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Concepts Of Mine: Consumables, Merchant, Gambler And Void 'cause I Like That


K_Shiro
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Of course I'm not a member of the Design Council (I didn't have that money) but I have ideas just as everybody else does. I still think it's better to write them here instead of bombing DE with them in every topic I get to post in.
So I gathered an overview of my old posts so they are easier to digest - and so I can link them when necessary :D

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

Consumables and the Void:

[Last edited on 2014.03.18.]

The reward pool, be it Void or Derelict, maybe just a simple mission, is getting more and more diluted, chaotic thus disappointing more and more players as new items are added to it. We have seen DE do their best to provide us with a sense of attainable goal while still keeping us from simply getting everything on first try so the game stays rewarding and "challenging" at the same time. If the rewards were easy to obtain, we would play but only for a little while, but the current situation is tipped towards the other side where "everything" should be obtainable but in truth there are so many thing you hardly get what you want and thus it kills the mood, people without "nolifer" tendencies complain and leave. Hell, even some nolifers have left.

 

I believe the problem hails from the fact that if you don't get your reward from the Void (Derelict, etc.) you usually don't get ANYTHING useful. Nothing at all. Sometimes a forma (I have 62 unused blueprints...) which can be useful but in fact it feels like it's not on the "same level" as the prime parts etc. In fact, several mission types provide you with rewards that seem too... diverse. The usual Survival 2500 credit reward vs prime parts or T3 keys comparison is a kinda obvious example.

 

Anyways, if the void runs were more profitable to begin with, more would play them, regardless of them getting, already possessing or still farming the prime parts. If you can't get your stuff but still walk away well rewarded it sure feels less annoying. The recent addition (and damnation) of Rhino Prime sure kicked me in the head, I really don't know if I want to see another T3 survival for a month or 2...

Yes, Trading is a great way to solve the problem partially - the part where you don't get your stuff. You can get it through trading but the problem is that you either have to offer platinum or something valuable in return. In first case it means some people might outright skip the "play the void missions" part and simply buy the stuff. Sure that might work for them but I doubt this game should end up being an AHCraft as some before it. In latter case you most likely don't find such valuables while farming the new prime parts since at that point most people already have the previous set and you can't trade forma (and keys are plain not worth trading most of the time).

 

Anyways, I guess I should end the lengthy introduction and get to the point - my ideas on how to make the Void (etc.) missions more appealing to players.

 

First of all, Void and Derelict missions have a very limited Resource palette thus they are rarely accessed for Resource Farming purposes. Yes, the Derelict Assassination is valued for the Orokin Cells but apart from that... anyone else who has millions of Nano Spores already? Or Alloy Plates? I think Void missions should provide random resource drops, their common:uncommon:rare ratio tiered to their own rank:

T1 - 30:15:1

T2 - 20:10:1

T3 - 10:5:1

 

Next on the line is that I've noticed that most players flat out ignore lockers and even the times when people hunted destructible containers, mostly those in Challenge/Parkour rooms, have passed now. Those lockers, containers could be great and those rooms are potentially cool ways to distribute rare stuff.

 

Defense and Survival missions are obviously not ones to be touched too much because they are capable of delivering multiple parts and the map itself isn't exactly freely explorable - you cannot parkour while running out of time too much, etc. Changes I would make to these:

- Reward pool should only contain prime parts, and a "Consolation/random prize pack"(see consolation/random prize pack a bit lower in this article).

- The chances for higher level stuff should raise according to the time spent in the mission, eventually making "common" stuff "rare" in the drop list.

- Resources (like Orokin Cell) or credits packs should not be included among the rewards, they should drop normally as mentioned above (credit packs might come from "consolation/random prize packs", read about it later on) .

- Defense missions are not particularly easier to complete than Survivals (especially with the weakend Frost's globe) so I see no reason for giving the player only last reward offered.

 

As for other void mission types:

- Remove Prime parts from Mission end rewards. Void missions rewards can only be "Consolation/random prize packs" (see later), forma or Prime Blueprints (not parts, main blueprints).

- Spawn challenge/parkour rooms in quantity equal the Tier of the mission, one of every "rank", starting from 1 (So a T1 mission has one rank1 room, a T2 has a rank1 and a rank2 room, etc.). Rank of room determines the quality (tier) of reward for completing it.

- Make prime parts drop from challenge/parkour rooms, maybe from a locked vault at the end that you have to hack first. No Cipher and only 1 try per player is allowed.

- Other lockers and containers might be present just like before both in and out of these rooms, but not containing prime parts, those are only in the Final Treasure Chest :)

- Containers, lockers and enemies throughout the map should drop the already mentioned resources and a rare "consolation/random prize pack" (see in just a few thousand more lines).

 

Now to the part about making the void missions more rewarding even if you don't get what you want...

If the Void missions would become a source for some valuable loot that is nearly guaranteed to drop from them they would be hot. Of course that loot must not be "too valuable" since a very effective thing in large quantity can be a problem. So, what is there which is needed in great quantities but still valuable? Consumables. Things that are expended during your play time. They can be cool but you will use them up and so you will need them again, thus you will farm them again.

 

Consumables like
- health or energy regen (similar to the artifacts but stronger for a limited time - for example over 30 seconds you get 5 hp/sec)
- lockpicks to open 1-5 locked containers per pick (could use the current "puzzle" mechanic to make it more exciting :)
- temporary pickup radius bonuses (like you get all pickups in a 50meters circle for 5 minutes)

- timed resistance bonuses to counter stuff like frozen/half shield maps (like 3minute immunity to a specific enviromental effect - sounds better for me than constantly using a mod for that purpose) maybe overall damage restance like 20% damage absorbtion for 1min or for X dmg

- damage bonus for 1min
- attack speed bonus for 1min
- temporary max energy bonus (like 300 but only for 5min)
- stealth generator (30 seconds of stealth for anyone or until broken by attacking/attacked)
- X-ray vision - seeing enemies (and/or drops) for 5min through walls like when using Scanner
- bigger health and shield packs
- 10 sec displacement - invulnerable but cannot affect entities

- sentinel repair kit that heals your party's sentinels for X health points.

- sentinel replacement parts that reassembles your destroyed sentinel.
- rifle/sniper/shotgun or pistol ammo packs providing munitions for whole team on consumption
- placable autoturret that cannot move - lives 1min and shoots everything that isn't wearing pink shorts
- grenades (HE, Cluster/AntiArmor, EMP, incendiary, cryo, poison gas, stun/knockback/ragdoll like slide attack kogake etc.)
- throwing spear, 5 pieces per pack etc.
- teleportation marker - it comes in pairs, you put down the arrival marker first then either teleport there on next activation or put down a second marker for anyone to use... maybe even make it 2-way and active for 5 min or so making farming faster, like Nova's wormhole, only it's a bit better but costs credits/resources (or plat if you buy it instead of building it) as any consumable
- steroids, increased stamina regeneration for 5min or complete immunity to stamina drain for 10seconds
- key that for 15seconds, opens a gate to Hell
- expandable turrets, basically you activate it and you put down a turret that cannot move from that location, has limited ammo/energy/time (there could be different turrets, flamers, autoguns, shield generators like a weak snowglobe that has health but heals overtime even after getting down to zero, one that amplifies tenno damage if close, or dampens enemy speed/damage similarly, etc. - idea born from here https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/110492-suggestion-turret-sentinel/#entry1280153 originally)
Whatever.
Some/most of these partially exist within the game already so implementing them shouldn't be too time consuming while they could provide a nice boost to anyone and maybe even open up a new market for platinum. Continously needed as these are consumables, you ought to buy new ones at some point. This could go well with harder maps - making it possible to raise the bar even higher.

 

As for how to put them into the game - instead of simply making them a random drop as mods, etc. I would use a Consolation/random prize pack to distribute them alongside a few more essentials.

 

This package contains 3 things that are chosen one-by-one from a reward pool, may contain multiple instances of the same type but not the exact same (except credits, those can only appear once per pack):

- Common/unc/rare mods with 30/15/5% chance.

- Extra credit sum, 7500 credit/tier of mission, 30% chance.

- 30% chance to get a consumable (if possible I would tier consumables like mods)

- 10% chance to get something... nice. Special bps that can only be obtained from these packs, forma, void keys, maybe mods. Not highly powered or rare mods but a family of mods only obtainable through this package. Like elemental mods for Warframe that slightly alter their powers - a flaming or viral Snow globe is always nice (of course I know because of the needed effects this would need brutal amounts of time but at least let it be a dream of mine for now...).

 

Already mentioned above that I would give Prime blueprints, forma and this pack as void mission rewards.

T1 missions:

15% Prime BP

15% Complete Forma

65% Consolation/random prize pack

5% 2 Consolation/random prize packs

 

T2 missions:

25% Prime BP

25% Complete Forma

40% Consolation prize

10% 2 Consolation/random prize packs

 

T3 missions:

30% Prime BP

30% Complete Forma

30% Consolation/random prize pack

10% 2 Consolation/random prize packs

 

So, kinda like this. This way void mission would be played instead rushed, and while the drop quantity and quality of Prime stuff would be higher, to obtain them you would have to take your time playing the mission (much more so than now) and even complete a challenge run that might even fail - pretty well balanced I would say and quite a bit more fun than doing missions in a fast succession just to get nothing useful at all at the end. Also, with all the stuff and

 

Merchant:
[Last edited on 2014.03.18.]

Though after I've first detailed this idea here, Trading and Trading Kiosks were implemented into the game, also DE showed us their plans of the Space Station Hubs, preferably containing marketplaces too. I have no idea how they will play this card but I have high hopes. Until that is implemented, here is my revised idea of the Merchant.

 

The Merchant would be like some form of blackmarket, where you can find some generic stuff and special items or items from the normal Market but with a twist.

 

By the original idea I wanted it to be put in the dojo, because I wanted it to be a more clan based thing, both because upgrading it could get the members together for a bit and also appeal to those visiting your dojo. A HUB version can be better in terms of global costs - it could behave like a stockmarket, if someone buys a lot of a certain item that item's cost goes up. Latter can work in a clan too actually but obviously it's more agressive on a global or territorial scale, within a HUB. You could actually travel to different planets in hopes of nailing a really good deal:D

 

So, she could sell:
- A resource pack, preferably themed "after" a planet. It would be like getting 3 normal drops on a mission on that planet, you pay for it instead of goind there and farming it yourself. The cost should be above/around 3000 credits so it actually costs a lot to even have a steep chance to get some rare stuff like an Orokin Cell or whatnot. Also the resource packs should rotate, thus not all of them would be always availible, maybe you can choose from 2 or 3 types a week.
- Weapon, maybe even frame blueprints and parts, with a "blackmarket" tag to them. These could be used in the making of their normal counterpart (even being managed as one in your profile stats) but if you use such a part or bp you would have a chance (dependant on how many parts are from the Blackmarket) for the weapon to have a "kink" of sorts. This could include changed stats (positive and negative, mostly balanced out, similarly to corrupt mods), extra or missing polarities, in extreme cases having different element (like a freezing Ignis :D - okay, that guy is clan special but you get it). Unique stats could be added to them, like "chance to be jammed" where you have to reload to be able to fire again, "ammo leak" which causes the weapon to occasionally consume 2 ammo instead of one or "timewarp" where your weapon has a chance to not use an ammo during a shot... etc. Would be nice if she had "merchant only" stuff too, similar to Vauban that can only be obtained through alerts.
- Mods or random mod packs, common, uncommon, rare... it would be especially nice to have mods exclusive to her.
- Consumables.

- Consumable pack of 3 random pieces from a certain type - cheaper than buying them alone but more risky of course. Possible "miss" item included, joke stuff, like pink shorts.
- Dojo stuff, like decoration blueprints. Maybe dojo styles. For platinum even.
- Crosshair types maybe...

The Merchant would have a special sale ongoing all the time, a random item that's only availible for set time, like an alert (24 hours or so?). It would be unique to player, everyone would have a different sale at the Merchant's. If you don't like the current item on sale you could spend some platinum to force the ending of the current sale for yourself and the beginning of the next for 5 plat that doubles every time you do this. After a full 24 hour sale passes, the plat cost resets to 5.

I would make the item on sale very random, to really extreme extents. Ranging from a simple sentinel mod for credits, a certain palette (maybe one that was for sale during an event, for credits too - like the Halloween/Valentine), to a Catalyst. Preferably all of them purchasable through credits and plat too though I wouldn't mind multiple instances of the same thing - like you might find the Standard color palette for 1,000,000 credits as a Special Sale but next day you might get a Sale of Standard color palette for 25-75% plat price. Maybe you could even have Platinum Coupon as a special sale, preferably ranging from 5% to 75% with the cost changing accordingly (a plat coupon for platinum might be nice too :D). You get it, nearly everything could appear, of course most of the time you would get basic stuff - if the Merchant would be included in the Dojo, it would be nice if the clan could upgrade it and that would determine the quality of possible special sales.

 

- Merchant level 1: 5 common items for sale, and as a special sale, 1 common item with better cost, changing every 4 days.
- Merchant level 2: 5 common items for sale, and as a special sale,1 common item with better cost or uncommon item, changing every 3 days.
- Merchant level 3: 5 common, uncommon items for sale, and as a special sale,1 common or uncommon item with better cost or rare item, changing every 2 days.
- Merchant level 4: 5 common, uncommon or rare items for sale, and as a special sale,1 common, uncommon or rare item with better cost, changing every day.

