Where's Warframe Going (I Finally Explain The "lack Of Depth" Comments)

[Argoms]

Before you read this, remember that this is a personal opinion. I believe that warframe is heading in a valid direction that can lead to success. However, it's really turning into the sort of game that I personally dislike. One of the main reasons that I'm posting this is something Steve said during a livestream: "Warframe is a game of consequences."

No. It's not. Warframe is in no way a game of consequences, and every update seems to reinforce the point that it is not a game of consequences. (In case you're wondering, yes, I do like actual games of consequences) By failing a mission, all I've done is not gained the rewards associated with the failure. Other than the loss of time (which only comes out to 5-10 minutes at most), there is no consequence in failure. It comes down to this- warframe is, currently, a typical MMO with shooting tacked on. It's built on grinding towards an objective with minimal influence from player skill. That's why I say it has no depth.

 

Maybe you (DE) are fine with Warframe the way it's going. Maybe it is meant to be just a casual game with a cool aesthetic. That's your choice to make, but the way that you talk about Warframe during the livestreams feels like you want it to be a lot more. Here are my suggestions.

 

***

 

A consequence is the result of a choice, so a game of consequence should be full of meaningful choices, right?

 

There are very few (I could probably argue less than three) meaningful choices in Warframe, even though there may seem to be at a glance. A meaningful choice being a decision where every option has its pros and cons, and nothing is completely objectively better than anything else. In a typical shooter game, this could be something like bolt action rifle vs fully automatic- do I want to do more damage and potentially kill my opponent in one hit, or do I want to sacrifice this for some backup shots in case I miss? It would not be say smg vs pistol- there would be no reason to pick the pistol unless you wanted to gimp yourself. A lot of warframe seems to lean towards the latter, though.

 

For example, the mod system. At first, it seems like an interesting way to customize your weapon- spend points to increase whichever attributes you find most important. However, this isn't really the case. Let's look at damage types.

 

We have three damaging elements (ice is only effective against shields, will touch on later)- fire, electricity, and armor piercing. Every damage type does varying damage on various enemies. That's all they really do. They in no way change the handling of a weapon, but simply change the amount of damage it does. As the saying goes, a game is  a series of interesting choices. Does an elemental damage mod represent a valid or interesting choice? No. There is always one objectively better option to use against an enemy no matter your playstyle, so you only really have one option (arguably more against enemies with multiple weaknesses). No choices there (on top of that, it's likely that a higher leveled gun could just slap every elemental mod on).

What would I change? I'd make every element have their own unique effects that change the feel of the weapons while giving them advantages over a faction while not making them arbitrarily worse against others. For example, fire. Fire is good at killing infested, right? How about having its damage done over time? A flaming enemy will also do damage to nearby enemies, with a chance for them to also catch fire (based on mod level?). This will keep fire as a good choice for killing infested, but because it's good at crowd control (and not just more damage per shot). I could still set grineer on fire, but the effect wouldn't be as devastating since they don't form large crowds.

Ice is an example of doing this badly- a status effect that is universally equally useful and doesn't in any way scale with damage. Ice is helpful against everything- enemies shoot more slowly, move more slowly, and attack more slowly. Again, not a particularly interesting choice we're making. On top of that, it doesn't scale with damage. A single +15% ice pellet from an otherwise unmodded strun slows an enemy as much as a meatshot from a fully modded hek. This reduces the cost/benefit weighing of an ice mod even more- for 4 points I can have all the benefits of the ice status effect instead of having to sacrifice 9 for the effect to be powerful.

 

Another problem with the current mods system is that mods that don't directly add to a weapon's damage (which is arguably the only useful measurement of a weapon, explained later) still compete for limited mod points/slots with the damage mods. Adding magazine size or zoom to your gun effectively decreases its damage per shot. While this sort of works when you balance everything on an even playing field without vertical progression, how are you meant to balance enemies for both the guy with +100%zoom instead of +100% damage? This problem is made even worse with rare mods like multishot that compound the effects of any other mods on your gun.

 

***

 

As I said before, player skill has a minimal influence on anything in this game. What few skills are needed are highly transferrable from any other shooter game (pointing and clicking, basically). Every frame essentially has a built in panic button activated by the 4 key that kills everything nearby instantly. How are you meant to have any sort of challenge in the game if this is the case? The only way to make the game harder if the player can potentially do this is to have enemies that stop the player from being able to do so in the first place. Yay, stunlocking.

