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Overhaul Idea: A Step-By-Step Guide on How To Fix The Conclave


(XBOX)Shardz
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(Prefix: To anyone who may disagree with, or dislike this idea as you read through it; I ask that you at least read it through to the end and understand this concept fully before judging it prematurely.)

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Context:

Warframe, being a PvE-based game at heart, has never exactly been known for having a very strong PvP. And with Conclave having horrible weapon, frame and Mod balancing, lacking in player population, not being advertised within, or outside the game very much at all and also running on a peer-to-peer connection for extreme lag -- it’s not all that hard to understand why it’s been panned by most of the community, either.

But, it’s not a hopeless mode just yet. DE has a great start for it. The framework is there with it and they just need to make some long-needed changes to it, to make it playable.

As someone who enjoys PvP in online games, I was hoping to possibly fix Conclave, to not only allow for more variation of play in the game, but also be inclusive of more types of players.

So, I came up with a detailed step-by-step guide for DE on how they could potentially fix Conclave almost instantly, to not just be playable, but hopefully much more enjoyable, as well.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Explanation - Part 1: (Analysis)

Now, to start off, we first need to try and understand exactly everything that is, in fact, wrong with Conclave before moving into how to potentially fix it.

But, what exactly are all the thing’s wrong with it? Well, putting it in an orderly list, including the ones mentioned above, it’s issues are such:

 

1.) The Player Connectivity Is Atrocious.

Spoiler

Connections in Warframe run off what’s known as a peer-to-peer, or player-hosted sessions. When running a PvP service, unless you have a player-base the size of that of the top triple-a’s, then this is an unsustainable form of hosting for an online service -- not just for PvP/Conclave, but for PvE, as well.

Lag is not something anyone enjoys and when it happens to such extreme degrees as it does in Warframe’s Conclave, it makes the experience a horrific one for the player.

Being killed when no one was moving; getting kills off players who are standing still and don’t know what’s going on; having host migrations constantly while in the middle of a fight, because someone got annoyed and left -- these are highly frequent occurrences in Conclave.

If DE hopes to ever one day make this mode playable on anywhere near a competitive level (which.. PvP pretty much is entirely based in competition..), then this will likely need to be at the top of their priorities list when they go about making their changes.

 

2.) Conclave Has Horrible Balancing..

Spoiler

Frames and weapons in Warframe are very obviously primarily designed around PvE first and (poorly) balanced for PvP second. This way of thinking isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, but far from being a good one for trying to include a PvP mode and have all characters still be playable and all weapons still usable.

PvP as a whole is more-or-less treated as an afterthought within the game and that’s never more apparent than it is when you look at the balancing of each item within the Conclave..

 

Some easy examples of it’s bad balancing being the fact that multiple characters’ abilities aren’t helpful at all in Conclave. Their abilities do “work,” but they just aren’t that useful, or don’t do what they should for the amount of energy used.

Among the frames/abilities that serve little-to-no purpose, we have:

 

1.) Ash -

  • 1st (Too low damage at the base level for the cost. If it had much better tracking, it wouldn't be as much of an issue.),
  • 2nd (Everyone can still see you while you’re invisible. Make invisibility moves properly invisible..),
  • 3rd (What’s the point of having a teleport if I don’t teleport right to them and don’t cause any sort of effect, DE? They’ll simply just bullet jump away before I even finish the animation)
  • 4th (Too low range and arguably lacking in proper CC, as well. Half-healthing an enemy is great and all, but for a massive lacking in mobility, this isn't really counter-balanced well.)

 

2.) Banshee -

  • 1st (Too long of a cast timer to be practical in combat for just a simple CC move at the range currently present for it)
  • 2nd (Too high of energy cost to only gain 1 weak point on a nearby enemy)
  • 3rd (Surprisingly enough, this isn’t necessarily a bad ability. Just.. why’s it on Banshee exactly..?)
  • 4th (The radius size doesn’t fit the movement level. Players will just have gotten out of the radius by the time you finish casting the ability. The ability is also too high in DPS and is basically just a guaranteed free kill if they’re within the radius, with no way for most of the enemies’ frames to be able counter it. Only frames with built-in immunity would be able to counter this.)

 

3.) Excalibur -

  • 1st (Not enough damage, if using as a primarily DPS/CC move; not enough range to use as a primarily CC-based move for the cost.)
  • 2nd (The stun is not nearly harsh enough and should fully blind the player for at least a decently good moment, like a flash-bang. A millisecond-long flash and stagger doesn't quite cut it.)
  • 3rd (Either too short of a radius for the cast time, or too long of a cast time for the radius. Take your pick, DE.)

 

4.) Frost -

  • 1st (Way too low damage/CC/utility for the cost),
  • 2nd (Wayyyy too low of range/damage combined for the cost..),
  • 3rd (Not enough bubble health for it to last long enough to be worth the energy cost.)
  • 4th (Is designed to be one guaranteed free kill with no actual skill of use.)

 

5.) Hydroid -

  • 1st (A long cast time for little results. By the time this is done casting, not only could the enemies be far away, because of completely unrestricted movement, but this ability also just doesn’t do much damage)
  • 3rd (And this is useful for..? Exactly, it isn’t useful to be able to turn into a puddle and barely be able to move an inch, if you don’t do anything to any enemies when they walk over you aside from knocking them down to near-instantly get back up.. This move needs higher CC proc rates and a larger range to be worth it.)

 

6.) Inaros -

  • 1st (Arguably too low of damage, or range.)
  • 2nd (A bit hard to hit, but is otherwise good.)
  • 3rd (Add a CC pull, to make it a utility, and it'll be a decent ability.)
  • 4th (Decrease the cost for the % of Armor gained. You should be able to reach 100% without having pick up an absolute load of health orbs.)