 

Thus though you would get a chance to get something extremely good stuff as Special Sale if you upgrade your Merchant it still doesn't mean all your sales would be cool. The RNG gods would run amok within this I believe but hell, it would be still fun and a way to distribute extreme stuff. Maybe even Darvo's deal could move to the Blackmarket. Though I originally imagined the Merchant to be a woman (instead of always getting the fat guy we see in RPGs :D) it wouldn't be that bad to have Darvo pose as such instead (I mean pose as our merchant...).

 

Gambler:
[Last edited on 2014.03.18.]

With the introduction of Transmutation, this idea has become somewhat obsolete - this is how I've originally detailed it:

"Introducing the Gambler to the dojo might solve the "i have so many useless mods" problem as I already reached a state where most mods are only good as fusion cores or worse as they make it tedious to find those I need and I don't have the will to sell 32 pages of pistol mods for that meager credit cost... nice thing I'm writing this 'cause saying this in one breath might be dangerous.

We could give 3-5 mods to the gambler and he would give a random one from the same rarity of the ones we gave (on average, so 1 rare card and 4 common would still yield a common one) and occasionally a super rare card that's only obtainable at the Gambler's.
For better chances or to raise the rarity of the next earned mod, platinum could be introduced.
Maybe other things could be exchanged and earned too - like random bps give random bp or by some chance something completely different, like a 10%off platinum coupon or a consumable, resource, part, etc.
"

 

Anyways, the current Transumation is nice and all - but I believe it is too shallow. As you can see in the original idea, I had hoped that not only mods will be availible for "gamble" but other things too, including Blueprints. I still think that besides mods, it would be interesting to allow the Transmutation (I still like the name gambling more though) of Blueprints, Resources, Keys even. Preferably prividing a chance to obtain rare things that cannot be obtained in any other way than Transmutation. Also it would be VERY nice to have some system behind the Transmutation procedure instead of the usual one - like you can only get a mod from the Polarity/Rarity/Type included in the Transmutation - if you only mutate sentinel mods, you can only get a sentinel mod.

 

Again, it might be too much to ask for but I believe it would be awesome to be able to use melee blueprints and fire based mods to get some fire based melee weapon blueprint...

 

Simulation room

[Last edited on 2014.03.18.]

The Simulatiom room would be a room in the dojo, basically similar to the StarTrek series's holodeck or maybe even more so to the Matrix's training programs. You could opt to practice a mastery test completed or failed in the past. It can be your currently "active" one if you have played it at least once already or set up a controlled situation through some basic options:

- Theme: Planet name, orokin tower or derelict. The map would be a very simple one, mainly just an arena but graphically themed to match the criteria. You can only use themes you have met before (if you have never been to the void, shame on you).

- Enemy: You could set which enemy types you want to spawn during the simulation, you can only use enemies you have fully scanned in your Codex. Also here you could set the chance of spawning for the individual types - you practically have 100% to distribute.

- Enemy per wave: How many enemies would spawn each wave.

- Number of waves: How many waves will spawn altogether.

- Time limit/Duration: If number of waves is set, it shows how much time you have availible to kill all the enemies spawned (could be nice if there was a "per wave" tick at the side). If you can't, you fail. If the Nr of waves is not set, it's called Duration and while there is still time left the enemy waves continue to spawn as soon as you kill everyone from the last wave.

- Rank of enemies.

- Rank of enemies raising by wave: How many ranks enemies gain between waves.

- Handicap: Unique handicaps, like "stealth only", "melee only", "no energy", "no shields", etc. can be added to make the Simulation harder.

 

Would be nice if most of these settings would be present for the Mastery Test trainings too so you can "spice" it up.

The Simulations "difficulty" would be calculated from all these settings and if you manage to complete the Simulation, you would be awarded accordingly to that.

For example

- 100 points difficulty: small supply pack, containing a random common consumable, a random common resource or common mod.

- 250 points difficulty: supply pack of 2 items that can be either a common-uncommon consumable (including T1 key), resource, mod.

- 700 points difficulty: pack of 2 items that can be either a random consumable (including T1-2 keys), resource or mod (rare ones have very little chance).

- 2000 points difficulty: pack of 3 items that can be either a random consumable (including T2-3 keys), resource or mod (higher chance of good stuff).

- 5000 points difficulty: pack of 3 items that can be either a random consumable (including T3 key), resource or mod (mostly good stuff, like T3 key, Orokin Cell, Prime chamber... okay, the last one might be a bit too good :DDD, maybe heavy caliber), forma/reactor/catalyst bp (these guys should be damn rare of course but still, an extremely hard difficulty should hail rewards accordingly).

 

Challenges:
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]


Challenges in the game are already nice, they provide us with a little bit of extra goal and on completion some extra affinity. It's nice but shallow, we mostly don't even notice that there is a challenge ongoing and have no means to actually check what it is if we missed it at the beginning.

It would be good to build on that base and provide us with challenges with higher goals and bigger rewards. This way you could reward players who are actually playing the game, similar to those hunting for alerts.

 

As for rewards, I would provide an amount of Affinity (as now) and one of the following:

- 1% chance to get a vanity item, a crosshair, weapon skin, map-scheme (remember the previous minimap versions?), scope (UI for sniperscope).
- 10% chance to get a pack like the ones mentioned above, containing 3 random items, mods, gear, maybe even keys in rare cases.

- 24% chance to get a single item, mod, gear, maybe even a key.

- A single Voucher or Token which you can use to buy items bypassing RNG, fe. prime parts, thus providing means to get something by plain playing a lot. Will explain this further in the next chapter.

- After numerous completion of a single type of challenge, the player could be awarded a titles - like sharpshooter, headhunter, etc.
 

Anyway, the challenges could go further than how they are and for example they could vary depending on map type:

- Soldier: 95% of Your kills must come from your primary weapon.

- Pistolero: 95% of Your kills must come from your secondary weapon.

- Blademaster: 95% of Your kills must come from your melee weapon.

- 95% of Your kills must come from Warframe abilities (if you have damaging onesavailible).

- Anatomy: 75% of Your kills must come from a vital shot (like headshot or in case of ancients, legshot etc. or spot marked by Banshee).

- Backstabber: 50% of Your kills must be performed from behind (not stealth kills, just from behind).

- Shadow: No alerts (not availible on infested maps).

- Snapshot: Your team must kill 50% of enemies in 5 seconds after visual detection (IF they detect you :D so stealth all the way and you are cool!).

- Whirlwind: Do a killing spree of 20 consecutive kills with no more than 5 seconds between each kill.

- Untouchable: You cannot lose health (this needs the current Bleeding proc to be fixed so maybe your shields must never reach 0? - beware of Distruptors and Nightmare missions :D ).

- Rusher: You must complete the mission under X minutes (normal missions).

- Completionist: You must reach at least X waves (defense)/ Y minutes (survival).

- Economist: Complete survival with only using personal supply drops.

- Wacko: Complete the mission wearing pink shorts.

- Marksman: Have at least 60% accuracy.

- Norris: You must kick/knock at least 50% of enemies to the ground at least once before you kill them.

- Thief: Your team must open 86.3% of the lockers and containers.

- Collector: Scan all enemy types appearing during mission at least once (excluding seeker's grenades, cameras, barrels etc. - can be damn hard actually).

- Wingman: Assist in at least 50% of the kills performed by your teammates (unavailible in Solo).

- Complete a mission without using any of your abilities/primary/secondary/melee weapon.

...etc.

 

As mentioned above (rewards/titles) it might be best to plan for numerous completion of the same type so multiple levels would be cool, the harder the challenge the better the chances for a good reward. For example at the beginning of a mission you are presented with the Marksman challenge and the better you “score” the better the reward might get (of course you won't get a guaranteed good stuff but your chances might skyrocket). If you complete a certain rank of that challenge you get the title as a guaranteed reward.

To make sure players do not restart a mission infinite times to get the challenge they want, it would be best if a new challenge would only be given when a mission is complete (mission, not challenge so you can actually skip a challenge you cannot do). So if you just quit and restart, the same challenge would welcome you.

 

Vouchers:

[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]

Many have already presented their ideas about vouchers/tokens in game, akin to the pvp reward systems in Wow and various other MMO games. Indeed, this idea actually holds great promises in my eyes too.

 

First of all, I would present the opportunity to purchase most plat-only items with vouchers (2 costs shown and you can choose which one you want to pay for it). By plat-only I mean those that cannot be normally acquired any other way, so palettes, slots, syandanas, maybe helmets, you name it. Maybe orokin reactors/catalysts and forma but latter 3 are fine the way they are in my eyes – being rather valuable rarities.

 

As for buying plat only things with vouchers/tokens, an incredibly high conversion rate would be necessary so it's easier to fine-tune them when needed. For example, right now a colour palette costs 75 plat, I would make that cost 750 (or even 7500) vouchers. The Challenges mentioned in the previous chapter could give 1-10 vouchers normally, depending on the “score” of the player.

The high costs are needed so it takes a LOT of time to get such an item, thus plat will retain it's value (we need DE to be able to sustain this game after all).

- Vouchers could be purchased with Platinum or earned from Challenges, Simulator room/obstacle room runs, PVP matches ("First PVP win of the day Voucher reward" - or a detailed pvp league could be added but latter can wait, even the first part would be nice), Daily login reward, drop from "Consolation prize" (check "Consumables and the Void" chapter for more info).

- Vouchers could be traded, thus those with platinum available could get them from players for a bit of a lesser cost. With vouchers being present in the Market, their cost on the trade channel would be rather steady.

- Voucher-boosters could be purchased for platinum, raising the voucher income from traditional sources (challenges etc.) by 50% or so.

 

With the voucher system implemented, it would be great (and damn beneficial for DE) to include more vanity items in the game.

- "Material" property added to colour palettes meaning all colour palette would be either Metal, Energy/Glowing, Matte, Phong, Pearlscent etc. thus providing us with immense amounts of colour palettes and great customization options (a fully glowing warframe could be seriously fun and annoying :D though they don't have to glow that much).

- Multiple crosshairs to choose from.

- Maybe multiple map designs (remember when they've introduced that whitish looking new mini/full map, and how it was effectively rolled back? an option to choose from the different designs could be niiiice).

- Scopes.

- Weapon skins.

- Frame skins.

- Sentinel skins.

- Consumables for fun and trolling - like a consumable changing the visuals for a map (turning the colorfilter red or some other colour), placeable lightsources.

- Soundpacks for weapons or Lotus, etc. (I would love to get back the old sounds for vipers though sound packs might consume a lot of space on the harddrive, though maybe a way to apply filters to certain sounds could be just as good - as far as I know there is a random filter on the Lotus's voice already to make it sound more... random).

 

As an alternative solution for the infamous loot-table dilution/RNG problem, vouchers/tokens could be awarded for every rank of a void mission (completing T1 gives 1, T2 2, every extra 5 waves/mins give 1 more token at the end of a void def/survival etc.) while prime parts being available for vouchers/tokens.

I would allow “rushing” of foundry projects and such for vouchers/tokens too.

 

Universal abilities:
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]


In some cases it would be nice to have abilities that can traverse between frames. Just as the "Sanctuary" mod is a genuine Sentinel ability and can be used on all sentinels, there could be abilities like that for Frames too. Universal skills that can be very useful for any and all frames but too vague or not specialized enough to be the abilities of a new, completely separate frame.
- Aegis: Buff to allies in range, powered Shield regeneration, for 25 energy the frame is regenerating shields on a higher rate.
- Hunted: The ability marks a target giving flat out +25% critical chance to every hit reaching that target for limited time.
- Insomnia: Target area becomes infested with nanites for 15 seconds that invade the neural system of enemies passing nearby making them docile - effectively stunning them. The effect dissipates from enemies suffering damage (shield damage doesn't count).
- Haunted: A swarm of nanites occupy the area around the player, jumping from enemy to enemy, causing periodic damage and psychosis debuff to them. Psychosis has multiple possible effects, randomly chosen, from catatonic state (stun, trembling with fear), randomly attacking any target or even thin air, running away in fear, in case of ranged opponents switching to melee only mode (like in case of Loki's ultimate).
- Vampire: The ability infests enemy(s) with nanites that slowly eat away the body and healing the host frame with the stolen energies. This healing might produce “extra” health, stacked above the maximum health amount.
- Cripple: The ability infests enemies with nanites that stop shield regeneration, lowers armor and slows the target for moderate time.