 

Taking control away from the player isn't fun. However, it seems to be the only way that enemies can be any sort of threat to the player at the moment. There's a huge lack of interaction between player and enemy beyond simply applying bullets to each other's faces. One area that could be expanded on is blocking- I didn't know that blocking existed until I was a hundred hours in. It seems to have potential- enemies with blockable but otherwise massively damaging attacks, deflecting certain enemy projectiles back at groups of enemies, something more than just being a reload cancel key.

 

Another is wall running- it feels very clunky at the moment (to me, at least) and I only use it when I have to (certain areas of a map). I feel like this game wants me to be darting all over the place and raining bullets from above, only touching the ground for a quick melee kill, but what happens is that I run in the general direction of the enemy while spamming the left mouse button because that's more effective. I'm not saying that tradional cover-based shooting shouldn't exist, just that this being space ninjas, wallrunning should be a lot more integrated into combat (right now, it's basically punished since it's harder for you to hit things while moving, but not harder for them to hit you).

 

But overall, the game just currently doesn't get harder. Like another poster said- the difficulty curve is basically backwards. You start with a crappy gun and work your way up to a bullet-spewing death machine that sets enemies on fire, electrocutes them, and freezes them all at the same time. What do the enemies get? Bootleg versions of your guns and a walking pair of legs with a very telegraphed stomping attack avoided by jumping.

 

As I go to later planets, add enemies that have highly damaging, avoidable attacks with subtle telegraphing before hand. Make enemies that turn the floor into lava so that I can't touch it. Have enemies that shoot large, slow-moving projectiles to act as area denial. Let enemy snipers actually shoot me from long distances, but give them laser points so I know I'm being looked at. Just don't throw the same enemies at me while increasing their health and damage.

 

***

 

tl;dr: Choices currently aren't meaningful since there's always a best option, there should be a lot more skills in gameplay like wallrunning and blocking, the difficulty curve is backwards.

 

(Edited to make a few things clearer and fix some typos)

Edited July 5, 2013 by Argoms

[http404error]

This shows great insight into the gameplay and its potential improvement. I agree on all counts. Thanks for typing all that up!

[alocrius]

The game is clearly being developed with the lowest common denominator in mind.  Having maxed out what the game has to offer I have sadly realized this is a glorified Contra.  It has no more depth or strategy than any arcade shooter I've ever played.  But it looks good!  DE just don't have the huevos to fulfill the promise of what the art direction suggests.  The artist for this game is brilliant.  The creative director not so much.  Somebody probably has them on a short leash. Maybe it's not their fault.  Now that I have started playing other games again that actually cater to thinking peoples I don't feel so let down.

[TheHeraldXII]

+1, because that's all I have to give. I really want Warframe to gain some depth, all I have is novelty.

Specifically I mean building your character holds no real choices at all, you stack damage until you run out of points on weapons, admittedly 'frames are slightly better that way. Playing the game holds little player choice either, with gunplay doing most of the work, melee isn't high risk/high reward, it's just a risk, abilities basically just involve saving up to use the one instan-win button.

Edited July 3, 2013 by TheHeraldXII

[Phoenix86]

one of the few wall-of-text worth reading, +1

[Hixlysss]

A lot of good points. To be completely honest I believe the weapons need a work over, more "Ups and Downs" to the mods instead of it just being "I can either have an awesome clip size and rain death on enemies with bullets, or have massive damage to kill everything in one shot" which everyone us always going to choose the latter because reasons.

 

Each of the damage boosting mods should have an obvious draw back, like having a fire mod on a gun would make it next to useless against certain enemies, or perhaps even reduce clip size. Armor piercing would do the same, except do less damage to unarmored targets. I'd also like it so only two elemental mods could be equipped at a time, like either Armor Piercing and Fire, or Fire and ice, Electrical and Serration.

 

I'd also like to see the mod slot split up a bit between "Utility" mods and "Buff" mods. A utility mod would be the extended mag, more ammo pool, fire rate, ect. Boosts would be the damage mods and multi-shot type mods.

 

Eagle Eye is a neat little mod. But who is going to use that over say...a maxed out serration when Serration has 0 drawbacks.

[Argoms]

A lot of good points. To be completely honest I believe the weapons need a work over, more "Ups and Downs" to the mods instead of it just being "I can either have an awesome clip size and rain death on enemies with bullets, or have massive damage to kill everything in one shot" which everyone us always going to choose the latter because reasons.