 

7.) Ivara -

  • 1st (Too high of energy cost, but otherwise good.)
  • 2nd (How would guiding a projectile in real time ever be useful in PvP combat? In a fast-paced game like Warframe, there's no reason to make me stop for a relatively long time to guide an object through the map and potentially miss my target anyway.)
  • 3rd (You’re still visible while using her invisibility.. For the restrictions placed on her movement, this seems ridiculous for it to not make you fully invisible.)

 

8.) Limbo -

  • 2nd (This should definitely be a momentary halt of player movement, just like in PvE.)
  • 4th (Far too short of a duration for the cost and detriment of being able to be damaged again by players who walk into it. It needs the addition of more overall utility and it'll be fine.)

 

9.) Loki -

  • 1st (This would never be useful against an actual person, even with the shots it's able to fire.. Make it more convincing and have it imitate an actual player’s movements more, while not giving away that it’s just a decoy, so that it’s actually useful.)
  • 2nd (You can still be seen with relative ease while invisible.)

 

10.) Mag -

  • 1st (Doesn’t deal enough CC for the cost. If it’s going to be single-target, it should definitely fully rag-doll the player and force them to the ground for a good bit longer bit of time than it currently does, instead of just knocking them over to get right back up immediately.)
  • 4th (Is designed to be one guaranteed free kill with no actual skill of use)

 

11.) Nekros -

  • 4th (This is not fit to be an Ultimate, or 4th ability if all it does it decreases respawn timers to 0… In a MOBA game, this would be brilliant, but not in Warframe, where respawning is already short anyway.)

 

12.) Nidus -

  • 2nd (This move should forcefully pull the player to it’s position, just like in PvE. Or, it should tether them within a very close vicinity to it’s landing point, if a player is nearby and not allow them to escape from the area at all. Otherwise, it's good.)

 

13.) Nova -

  • 2nd (This ability’s movement is too slow for the damage provided)

 

14.) Nyx -

  • 3rd (The idea of this move overall is great and suits Nyx well, but it lacks much practical use in Warframe's PvP system.)

 

15.) Oberon -

  • 1st (Lacking in much CC. Could potentially add a movement slow to this)

 

16.) Octavia -

  • 1st (This ability doesn’t do anything useful on its own… It needs to be changed to where the ability’s damage-based trigger is activated just by shooting at the ability’s entire covered area, rather than a small, concentrated center, that NO ONE is going to be dumb enough to shoot at and trying to bait them to do so seems like silly design..)
  • 2nd (Doesn’t actually help the player much at all outside of the given aura. Make this ability cover the player in a damage-reducing aura and have that cause the damage reflection, to make use of it in combination with the first ability.)
  • 4th (Without the two first abilities being of use, this ability itself is mostly useless.)

 

17.) Rhino -

  • 2nd (Decrease the degradation at least slightly over time and reduce it's overall health a tad and this ability will be just fine.)

 

18.) Saryn -

  • 2nd (It “attracting projectiles” doesn’t make sense in the context of the ability and it's user. If it were made to work like that of the Orphid Specter from the Silver Grove questline, where its Molts crawled around and exploded, or something to make it animated and active as a decoy. Then, it would make more sense in the context of the frame it's on.)

 

19.) Titania -

  • 1st (WAY too hard to hit with our current movement system..)
  • 2nd (WAY too hard to hit with our current movement system..)

 

20.) Vauban -

  • 2nd (All of these mines cost too much for their level of usefulness. Shred Mine is especially useless and would be best fixed by adding a guaranteed Slash proc to it.)
  • 3rd (Doesn’t do enough for cost. and it's form of CC doesn't make much sense in the context of Vauban's Bastille, either. Why would it slow instead of simply holding the player in mid-air suspension like in PvE? I don't see a reason for the change. This ability either needs more range, or it needs to hold enemy players up in the air for a brief moment. I would prefer the latter, honestly.)
  • 4th (This ability needs to actually CC players in a more meaningful way than simply knocking them over in a random direction, considering that it's a 100 Energy cost Black Hole. I would change this to just simply pull them into the center starting point and also add a range buff to make it do exactly what it does in PvE.)

 

21.) Wukong -

  • 1st (It takes far too much energy for a simple knock-down CC and doesn’t deal enough damage to be an easy DPS move.)

 

22.) Zephyr -

  • 1st (Way too high of an energy cost for what it simply does.)
  • 2nd (Either this move doesn’t do enough damage for the range traveled, or it doesn’t do enough CC. I’d go with CC over increasing the damage, personally, and say it needs to knock down players in a decent-sized area around the impact point.)
  • 3rd (It barely ever reflects projectiles.. Make its % chance of reflection for projectiles much higher, or the cost much lower, while also changing it to have a lesser chance to reflect hit-scan weapons.)

 

Now, some of these are more-so viable when upped with Conclave-exclusive Mods, but not as much as a player would hope, as they usually still aren’t that useful either way, or even just flat aren’t useful at all, even.

Each of these abilities should serve a very definitive, relatively unique and overall useful purpose in the game’s PvP. There shouldn’t be any abilities for any character that are able to be deemed utterly useless, or impossibly hard to hit another player with. There can be skill-shot abilities, that take more skill to aim, but they shouldn’t feel next to impossible to actually hit someone with.

These abilities don’t even have to be the “most useful in the world,” just within reason to even bother using.

These abilities also cost far too much energy per use at base and should all have much more personal levels of energy consumed for each frame and ability. I’m not saying they have to take next-to-nothing to use, but most of them definitely need to take far less than they currently do -- especially for how poorly some of them actually perform.

