Why do certain frames and abilities go neglected for years?

[waynexx]

33 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

But, that's just it... not a single frame has gone for more than six months without an update or fix. Everything gets patched, even minorly, to keep the game from getting too far ahead of the frame.

Look at Zephyr, a frame that has remained basically un-changed and seemingly neglected since inception more than two years ago, in terms of what it does at least, but the Turbulence ability is one of the most patched and updated abilities in game overall. Nearly constantly changed until the mechanics on it work exactly as originally intended with almost everything that's come into the game in the last two years.

At the very least, frames and abilities aren't neglected, they're constantly considered every time any kind of change is made.

If they weren't, broken combos would still rule the day, like the Greedy Gunslinger and so on and so forth.

I'm not about to attribute necessary maintenance, to listening and acting on player feedback. It's common knowledge at this point, that many abilities are somehow flawed and deemed useless in most situations; there's no good reason for this, and they could at least acknowledge it if anything.

Is there actually some design philosophy behind these things (that seemingly no one understands)? I think it has more to do with priorities, and things being neglected as a result.

I made this thread because I believe that others, like myself, regard these to be a higher concern than they demonstrate being aware of.

Edited November 23, 2016 by waynexx

[Nazrethim]

Be careful what you wish for. They may have a crack team balancing PvP, but whenever PvE balance is considered they either do a great job (Valkyr hysteria, Saryn and Excal reworks) or royaly f*ck whoever used something (like Saryn rework, which falls on both sides or Ash's incoming BS targeting tweak).

It all depends if DE really understands what are the issues and explore solutions to most or all of them.  Ash had a lot of things to fix, yet the only change will be a nerf to Blade Storm targeting. All the other issues with the frame were flat out ignored. Oh, and the tweak won't actually solve the problem it intended to solve in the first place (bladespam will continue, just with players sweeping the battleground, interactivity be damned)

 

EDIT: Oh wait, now I remember, they DID royaly f*ck Ash's bladestorm for MONTHS in Conclave, being a 100% useless energy sink. So I guess there's a precedent for what they are going to do!

Edited November 23, 2016 by Nazrethim

[(PSN)RenovaKunumaru]

9 hours ago, waynexx said:

I can't begin to fathom the reasoning; it can't just be 'resources', no. Is it actually such a low priority? How is it that Coclave has a crack team (or just one dude) on it constantly making adjustments, but certain abilities in PvE stay useless for years?

Why don't you take the time and read every patch note.

[Birdframe_Prime]

15 minutes ago, waynexx said:

I made this thread because I believe that others, like myself, regard these to be a higher concern than they demonstrate being aware of.

Not to sound like this is necessarily a bad opinion, but... you mean that you want to prioritise making the few frames that are, only by popular opinion, considered less useful (not bad) than all the other frames, over, say, fixing actual gameplay itself?

I mean, not to put too fine of a point on things, I can think of two things, right off the bat, that are more important than updating Zephyr (my favourite frame and counting 25% of my nearly 900 hour play time) or her abilities. Namely armour scaling, for a big one, and damage balancing, for another.

And why do I, personally, think they are more important? Because no matter how bad you think a frame is, how neglected, any one of the frames in circulation now can be used more or less effectively on every mission type up to the Sortie level.

I can take Zephyr to two hour survivals as easily as I can take a Loki or even a Limbo, it can be done, and is done frequently enough to show DE that the frames, while not all are created equal, are all still effective.

[waynexx]

24 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

Not to sound like this is necessarily a bad opinion, but... you mean that you want to prioritise making the few frames that are, only by popular opinion, considered less useful (not bad) than all the other frames, over, say, fixing actual gameplay itself?

I mean, not to put too fine of a point on things, I can think of two things, right off the bat, that are more important than updating Zephyr (my favourite frame and counting 25% of my nearly 900 hour play time) or her abilities. Namely armour scaling, for a big one, and damage balancing, for another.

And why do I, personally, think they are more important? Because no matter how bad you think a frame is, how neglected, any one of the frames in circulation now can be used more or less effectively on every mission type up to the Sortie level.

I can take Zephyr to two hour survivals as easily as I can take a Loki or even a Limbo, it can be done, and is done frequently enough to show DE that the frames, while not all are created equal, are all still effective.