 

Each of the damage boosting mods should have an obvious draw back, like having a fire mod on a gun would make it next to useless against certain enemies, or perhaps even reduce clip size. Armor piercing would do the same, except do less damage to unarmored targets. I'd also like it so only two elemental mods could be equipped at a time, like either Armor Piercing and Fire, or Fire and ice, Electrical and Serration.

 

I'd also like to see the mod slot split up a bit between "Utility" mods and "Buff" mods. A utility mod would be the extended mag, more ammo pool, fire rate, ect. Boosts would be the damage mods and multi-shot type mods.

 

Eagle Eye is a neat little mod. But who is going to use that over say...a maxed out serration when Serration has 0 drawbacks.

I agree that weapons need an overhaul, but it seems like DE has backed themselves into a corner here. They have a release date,

microtransactions, and a steam release, so trying to change something so integral to the game at this point would be tough.

 

What I'd like to see weapons wise is diminishing returns on damage mod benefits and increasing returns on utility mod benefits per level. Additionally, weapon base damage should scale with level, if at all (in my ideal game, there'd be almost no inflation of damage/health), or you get back into the false choice of damage vs utility.

[General-Griffin]

I agree, I feel that if we also added unique negatives to the elements it would stop players from using all three. If we managed to make the debuffs a kind of triangle if you will then each one would add a buff and be de-buffed by the others if you equip more than one elemental BUT if you use all three the damage would still be there so it only effects the extras of each elemental.

 

Basically if you have all three on you get all the damage but none of the stuns that come with it as they cancel each other out or something...I don't know you work it out.

[Azure_Kytia]

I agree, I feel that if we also added unique negatives to the elements it would stop players from using all three. If we managed to make the debuffs a kind of triangle if you will then each one would add a buff and be de-buffed by the others if you equip more than one elemental BUT if you use all three the damage would still be there so it only effects the extras of each elemental.

 

Basically if you have all three on you get all the damage but none of the stuns that come with it as they cancel each other out or something...I don't know you work it out.

 

Yeah, nah. The only people that would trouble is low to medium progress players. I'm in favour of limiting the elemental mods to Armour Piercing and 1 other element, simply because adding fire to ice may as well make a steam gun, and currently stacking all elements diminishes any "tactical" decisions you have to make regarding your loadout, since you can whack them all in as it is.

 

By limiting the elemental damage types you can equip at once, you can actually have some reason to team up at a later rank or level, as players go out to a mission ready to deal with a variety of enemy types.

 

But hey.

[Argoms]

I'd like elements to take a percentage of your damage, instead of adding additional damage. You could theoretically make a gun that deals split fire and electrical damage for example, but it won't do any more damage than a regular gun unless the enemy has those specific weaknesses. Since most of the time enemies are weak to one but resistant to another, splitting between elements would be a bad idea most of the time, but still possible.

[General-Griffin]

Yeah, nah. The only people that would trouble is low to medium progress players. I'm in favour of limiting the elemental mods to Armour Piercing and 1 other element, simply because adding fire to ice may as well make a steam gun, and currently stacking all elements diminishes any "tactical" decisions you have to make regarding your loadout, since you can whack them all in as it is.

 

By limiting the elemental damage types you can equip at once, you can actually have some reason to team up at a later rank or level, as players go out to a mission ready to deal with a variety of enemy types.

 

But hey.

 

Yeah to be fair.

[notionphil]

Amazing insight into the core gameplay mechanics - your specifics are (intentionally) hazy, but the message is perfectly on key. Few choices, fewer consequences.

 

I would love to have to actually make choices instead of 'correctly modding' my weapons - or forma'ing them into oblivion so that there is no more wrong way.

[Rompido]

good read! +1

 

I'm 100% with you. there is no real "end game" but as said in the past by the Dev's all content out right now is just 'farm content"  same concept of having to run low and high level dungeons for gear to become "raid ready" I'm still excited about this "end game" content.

[http404error]

I'd like elements to take a percentage of your damage, instead of adding additional damage. You could theoretically make a gun that deals split fire and electrical damage for example, but it won't do any more damage than a regular gun unless the enemy has those specific weaknesses. Since most of the time enemies are weak to one but resistant to another, splitting between elements would be a bad idea most of the time, but still possible.