 

There are also some characters that have abilities that are far too overpowered, as well. The frame/ability that I know of so far would be:

  • Ivara’s 4th ability (Instantly One-Shot-Kills players across the map..)

 

This ability, instead of being either mostly, or entirely useless like the previous list, is instead far too powerful as it is currently and is in need of a decent nerf.

 

Now, for both the sake of my sanity and the sake of the overall length of this post, I’m not going to go into all of the weapons and their individual balancing. But, I will definitely say that each weapon, inarguably, needs to be re-evaluated. There are some that definitely do feel a lot stronger and objectively more useful than others and the player shouldn't have to rely on 'must-have' bandage Mods to make them useful. (This is true for PvE as well, DE...) And, while you can never have a perfectly balanced META without removing any and all variety from the player in totality, you can definitely have one that is still much more well-balanced than what I feel we’re at currently with our weapon balancing in PvP.

There are also Weapons that are even entirely missing from PvP, as well! -- The AkBronco being one of them..

No weapons should be missing at all, otherwise it'll feel like you're playing favorites with your PvP weapon carry-over choices and will end up excluding and losing even more of the PvE audience because of it.

 

Prime Weapons and Warframes and special variation versions of each weapon also cause significant issues within the Conclave, by adding multiple, unneeded, or extra versions of the same weapons and frames, needing to be individually balanced over their original. Since these weapons and frames are also literally objectively better weapons over their original in PvE, they run the risk of just being pointless additions to the selectable list of items to use as their own entity if they're equal and not better the their original counterpart in some way. I'd recommend changing Prime weapons and Warframes, along with Vandal/Wraith versions, to be cosmetic-only skins for Conclave that can be added to the base model of the weapon in the Conclave section of the arsenal to avoid any potential confusion on whether it's worthwhile to use them, or not and avoid needing to worry about balancing them in any capacity. Or, DE can just continue to give themselves extra work, and/or the community extra added confusion.

 

However, the balancing issues still aren’t over, though! Oh, no.. We still have yet to go over the most important balancing issues of them all..

Above all else, DE definitely has to fix Conclave’s biggest balancing issue before anything else.. That issue being: the fact that there is a Mods-based progression system in Conclave. This.. I’m not sure who’s idea it was at DE, but to put it bluntly: it was an absolutely horrible one..

 

When you make PvP have an Objective system of progression, you leave the door open for:

  • Pay to Win (People buying Mods from the player-traders and dominating the Conclave over those who don’t.)
  • And for newer players to be objectively disadvantaged for simply being new

 

If DE EVER wants to even dream of having a balanced PvP, this system has to be one of the first things to go.

 

3.) It Lacks Proper Commercialization.

Spoiler

While this isn't exactly a gameplay flaw, DE does, in fact, need to do a much better job at commercializing not only their game as a whole, but especially the Conclave and PvP once it’s been fixed and is known to, with certainty, be objectively fair and balanced for all players, both new and old.

I understand that it’s not a ‘main attraction’ of the game, currently, but that’s no excuse to not make it better than it currently is if it’s in the game, or even just let people know well that Warframe has a (hopefully soon to be good) PvP mode.

 

4.) The Movement Is Too Unrefined to Enjoy.

Spoiler

With Conclave, your Warframe’s movement – while not being exactly the same – is almost that of what it is in PvE. While this may sound good at first, to have a more-or-less seamless movement experience, it really isn’t..

This system is not a sustainable one, due to the fact that it makes players nearly impossible to not only keep up with during combat, but to kill, as well.

Some could argue: “that’s the point;” I would argue: that it’s not fun. No one likes Halo jumpers from the Halo games. No one liked people who boosted around endlessly in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. No one likes crouch-dodgers/prone-shooters, who abuse the crouching and prone mechanics of a game during a gun-fight. And I can say with certainty, that the movement in Warframe’s Conclave is no different.

Trying to hit a player while they’re jumping insanely high over and over, bouncing off walls and sliding, or rolling around 24/7 is not fun and even impairs different forms of play. It’s also already hard enough to aim a sniper in Warframe at a moving target. This is made all the much harder by the horrible peer-to-peer connections, usually poor map design and extreme levels of movement, to make the experience feel excessively annoying and movement-spam filled, rather than well-paced and highly rewarding.

The movement doesn’t have to be utterly nuked and reduced to being next to nothing, considering that high mobility is at the core of Warframe’s fundamentals of gameplay, but there definitely are some changes that need to happen there to make the experience more enjoyable to players.

 

5.) Some of The Maps Are Just Plain Poorly Designed.

Spoiler

When you design maps in a multiplayer environment, you want to try and make maps that present a fully balanced experience for the player.

The main things needing to be focused on being:

  • How the player transitions through the map
  • How fast the player transitions through the map
  • Whether, or not each part of the map serves a set purpose
  • And whether, or not the map fits each playstyle, weapon type, character and game mode appropriately, to be inclusive of all forms of play

 

There are quite a few good -- or at least decent -- examples of well-made PvP maps in Warframe. The Earth Compound Tileset, Uranus Docking Bay Tileset, Corpus Core Tileset and Grineer Shipyard Tileset being among those said examples – Core and Shipyard being the best of them all. But, aside from those Tilesets, a lot of the other gun/combat-based maps (I’m excluding the Lunaro maps, since they’re relatively easily balanced and aren’t currently too much of an issue) are actually not all too fun to either look at, or enjoyable to have to play repeatedly.

 

Most of the maps’ pathways lack reason.