- Weaken: The ability infests enemies within it's range, lowering all their damage output by a certain percentage.
- Sacrifice: Buffs the caster, % of the damage from incoming attacks (the clean damage of those that hit, thus before armor, melee parry/block or shields apply) is stored. The next successful outgoing attack has it's damage raised by the stored amount while it resets the storage to 0 (thus you have to start accumulating it again). This circle can repeat until the duration expires. The case of IronSkin is up to debate.
- Narcosis: The enemies in vicinity are infested with nanites attacking their motoric systems causing slow effect on a large area for moderate time.
- Zeal: The caster turns 50 health points into matching amount of energy points, for no cost in energy (upgrading may grant more % energy than 100% of spent health). Would be nice to give a certain % of this to all teammates in range.
- Fueling: The caster shares energy with present friendly unit(s) - upgrading may give higher percentage energy to others than 100% of spent amount.
- Owlsight: Enemies are highlighted by a bright aura like in case of Banshee's Sonar ability and a moderate nightvision effect is also gained - no effective attributes change, no direct combat use but superb for stealth players.
- Dreadcry: A wave of nanites infest enemies in a large surrounding area attacking the enemies neural systems forcing them to attack the caster instead of whatever they were doing.
- Cowl: Caster is enveloped in a cloud of nanites that render him invisible until no movement is done (cost must be very nominal). Limitations might be changed to allow crouched movement.
- Counterstrike: Kinetic nanites are released to envelop the frame, the next attack that hits the caster will be completely reflected. Upgrading raises the number of reflected attacks.
- Tremor: Target enemies become infected with nanites attacking their motoric system denying precise actions, making them inaccurate in every means. They miss their targets or walk to a different location than intended – the difference is random for every action thus they just might hit you as normally but might keep walking into the wall by the door.
- Anything that are nothing specialized like elemental attacks but overall useful for anyone.
Such abilitiy mods could be sold at the Merchant's or gotten from random draws at the Gambler's. Of course then it would be necessary to make these mods to be neutral, as letting them use whichever slot is open (I only have the third ability's slot open? Aegis goes there! Only the first is open? No problem, Aegis is on 1!)

Extra choices:
Thought about it some more and maybe universal abilities could cause some loss of uniquity among frames (I means seeing different frames with same skills is... not that good) so maybe you could only use one of these on a frame. I still like the idea of multiple skills to choose from so maybe giving more than 4 abilities per Frame? I mean you can still use only 4 at once but you could choose from 8 or 16 or so to make the frame fit your style more. Their assigned number/tier/button would depend on where you place them in the arsenal (like with elemental damage mods in U11 now) so you could use übers only or weak ones only too.
I would really like to leave the Wave of Ice of my Frost and get some debuff for enemies around or something like
- Hail: a whirling storm of nanites consume the heat around Frost, hindering (slowing) and slowly damaging enemies around him.

 

Puzzles:
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]


During leveling up I came across a challenge of solving puzzles in time. Some of them were ones I have never seen before. It was surprisingly fun! This system is perfect for anything related to unlocking stuff, it could be used at so many places.

- Treasure rooms that can be accessed by breaking into a console but shut themselves if someone fails in the puzzle (maybe 1 try per player? so no hard feelings on a fail of your teammates).
- Changing the mechanic behind the MasterThief mod, so that every locked container can be opened with it if the player completes a puzzle - with every level of the mod, the puzzles would become easier or the time limit longer – maybe giving extra "try"-s? On fail the container would seal shut (for that player only so others can still try!).
- It would be fun to get advantage of the map through the computer consoles here and there... like changing the allegiance of a room's (or whole map's) security system for a very limited time, maybe even shutting it down for some time (to counter laser doors that will be eventually fixed so we can't slide-melee through them anyways).
- Getting informations about enemies on minimap for some time etc. Maybe trigger leaks here and there, alarms that lead enemies astray (affecting spawns perhaps) or into a trap, etc. More stuff like the “new” option to hack yourself a moa on Corpus maps :)
- A new warframe mod that affects console hacking - like "Puppeteer", "Hacker" or something - could do wonders: if you can hack into a console new possibilities open the higher level your mod is (or at least you have a higher chance that these open, etc.). Like without it you can only stop alerts, but every level of the mod would give X% chance to open all options (of course calculated one by one, so if one is not lucky, none opens, if lucky all of them - usually about 1-2 -, though diminishing returns should apply). Maybe mentioned calculation should happen once per level so trying different consoles wouldn't mean trying anew.

 

PvP:
[Old but might still work well]


Player VS Player game modes are always an issue in a PvE game (in all games), because they are less repetitive thanks to your enemies' creativity. In Warframe, this PvP might come at the cost of lore though, thus they introduced the "friendly" practice of ancient Conclave-s which during Tenno hone each other's skills. Some already mentioned this but we already saw other PvE games with great PvP options - sorry for the ad but: L4D. The idea to allow the other team to be spawned as enemies is great. That could work in Warframe too.
- Team 1 starts as Tenno
- Team 2's members are spawning randomly as ANY enemy, they can't choose spawn spot or type either.
- AI enemies still spawn normally.
- Match continues till Tenno team is eliminated or they finish mission.
- In round 2 the roles are switched, map stays the same, events stay the same etc. Possible enemy (both ai and player) spawns too.

The idea is not mine but I wish for it to prosper so I've added it. The following second part is mine though...
- If an online mission is commencing (as usual lobby or in-game), one can join it as "enemy".
- Players joining as enemy are spawning (and constantly respawning if they pass away) as/into random enemies.
- Players should or shouldn't issue orders to enemies might be an open question since it would be easy to help players during the mission.

As for lore, we can say that Tenno can link themselves to their enemies during dreams to learn how they think and act so they can know their enemies better. So they are not controlling them in reality just experiencing their surroundings and thoughts... Okay, okay, but what else could I come up with? :D

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

 

- Continue to second part -



Updates:
#1 "Challenges" chapter added.
#2 "Universal ablities" chapter added.
#3 "Simulation room" chapter added.
#4 "New mods" chapter added.
#5 "Puzzles" chapter added.
#6 "Changing a few things" chapter added.
#7 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Volt.
#8 "Updates" chapter added so it's easier to see if there are changes without opening the spoiler tabs.
#9 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Dojo - Vault.
#10 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Nekros.
#11 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Stamina.
#12 Few changes made to "Consumables" chapter.
#13 "In-game events" chapter added.
#14 "PvP" chapter added.
#15 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Stalker.
#16 Removed Trinity from "Changing a few things" chapter as it's no longer relevant.
#17 "Universal abilities" chapter expanded with "Extra choices".
#18 "Changing a few things" chapter divided into a "Warframe" and an "Other" section, Frost added to "Changing Warframes" chapter.

 

#19 "Consumables and the void" chapter spiced up/updated a bit.

#20 A few updates based upon my newer posts (like more detailed challenges), "Vouchers" chapter added.

#21 Removed Volt from "Changing Warframes" chapter.

[2014.03.18.] Updates to "Consumables and the Void", "Merchant", "Gambler", "Simulation room" chapters, added date of edit to these too, for clarity. Switching "Updates" from numbering to dates [YYYY.MM.DD.].

[2014.05.28.] Updates to “Challenges”, “Vouchers”, “Universal abilities”, “New mods”, “Puzzles”, “Changing Warframes” and “Changing a few (other) things” chapters.

[2014.05.30.] Warframe Concept Vizier added.

[2014.06.24.] Since I've run out of space I had to take the post apart, into 2 pieces. 2nd part can be found HERE

[2014.06.24.] "New mods" chapter moved into “Concepts” chapter.

[2014.08.14.] "Emblem stat bonuses" chapter added.

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

- q86d.png -

Edited by K_Shiro
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All of this makes sense. I'd upgrade the merchant one just for the sake of better items. ^^ There should be more levels for larger clans, maybe? And better chances if resources are pooled for smaller clans.

 

I'm with you on not having enough money for the Grand Master Packs... Bills, myself, and my cats come first.

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Well, maybe even different directions to develop the Merchant towards like one that trades corpus stuff, mods or weapons more etc.

I like these ideas the most (from the ton of stupid ones I thought of) because they can be solid or random depending on what you need.

 

Would be nice if I could move this topic to Fan Concepts but I can't do more than writing to moderators. May they find my request acceptable :)

 

Edit: This actually happened already (quite some time ago too).

____________  _ _  ____________

 

WotV_logo_gold_small.png

Edited by K_Shiro
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  • 2 weeks later...

I think that all of these ideas are great! But in particular, the merchant and the gambler really stick out for me. It would add a new dimension to the game, meaning that you wouldn't need to grind so much (if luck is with you). It's nice to see that someone has actually put thought into what they want from this game rather than just splurging out any random stuff.

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Added some new stuff - and this new reply so this topic might get more attention. At least I'm not spamming... hmm, that might work, though I might not want that kind of attention :)

____________  _ _  ____________

 

WotV_logo_gold_small.png

Edited by K_Shiro
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Wow, you deserve to be in the Design Council for this alone. I haven't been in the Design Council but I've heard things, and it makes me sick and tired of people from the Design Council consisting of people who are just like...."le meme" this and "le trend" that. Bandwaggoning any suggestion DE makes, and would rather push out overpowered weaponry then governing the system to have a balanced and fun game-style overall.

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  • 1 month later...
...

Also, update your section on Trinity.

 

Yup, removed trinity. Sadly I've sold mine back in the days (since I obviously had problems with her - wouldn't have included her in the "changing a few things" chapter otherwise...) so I was "a bit" late on this one.

 

- q86d.png -

 

Anyways, though the current Well of life is still rather controversal for me (a healing skill that's better to be used as a stun instead...hmm) I don't feel that's enough reason to start a whole chapter on her as most of her stuff became pretty good - even if I basically hate all kinds of invulnerabilities... I can live with it.

Edited by K_Shiro
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HOLY S#&$. I would love if most of these things were added into the game, some great work you've done here OP. Better PVP, more clan additions, possibility of buying mats and BPs... :D

 

Anyways, the Design Council, never heard of it until i read somewhere that they voted on upcoming weapons. Considering what Vsuchinoko said, i feel like the Design Council are just people who spend alot of money on the game, sure they support the development but they probably can't come up with good ideas that would benefit the game like yours does OP.

 

I dont know much about the Design Council, anyone mind pointing me in the right direction as to where i could find info about it?

Edited by Daidaiiro
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The Design Council has been filled with people who bought second or higher Founder's pack when they were availible. I don't know the way to get in now.

 

- q86d.png -

 

As for their ideas, they can usually vote on ideas from DE (as far as I know), that's how Nova and Nekros got into the game - and considering my avatar image you can guess if I like those ideas or not :D

EDIT:

After some time I have found this in [DE]Drew's profile description:

"Know a player who deserves to be on the Design Council? Send me their Warframe alias in a private message!"

 

(https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/user/488958-dedrew/ truth to be told I've tried using the [.member] bbcode stuff but it just didn't work with his name, with or without [] etc.)

Edited by K_Shiro
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  • 1 month later...

The Design Council has been filled with people who bought second or higher Founder's pack when they were availible. I don't know the way to get in now.

 

- q86d.png -

 

As for their ideas, they can usually vote on ideas from DE (as far as I know), that's how Nova and Nekros got into the game - and considering my avatar image you can guess if I like those ideas or not :D

As for the PVP Thing, (Reviving old topic), make it so that once per match, someone can become the Stalker/Harvester (Depending on the map).

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As for the PVP Thing, (Reviving old topic), make it so that once per match, someone can become the Stalker/Harvester (Depending on the map).

 

I'm not a big pvp fan myself (believe it or not - those who played cod4 against me would scream at this point... most likely) so I'm not exactly the best person to advise on such topic but I guess the idea is nice.

 

Several games had such pvp modes (like the hunter in Avp3 if I remember correctly) and such game types usually had a rather good reception. Well, I believe in some ways that could be a good way to elevate pvp to a higher level though maybe I would do it this way instead:

- A random player would be marked as boss and would turn into a random boss from the actual panthenon (like Phorid or even the Zanuka).

- The player killing the last boss would be marked as the next boss and eventually turn into it/get respawned as such.

- The Stalker and Harvester could normally spawn during pvp matches as an AI controlled entity, the team eliminating it first gaining some extra points.

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Ok just want to explain that design council does not do that much. Some times there is a vote in there and we pick between preset options. Sometimes there is "feedback" threads but it is just a way one way information dump that DE looks through. Very little two way communication or "council" stuff going on. The upcoming weapon vote stuff will be the most designing the council has done in months and months. Mostly it's just for DE to post upcoming stuff for people to see a lite early. It all gets leaked to reddit right after.

As for these ideas. I had a good browse through and some of it is interesting. However I shall post some personal points.

Voids-the resource add to voids ruined the availability of 4 resources. Voids should have had a special resource only found there e.g. " orokin generator" or "orokin alloy" this should then have been used to craft the primes instead of / alongside orokin cells.

Merchant and gambler are not needed. Instead daevo should offer more discounts. 50% off helmets or even resources on a daily Change over would do the same. As for gambler we have transmute which is a little better now that abilities were removed as a reward but still not worth the huge cost.

simulation room is good and we also need a firing range.

Puzzles, challenges, stalker and in game events. All of this is where de needs to focus improvements. I love your ingame events. That is what the gaming is lacking. However want to say that the game should move low gravity from nightmare to a normal event like cryo or explosions. It does not really add to difficultly and would make sense for a ship to lose its gravity controls if damaged.

Surprised you don't have a stealth section.

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...

Voids-the resource add to voids ruined the availability of 4 resources. Voids should have had a special resource only found there e.g. " orokin generator" or "orokin alloy" this should then have been used to craft the primes instead of / alongside orokin cells.

...

 

Yea, for example right now Control modules drop like crazy here and there, killing off it's value (I have hundreds of them). If any resource could drop it would be worth your while to search everything and would still be RNG based upon rarity so it would not lower the value of resources.

Originally that part was written when the voids appeared, at that time they dropped no resource at all - made it a bit more up-to-date though. As it stands it's mostly meant to point out how lacking they still are. I think I'm going to include the "full random" thing about the resources, now that I think about it...

 

 

...