 

This right here is my favorite idea. Hopefully most enemies would be weaker towards elements than they are towards normal damage so elemental mods usually provide a buff. This would also allow the mod cost of elemental mods to be lowered.

 

In fact, this is how I thought elemental damage worked when I first started out.

[Onbashira]

I'd like elements to take a percentage of your damage, instead of adding additional damage. You could theoretically make a gun that deals split fire and electrical damage for example, but it won't do any more damage than a regular gun unless the enemy has those specific weaknesses. Since most of the time enemies are weak to one but resistant to another, splitting between elements would be a bad idea most of the time, but still possible.

Then no one would use element mods.  With scaling resistances it would always be safer to simply stick to normal damage.  Corpus take less than 100% electric damage around level 70

[Argoms]

Then no one would use element mods.  With scaling resistances it would always be safer to simply stick to normal damage.  Corpus take less than 100% electric damage around level 70

I'm guessing you missed the part where I said not to make enemies more bullet spongey and damaging as they level?

 

The current level system is bad design. You can't build good mechanics on a bad foundation.

[LordLimberjackManslayer]

Bumping because this game desperately needs some changes to the core gameplay. At the moment, Skyrim has more depth in it's gameplay, and that's saying something.

 

Also,

 

Each of the damage boosting mods should have an obvious draw back, like having a fire mod on a gun would make it next to useless against certain enemies, or perhaps even reduce clip size. Armor piercing would do the same, except do less damage to unarmored targets. I'd also like it so only two elemental mods could be equipped at a time, like either Armor Piercing and Fire, or Fire and ice, Electrical and Serration.

 

Definitely agree with each having drawbacks, since that's the key to having a variety in gameplay while still retaining a balance.

 

 

 

What I'd like to see weapons wise is diminishing returns on damage mod benefits and increasing returns on utility mod benefits per level. Additionally, weapon base damage should scale with level, if at all (in my ideal game, there'd be almost no inflation of damage/health), or you get back into the false choice of damage vs utility.

 

I don't think changing the way the mods scale with ranks is a good solution. All it does is balance out the cost-effectiveness per rank for what we currently have, but the problem is what we have right now is S#&$ in terms of gameplay mechanics. I mean, we have damage mods with zero drawbacks that completely overshadow the utility mods. Imo, we should just do away with anything that gives flat upgrades to stats, but I doubt that'll happen.

 

Also, if we have a mod system where there are no direct upgrades to stats but rather side-grades that can indirectly make me more powerful by changing some aspect of my gameplay (enemies attack slower in a certain radius around me, projectiles have a higher velocity, etc.), like Eagle Eye or melee reach do, then I totally agree with upgrading a weapon's base stats as it levels up, but only if it's a minor boon.

Edited July 5, 2013 by Bazlebib

[Makaveli61]

Great General Support. Hope De Read this. sign+1.

[gell]

I disagree with most points aside from the very last one, where enemies should become harder due to more interesting attacks, and not bullet sponges. You used this thread as more of a sound piece for your qualms as opposed to talking about WF not being a game of consequence. Try to put some headers or organize your thoughts better if you're going to be jumping all over the place without leading back to your original subject.

 

Wall running shouldn't necessarily make killing stronger. It's for mobility, not for increasing damage. Also, if you've never done a running slide to front flip over an enemy's head and ground pounded him and his group, then too bad. It's useful, fun, and it increases my choices as a player. I don't just have to run and gun at guys, nor would that be the most beneficial. It's beneficial for me to flip into a group to knock them all down.

 

Damage types aren't just damage types in WF. Granted enemies do have vulnerabilities and resistances to each element type, but rather than making them the usual archetypes for these things, they're more sensible. I love freeze mods and use them on all my weapons because slowing the enemy is great. I enjoy that, and it makes my guns better. I don't care if it's unranked or max level. I like freeze mods for slowing enemies. If you want to see a game that really has damage types per enemy type, then play Spiral Knights. The 3 damage types in that game are all extremely obvious when you play. WF has a mix of this, but it's not dead set on keeping you from using anything. Armor piercing is its own thing, and while it may count as an element, it has specific purpose beyond just being an anti-Grineer element (e.g. powerfists don't have armor to pierce, and Corpus blockheads have thick armor). Your point about ice is true, but it's good that it's this way. Ice is good vs everything. DE should work to make them all effective in some way, vs everything. Shock should interrupt, even zap others maybe. Fire could spread, but I'm usually not a fan of this in games that do it. It tends to make fire way OP and then any balancing attempts make it incredibly weak. Fire has a unique hit reaction on both Grineer and most Corpus though, so it does have utility as well. it's not just for infested; it's an interrupt.