I don't think it's a matter of leveraging resource, so much as it's being aware that these things matter to their player-base and to at least acknowledge (and eventually address) these concerns. These abilities are only part of what they need to revisit, not necessarily something that needs to be put first in the queue.

And there are several frames that might survive 2 hours into a survival using only a single ability (if any); this doesn't prove anything, it's just the way the game is. The fact is, some of these abilities are simply poorly designed and people aren't happy with them (which is arguably the bottom line).

Edited November 23, 2016 by waynexx

[waynexx]

14 minutes ago, (PS4)RenovaKunumaru said:

Why don't you take the time and read every patch note.

I think you misunderstand what's being communicated here.

Edited November 23, 2016 by waynexx

[bl4ckhunter]

18 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

I mean, not to put too fine of a point on things, I can think of two things, right off the bat, that are more important than updating Zephyr (my favourite frame and counting 25% of my nearly 900 hour play time) or her abilities. Namely armour scaling, for a big one, and damage balancing, for another.

Do you seriously think that it will ever happen? Really? armor has been the mess that it is since before open beta and it's not even that hard of a fix, they just needed to make armor values flat across all levels and buff grineer health scaling a bit, the fact that it hasn't happened, like many other changes really, it's clearly due to the fact that they're not willing to do it, whereas they might just update zephyr if we ask enough times.

[Birdframe_Prime]

50 minutes ago, waynexx said:

I don't think it's a matter of leveraging resource, so much as it's being aware that these things matter to their player-base and to at least acknowledge (and eventually address) these concerns.

I'm not on the same page here, on devstreams they mention at least one frame per session that they're looking at with intent to improve, there's questions from chat and write-in topics from the forums, views are heard, questions answered as best they can and always acknowledgement made of how there are still people unhappy with the state of a warframe.

Where did you think reworks came from in the first place for frames like Ember and Frost? All from DE acknowledging that people didn't think those frames were in the right place.

Obviously Excal came purely out of their heads when they realised they had made parkour invalidate his Super Jump. But every other frame's changes were based on feedback.

Just because they haven't gotten to them yet, doesn't show a lack of acknowledgement, or even a lack of resources. It shows how long these changes take and how much time they allocate to making and balancing the changes they want to put into the game.

[Awazx]

Because fixing / improving what already exists does not give money, but adding new weapons / frames / objects gives money easy and fast.

[Darkmoone1]

They don't like to touch abilities unless they're absolutely broken in one direction or another. Which is absurd, because so many frames would benefit if the team would take one quick look at certain frames performance across various enemy levels.

[RealPandemonium]

There's no pressing reason to change them, at least from DE's perspective.  DE also doesn't actually play Warframe, so they have little real exposure to how the issues affect actual players.

[Faulcun]

The other side of the fence is that there are a multitude of casual players who simply expect to press 4 to win. Then there are those players who actually take the time to learn the ins and outs of each power for each frame. While some may say that an ability is useless, another may find it to be the most useful.

The problem is people relying on these "meta builds" and so on, where the focus is on one single ability because the rest are "garbage". Find the "best" ability and spam the crap out of it. This is what gets players into trouble.

This can be seen in any "DE plz REWORK #randomwarframe" thread. There are players who think a frame is garbage because it doesnt effectively nuke the map on command, and then there are the players who rock that frame, usually reviving the former group.

DE must then make careful decisions about rework based on intelligent feedback on both sides, and make sure that any changes made dont hurt a power while at the same time not making adjustments that create overpowered balance. Volt is a perfect example. I loved him before, and hes still a beast frame without having retracted from his original playstyle.

Excalibur is another example..... that never should have happened with exalted blade. Its still OP, and needs to be changed from the mobile spam turret that he is now.

At the same time, DE always has to focus on making money... so new content gets priority and they work on old stuff in between. Thats just as much the consumers fault as it is theirs.

[waynexx]

At least they finally reworked Blade Storm.

[waynexx]

1 minute ago, waynexx said:

At least they finally reworked Blade Storm.

I don't even know if I'm being sarcastic here or not; I mean, I actually like the change and understand the philosophy behind it.. But, what!?

Edited November 26, 2016 by waynexx