If a hallway is lengthy, what’s the intention there? Is the player meant to aim down it and trade fire with another, like Operation Locker from the Battlefield franchise? Or, is this hallway meant to be more of an alternate travel path; a back route, for the player to sneak behind enemy lines and flank them?

Are there locations that suit all of the types of frames, weapons and forms of play to at least a decent extent?

Are there multiple transition routes for players to take?

Do the spaces feel relatively well-balanced in size to each other? (I.e: One large, open room, then a few smaller corridors connected to another large room.)

Is the map balanced for both sides, or is one side slightly advantaged from just being spawned on their original side?

Are all spawn locations relatively fair, or are there some that could lead to a player being near-instantly killed upon spawn? Is spawn spacing far away from the main fight?

Everything needs to have purpose and balance.

 

6.) It Lacks A Solid Reason to Return.

Spoiler

Currently, there simply is no reason to repeatedly come back to Conclave on average. The only things that incentivize players to ever come back to it, is when there’s either an event for it where they’ll earn something that can be used outside of PvP, or when there’s a new Teshin/Conclave exclusive item, only available through earning standing for the Conclave Syndicate in the mode itself to also be used outside of PvP.

Without a relatively good and solid reason to return; without a form of well-thought-out progression for the player to seek after, or items to be earned, why bother continuing to play? Especially, why bother continuing to play, if the PvP itself is so incredibly hard to find enjoyable at the base level of it’s fundamentals/gameplay?

It is imperative that a solid enough and stable enough form of player progression be added, that isn’t going to just objectively disadvantage others (*COUGH* Conclave Mods.. *COUGH*), but still feels rewarding enough to continuously appeal to players, without the need for constant content additions every other week to the Conclave Syndicate to be relevant.

 

7.) The Game Lacks Any Team-Play, For An Otherwise Team-Oriented Game.

Spoiler

There never really is any actual team-cooperation-based combat in the Conclave, other than just mindless brawls, with damage flying around everywhere, lacking any actual direction, or coordination.

This is an overarching issue in the game in PvE, as well – though, to a much lesser extent.

But, either way: Try adding more actual cooperative team involvement to the PvP and it’ll allow for more ability set flexibility, similar to that of a MOBA game.

 

8.) And finally, while this may be a lesser issue; It Doesn't Currently Allow For Players to Play With Their Friends In An Enjoyable Manner.

Spoiler

In Conclave, there are, of course, multiple modes for the player to try their hand at and play. Some of these modes are for a solo player only -- like ‘Annihilation’ -- while others are team-based. Unironically enough, though, Conclave won’t actually allow for you to enter team-based game modes with a team.

When going into Conclave with a squad, the game will usually default to doing a certain set thing immediately (likely because of the low player population) and that thing is: splitting the squad in half to start a match more quickly..

If someone, somehow is reading this.. on the Warframe Forums.. and yet doesn’t know: Squads are comprised of 1-4 players, regularly. Conclave’s team-based modes are made for 4v4 gameplay. So, there should be no problem with a player taking a 4-man team into a 4v4 team-based mode to play with their friends.

If DE wants more people to actually pick up Conclave and give it a go, they’ll have to fix this issue, as well, or else they’ll lose many players due to this.

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Explanation - Part 2: (Solutions)

NOW THEN!.. Since we’ve finished understanding exactly all of the more important things that are wrong with the Conclave system, it’s time for me to offer my solutions..

 

1.) Start Running Official, Dedicated Servers For All Versions of Warframe.

Spoiler

Adding set servers across all platforms is imperative. This addition would not only make PvE players happy, but Conclave players, as well. It would be costly, yes. But, the benefits from transition to this from a peer-to-peer system are entirely worth it.

If it turned out to be the case that this is not possible for DE to do for all platforms, however, then I have to say that would be a genuine shame..

 

2.) Change PvP/Conclave Mods To Be Automatically Owned By Every Player From The Start.

Spoiler

Aside from having to tweak the PvP Mods themselves, this would instantly fix the unfair progression issue present in the Conclave.

How this would work is all of the PvP only Mods would now just automatically be in every player’s PvP loadout’s inventory from the start. They cannot be sold for Credits, traded, or Transmuted anymore. They’re now permanently bound to your account by default and will no longer be earned from playing the Conclave at all.

This follows the mindset of MOBA games (like Smite and League of Legends), where you have immediate access to all items and can build your character with whatever you want right from the start, or set the game to build for you. This way, each player may not own every character, but they can definitely build them all with the exact same items without having to play an endless number of games to earn said items, making for an even playing field, with no pay-to-win element.

 

3.) Promote Your PvP Revamp Like Your Entire Salary Depends On It..

Spoiler

Regardless of whether this revamp idea is seen as being solid and is taken to by DE, or not, if they choose to revamp the PvP at all, they absolutely must promote their PvP updates endlessly from now on, to show that they not only have an incredibly large and highly detailed game, but to show that they mean business with it’s multiplayer mode and are willing to welcome not only PvE players, but a PvP community, as well.

 

Another example of how they could go about doing this is by adding a Conclave side-quest within the main game. This would not only introduce newer players to the Conclave, but give them a good understanding of what it is, how it works and why it works the way it does. 

As it is currently, Conclave's details are highly limited and adding a quest-line to explore it's lore in an in-depth capacity would likely make more players' opinions and understanding on the mode go up significantly.

 

4.) The Addition of Either a Stamina Bar to PvP, Or a General Limiter For The Movement.

Spoiler

For the Stamina bar, it literally doesn’t have to make its way into PvE at all with this, so don’t go getting your panties in a knot just yet PvE players..