 

I really disagree that the non-damage mods shouldn't share the same space as damage increasing ones. Their utility is a good choice to have, and why they are based on preference. If your preference is damage and you don't see benefit in using utility mods, then that's up to you. But I do prefer putting on utitlity mods and I do not feel like I'm really hurting the weapon's damage in favor of a few utility mods. I don't need to min and max every weapon so it does the utmost damage when most of the game doesn't require it (at the moment, only part that does is maybe super high level defense missions).

 

Also, why diminish returns on damage mods and increase returns on utility? The mods are fine right now. It takes forever to get Serration up. I would hate it if the last 5 levels went up by a total of 10%. If the cost to upgrade was linear, maybe I'd agree about the damage mods, but it's not linear. As for utility, they are still useful with every level. If DE were to implement your suggestion, they'd likely have to balance so that the first few levels of a utility mod felt awful and only become useful at max level, because max level is always something to balance for. So why increase returns? What does that solve?

 

I think you came from the right place with your initial criticism though, and I agree on the whole, but your points really dragged down your message. DE's biggest mistake is probably giving the players so much to wish on. They added a lot of stuff but not much of it is fleshed out, so when they give us elements, we want those elements to do more. When they give us blocking, we want blocking to feel like other games (deflecting projectiles back, countering an attack, etc). They have a lot of stuff in this game that is... well it's really mostly alpha state, even if they say the game is in beta. But this is where we play our part, since it's in "beta." We tell them how these things are going and where to take them. They won't please everyone, but we know they read the feedback, so we should keep voicing it.

 

But if I were at DE, I wouldn't have done much based on your post. It's all over the place.

Edited July 5, 2013 by gell

[Kn0xxPT]

I think, DE needs a new game director and a person that can prioritize some game mechanics, and knows what it needs to be done!

Like Naoki Yoshida made with the lost FFXIV Online

[TheHeraldXII]

-snip-

The point I believe you're missing throughout your talk about the mod system is that all weapon mods, in the end, simply increase damage. Attack speed increases DPS at the expense of ammo efficiency, +magsize increases damage per mag, +ammo reserve increases maximum potential damage and elemental mods do all of that in one mod, and increase ammo efficiency to boot. The current mod system is a crock, and the "utility" mods don't actually provide utility, besides a few of the new mods like Thunderbolt, Reach and the +zoom mods.

The issue that he brought up with the damage mods is also that they don't do anything interesting, they're just damage buffs, and you equip every one you can, not a specific counter. This is kinda strange seeing as the enemies have elemental weaknesses. I mean, if there's no compelling reason not to take every damage mod, why give enemies different resistances? You pretty much always have the thing their weak against as well as the thing they're most resistant too, so the damage tends to even out.

I don't exactly have any wonderfix that I can suggest for weapon mods, but I feel like you should only be able to equip one of the fire-ice-lightning mods at any time and that they should have varied effects. Lightning stuns certain enemies, fire deals DoT,  ice keeps doing it's thing.

[chill1ray]

Yeah, nah. The only people that would trouble is low to medium progress players. I'm in favour of limiting the elemental mods to Armour Piercing and 1 other element, simply because adding fire to ice may as well make a steam gun, and currently stacking all elements diminishes any "tactical" decisions you have to make regarding your loadout, since you can whack them all in as it is.

 

By limiting the elemental damage types you can equip at once, you can actually have some reason to team up at a later rank or level, as players go out to a mission ready to deal with a variety of enemy types.

 

But hey.

Actually that is an interesting idea !!!

 

What if mixing elemental mods actually created a unique effect  based on combination!!

 

Example,  fire mod[a]{lvl} + ice mod{lvl} = N {effect]  OR  Ice mod[a]{lvl} + Lightning mod{lvl} = N {effect}

[i6n0r4n7e-2.0]

Yeah, nah. The only people that would trouble is low to medium progress players. I'm in favour of limiting the elemental mods to Armour Piercing and 1 other element, simply because adding fire to ice may as well make a steam gun, and currently stacking all elements diminishes any "tactical" decisions you have to make regarding your loadout, since you can whack them all in as it is.