Merchant and gambler are not needed. Instead daevo should offer more discounts. 50% off helmets or even resources on a daily Change over would do the same. As for gambler we have transmute which is a little better now that abilities were removed as a reward but still not worth the huge cost.

...

 

The Merchant and Gamble were mentioned here way before Davro or the Transmutation. I agree, the transmutation pretty much fills that role, so the Gambler is more-or-less a reimagining now, a way to make transmutation more personal I guess.

 

As for the Merchant, I still think it's viable. Davro only offers platinum based deals so pretty much has nothing to do with the Merchant I've detailed over there. The Merchant is meant to be a "Clan mastery rank" kind of thing, a bit similar to the researches, thus providing clans with bonuses if they spend resources on it to build/upgrade it.

 

...

Surprised you don't have a stealth section.

 

DE mentioned a more detailed alert system (I mean the one with the siren mid-mission) in the past, let's say I'm waiting for that.

 

At this point Stealth is close to non-existence. The game itself should change first for Stealth to become viable.

- Lack of multiple/hidden routes (like a way to sneak through a room behind crates or on a pipe above etc.).

- Without alert there are only a few enemies so not even remotely balanced reward for performing stealthkills.

- With alert on usually you cannot perform stealth kills, in fact they usually rush at you so no sneaking at all.

 

So all-in-all, only frames possessing invisibility can benefit from stealth, since they can move undetected yet still cause alarm for additional enemies to spawn. Not that simply moving/shooting invisible can be considered stealth :D

Edited by K_Shiro
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  • 1 month later...

Ok. I read all of this. I fully support everything this thread suggested! I love the warframe ability update section. Its interesting how he sets up certain abilities to have 2 specific types of damage, how he suggested Frost's new Ice Wave to be a combo of Ice and Piercing only. I like damage 2.0 but its kind of annoying when it comes to status where slash, impact, and pierce happen at random. Also giving powers one of these damage procs make them more viable to specific targets. I could honestly go on about his improvements but long story short they are great. This should be DE to do list for 2014.

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  • 3 months later...

- Back to first part -

 

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

 

Second part:

 

Changing warframes:
[Last edited on 2014.06.23.]


Things I would change on certain frames.
 

Banshee

[Last edited on 2014.06.23.]

She looks... interesting. At least get her decent shoes instead of those slippers.

 

Frost
[Last edited on 2014.06.23.]


As my first ever built frame, Frost has a special place in my heart. After I got Frost Prime I've formad it so hard... well, the usual, only 1 skill slot, etc. I love this frame yet I was more than willing to trade 3 abilities for simple mods and never looked back. I'm only using Snowglobe. So here comes whining 2.0.

Time has passed, Frost got changed a bit. You can guess that as many others I am not fully satisfied with the results.

The original problem was that most of his abilities fell short compared to other frames' (actually pretty badly), which endorsed the use of his only truly useful ability (snowglobe) which was pretty overpowered, way more than bastille. Actually I've welcomed the removal of “invulnerability” for the globe, even though it pretty much destroyed the only thing that kept Frost afloat thus crushed mine too. Yes, I would have changed it in a different way, no matter how much I hate invulnerability.

 

The changes reflect the usual idea of "nukes", meaning a large amount of people cannot see further than the damage an ability causes. Hell, many would call Loki weak and bad and I can honestly say he is one of the Most fun frames to play and actually brutally effective in most situations. He is damn scary and can pretty much save the day. Without any direct damage skills, mind you.

 

Thus I would prefer Frost to be a CC frame, especially since freezing based powers are usually best for that. Anyways, here comes my "idea pack" of Frost:

 

First of all I would make it so all Freeze effects act like this:

- Freezing enemies render them immobile for the duration.

- Enemies frozen have suffer more incoming damage by certain % (about 50% would be best). Actually it would be nice to make their resistances change differently, like physical damage having more effect while fire essentially being weaker (since it practically just melts the ice). But that complexity can wait.

- If the duration is over, the enemies suffer "slow" effect for standard duration (like when Cold's status effect kicks in).

- The effect can be prematurely broken by causing more damage than certain % of max. health in one hit.

- If the effect is broken prematurely by damage, the target is knocked to the ground, those standing around him will suffer blast and/or impact damage from the shattering ice (this has status chance thus they might end up being knocked down thanks to the blast damage). The above mentioned cold status effect still appears on the originally affected, now free enemies – thus they are slowed.

- If the effect is broken prematurely by damage, the damage is applied first (thus gains the whole bonus %) and it is then that the effect breaks. Even if the target dies, the ice shatters thus damaging those around.

- Bosses cannot be frozen but they are slowed to a complete halt at first and gradually "thaw out", preferably during half of the original time limit (those knowing the Deathknight from WoW are allowed to raise an eyebrow here :D). The incoming damage debuff is applied to them as well, though the effect is halved since they are not completely frozen. I consider Stalker and kin bosses too.

- Diminishing returns apply, repeated usage of this effect on the same enemy will yield decreased duration of effect until a certain cooldown period has passed.

This way it seems at least remotely logical and has tactical depth too.

 

1. Freeze
The new version was previously mentioned to work "like" Ember's fireball... I have rarely seen anyone using that, so I guess that's the similarity. Sorry for being sarcastic but I haven't found any positive change in this skill since before, just as "useful" as it was. You don't want to stop to freeze single enemies when you are fighting a group and since the bosses usually end up being bugged or at least invulnerable thanks to this baby, I wouldn't advise using it on them either. Good to stop one when you need to revive... a rather narrow field of use, since to begin with, you try to avoid going down. Get into cover and you will never use it for that again.

So what I would do with it - endorsing the use of Frost as a CC frame:

- Range: 50m, 3m aoe on impact location, enemies further away from the center of this aoe suffer weaker effects (decreased duration of effect and only slow when too far away), latter affected by power range mods.

- No initial damage.

- Enemies in 3m aoe (affected by power range mods) are frozen in place for 5/7/9/11 seconds (affected by duration mods).
- Frozen targets suffer incoming damage buff as mentioned above.

- Prematurely breaking frozen status incites the above mentioned “explosive” reaction.

- After frozen status dissipates (either normally or prematurely) the originally affected enemies suffer from cold status effect, slowing them for the standard duration.

 

2. Ice Wave
Ice Wave was never really a specifically good damaging power (only an adequate one that looked "cool") I believe it could too use some rework. Yes, it was presumably changed to apply cold status effect thus slow the enemies - before dmg2.0 it's cold damage did the same thing so we only took a step back. Well, still a form of improvement.
Currently Avalanche is simply outclassing it, energy/effect ratio is too different. So, my version:

- Ice spikes form on the ground, enemies hit by the growing shards get knocked to the ground and suffer 50/100/150/200 piercing damage.
- The spikes stand for a duration of 5 seconds (affected by power duration mods, but not by the rank of skill), like some kind of ice trap, any enemy getting too close to them gets damaged and slowed (cold status effect).
- The damage is 60/80/100/120 per second as long as the enemy stays within the aoe (standing among/on the spikes), affected by power damage mods. The damage IS damage per sec, not damage over time, thus if duration get's higher (by Continuity for example), the overall damage goes up.

- The range seems fine as it is.

 

3. Snow Globe

I'm one of those that actually think that the nerfing of the Globe was a logial and acceptable step. No I don't like how it was nerfed but I admit I like it even this way more than how it was (I am mostly playing Frost, mind you). It was an invulnerable cover which you could shoot through effectively providing ranged immunity against everything except railguns and explosions (latter is more of a bug or a simple miss in design, as it feels illogical if the other things are kept out). It made Frost into the "globeframe" with no skills whatsoever apart from Globe. It was a very narrow role and was pretty much outclassed in every other area. Though this has changed, it has changed in a wrong way. Frost still doesn't have anything that makes him a worthy choice in place of any other frame while he no longer has the globeframe role either. I know that balancing the globe is hard - but I believe that problem hails from the very design and idea of the snowglobe, thus I would like to forget that as it is.

 

Winterhail

Description: “Frost takes control of the surrounding moisture, forming it into a raging storm of razorsharp ice, hindering ranged attacks and damaging enemies that venture inside.”

Frost creates a storm made of icy shrapnels, dealing cold and slash damage to those inside, while weakening ranged attacks passing into/through the globe.

Range: 5m, affected by power range mods.

Duration: 30s, affected by power duration mods.

Damage: 15/30/60/90 per second, half slash, half cold damage (thus the overall damage is way lower than Ember's FireBlast), affected by power strength mods. The damage part is HIGHLY optional – I'm not sure if this ability needs damage at all, it just seems logical, given how vicious the storm is.

Enemies suffer from plain ol' cold status effect.

Damage mitigation from ranged attacks is 20/30/40/50%, not affected by power strength mods but a shot weakened then passing into/through another globe get's that modifier too so you can further weaken it with additional globes (halving it, then halving the half value, then halving that etc. will make it very weak but never 0).

Certain ammotypes might react differently, like missiles, rockets, grenades having 20/30/40/50% chance to explode prematurely every second they spend within the storm, first calculating this when they enter it (since rockets most likely fly faster than to spend 1 second in the area).

 

This way we get a worthy T3 ability which is still way less illogical and "absolute defense" than the original Snow Globe while MUCH more useful than current one.

 

4. Avalanche

Avalanche itself is not a bad ability by nature it's just that we have seen the near-exact same ability on other frames, countless times. It's nothing creative, only a large aoe damage spell, like that of Saryn, Mag etc. - even Volt is different since his Overload hold the possibility of higher damage thanks to exploding stuff, and Rhino has his "aftereffect" of floating enemies, making his über a "small" bastille for the recently (or soon to be) deceased. In fact Avalanche is like a reverse version of Rhino's stomp, first stunning, then damaging. But pretty much that's all the difference.

 

Here comes the "I would do the following" part:

Make Avalanche into something like Molecular Prime, an ability not dealing damage by itself (for MP you have to start killing the enemies since the effect only deals aoe damage if affected enemy dies - after then though... well I believe most people are familiar how dominos work, so you get the idea).

 

Description: “Summons a treacherous landslide of ice that instantly freezes enemies in the vicinity rendering them immobile and highly susceptible to damage.”

Range: 15/18/22/25m, affected by power range mods.

Freeze duration: 7/10/13/16s (affected by power duration mods).

Otherwise same as in case of Freeze, detailed above.

 

Nekros
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]


I'm a necromancer to the core. In every computer game and rpg (real ones where you sit around with books and character sheets) that has one I always play necromancers. So this little guy here is kinda important to me - thus I have my opinion on all his aspect obviously. Forgive me for this.

1. Soul Punch
I've liked this but lately I think it got nerfed, it's ragdoll effect that is. I'm sad. As for a necromancy themed frame I believe a lifesteal or control skill would be best instead of damage. My version:

 

Soul touch

Description: “Nekros tears at the very existance of enemies in front of him, stealing their energies to heal himself.”

The skill causes 100/200/300 damage to enemies in a line in front of Nekros healing him 25/35/45/55% of the amount caused.

 

2. Terrify
Not just that it looks a lot like Radial Blind but overall lacks in utility. Even it's armor reduction effect is rather mediocre - would be better if it was a 25% resistance reduction effect altogether, without the victims "fleeing". A full 10-30% extra incoming damage aoe... now that would be wicked :) More like an ulti at that point actually. Idea:

 

Daymare

Description: “Nekros invades the minds of enemies around, trapping them in a nightmare.”

In an area of 5/10/15/20 units enemies are stunned and only stare ahead blankly. They take damage of 10 health(!, no resistances apply) per second for 9/15/20/25 seconds. Every instance of incoming damage lowers the remaining duration by 1 second (go heavy hitters!). Bosses are at least staggered but better if slowed. I would make most CC skills manifest as slow on bosses.

3. Desecrate

Actually this is Nekros's most used or at least most useful ability. Pretty much a true savior during Survivals, and overall very useful for prolonged fights or farming. The fact that in some cases you literally need it and it has no substitute... well, that's a big no-no. Forcing a choice on players is never good.

Still, normally it's not that needed. Actually you rarely have that many corpses lying around that it's worth using this skill especially that it doesn't always work - and then you have to cast it again, and... you get it. With even a team of relative beginners you can expect to be revived when you hit ground head first so the abundance of health globes this skill provides isn't that useful. It heals your sentinel though so by no means would I call it a waste even during general missions.

 

In some cases it might yield useful loot (not much chance, let's face it), I would have it changed to one of the following, given the chance (and change RNG so you don't have to realy on this):

 

Desecrate

Description: “Nekros preys upon the residual energies of the recently deceased, granting regeneration to him and his allies.”

Nekros buffs the team for extra regeneration of health, shields and energy for 20/25/30/35 seconds. The amount gained per second is the exact amount of corpses within a range of 4/8/12/16 at activation of skill.

 

Black mark

Description: “Nekros marks enemies around him to leave behind supplies if killed.”

The ability marks enemies in a 10/15/20/25 range radius around Nekros (preferably with an eerie looking effect, like a slight energy colored aura and/or small energy colored globe above their heads) for 5/10/15/20 seconds. If the marked enemies are killed they drop one of the following besides mentioned loot (chosen by RNG on spot):

- commonly an energy orb

- commonly a health orb

- commonly an experience orb

- commonly a small support unit during survivals

- on uncommon occasion, a speed orb, granting movement and attack speed bonus

- on uncommon occasion, a damage orb, granting damage bonus of 20% for 30 seconds

- on uncommon occasion, a shield orb, granting 25% damage resistance for 30 seconds

- on uncommon occasion, a shock orb, stunning enemies visible to players for 5 seconds

- on uncommon occasion, a trauma orb, slowing enemies (by 40%) visible to players for 30 seconds

- rarely a “revitalize” orb, healing everyone to max.