This also isn’t going to nuke the movement entirely, either, like I said I wasn’t after earlier. Instead, my intention, again, is just to limit the amount of excessive movement spam present in the game, to make it so I don’t have to spray endlessly at some annoying rando Conclave player, jumping around mindlessly at the top of the room for the entire game. Or, so that I don’t have to ground-slam a million times, just to stop someone from rolling around endlessly.. I came here to play Warframe, not Dark Souls 3..

 

Now, the amount of Stamina consumed would likely be based on their size/role in the team and going in order of what movement should likely take up what % of the Stamina Bar per use:

  • Bullet Jumps should definitely take the most (Likely around 30-50% per jump)
  • Followed by Rolling (Possibly 25-35% per roll)
  • After, you’d have Ground-Pounds (20-25% per GP)
  • Then you have Wall-Running (Probably 20-25% per tap)
  • Next would be Jumping (Likely sitting at around 15-20% per jump)
  • And finally, the last being Sliding (Would likely be 15-20%. Unless you’re playing Nehza.. Then it should be number 2, in place of Rolling, with 35-50% because no.. Just no..)

 

The difference in changes between Light Frames, Medium Frames and Heavy Frames, I’ll leave to DE.

The percentage numbers themselves are also easily up for debate. I’ve tried to make them not too restricting, while also restricting enough to accomplish my original goal of stopping the unnecessary movement spam. If someone in the comments is good at crunching numbers, though, I would appreciate them taking a look over and determining if this system would be far too harsh, or not.

 

These changes would slow down the movement in PvP, yes, but that’s the point. With these changes, weapons and frames that were once entirely useless (or were close enough to being so) and play-styles that were, as well, are now going to actually be viable, since hitting players will just be much easier in general -- even without a direct upgrade to the size of a character’s hit-box.

Will this change be the most liked at first for Conclave? Probably not, knowing the community. But, will it be worth it in the end? I definitely believe so.

 

And yes, I do know that Warframe had a Stamina bar once before. Now’s a new time to try things and the outcome might be entirely different than before. Not to mention, they can just revert this change to Conclave, if it evokes enough hatred and just generally isn’t helpful.

But, giving the idea a try is definitely worth doing for DE.

 

5.) Take A Re-approach to Map Design.

Spoiler

It won’t hurt to take a bit of extra time to look into competitive map designs, or possibly even hire a more experienced employee at designing PvP-based maps, to assist the team in their re-evaluation of their current maps and help them come up with some newer, more interesting designs for players and their friends to enjoy.

 

6.) Add New Incentives For Players to Return To.

Spoiler

There are two things in mind for adding more incentive to playing the Conclave.

The first was to simply add more of every earnable thing to Teshin’s Syndicate shop. Things like exclusive Warframe and weapon Mods for PvE, more exclusive Warframe and weapon skins and armor, etc. These things would always be earnable and could allow for players to earn skins through means other than just buying them with Platinum.

 

The second idea I’d had was the addition of a Ranked Play System.

This would bring in competitive players from all over and could even start a potential competitive scene for Warframe’s Conclave, if the other balance changes are good enough to make it sustainable for competitive play on this level.

The reason why you’d want to cater to these sorts of players and give them a reason to play, is so you could grow the overall PvP player population almost immediately.

Players love to be competitive and show they’re the best, so if you want to bring in a lot of new players and do so very quickly, this would be the way to go.

 

Here’s how it would work:

Similarly to games like Halo, Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Siege, Smite, League of Legends, etc. the player will first start by playing placement matches.

There likely will be 10, or so, of these and based on a player’s in-match performance and win-rate, the system will dictate their new Ranked position.

 

Said potential Rankings will be:

  • Copper Division
  • Iron Division
  • Bronze Division
  • Silver Division
  • Gold Division
  • Platinum Division
  • And Diamond Division

 

(The amount of Ranks can be decreased, if needed.)

Once a player has completed their placement matches, they will be placed into one of these set Ranks. These Ranks will reset every Season, allowing for a fresh start for every player each Season.

Seasons will likely last a few months at a time and will also come with Season-Exclusive Prizes each time.

 

The system’s Seasonal Ranked prizes also aren’t entirely exclusive to those who make it the highest Division, either.

Players who participate at all will still earn something for every ranking and the higher up you are, the more you earn at a time, allowing you to earn only 1 item if you’re at the bottom of the ladder, but you’ll earn all items from the Season if you make it to the top.

 

Listing off the types of prizes each player can earn each Season, you have:

  • For Copper Division, a 1-month long Affinity Booster
  • For Iron Division, a 1-month long Credit Booster
  • For Bronze Division, a 1-month long Resource Drop Chance booster
  • For Silver Division, a 1-month long Resource Drop Amount Booster
  • For Gold Division, a Season-Exclusive/Season-Themed Sigil and Shoulder Emblem to match
  • For Platinum Division, a Season-Exclusive/Season-Themed set of Armor and Weapon Accessory to match
  • And lastly, for Diamond Division, a Season-Exclusive/Season-Themed Warframe Skin and Weapon Skins Bundle

 

These items will not be able to be traded and cannot be earned again. This will make the players who grind to earn them feel like they’ve actually accomplished something and will have one-of-a-kind prizes that only the top-ranking players and their teams will have earned to show for it, similar to how Rainbow Six: Siege deals with its Ranked Seasonal-Exclusive gear.

 

7.) The Addition of A More Team-Based Mode.

Spoiler

With Warframe’s PvP needing a bit of extra team-based structuring and Warframe also having everything already set up seemingly just about perfectly for it, I thought that with as many times as I’ve mentioned it, the addition of a MOBA PvP game-mode to Warframe’s Conclave would make a good bit of sense.