 

By limiting the elemental damage types you can equip at once, you can actually have some reason to team up at a later rank or level, as players go out to a mission ready to deal with a variety of enemy types.

 

But hey.

+1

 

The mods on weapons should have pros and cons, because giving only pros is not funny at all. In other games, when you add a fire damage for example, it have a negative impact in recoil or bullet speed.

Imagine to have a hollow bullet for better penetration, it will have pros against un-armored units, but cons on armored.

 

Personaly i like the realism, the weapons have recoil that must be compensated to be accurate, but by the other hand we have players that dont like the realism, that prefers co2 gunw with no recoil.

[gell]

The point I believe you're missing throughout your talk about the mod system is that all weapon mods, in the end, simply increase damage. Attack speed increases DPS at the expense of ammo efficiency, +magsize increases damage per mag, +ammo reserve increases maximum potential damage and elemental mods do all of that in one mod, and increase ammo efficiency to boot. The current mod system is a crock, and the "utility" mods don't actually provide utility, besides a few of the new mods like Thunderbolt, Reach and the +zoom mods.

 

I didn't miss that point, but I perhaps need to address it better.

 

I don't put all those mods into my weapons. While many of them do effectively increase damage, I feel that they provide other things as well (multishot not included; it's silly and needs to go, even with everyone loving multishot because it's more dmg). e.g. I add fire rate to weapons that I think are too slow. I don't add them to weapons that are fast because I don't need to run out of ammo faster on a grakata. I don't add magazine capacity to do more damage; I add it to fix weapons that I feel have too small a capacity. I realize that by doing this, I'm not min and maxing yet again, but I don't care because I already choose to use utility mods. If you choose to use all the damage increasing mods because you value increasing damage over all else, that's your prerogative, but I don't find that to be a broken system. DE could limit it and I wouldn't mind though, and in doing so could possibly appease the OP and anyone who agrees. 4 "damage" mods, 4 "utility" mods.

 

As for your question about why not stick all the elemental mods in? I don't have space for all of them with the utility mods I use. Of course, I do think DE should release more utility mods, and here we can help them by actually suggesting some. It's hard to take criticisms and not have anything to springboard from, so it's nice if you can suggest things as well. I know you said you don't have ideas on how to fix it, but you did already suggest maybe limiting elemental mods. Think of more and suggest them.

 

Since I said I don't have a problem with the system, I will just make utility mod suggestions, which I think can be enough to entice players to take out at least a few "damage" mods. But again, to each his own. I personally love the reach mod for melee weapons, and it doesn't inherently increase damage. I choose to use it, but it may not be for some people. The reason why you might choose it too is because it's a utility mod you feel is useful, as all utility mods should potentially be.

 

- reduced recoil

- reduced spread

- bullet ricochet (for people who are terrible at aim, see Deathtrap's ability in Borderlands 2)

- random chance a reloaded clip has double ammo

- bullet spread mods? Could make shotties shoot in a line, ring, stream, swirl, or other pattern

- chance for explosions, similar to the existing arrow mod

- make hits return a percentage as health, energy, or more ammo (rewards accuracy)

 

And beyond those, as the above person mentioned, you can also give pros and cons to each mod, not just pros. Since they're mods though, they need to be more pro than con, not just even. +10% dmg, +5% recoil. They could be more creative and make a mod that increases fire rate but causes overheat when sustained for too long.

All the above, and the current mod system doesn't need to change at all. DE is still fleshing things out, so I'll give it time.

[Argoms]

On elemental effects:

My suggestions-

Fire: aoe damage over time (explained in OP)

AP: Pierces enemies (worse against infested because they're all different heights/weakspot locations- where do you aim? I suppose a damage modifier may be justified here because there's a realistic reason :/)

Electricity: Causes enemies to move much more quickly and erratically, throwing off their aim (bad against infested because you don't really need to aim melee, and they'll run faster towards you)

Ice: Scales with damage

 

All elements: replace normal damage instead of adding it.

 

On utility mods: The problem, as it stands, is that there is no utility. There is never a reason to do anything with your weapon except kill your enemy faster.
 

For example, in counter strike (when you don't have loads of cash), you have a choice between buying a good weapon or a not-so good weapon along with grenades for purposes like area denial, delaying enemies, or distracting them. Additionally, you could buy a defuse kit to save precious time, since defuses often come down to seconds before the explosion.