- rarely a “recharge” orb, setting everyone's energy to max.

- rarely an “insight” orb, granting 25% extra experience from all sources for 30 seconds

- rarely a “wrath” orb, granting a damage aura to all players, dealing 1% max. health damage to enemies in range (of 10?) for 30 seconds

- rarely an “enlightenment” orb, randomly leveling an item on the player (as long as it's not on 30)

 

Thus the ability no longer affects the drop of valuables, only stuff that is useful “on the spot”. In fact numerous funny stuff could be added :) If only the common stuff drops, that's good already.

 

4. Shadows of the dead
Right now it's a limited version of Chaos (Nyx). While Chaos affects all enemies around, SotD only uses a preset amount of minions. Against bosses they don't pose a threat so you would most likely use them to battle numerous opponents at once (like reinforcements). During SotD you have about 12 minions tops fighting against the enemy while during Chaos they fight amongst themselves so not just that you have potentially higher damage (it at least scales with the number of enemies not to mention their rank:D), you even stop the group from attacking you (as long as you are not the closest target). SotD has no such effect, your minions are not even priority targets thus even during a defense mission, they have a high chance to be generally ignored thus Chaos fares better. Hell, if we take into consideration that your summons are enemies killed that means they are most likely from previous waves - thus weaker than current wave. All-in-all you are better off with Chaos for defense.

Oh, and the extra limitations:

- You have to kill an enemy so you can summon it. If your team is particularly good at stealing kills... well, you can guess the rest.

- Once you summon a minion it's gone from the "list" or “buffer”.

- Only last 20 enemies are remembered by the "buffer" so you can only summon 20 before you have to kill more (and the kills of summoned minions do not count). Thus you have little to no chance to replenish them during a bossfight (meaning this ability is just as useful against a boss as Chaos – or maybe less, dunno if Chaos produces some effect at all).

 

If I wanted to make this particular skill viable I would do the following:

- "Buffer" or "memory" does not get cleared, summoning minions does not erase any of them, you don't have to replenish them.

- Stronger enemies overwrite weaker ones when "buffer" is already full (if the HP*DMG number is much higher, rank is at least 2-3 higher or they are higher class, like heavies over lights etc.).

- Make it spammable, no "power in use", like... evar.

- You cannot summon more minions than the maximum number stored in "buffer".

- Focus and damage mods affect the size of "buffer".

 

Hmm, to stay to the usual format I will write additional replacement ideas here:

 

Calling

Description: “Enemies killed around Nekros have a chance to return and serve their new master.”

For a duration of 10/20/30/40 seconds, enemies dying (don't have to be killed by Nekros!) in a radius of 10/15/20/25 units have 30/45/60/75% chance to spawn a minion (preferably after random time, 1-1000 milliseconds to minimize lag in case a Nova goes wild), that exactly matches their characteristics, preferably right on their corpse or in case it's "out-of-bounds" (thus fallen or something) next to Nekros. The minions live until they are killed or 15/20/25/30 seconds elapse.

 

Servitude

Description: “Nekros summons the recently deceased to aid him.”

Nekros stores the characteristics of enemies he has killed, 1 for each rank of the card (starts at 1 on rank 0). When the "buffer" is filled, significantly stronger enemies (if the HP*DMG number is much higher) overwrite weaker ones. When the ability is activated, the first stored enemy is summoned with double health and damage, staying until killed or for a maximum of 15/20/25/30 seconds. The spell doesn't have a "power in use" property, it can be activated as long as there is enough energy. On repeated activation the next stored enemy in line gets summoned. The Nekros can have as many minions summoned at once as the mod's rank+1. The moment he reaches "the end of the line" and still further activates the skill, the first minion dies and gets respawned with full health. These minions must have very aggressive AI and a rather high priority as targets for opponents (also a strange affection for the player, following him/her around).

 

The latter version is more gentle on the rig and allows for a better built relationship between Nekros and his minions. If there was a way to choose which enemy you want to store, that would be even better but then again, making a skill too complicated negatively affects gameplay.

 

Nyx

[Last edited on 2014.06.23.]

Nyx is right now (2014.06.23.) one hell of a powerful force. Not that there is any problem with it but I honestly doubt that DE will leave her like this, her Absorb being the only possible way to murder high-ranked enemies and it even boasts very useful defensive uses. So, in preparation for the incoming nerf, I hereby present my ideas for changing her.

 

1. Mind Control

Honestly, one of the most fun yet highly situational ability in-game. While you can use it creatively and get yourself a powerful ally, most of the time your teammates will have no problem never noticing your deed and will remove your ally just like any other enemy. In fact, since it can render even the strongest enemies harmless (unlike any other first ability) I wouldn't be so surprised if this one got nerfed too.

 

My version is more “permanent”:

- Activation of skill causes 1 second stun on target (it staggers for a moment).

- Target changes allegiance, fights for Nyx and follows her around.

- The ability is “passive channeled”, the Nyx can do whathever she wants while it's active but she is losing a certain amount of energy per second until she releases the ability or runs out of energy.

- The ability cannot be cast on other targets until the first one is dead or released.

- Initial cost is 20 energy and 5 points of energy per second.

- After the ability is released, the now freed target is stunned for 1 second once more, then gains Confused status effect (attacking nearest target which is usually Nyx) for 5 seconds.

- While the ability is active, the target is a full-fledged member of the team (much like a Specter), thus players cannot damage the target in any way.

 

This way both the overly cheap “remove one enemy” card and the problem of overactive teammates disappear.

 

2. Psychic Bolts

Honestly I'm not using this skill all that much – like “not at all”. If it's damage, nothing can top Absorb, especially since a properly built Nyx uses less energy for an attack with Absorb than what you would spend on casting Psychic bolts once (and for an obviously much greater effect). So, how I would “improve” this ability...

 

Psychosis

Description: “Nyx strikes at the minds of her enemies, bringing their slumbering insanity to the surface.

Nyx releases 3/4/5/6 bolts of psychic energy, which randomly strike at enemies within sight range (50), evoking a random effect from this list on the targets they hit:

- Target is blinded/stunned for 3 seconds.

- Target switches allegiance and helps the tenno for 7 seconds. Can be hurt by the players.

- Target falls into confusion, attacking the closest entity for 10 seconds.

- Target is slowed by 50% for 20 seconds.

- Target succumbs to fear and runs away exposing itself (20% extra incoming damage from every source) for 5 seconds.

All targets hit suffer 200 damage over the time of the duration (for the slow effect this means 5 damage per second, while for the stunned enemies 33 dps).

 

3. Absorb

No changes except Nyx would suffer 25/20/15/10% of the incoming damage. Still damn powerful but no longer all that safe. The dealt damage shall come from the damage suffered by Nyx thus if Nyx gains some other form of resistance (Trinity's Blessing), the Absorbed damage goes down too.

 

4. Chaos

I wouldn't really touch this little baby, she is maybe the most powerful CC ability in the whole game. Maybe I would give it a longer duration and make it the Ultimate ability of Nyx to take the place of the “soon-to-be-nerfed” Absorb.

 

Oberon

[Last edited on 2014.06.23.]

I overall like him, being a balanced healer/damage frame, though feels nothing like a paladin that he was supposed to be (or was he?). Mainly he lacks protection spells and the armor/resilience of a “holy knight” kind of character. He doesn't really need much, some armor,

Oh, and honestly I personally don't like the animated effects of his Smite and Hallowed Ground abilities. Those swirling... swirls feel weird and lack any pretense of direction – they just look out of place. Smite for example looks more like a set of aerial anomalies instead of a linear shot- which in this case feels weird. As for HG, it looks incredibly strange to have clearly visible straight lines show the borders of it's aoe (shouldn't the enemy notice too? :).

Renewal

On a more important note (which has nothing to do with looks), his Renewal could use a single change: removal of “max health” as condition of completion. Right now, if your health reaches maximum, the spell dissipates from you (if you had max. it doesn't even activate). It would make it much better (while not making it op) if this wouldn't apply, the spell would activate and stay active for the full duration in any situation. Of course your health cannot go above 100% (Trinity might benefit from such an ability though) but as long as the ability is active, if you suffer damage, it would start healing you.

I would double it's duration and make it heal a % of max. health instead of a certain amount, like 20/30/40/50%. Considering how much Trinity heals with a barely higher amount of energy, this shouldn't be overpowered.

 

Changing a few (other) things:
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]

Some things I find worthy of changing a bit.

 

Dojo - Vault


The Clan Vault was introduced quite some time ago, mostly acting as a buffer where we could store the refunded resources from deconstructed buildings and the like. With the Dark Sector conflicts introduced we got a new source of income for this Vault (well, some of us). Still, currently clans cannot normally control the amount stored.

We already have a vault kiosk available as a dojo “decoration”, where we can donate credits – it seems logical to expand this to allow donation of all kinds of resources, plat. I expect that to happen pretty soon but who knows. The biggest problem is not this but what to do with those resources stored within. We don't really have any way to use them up.

- You can build new rooms for your dojo but the ideal situation is where you don't want to do this because your dojo is complete (we have reached the 100 cap so I cannot build more rooms even though we have hundreds of unused capacity points...).

- You can build decorations for your dojo but those get old pretty fast (and let's face it, most people lack either the will, time or the common sense to do this properly) and most of them are plain vanity stuff.

- You can research new stuff in your laboratories but most likely you have everything already and researching the occasional 1-2 weapons added in the last patch isn't exactly that taxing (if it was, people would revolt, for obvious reasons).

- You can try to attack a node in dark sectors but that means you use resources to gather resources so eventually it's a meaningless struggle (and the whole thing depends on whether or not you can win the clickfest when trying to start your attack on that node – more details on dark sector conflicts a tad later).

Practically none of these directions can fill the role of a meaningful resource-sink for a clan.

Many players on forums (and I guess DE included) doesn't like the idea of plain allowing the distribution or removal of resources from the Vault. Well I must admit, it's pretty obvious that in a game with real-money transactions, there would be at least some degree of temptation to clanlords to “take the money and run”.

So instead of a direct way to access the resources, I would allow the purchase of certain items and privileges from clan resources for the whole clan or certain players. The cost should scale with clan size (just like in case of dojo building and lab research).

 

Clan buffs:

Kind of like a “stance” for the clan, a temporary global buff for all members during any mission done within the limits of the duration. All these buffs can be purchased in different ranks and for a duration ranging from 1 day to about a week. For doubling the effectiveness (next rank) or doubling the duration, the cost goes up by 190% (so if rank1 costs 100,000 credits rank2 costs 190,000c). This way it's worth buying the bigger and longer version. Only one clan/global buff can be active at a time, purchasing a new one overwrites the previous one, no refunds (the following examples have a maximum rank of 3, while 1 is the lowest).

- Lich

All members of the clan gain 5/10/20% bonus to every generic drop they find during missions, like health, energy and affinity (only from globes!) but not ammo or credits.

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 100,000 credits, 1000 plastids, 3 neural sensors for a Ghost clan.

- Assassin

All members of the clan gain 5/10/20% bonus to every credit drop.

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 150,000 credits, 25000 nano spores, 3 control modules for a Ghost clan.

- Ranger

All members of the clan gain 5/10/20% bonus to every ammo drop.

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 100,000 credits, 7500 alloy plates and 2 control modules for a Ghost clan.

- Miner

All members gain 5% chance to earn double the amount when picking up a resource drop (calculated separately for every drop).

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 100,000 credits, 7500 ferrites, 2 orokin cells for a Ghost clan.

- Sage

All members gain 5% more affinity from every sources.

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 100,000 credits, 4500 salvage, 3 neurodes for a Ghost clan.

- Scavenger

All members gain 5% chance to cause an enemy to drop double loot on death. Obviously doesn't affect end-of-mission rewards (like in case of void and bosses) or survival/defense rewards.

Rank 1 with a duration of 1day costs 100,000 credits, 3500 polymer boundles, 3 pieces gallium for a Ghost clan.

 

Would be nice if the buffs' effectiveness scaled with the rank of the clan member. Leader and second in line gain full effect, while a 0.75 multiplier (75%) is applied for every rank one is lower than that (75%, 56%, 42%, 31% etc.). This way people would want to be promoted thus there would be a much higher incentive to behave well. I could imagine a full statistical page for clans so we can track how much people have donated and played, contributed during events, etc. so we can effectively notice if someone should be promoted.

 

Clan equipment:

Purchasing one of these would provide clan members with certain gear during missions – if they have enough free slots. Multiple of this can be bought and on case there is not enough slots for the player to bring all of them, the game randomly decides which one is chosen. In worst case scenario, they can appear as gear items with time limit within all members' arsenal (they cannot be sold). They cannot be “used up”, their quantity always starts on max. when a player enters a mission.

Medium Clan [health/shield/energy/ammo] recharge pack

Every member has 1/2/3 medium team health/shield/energy/ammo recharge pack on mission start, managed separately in case the player already has similar items in their gear, indicating that it is a clan-based item, replenished on every mission start.