 

The mode could have two sides:

  • Teshin
  • And The Lotus

 

These two could play off the 'Sun/Moon'  teams. DE could ascribe them each to one side of the fight and it would still make sense, logically, given that there are tensions between Teshin and the Lotus and this mode could make for a great exploration of those actual tensions -- hopefully even with dialogue from each of them as the game plays out, as well.

They also both command the Tenno -- albeit in different ways -- as well, so there’s be no issue of their commanding state over the Tenno not really making sense.

 

Each Warframe also fits into each of the 5 core character archetype categories of a MOBA, as well.

For Hunters you’d have:

  • Banshee 
  • Ivara 
  • Mag 
  • Mesa 
  • And Titania 

(All of these frames revolve almost entirely around ranged weaponry and make better use of them compared to the others.)

For Guardians you’d have:

  • Atlas
  • Chroma
  • Frost
  • And Rhino

(All of these frames are built around having extremely high levels of sustainability.)

For Mages/Casters you’d have:

  • Ember
  • Equinox
  • Harrow
  • Hydroid
  • Limbo
  • Nekros
  • Nova
  • Nyx
  • Octavia
  • Trinity
  • Vauban
  • And Volt

(All of these frames rely on abilities to keep themselves alive, through CC, ability-based DPS, ability-based life-steal, etc.)

For Assassins you’d have:

  • Ash
  • Loki
  • Mirage
  • Nezha
  • Saryn
  • And Zephyr

(These frames are based in mobility and close-quarters-combat. Most of them also have an innate stealth, or assassination component built into their ability kit, as well.)

And lastly, for Warriors, you’d have:

  • Excalibur
  • Inaros
  • Nidus
  • Valkyr
  • And Wukong

(Each of these frames have a bit of everything; DPS, sustainability, mobility, etc. They're decent at all things and don't excel too much in any one thing.)

 

The number of frames for each category isn’t perfect (and even highlights some character design issues in the game), but it’s a good start, given that they can fit easily into these categories and can add more for each category later.

 

Other general mode details:

The Mode’s Logic:

This mode will likely be a simulacrum-like simulation system within the Conclave, to allow for a wider range of unreasonable, or otherwise inexplicable events being able to take place. Kind of like how we went into a Cephalon’s mind with Octavia’s Anthem.

Player Count:

There would be 5 players to a team (like most MOBAs). This is unheard of for Warframe, to have 10 players in one game, but it would be needed for this system to work and it wouldn’t negatively impact anything at all to do so.

The Map:

The system would run on a 3-lane map design (similar to how most MOBA’s are) and would have massive parkour-only areas mixed into the ‘Jungle’ area of the map, located in-between lanes. The map will be extremely massive to allow for the extreme movement system, but would not be excessively large and would transition visually through the aesthetics of the three main factions (the Grineer, Corpus and Infested), likely in a zone-based format for consistency and equality in layout of both sides.

Whether the map is outside, or not, doesn’t matter. As long as the very edges of the map aren’t something that can be scaled and the inner walls between the lanes and parts of the jungle mostly are (parkour portions excluded).

Spawns:

All players will spawn in the same location at their side of the map for every respawn known as ‘The Relay’ (similar to a Spawn Fountain in Smite) and will not have any random spawns. The Fountain will also reward Health, Energy and Ammo when standing within it.

Player Respawn Timers:

When a player dies, they'll have to wait a set amount of time before respawning. This time increases as the timer for how long the game has gone on increases.

Buyable Items:

There will be a massive amount of purchasable items for the player to choose from for different varying things in the game. 

The first of which being their Mods, that they'll use to build their character in the game. The player will be able to select a handful of Mods throughout the game that will be intended for different levels of play as the game goes on. These Mods will be the regular Conclave Mods, possibly with new ones mixed in. Each of them will have set Credit prices and their price will dictate when they're best suited to be bought by the player, normally.

Other items will be Gear items. Things like: Team Restores, Self Restores, Armor Potions, Movement Speed Potions, etc. They could even make new Gear for PvE along with this update and add it into this mode, as well. 

Items Store:

The way a player will access their Items, both build items and extra additives, like Restore items, will be through the in-match store. This will only be accessible while in a match and while the player is standing in The Relay at their spawn, force the player to travel back eventually to buy newer items, leaving their lane wide open for their opponents.

Player Sustain:

When out in the map, a player's Health, Energy and Ammo WILL NOT REGENERATE. Instead, there will be either locations to grab any of which in the map itself within the Jungle area between each lane, or the player will be able to buy restore items for all of their 4 basic needs (Ammo, Health, Shields, Energy) at their base with Credits.

Defense Points:

There will be both Corpus and Grineer Defense Matrixes (dense towers) present at key junctions in the map, that the player will need to first destroy before they’re able to progress further in their lane.

These towers will likely be laid out to start with the more simplistic, but highly damaging Grineer model defenses in the middle, before transitioning to being the highly intricate and self-regenerating Corpus defenses. When a Grineer defense point is destroyed, it can never regenerate, whereas the Corpus ones can regenerate based on a set timer after destruction.

To destroy each of these Defense Matrixes, the player will have to complete a task of sorts, based on which faction's Matrix it is. The way each faction's Matrix engages the player will be different, as well.

For the Grineer, it would likely be based in brute force (as mentioned earlier), with massive cannons shooting the player upon entry of the Engagement Zone.

For the Corpus, it would likely be based around the destruction of a few debuff towers -- each with a different debuff type -- while also worrying about different laser cannons with a charge rate to them.