 

These choices don't exist in warframe. There is nothing to do except for killing enemies, and we're already absurdly good at it. It's like if you removed bomb planting/defusing in counter strike- nobody would buy a kit or grenades because you no longer have to hold or take an objective. If we want utility, we need to add some sort of secondary objective(s) that the utility helps us with.

 

 

+1

 

The mods on weapons should have pros and cons, because giving only pros is not funny at all. In other games, when you add a fire damage for example, it have a negative impact in recoil or bullet speed.

Imagine to have a hollow bullet for better penetration, it will have pros against un-armored units, but cons on armored.

 

Personaly i like the realism, the weapons have recoil that must be compensated to be accurate, but by the other hand we have players that dont like the realism, that prefers co2 gunw with no recoil.

 

A pros-only mods system could work because you only have a limited amount of points to spend (in a well-designed system, not what we have now). Every point you put into damage is a point that you didn't put into recoil or reload time, for example. If the cost of every pro is properly balanced (which currently it isn't), you don't need to add cons to mods because the cost is enough of a price.

 

Hollow points are effectively our normal ammunition, with armor piercing elemental damage being FMJ rounds in the game as it stands. However, this doesn't change the feel of your weapon at all (see: entire bit about elemental damage being false choice in OP), so it doesn't add any sort of variety other than flat damage.

 

In real life, people don't compensate for recoil, they fire in bursts/single shots and then line up their sights again. I know what you mean though- something like counter strike's recoil patterns that you can learn and compensate for versus call of duty recoil which is completely randomized and lowers the skill ceiling.

 

Unfortunately, the people in charge of gameplay mechanics seem to want to lower the skill ceiling as much as possible, so we're going to be stuck with the cod-recoil. Mag's skills were changed to aoe because apparently it was hard to aim in the heat of battle for example, even though every complaint was because the skills were buggy and overall useless even when they did take effect.

 

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GIANT EDIT: Didn't see gell's post. Here's the reply:
Warframe being a game of consequences means that you should have choices and these choices should have consequences. I spend the first half of the post explaining why no, you don't actually have choices, so there can't be any consequences.

I never said wallrunning should make killing stronger (dafuq?). I said there should be more mobility in combat because this is space ninjas and not spec ops. A running front flip over and enemy's head is no more effective than just jumping on the spot and using a ground attack.

Damage types are just damage types in warfare. Just like spiral knights, every damage type just deals more or less damage to certain enemies. The weaknesses and resistances are just less dramatic. Why would I ever use electricity over fire against infested? Fire over electricity against corpus?
The difference in weapons of this game compared to spiral knights is that while spiral knights has you upgrading your brandish to either combuster or voltedge, warfareme has you adding either a hellfire or stormbringer mod to your cronus. It's the same thing with a different result (and don't get technical with me on how combuster/voltedge do the same damage type and only do different status effects, I know.)

Your reasoning on freeze mods seems to literally be "It's good because I like it". You put it on every gun because you feel your gun is better with it than without in every situation, which defeats the point of a mod system. If you feel like that about freeze, the game would be exactly the same to you just having a level cap four levels lower and adding freeze effects to every weapon without requiring a mod. It's a false choice, and may as well not exist then (the decision of whether or not to put a freeze mod on).

The fire/electricity panic effects are pretty worthless unless you have a habit of shooting every enemy once and then going back around again with your low damage-per bullet weapon. From my observations over thousands of hours of various games involving combat, people shoot things until they die.

Non damage mods sharing space comment isn't a reply to me, so I'll skip over that.

Again, the mods are not fine right now. The entire system and its cost/benefit ratio is broken, and isn't this beta? Or is it suddenly not a beta now that being beta is a reason to do work instead of putting it off?
Why is max level the only thing to balance for? If that's the case, then mod points don't exist because apparently they're infinite. Balance the cost to the benefit, don't ignore a large portion of the cost.
Utility mods being things like zoom (there's a general lack of utility currently too) and not reload time, in case I haven't made that clear. Reload time increases sustained dps, magazine capacity burst dps. The numbers could use fixing, but I wouldn't consider them utility.

The game is development-wise, in alpha, but it's pretending to be near finished through spreading any existing gameplay extremely thin and even has a release date.

This is a post explaining things to players. What remaining faith I have in DE's competence tells me that every single decision I call a flaw is an intentional decision because the goal is a skinner box and not something genuinely fun.

Edited July 5, 2013 by Argoms