It might be a better idea to make these items personal, as in not the “team heal” but the “heal self” kind



Stamina


There have been many problems with and changes to the stamina system - some went as far as saying we need no such thing. I must disagree I believe that little piece of realism really gives a + to the game, it just feels awkward to jump, slide, run, wallrun, etc. all the time without getting tired. And apart from the realism, it gives more depth to planning movements, as you have to keep in mind that you might run out of stamina. I like this. But it feels weird to have some frame rush around the place like cats on fire while heavy frames feel more like a fat guy with heartdisease than something strong.
To “balance” it out or at least make it remotely logical, I would make fast frames pay less stamina for acrobatic moves and let them move a tad faster (just like now), while having less stamina than normal. Tough frames would pay more stamina for acrobatic moves (they are heavy after all) and move a tad slower, while having more stamina overall (they are strong and resilient!).

This way it's logical and if it's only running, the heavy frames would have a better chance to keep up than now - so rushers could stay calm and feel less need for nagging them to move... DE has already mentioned the well known “butting” and “coptering”, the usual means of fast movement during a mission. This usually hails a change sooner or later – and when that happens heavy frames will go snail.



Stalker (and bosses overall):


One form of in-game events is the Stalker, the shadow with a blade, who h(a)unts the Tenno during missions, appearing from time to time with the promise of swift death or riches to those capable of defeating him.

We have seen various versions, one that was a pushover, one that was plain brutal, etc. Right now the outcome of confronting him seems harder to guess mostly because he no longer arrives kneeling and defenseless while having decent damage supporting his speedy arrival.

Most players only see him as a way to get some weapons blueprints or an SD mod – or a reason to abort mission.

My biggest problem with him (and bosses usually), is that his main strength doesn't hail plain from his damage or tactics. When you are unlucky, he can easily slash at you without you having any chance to evade the attack, even if you try to parkour all over the place while possessing immunity to numerous abilities of ours. The former thing can only be solved through AI programming and I won't start detailing that here since that doesn't plain concern a single enemy but the whole gaim. As for the latter, I know abilities with freeze and stun effects could make him easy pray if not managed properly but I think making an enemy "immune" to effects is not a good idea. It takes away the "reality" of your abilities by introducing an enemy who is simply not affected by them - like in children's shooting games when they shout "I shot you, you are dead!" at an adult who plain smiles back and cares not.
I mean if the Stalker is capable of simply ignoring our abilities then why does he not ignore our bullets or direct attack abilities? He is clearly capable of doing so. He is not even a "predator" that fights for the thrill of the hunt, he is plain out to "punish" you for your "crimes". He is not even a Samurai to be overly focused on honorable combat.
If feels strange to shoot and vanquish a guy capable of simply shrugging off our most prized abilities that shatter stone and flesh.

Anyways, I have a few ideas (of course I do :) that could substitue for his ignorance/immunity:

Disruptor field:
Ability, the Stalker can use it once in every minute (doesn't use it unless hindered in some way). The ability disrupts surrounding energy:
- collapsing active effects (snowglobe, bastille, freeze, flames, contagion and all others too)
- nulling player shields
- disables player casting for duration
- destroying 25% (of full amount, not actual amount) of player energy reserves
- disabling player energy and shield regeneration for duration.
The ability plays like an energy wave, not like Volt's ultimate but similar animation can be used. A residual effect, energy dots swirling around like in derelict/infested missions shall stay for duration. The abilitiy's duration shouldn't be too long, like 3 or 5 seconds. That should be enough to birth a window of opportunity for the Stalker to strike yet not too long for the Tenno to feel completely powerless.
Emergency teleport:
When incapacitated by some ability (stunned, frozen, etc.) and unable to "cast", the Stalker disappears in a puff of smoke and doesn't appear for some time or till his target is in a place he can attack. It shouldn't be that hard to make the Stalker capable of discerning if he has enough "space" to perform his attack - DE does feats dwarfing this to a mere trick every day. I can imaging players slowly advancing through the map, always under the cover of Bastille, scared the Stalker might massacre them :) Oh, how nice it would be if after disappearing the Stalker would reappear on the closest safe spot and cast Disruptor field... mwahaha. That would certainly rile some feather amongst the Tenno - seriously, that would make him a damn scary opponent.
Ether shift:
When stunned (or frozen, etc.) the Stalker shifts into an ethereal state, he is partially translucent, light particles shine around him midair (close vicinity, like dust in light just not moving... like stars on a night sky) and he is invulnerable or 75% resistant to damage. By invulnerability I mean he has no "collision box". This is the absolute last resort ability (for me, not him), if the Emergency teleport is not acceptable.
 

Well, I'm not that naive, I know it's near unthinkable that such things will be implemented... but if at least he would suffer a slow debuff when our CC abilities hit him, that I could live with. The % could scale with the type of attack that hits (like slow attacks only slow him 20% while stuns 40% etc.)... and so on.

 

Kinda that's it - for now. The Stalker simply holds so much potential, I cannot just ignore it if I think something is off...

 

In-game events:

It would be nice if on higher difficulty maps you would get more than just simply higher stat enemies - that doesn't really make me play on higher difficulty since it feels exactly the same as the easy ones. Why would I need to level my mods once I got everything? Yep I get stronger but what do I get for being stronger? Game experience doesn't change, only the floating numbers are bigger. If new enemy types would appear gradually (not all at once as it mostly looks right now) as difficulty rises and they would become more intelligent (like heavy grineer using cover instead of waiting to be shot in the middle of the room...), use more diverse abilities (like new grenades, portable shields, health package, maybe even portable heavy weapon they have to set up first :), the higher difficulty maps would actually be different.

The hardest part of this is making enemies more clever - infested is only running towards you like fools, but programming it so they stand a chance against bastille is a job for superman. The easy way out (or at least a partial help) is the introduction of in-game events that might happen on a mission - just like the Stalker (which we all know doesn't exist) appearing to maliciously murder a tenno.

Just a few examples I have thought of:
- Team running into a Grineer blockade - soldiers with shields in a line, providing cover for the heavies behind, like some roadblock :D, maybe even some snipers on higher ground.
- A miniboss Hyena spawning with guards, slowly moving through the map (or at least part of it) looking for you.
- An "ambush" room where you get locked in and the only console is well defended, the room itself filled with enemies in cover.
- Locked in a room slowly filling with poison gas (could work practically the same as the decompression event when shooting windows on ship).
- Corpus drone or immobile device blocking energy use or nulling all your shields while in it's (huge) aoe, guarded by some troopers.
- Enemies preparing to bomb a bridge or room to block your path - maybe you meet engineers welding a door. You have to around if you can't stop them in time. Maybe they try to block the path to some "treasure" room with secondary objective or whatnot.
- A special infested that harasses you on the whole map by appearing and turning invisible when getting hurt - maybe spawning one last time near extraction and you get extra reward for killing it.
- Infested nest with "cocoons" of not yet completely converted beings, guarded by some unique enemy (dunno about lore, maybe a matriarch or just a "guardian").
- Infested tenno appearing among the enemies, using special infested abilities.
- Infested "webs" on certain corridors you have to burn or cut, maybe producing poison clouds on "death" like toxic ancients.
- Infested object affecting part of map, causing hallucinations to tenno like change in coloring (even going monochrome) and not really existing enemies lingering around till players find and destroy the object or creature.
- Enemy reinforcements appearing during a fight - maybe under the cover of flashbang/smoke grenades.
- "MiniBoss" appearing during defense missions, possibly during waves on power of 5, not necessarily unique, it can be a named and recolored version of normal enemies (like the original bosses :P) but should have random abilities - and not much more hp than a heavy.
- Enemies actually retreating to next room if their numbers get too low. This is not really an event but still...
- Secondary objective appearing - not a must to complete but should be nice in some ways. Like giving an extra reward or helping in mission overall. Like you can do something about the "freezing" conditions of the map or the enemy is in the reactor room trying to destroy the ship - if you fail fires and explosions erupt on map, with a nice timer, which running out means a big explosion and death of team (this needs some extra animations so you don't see yourselves lying on floor after the ship is destroyed :D ).
- During capture etc. another team appearing on the map (not tenno or maybe rogue tenno), trying to get your objective first and you have to beat them to it - of course it's easier to only make them appear when timer runs out, near the objective... they can jump out from vents normally inaccessible. That way the host doesn't have to handle fights you don't even see, also you can't run into them right away so the suspense is upheld. I won't even mention the possible problems of them getting stuck or not being able to fight their way through properly. But if they get the objective first, they shall go in a route you can "intercept" so you might get the objective from them. This would be even better if "raid" missions would to reappear :D

And a ton other event can be created so they don't become too frequent. This is not the same as upping the AI but still gives some thrill and diversity.

 

Concepts:
[Last edited on 2014.06.24.]

Vizier (Warframe)*

Type: heavy control frame

Concept: sand, light manipulation, mysticism, arabian theme

Health: 100 (300 on rank 30)

Shield: 125 (375 on rank 30)

Energy: 150 (225 on rank 30)

Armor: 150

Speed: 0.9

 

- Ability 1 concepts

Curse” – damage/inverse Link

Description: “The Vizier marks the target enemy that shall suffer all the damage dealt to other enemies within range around.”

The target enemy will suffer 40/60/80/100% (affected by power strength mods) of the damage dealt to enemies in a range of 9/12/15/18 (preferably not affected by power range mods).

Would be preferable if all damage was copied, not depending on allegiance (thus damage done to Tenno also contributes). No limit on how many enemies can be marked at the same time. Energy cost: 25.

 

Desert wind” - linear blind

Description: “The Vizier unleashes a torrent of small particles to blind those in front of him.”

The ability applies blindness effect to all enemies in a line within a range of 9/12/15/18 (affected by power range mods) from the player for a duration of 2/3/4/5 seconds (affected by power duration mods). Blinded enemies are incapable of ranged attack, just randomly walk around (or struggle in one place) but when closed on, they might use melee to fend off the players. Boss or other stun-immune enemy types suffer 80% slow instead. Energy cost: 25.

 

- Ability 2 concepts

Singa hamata”or “Beneath the desert sands” – ethereal form, bonus damage on exit, passive channeling (can do other things besides channeling)

Description: “The Vizier shifts into shadowstride, moving undetected and untouchable to ambush the enemy.”

The player is invisible and invulnerable while the ability is channeled, can move without hindrance (thus even through enemies). The channeling diminishes energy and disables any other ability but other than that, doesn't hinder the player - it ends if the player reactivates the ability (presses 2) or successfully(!) attacks (or the energy reaches 0). In case of a successful attack, be it ranged or melee, the attack gains a 45/55/65/75% bonus to it's damage (not affected by power strength mods) and an explosive aoe that deals the full damage to all enemy within a range of 9/11/13/15 to the impact location. Energy cost: 10 for activation and 10 energy per every second spent in this state (affected by power efficiency mods).

 

Shifting sands” - CC aura, passive channeling

Description: “The Vizier summons whirling particles to hinder his enemies.”

The ability places a whirling storm of sand onto the player, that follows him around and applies an accuracy debuff onto enemies within the area of effect causing them to miss their shots by a 20/30/40/50% chance (the shot still goes into the general direction so beware of Napalm and Bombard grineer), as well as slowing their movement by 80%. The storm covers the area within the range of 9/11/13/15 to the player (affected by power range mods) for 10 energy point per second. Activation costs 25 energy.

 

Ability 3 concepts

A thousand suns” – blind, active channeling (no other action is allowed)

Description: “The Vizier summons the gaze of scorching desert suns, blinding his opponents.”

The ability consumes 10 energy per second (affected by power efficiency mods), while it applies blindness effect to all enemies within a range of 16/19/22/25 (affected by power range mods) from the player. The enemies take about 1 second to recuperate after the channeling has ended. Boss or other stun-immune enemy types suffer 80% slow instead. Activation cost: 25.

 

Fort” - cover/obstacle

Description: “The Vizier brings forth a wall made of sand, blocking the path for enemies and incoming projectiles alike.”

The ability spawns a thick (about 2 units), opaque wall of sand, the grains constantly pouring down on it's surface, double the height of a player character and the width of 3/4/5/6 (affected by power range mods). Enemy AI should handle it as cover, thus if possible they ought to try find a way round it (and won't shoot it like fools after realizing it doesn't work) – on the other hand if that is not a viable option, they can pass into it but they are slowed by 75%. The wall blocks all and any shots (but not explosions) and even slows the Tenno by 25% if passing into it. Only one wall can be active at a time but the power can be activated limitlessly as long there is enough energy (always destroying the previous wall and summoning a new one). Costs 50 energy (affected by power efficiency mods) and stays for a duration of 10/12/14/16 seconds.

 

- Ability 4 concepts

Drystorm” – slow and leech, active channeling

Description: “The Vizier calls forth the legendary Drystorm to rob his enemies of their life's energy and render them but bones and shadow.”

The ability slows enemies by 20/30/40/50% (not affected by power damage mods) and damages them for 70/80/90/100 (slash, affected by strength damage mods) every second within a range of 14/16/18/20 (affected by power range mods) while providing 1 points of energy (not affected by power efficiency mods) to the player for every affected enemy. The ability uses 20 points of energy per second (affected by power efficiency mods) while it's channeled. Initial cost is 50 energy.

 

Daymare” - minion summon

Description: “The Vizier steals the shadow of his enemies to do his bidding.”