Lane Minions:

The lane minions could be the helpers of the Tenno and The Lotus; the ones located in the Tenno Relays. They would walk in a pack together down each lane helping push each Defense Matrix, coming in like clock-work on a set timer to sacrifice themselves to the Tenno cause.

Map Transitions:

Most walls of the map would, of course, be something the player can scale. So, parkouring your way around everywhere would be rewarded heavily, due to being able to scale a wall and ambush other players. The only zones that’s wall would not be something that can be scaled to jump over would be the parkour zones’ walls.

Player Progression:

The progression system will come in two parts:

  • Level Progression
  • And Build Progression

For Level Progression, the system will have the player start at level 1 at the beginning of the game and level up off of in-match XP as they play through their game, all the way to level 30 -- which would be end-game for the match. They would then select which abilities will be upgraded in what order they want (to a reasonable extent) as they level up, with only 1 ability upgrade per level each level, or every so many levels

For Build Progression, the player will start the game off with a set amount of Credits each time and will, both, passively gain Credits as they play and will earn an amount of Credits for completing tasks, like killing lane minions, destroying Defense Matrixes, or killing bosses, or players. These Credits will be used back at The Relay to buy new pieces of the Tenno's Mod Build.

This system will reset at the start of every game, having them level this way only for in the game mode.

Camps:

XP Camps, Reinforcement Camps and Restoration Camps will be placed throughout the map in key locations, all doing different things.

For XP Camps, it would be there to allow the player to have extra enemies to kill while transitioning the map, or heading to their lane.

For Reinforcement Camps, it would be to give the players the option to take down the camp and call in higher levels of reinforcements to aid their push. These reinforcements will be much more well-equipped and will deal higher damage than regular lane minions, while be a good bit tankier than them, as well. After their defeat, they’ll push the lane closest to their camp for the team that defeated them. These Reinforcement Camps also will not be easy to kill at the earlier stages of the game and will require a lot of coordination to take out quickly, or even at all.

Finally, for Restoration Camps, the player will be able to travel the map and pick up things like: Ammo, Health, Shields and Energy. These will likely be present on both sides of the map, to allow for players to invade each others' map territory and take advantage of their opponents camp.

Map Bosses:

A few map bosses will also be present for different stages of play.

Currently, I would say The Jackal should be a massive Credit Reward boss, giving the players a decently large boost to their Credits after killing it. He shouldn't be too hard to kill compared to the other boss -- likely being more-so easier to manage around the mid-game point. 

The other boss I’d say should be present would be Lephantis, as the end-game boss on the other side of the map, rewarding a massive flurry of buffs to the team that kills him, including Health and Energy regeneration, Ammo Regeneration and possibly a buff to armor and movement speed.

AI Respawn Timers:

When an XP Camp, Reinforcement Camp, Restoration Camp Boss, or whatever else is present on the map has been slain and/or made use of, they’ll have an independent respawn timer for when they’ll come back after they’ve been taken out, or used.

I don't have set timers in mind for each and would prefer to just leave that up to DE to decide on.

Engagement Zones:

Each camp/boss will have either an Engagement Zone that the players must stay within to avoid resetting their health bars. Having all players step outside this set zone will result in the health of the enemies regenerating almost immediately back to full and eventually being full again if the zone is not stepped back into quickly.

Targeting:

Enemy AI will only be able to target one player at a time. This allows for more team-play, based around tanking damage and diverting it to one-another, over just totally random and frustrating chaotic AI fights.

Base Guardians:

Once a player has beaten all of the Defense Matrixes, both Grineer and Corpus, they’ll make their way to the enemy team’s base, to face their team’s Cephalon Boss at the end. This boss will be the Cephalon manifestation of either the Sun, or Moon team's symbol and will have multiple weapons at their disposal to fight the incoming enemy Tenno. Weapons ranging from: massive anti-aircraft cannons that can shoot at a player, to summonable mini-Cephalon minions, to Gravity Spikes and Gravity Decreases, to Debuffs and will take your entire team to kill. This area could also allow for Arch Wing combat, if DE wanted, and could be naturally low-gravity, like some of Law Breakers’ areas.

Each of these weapons and boss mechanics will either have a disabling mechanism to them, a destruction method, or a player-chosen counter item (like a potion), so more skilled players can completely shut down the other team’s final boss if they know how to and can work together to do it efficiently.

Game Completion:

Once the Cephalon boss has been defeated, the team that defeated it will have one, since they’ll have destroyed the other team’s Cephalon.

 

All of the pieces are there for a great MOBA side-game, really. With some tweaks to the way combat works and some good support and commercialization from DE, this could easily bring in both a competitive scene to Warframe and just a lot of popularity to the game, in general, while adding a lot of fun and replayability to the game overall – especially for PvP.

Just look to Smite, or League of Legends if you're confused on any part of the development of this mode, DE.

 

8.) Lastly, Add New Ways to Play With Your Friends.

Spoiler

The first and highly obvious part of this is to make it so teams don’t auto-split when in matchmaking. I’ve already gone over why this is ridiculous and has to be changed.

 

The second part that I had yet to cover, was an idea for another addition that has been talked about quite a bit already and simply needs to be implemented. That idea being: The implementation of a Cooperative, Custom Map Editor.

What I mean by this is for DE to add a Map Editor to the game’s Conclave and make it so you can have up to 4 players working on a map together at the same time.

This would be a massive win, both in my book and in others, as well, and would alleviate the need for DE to constantly have to come up with new content for Conclave. Instead, they could simply create a Community Playlist and just pick the best maps out of the community to run, to let players play on in an official capacity.

