oh almost full, kill him, and him and now I'm full)

 

 

IMO, I'd prefer dropping the current energy system entirely and adding in a shared cooldown system similar to Mass Effect 2's, where different powers have different cooldowns. Bread-and-butter powers have low cooldown values, while ultis have large cooldown values.

 

This would spice up combat, allowing for more liberal use of powers, further differentiating warframes.

 

This would be a problem for mods affecting energy (flow and streamline). Which could be fixed by turning both into a "reduces cooldown by x%" - which frees up a mod slot, by the way.

[MJ12]

How exactly would that stop ulti spam?

 

Killing a lot of enemies refill a significant amount of energy, and you could hoard energy all the same (kill him, kill him, how much energy do I have oh almost full, kill him, and him and now I'm full)

 

Because after you've used your ultimate you've regained... 11 energy, instead of five enemies dropping energy orbs. Suddenly your ult is no longer spammable because it is basically impossible to ever be in a situation where you can regain the energy use.

 

 

IMO, I'd prefer dropping the current energy system entirely and adding in a shared cooldown system similar to Mass Effect 2's, where different powers have different cooldowns. Bread-and-butter powers have low cooldown values, while ultis have large cooldown values.

 

This would spice up combat, allowing for more liberal use of powers, further differentiating warframes.

 

This would be a problem for mods affecting energy (flow and streamline). Which could be fixed by turning both into a "reduces cooldown by x%" - which frees up a mod slot, by the way.

 

The problem is that cooldowns are unlikely to happen because they had those and discarded them for this system (I am of the opinion that the current system is even worse than cooldowns but eh.)

[Phatose]

Looks like that would turn "caster" frames into shooters whether they like it or not.  Kind of misses the point of having casters in the first place.

 

At any rate, you're dealing with the Ulti-spam problem in the wrong fashion.  Ulti spam happens because the efficiency on lower tier powers is terrible.  Maxed Venom, for instance does about half the damage of a Maxed Miasma - but it only does it to a smaller group, requires you shooting the spore, and it takes 3 times as long to actually deal the damage. 

 

You don't see a lot of ulti spam out of Excalibur, because his base power actually is efficient.  Slash Dash compares quite favorably to Radial Javelins, so you don't see much RJ spam.

Edited July 1, 2013 by Phatose

[Kyte]

Make all of the caster frames' basic attacks return extra energy on hit/kill/etc. Say (off the top of my head), Shock gives 5 energy on hit and 15 on kill.

Venom gives 5 energy when you burst the spore and 1 energy on every tick. And so on. Enough energy gain to keep power-only combat going on for a long time. Slash Dash gives no bonus since it's already efficient.

 

And, really, playing exclusively a single attack type (be it power, gun or melee) isn't gonna be optimal either way.

Plus, you can't turn caster frames into shooters because they already are shooters.

Edited July 1, 2013 by Kyte

[MJ12]

Make all of the caster frames' basic attacks return extra energy on hit/kill/etc. Say (off the top of my head), Shock gives 5 energy on hit and 15 on kill.

Venom gives 5 energy when you burst the spore and 1 energy on every tick. And so on. Enough energy gain to keep power-only combat going on for a long time. Slash Dash gives no bonus since it's already efficient.

 

And, really, playing exclusively a single attack type (be it power, gun or melee) isn't gonna be optimal either way.

Plus, you can't turn caster frames into shooters because they already are shooters.

 

Could work. In fact I'd generally want a 'prime' and 'release' functionality to combat, so you build up momentum/power/adrenaline/etc with basic attacks and then spend this for bigger effects.

[ValhaHazred]

+1 good idea!

It should also give a slightly reduced amount for ally kills or it might cause too much kill-stealing.