The ability starts with a bright light that blinds enemies for 2/3/4/5 seconds (not affected by power duration mods) within the range of 14/16/18/20. After that a black “torrent” forms on the ground which spawns 1/2/3/4 entity near the player. As for visuals it would look cool if the minions had space/void-like texture (mapped to screen – thus the minions look like a “hole” which through you can stare into space). The minions are bulky monstrosities, clobbering an opponent every second with aoe melee strikes, hitting for 125/150/175/200 (affected by power strength mods) slash damage each, having 50% chance to knock enemies over. They randomly choose targets for every hit, teleporting from opponent to opponent. They stay for a duration of 20/24/28/32 (affected by power duration mods) seconds and until then they cannot be hurt.

 

*Originally I've named him Magnus but I took too long making the 3d model (was reluctant to post him without concept art but... well, seeing how I'm still not ready with the model and still don't have any motivation to complete it) so later that name got taken. Overall Vizier (veziir or leader) sounds more fitting, being a control frame and such so it's for the better.

 

New mods
[Last edited on 2014.05.28.]


Thought about it a while and brought together my old mod concepts too - they are too much fun to just trash them so I will try to keep them out here where they are easier to see so maybe someone high up gets an idea :D.
- Shatter:
A mod for shattering shots on impact into shrapnels like a miniature explosion or extra/weaker shots generated like:
lvl1: 10% chance to generate a 25%dmg shrapnel
lvl2: 15% chance to generate 2 pieces of 25%dmg shrapnels

- Burst:
The mod makes shots explosive, giving them a small range AoE damage. (The seer pistol could use it well as it looks like it explodes to begin with).
lvl1: 0.2m range of explosion
lvl2: 0.4m range of explosion
lvl3: 0.6m range of explosion
etc.
Maybe it would make it more balanced if the explosion damage would be only a portion of the original damage... like making this a new Elemental mod:
lvl1: 10% explosive damage
lvl2: 20% explosive damage
etc. (The range being fixed on adequate length like 0.5 or higher might be good but that too could level with the mod just as cold effect seems to be more dependable on higher levels. Also making explosions carry the applied elemental mod effects is necessary to make this feel good - like a freezing explosion. Hmm...)
This mod might be even better if used together with shatter - shots exploding into small parts exploding themselves... whee.

- Rebound*/Snapshot:
Making shot's rebound once a level, or for X% dmg per level, or Y% chance for rebound per level.
Though maybe it would be best like this:
Lvl1: You have 25% divided by firerate for your shots to rebound if they don't hit enemies.
Lvl2: You have 50% / firerate for your shots to rebound if they don't hit enemies.
Lvl3: You have 75% / firerate for your shots to rebound if they don't hit enemies.
Lvl4: You have 100% / firerate for your shots to rebound if they don't hit enemies.
The chances would deteriorate by every "bounce" with a large amount, like the mod's base one of 25%. This way it wouldn't go that far even on maximum but would still provide the spectacle and utility usage. Imagine what Flux or Spectra look like with this babe :) Especially if range is reset on every rebound, essentially making Flux arch over larger distances than now.

*Originally I wanted the name Rebound but eventually Glaive got this mod with that name. Sadly only Glaive (and kin) can use it :(.

- Spread:
A mod for splitting your shots - halves the damage but doubles the number of all shots for every level with a small bit of a spread effect making them hit a wider area. Using it on a shotgun would be crazy... :) Pretty useless normally since it would devastate precision but could look funny... actually it could make snipers usable against crowds... like Lanka modded with Split chamber providing 2 shots to begin with, those shots being split and applying penetration to it and voila, you have made your longrange shotgun :) And since the damage is distributed among the shots, we don't have to worry about balance at all. Yea, we already have a multishot mod for every ranged weapon but this little baby would produce much more shots. Small grenades or rockets from Penta/Ogris? Mwahaha...

- Reservoir:
The mod would give a chance after each level that the next shot doesn't consume ammo.
lvl1: 10%
lvl2: 20%
...

lvl5: 50%
It should be a rather cheap mod since it doesn't really give much advantage especially if diminishing returns apply to the chances - but shall be kept in mind that it's more valuable than max ammo mods since this one actually makes you need less pickups instead of just letting you pick up more in advance.

- Shadow strike:
Melee mod, making melee weapons able to hit 1 more enemy per level. It could counter the problem of the one-hander melee weapons (though most of those should hit multiple enemies normally, especially since the animation doesn't stop after a proper hit but seemingly slashes through others too). Actually it would be best if made as a Split Chamber mod for melee weapons - that way it's useful to large weapons and one-handers too. Mainly if the extra attack is “unused”, it strikes one of the targets that the weapon hit previously (if there was any) so it's not wasted. Tenno thinking green, “don't wase your melee hits!”

- Leech:
Hitting an enemy's shield has X% chance to heal the character's shields portion of dealt damage.
lvl1: 15% chance regenerate own shields with 10% damage dealt to enemy shields.
lvl2: 15% chance regenerate own shields with 20% damage dealt to enemy shields.
etc.

- Ranger, Hunter, Assassin:
Description: Higher damage on weakspots.
Type: Weapon mod (primary, secondary, melee)
Shots hitting weak spots (like head or such) deal more extra damage than usual.
lvl1: Hitting weakspots cause 25% higher damage (affecting the bonus damage so if hitting head gives a +200% extra damage, this would change that number to 250% so it's nothing extreme) and a 10% chance for causing small concussion to target (resulting in lower accuracy – see Tremor at universal abilities, the chapter above).
lvl2: Hitting weakspots cause 50% higher damage and a 10% chance for causing mild concussion to target (the accuracy enemies retain is lower than on lvl1).
lvl3: Hitting weakspots cause 75% higher damage and a 10% chance for causing heavy concussion to target.
etc.

- Wolfpack
Description: Provides speed bonuses to the team to keep them together.
Type: Aura mod
Would provide 0.1 base speed bonus plus 0.1 speed bonus per player around meaning that those staying together can move faster. This way if you are too fast and leave the others behind you just might find yourself outrun by slower frames staying together.

- Nemesis
Description: The overwhelming presence of the Tenno induces fear in enemies causing their abilities to deteriorate.
Type: Aura mod
Every tenno on team would possess an aura of "weakness", that causes an enemy to lose 10% speed and damage (or accuracy). The aura stacks meaning more tenno around an enemy, the more debuff that enemy suffers from.

- Carrion swarm
Description: Aggressive nanites eat away at enemies around healing the Tenno in turn.
Type: Aura mod
An aura that constantly damages enemies around the players by a small amount (0.1hp/s per enemy) and feeding that very amount to the player(s) thus making this a fight only regeneration aura - since standing alone in a corner would make this useless while fighting in the midst of it it would outstrip the Rejuvenation aura mod. The amount of health gained would not change with ranks, but instead the range would, from 4-24m. It would be nice if this would heal shields too but honestly not that important.

- Beholder
Description: Enemies around the Tenno get occasionally stunned by nanites.
Type: Aura mod
The aura has 5% chance to affect an enemy around the tenno with a cooldown of 5/3/1 second. The stun effect itself suffers from diminishing returns thus stunning the same enemy less and less until some time passes: first stun 3 seconds, second 1 second, third only staggers. Effect can change to knockdown instead of stun.

- Mirror image
Description: Enemies around the Tenno are misled by holographic hallucinations causing them to occasionally miss their targets.
Type: Aura mod
The aura causes all enemies to have a 10/20/30% chance to miss their targets.

 

- Economist

Description: Energy and health globes charge for a higher amount.

Type: Aura mod

All energy and health drops picked up give 10/20/30% more energy and health, respectively.

 

 

Emblem stat bonuses:

During events we frequently obtain new emblems and while I like the design of quite a few of them I feel they could be so much more. Honestly I have seen a fairly similar idea in a different f2p game and my first though was that it could be perfectly adapted into Warframe. It would provide a possible "static" reward for all events that would make worth playing even if only an emblem is given as gift on completion.

Basically even emblems would provide certain bonuses for the play IF they are worn. This means you would have to choose which bonus you want. Also emblems could have levels, like bronze, silver, gold, etc. providing higher bonuses - awarded for doing more than necessary during the events. The bonuses must be rather subtle so they don't affect balance too much making it even harder for the Devs to maintain "order.

 

Example:

Current "Avalance Offensive" could award the following bonuses for it's emblem:

Bronze - for murdering 50 designated targets: 5% chance (per second) to apply 10% slow on enemies damaged by the player.

Silver - for murdering 100 designated targets: 5% chance (per second) to apply 20% slow on enemies damaged by the player.

Golden - for murdering 300 designated targets: 5% chance (per second) to apply 30% slow on enemies damaged by the player.

or

Bronze - for murdering 50 designated targets: 5% bonus cold damage to every shot.

Silver - for murdering 100 designated targets: 5% bonus cold damage to every shot, 10% cold resistance.

Golden - for murdering 300 designated targets: 5% bonus cold damage to every shot, 10% cold resistance, 5% chance to slow enemies within range of 8.

 

Challenges completed in large numbers could award some kind of emblem too which would get "stronger" depending on how high the player's score was (like maintaining 50/70/90% accuracy for a whole mission 100 times while killing at least X%, min.Y number of enemies, etc. ), also "Founder" emblems could provide some form of bonuses too, like 1% extra affinity income for every level of "Founder" status they have (so a rank3 founder would have 3% xp bonus). That's very little but still provides some real advantage.

 

Epilogue:

I realize these are just my ideas but maybe some bigfish get's something from this... anyways that's it for now.
Thank you for staying folks! Will be back next week (hope not).

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

Updates:

#1 "Challenges" chapter added.
#2 "Universal ablities" chapter added.
#3 "Simulation room" chapter added.
#4 "New mods" chapter added.
#5 "Puzzles" chapter added.
#6 "Changing a few things" chapter added.
#7 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Volt.
#8 "Updates" chapter added so it's easier to see if there are changes without opening the spoiler tabs.
#9 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Dojo - Vault.
#10 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Nekros.
#11 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Stamina.
#12 Few changes made to "Consumables" chapter.
#13 "In-game events" chapter added.
#14 "PvP" chapter added.
#15 "Changing a few things" chapter expanded with Stalker.
#16 Removed Trinity from "Changing a few things" chapter as it's no longer relevant.
#17 "Universal abilities" chapter expanded with "Extra choices".
#18 "Changing a few things" chapter divided into a "Warframe" and an "Other" section, Frost added to "Changing Warframes" chapter.

#19 "Consumables and the void" chapter spiced up/updated a bit.

#20 A few updates based upon my newer posts (like more detailed challenges), "Vouchers" chapter added.

#21 Removed Volt from "Changing Warframes" chapter.

[2014.03.18.] Updates to "Consumables and the Void", "Merchant", "Gambler", "Simulation room" chapters, added date of edit to these too, for clarity. Switching "Updates" from numbering to dates [YYYY.MM.DD.].

[2014.05.28.] Updates to “Challenges”, “Vouchers”, “Universal abilities”, “New mods”, “Puzzles”, “Changing Warframes” and “Changing a few (other) things” chapters.

[2014.05.30.] Warframe Concept Vizier added to “Concepts” chapter.
[2014.06.24.] Since I've run out of space I had to take the post apart, into 2 pieces. 1st part can be found HERE

[2014.06.24.] “New mods” chapter moved into “Concepts” chapter.

[2014.08.14.] "Emblem stat bonuses" chapter added.

 

____________ _ _ ____________

 

 

- q86d.png-

Edited by K_Shiro
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  • 3 months later...

As impressed as I am with this incredible compendium of sense and enhancement, I wasn't expecting you to punt the snowglobe. You just didn't deal with it. I admit to presumption, here, but this is what you meant to say:

 

1. Cut the white globe effect down to ONE-THIRD of its current visibility. It is TOO ANNOYING.

2. Remove the colored energy effect from snowglobe entirely. It forces socially-responsible Frosts to use black as their energy color and allows trollish Frosts to obscure everyone's vision with hot pink or something equally obnoxious. Got to go.

2. Double the durability of the snow globe, and make it applicable to all damage. Specifically to include railguns and explosions.

 

There. Fixed.

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I reread the entirety of this thread, and have many comments, but for right now I'd like to point out that many Warframe skills are more of a harm to the team than they are to the enemy. Any ability that fills the battlefield with friendly or non-combat entities is essentially a way to CC (Crowd Control, diminish the effectiveness of) the entire co-op team. Shadows of the dead is obviously one of these pain in the rear abilities.

 

Further, abilities that obstruct the view of teammates are antisocial and do more harm than good. I don't remember what it's called, but that ability that puts a ghost on every enemy is just ludicrous. All of that should be redesigned to avoid nerfing the team.

 

A related comment that is not directly in response to this thread: a Mirage can be an amazing troll in a co-op team. The Mirage equips a weapon with an annoying visual effect, uses colors that are loud and obnoxious, and obscures the view of the entire team. Not good.

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As impressed as I am with this incredible compendium of sense and enhancement, I wasn't expecting you to punt the snowglobe. You just didn't deal with it. I admit to presumption, here, but this is what you meant to say:

 

1. Cut the white globe effect down to ONE-THIRD of its current visibility. It is TOO ANNOYING.

2. Remove the colored energy effect from snowglobe entirely. It forces socially-responsible Frosts to use black as their energy color and allows trollish Frosts to obscure everyone's vision with hot pink or something equally obnoxious. Got to go.

2. Double the durability of the snow globe, and make it applicable to all damage. Specifically to include railguns and explosions.

 

There. Fixed.

 

First of all I'm not really looking at this from the graphical/trolling direction. Yes, multiple snowglobes can be pretty bad for your eyes right now and while a snowstorm wouldn't be any better (I do have ideas to remove the problem, like using the planes within the effect as masks for a screen based animation instead of directly acting as textured surfaces but that's not up to me) but at the same time I don't think I should care all that much.

If someone wants to Troll, that person will find a way. Taking animations down a notch and ruining the feeling for others because of a few, I can't agree with that idea. I like brightly colored effects (I have glow/bloom on) and while I find it annoying if someone casts the same thing in multiple instances to annoy others (like 9 snowglobes) but what should I do? Rage? Even if we removed all that stuff (and make everything look so subtle that it gets boring) they would find another way. Chat you, switch-teleport you, or just plain stand in your way.

I know this sounds evil but all you can do is to get friends that don't do this and play with them. I've learned to not care about such people - life is too short to make it even shorter by needlessly agitating over meaningless things.

 

As for the "didn't deal with it", I did and no, I wouldn't say what you wrote.

From the very beginning (for me that is open-beta), I loathed snowglobe. A thin film of ice stopping bullets is already ridiculous both logically and visually (together with free movement through it or shots going out, etc.) and after the nerf even it's effectiveness was lost.

Now I agree with the removed invulnerability. It much be destructible in one form or another - as one of my favourite quotation goes "In this world there is no such thing as immortality" and that is quite literally true for every single thing, be it a living being or an object. There is always enough force to move what you see immovable simply because a set and undynamic thing will always be limited. That's for my personal opinion on the design.

As for logical reasons, DE needs to (and according to them wants to) make abilities balanced so they are effective for all players, those who play on lower diff maps and those that play on higher diff too. With double durability the globe would end up being practically invulnerable on lower ranked missions while on higher rank it would die fast just as it does now, only a few waves later. It would just delay the inevitable. Also raising that health too high, it would just make Frost a necessity for certain missions all over again. That is never good. A specialized defense frame is nice but when a mission can only be completed because of that one frames single ability, it's narrowing the viable choices for players thus killing the game.

So what we are looking for is a way to make that shield provide protection against all odds but still cave in if the players mess up.

 

That's why I made that concept work with % dmg reduction instead of complete absorbtion - scales perfectly in every condition. Percentages are always the best solution, a rigid number always fails. And as a fellow programmer (and avid gamer) I can easily state that it's better for the programmer too. You change the damage and health of all enemies? Whoo, I have to rewrite every damage and reduction entry on player abilities!... or not, since I made them % so it doesn't matter to them how the numbers they affect change.

 

But just so I draw up a concept for a working version of the current snowglobe, I would make it have a certain maximum damage it can sustain from a single shot. That way there will be a relatively minimum time before it gets destroyed which never changes, whatever difficulty the players are on while it provides the possibility of sudden death if the players can't stop the enemies fast enough from shooting it (since too many shots mean it will die anyways :D). A visual indication of it's health would be obviously necessary to be visible to all players though perfect precision is not needed (would look weird if we saw 72237.223 displayed atop the globe :D).

 

Kind of. I still like my Winterhail more of course. Gotta go or else I'm falling asleep right here.

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First of all I'm not really looking at this from the graphical/trolling direction. Yes, multiple snowglobes can be pretty bad for your eyes right now and while a snowstorm wouldn't be any better (I do have ideas to remove the problem, like using the planes within the effect as masks for a screen based animation instead of directly acting as textured surfaces but that's not up to me) but at the same time I don't think I should care all that much.

If someone wants to Troll, that person will find a way. Taking animations down a notch and ruining the feeling for others because of a few, I can't agree with that idea. I like brightly colored effects (I have glow/bloom on) and while I find it annoying if someone casts the same thing in multiple instances to annoy others (like 9 snowglobes) but what should I do? Rage? Even if we removed all that stuff (and make everything look so subtle that it gets boring) they would find another way. Chat you, switch-teleport you, or just plain stand in your way.

I know this sounds evil but all you can do is to get friends that don't do this and play with them. I've learned to not care about such people - life is too short to make it even shorter by needlessly agitating over meaningless things.

 

As for the "didn't deal with it", I did and no, I wouldn't say what you wrote.

From the very beginning (for me that is open-beta), I loathed snowglobe. A thin film of ice stopping bullets is already ridiculous both logically and visually (together with free movement through it or shots going out, etc.) and after the nerf even it's effectiveness was lost.

Now I agree with the removed invulnerability. It much be destructible in one form or another - as one of my favourite quotation goes "In this world there is no such thing as immortality" and that is quite literally true for every single thing, be it a living being or an object. There is always enough force to move what you see immovable simply because a set and undynamic thing will always be limited. That's for my personal opinion on the design.

As for logical reasons, DE needs to (and according to them wants to) make abilities balanced so they are effective for all players, those who play on lower diff maps and those that play on higher diff too. With double durability the globe would end up being practically invulnerable on lower ranked missions while on higher rank it would die fast just as it does now, only a few waves later. It would just delay the inevitable. Also raising that health too high, it would just make Frost a necessity for certain missions all over again. That is never good. A specialized defense frame is nice but when a mission can only be completed because of that one frames single ability, it's narrowing the viable choices for players thus killing the game.

So what we are looking for is a way to make that shield provide protection against all odds but still cave in if the players mess up.

 

That's why I made that concept work with % dmg reduction instead of complete absorbtion - scales perfectly in every condition. Percentages are always the best solution, a rigid number always fails. And as a fellow programmer (and avid gamer) I can easily state that it's better for the programmer too. You change the damage and health of all enemies? Whoo, I have to rewrite every damage and reduction entry on player abilities!... or not, since I made them % so it doesn't matter to them how the numbers they affect change.

 

But just so I draw up a concept for a working version of the current snowglobe, I would make it have a certain maximum damage it can sustain from a single shot. That way there will be a relatively minimum time before it gets destroyed which never changes, whatever difficulty the players are on while it provides the possibility of sudden death if the players can't stop the enemies fast enough from shooting it (since too many shots mean it will die anyways :D). A visual indication of it's health would be obviously necessary to be visible to all players though perfect precision is not needed (would look weird if we saw 72237.223 displayed atop the globe :D).

 

Kind of. I still like my Winterhail more of course. Gotta go or else I'm falling asleep right here.

Regarding only the graphic section of your response: I'm not talking about nine snowglobes, or even about anyone deliberately trolling. The visual effect of a SINGLE snowglobe amounts to a CC on the entire team. It is nearly impossible to aim through a snowglobe. Additionally, the visual effect of blowing snow within the snowglobe is keyed to the energy color on the Frost that casted the snowglobe's suit. This can be highly obnoxious, especially if the Frost has something like hot pink or cyan as their energy color. I think it should be fixed. If you don't think so, that's fine, but don't confuse yourself into thinking I was talking about trolling.

 

I'll reply to the rest of this when and if I find time and motivation. It's your thread, I'm a guest here.

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Regarding only the graphic section of your response: I'm not talking about nine snowglobes, or even about anyone deliberately trolling. The visual effect of a SINGLE snowglobe amounts to a CC on the entire team. It is nearly impossible to aim through a snowglobe. Additionally, the visual effect of blowing snow within the snowglobe is keyed to the energy color on the Frost that casted the snowglobe's suit. This can be highly obnoxious, especially if the Frost has something like hot pink or cyan as their energy color. I think it should be fixed. If you don't think so, that's fine, but don't confuse yourself into thinking I was talking about trolling.

 

I'll reply to the rest of this when and if I find time and motivation. It's your thread, I'm a guest here.

 

Sorry, I guess I misinterpreted what you wrote though mainly because I don't really have negative experiences like that. I never really saw snowglobe as a hindrance in aiming (in fact I had trouble because of the fact that once upon a time the effect - both the storm and globe - dissipated the closer you were to the edge and I couldn't always tell when to pop the next globe... that was before the timer). If you are within the globe, the effect (I never had trouble even when I've used 'white' as energy color) is pretty much nonexistent, while on the outside... well, you can't shoot through it from the outside anyways.

Truth to be told I do play frequently with fullscreen map on so I'm used to most obstruction. Also honestly after playing so much void missions, my eyes are already blackened rocks of charcoal in my skull so I doubt even a hundred nova+frost+ember can cause me discomfort anymore. Hell, even the loading screen is blinding (hands up guys that move the ship just to block out the light-source during loading!).

 

Actually the most problematic effect that caused me trouble aiming was the old version of Bastille - it was toned down a lot but that vibration was just otherworldy and sickening. Even now it's pretty bad but nothing how it was back in the days. And the void+sniperscope combo of course. Now that's neat.

 

Again, if we have to put down more than one globes because it's so weak, you become so right that it hurts (my eyes :D).

 

PS.: Also yes, Shadows of the Dead (current version) is one of the most annoying hindrance to his own allies a Nekros can produce on a battlefield.

Edited by K_Shiro
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I really like some of these ideas. I can't say much about the PVP or some of the dojo ideas (not in a major clan; trying to get a small base going with a friend is a harsh thing, but it'll get there eventually), but I can say I really like the rest.

 

Thoughts on what I have read;

I think the simulation room could be a small interact able they place on your ship; you use it, and you select your options there. It seems like it would be more convenient to have it there. Even more so, I think such a thing would be nice if they gave you options to test unattained level 30 items/weapons/war-frames from the shop (or unused blueprints) in a simulation to see if you might like using it in the main game. Something like that would really help give me an idea of how useful my mod load out is, and whether not I will actually like a weapon I'm thinking of getting. By leveled, I mean that it would let you assign mods you own to a 30 point version as a test item to see if you may like it. This would allow you to test shop items before making the investment in the blueprint, or if you find a blueprint (say for a daily reward only item like a Gorgon), to test it out and see if you want to craft it.

 

I'm not too sure on vouchers cosmetically due to the nature of the F2P model, but making them a way to obtain items the RNG has blocked you from is a great saving grace for those on the lower end of the bell curve. Mind you, It could be possible that if they suddenly do throw huge amounts of cosmetics in game, it could make it so that the vouchers for cosmetics may not be a problem. But even so, I'm still not entirely sure about how well it would work on the cosmetics end. (I just thought, does war-frame have a workshop?)

Anyway, I think that's a good idea, and it would certainly lessen a lot of problems with the RNG.

 

On the note of puzzles, I'd personally like it if some other puzzle types were added. Nothing too complicated for the alarms and required terminals, but optional boxes, rooms, or possibly even secret areas having more difficult ones could be fun, especially If they have better rewards for it. Even a more difficult version of the puzzle in now for optional things of the sort would be nice. Honestly, the puzzles right now are so easy that the only time I've ever felt the need for a cipher when a corpus warden started a timer of 30 seconds with the turrets next to it. Though with this in mind, it would have to be made so that ciphers were balanced in effect with this; perhaps on puzzles like the treasure room, the cipher would instead grant one extra try on a differently laid out but equally difficult puzzle, and it could only be used before you fail, so if you know you aren't going to be able to solve it, it would be a sort of reroll.

 

As for challenges and universal abilities; yes. I've wanted more varied/more rewarding challenges for awhile, and this sounds like it would do it. Universal abilities are also something that I've always thought should be there, considering how much it could vary the gameplay, and allow you to swap out less favorable abilities for other ones. As well, possibly one or two more unique options for each frame. It's strange to me that they have so many themed frames, (fire. water, electric, etc.) and they don't have a extra options for each.

 

Another interesting possibility would be if they added different versions of current abilities for war-frames as alternate mod cards you could find, which greatly modified how the base ability functioned, without straying too far from the base idea. For some examples, alternate versions of rhino's abilities could make charge do no damage but send enemies flying rag-dolled, have war-cry give increased critical chance and critical damage, have iron skin give 70% of what it does normally but give 30% to all nearby players, and make stomp create a small barrier instead at decreased energy cost. Other modified versions of rhino's abilities could be to make war cry temporarily stop ammo consumption and increase fire rates, and another could have iron skin block all damage/status effects temporarily, but only from behind (though the balance on that is questionable, at least in my mind).

 

Whatever the case, I do hope some of the ideas you've listed make it into the game as I definitely believe many of them would be great improvements. (On a side note, I didn't even realize defense missions gave only the last reward shown; that's terrible. Suddenly they look a lot less appealing. Heck, in my mind they are actually harder due to the fact that you need to keep something other then your own person alive, so having it only give the last reward seems like a slap in the face).

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Thanks - I'm astonished that someone actually spared time reading through all that... even I have trouble doing so when fixing something or such:)

 

...

(On a side note, I didn't even realize defense missions gave only the last reward shown; that's terrible. Suddenly they look a lot less appealing. Heck, in my mind they are actually harder due to the fact that you need to keep something other then your own person alive, so having it only give the last reward seems like a slap in the face).

 

As for this baby, DE mentioned that they (might) make them commulative. Just as you mentioned, skill-wise, def missions are harder (since the pod can't jump out of the way of enemy fire I guess) while survival, for the most part, only depends on support-drop frequency (and thus enemy spawning that tends to be erratical... where are the police corrupted when you need 'em?).

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