It would almost guarantee the spawn of an entire new subset of players looking to express creativity in the community and it wouldn’t have to be exclusive to Steam. Games like Halo already do this and there is a giant sub-community that has sprung up around it and could  even compliment Captura and could allow for players to not only create their own scenery, but get to record clips and take pictures in it, as well.

 

The third and final idea was to add a Custom Games/Private Match Option.

This mode would also be good for people looking to mess with a game mode’s settings and potentially even create a fun new mode for people to play on, like people do in the Halo franchise.

It also could easily tie in with the Custom Map Editor and be a part of the Community Playlist for the Conclave.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Conclusion:

Now… After several days of on-off typing, this list is finally done… lol

Firstly, hopefully everyone agrees with at least most of the things that were said here and thinks they’ll be overall good additions to the game as a whole.

If not, or if you have any questions, feel free to ask away, as usual. The goal here isn’t to just dismantle and tear apart the idea, but to build on it and determine what’s feasible for the game and what isn’t. So, if you have some criticisms, post away and I’ll respond back as quickly as possible.

 

Secondly, if any of these ideas were originally mentioned elsewhere by others, feel free to link to their post down below.

 

Third, while DE doesn’t have to implement exactly everything I’ve laid out for them here, they absolutely do have to make a move on PvP eventually.. And if they’re not willing to do anything else with Conclave ever again to actually make the experience enjoyable and not just a broken mess of scattered starter-ideas, then it honestly just needs to be removed from the game entirely, to show everyone with total transparency and complete honesty and that genuinely don’t care about their PvP community.

Every time I’ve brought up PvP around other players, they’ve always said that DE doesn’t care about their PvP community at all and I’m really hoping that’s not actually true, given how much potential this game holds to have a solid PvP system in it. But, if it turns out to be the case, then I’d say it’s time to just close shop on Conclave entirely and just remove it as a whole, so no one player wastes their time with a mode that never receives any good support, given it's near-unplayable state.

 

And lastly, for those that took a shot for every time I said the word “Conclave” in this; I’ll be sure to visit your grave sometime soon.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

For Those Who May Have Questions:

1.) In reference to the comment made about having permanent access to all Conclave Mods: Yes, I do understand that MOBA games have a monetary system in place in their matches, to make it so you earn your items over time in each match. But, that wasn’t the point I was making. I was getting the point across that in MOBA game you would at least have permanent access to said items to even build them in the game, without having to go and earn them through repeatedly elsewhere, from playing match after match, or through buying them with actual money to be able to put on your character.

2.) Yes, I do understand that this is a gigantic list of massive changes to the game and would be an equally massive pain for DE to have to both code and implement. But, it would definitely be worth the time it would take to see it happen. I can wait a year, or two to see these changes, as well. They just need to happen to the game.

3.) No, I won't be putting up a TL;DR... If you're not looking to read through this post in full, there's no real point in making a comment about the ideas presented, since you'll have missed all reasoning as to why the ideas were presented in conjunction to each other and are needed and will, inevitably, miss my point with each note entirely.

Edited by (XB1)Shardz
Changed around the wording of the Balance section and removed certain portions of Warframe balancing.
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I'm not sure about the MOBA part, but we do need some new modes. Examples:

Interception/Domination: Very large maps, players must take control of Radio Towers and hold them to get points. Once either team reaches a certain point cap or the timer runs out, the match ends and the team with most points wins.

Archwing Racing: Limited only to 4 players. All 4 spawn next to each other, a counter starts and then off they go. All AWs would have the same base 3 stats: Acceleration (determines how fast can the AW reach it's top speed provided it doesn't collide), Max Speed (determines how fast can the AW go at it's peak) and Resistance (players start at 50% and affects how much hazzards affect them). Players would then be able to mod these to customize their style by increasing a stat at the expense of reducing another (for example, you could boost your Max Speed at the cost of Resistance if you are confident you can dodge hazzards and avoid colliding with terrain)

The initial mode would be Rush (get from start to finish first) and would focus on proper maneuvers rather than speed. The tiles will feature hazzards that players will have to dodge: Ion Storm (causes a passing player to be struck by a lighting spark that will stun him as if he/she just ate a wall), Gravity Field (slows down players who pass trough it) and Meteors (physical obstacles, will ragdoll the player if they collide at high speed, unlike Ion Storms, Meteors are mobile and bounce on impact on terrain or players).

 

Parkour Racing: Similar to the Parkour Course from the Dojo, these will be non-combat Parkour-intensive racing game. Could be FFA or Team based (the former won by whoever gets to the finish line first and the latter won when the whole team gets to the finish line).

 

Steal The Cephalon: Similar to Capture the Cephalon, the difference is that the match has 2 rounds of 5min each. Team Sun must capture Moon Cephalon, Moon team cannot do anything to Sun Cephalon, their only job is to prevent the Sun Team from scoring by either defending their own Ceph or hunting whoever gets it, while Sun must steal the Ceph and protect the carrier and ensure he/she scores. Round 2 the roles are reversed.

---

About the Teshin vs Lotus thing, that's not really neccesary as we already have Sun and Moon.

---

I think we need some sort of "Tournament" aside from Seasons:

I think 5 ranks would be enough. The scoring tracking your personal perfomance across all modes (you would be required to be Typhoon at least). The tournament itself would last about a 2 weeks and be announced well in advance.

Anihilation/Team Anihilation: Kills award 1 points. Every 3rd consecutive kill (a streak) awards 2. Killing a player on a Streak awards 2.

Capture the Cephalon: Kills don't grant points. Capturing a Cephalon awards 2 points to the player who scored and 1 to the rest of the team. Returning the Cephalon awards 1 point.

Lunaro: Scoring awards 2 point for the whole team. Unstable Lunaro and Out of Zone Scores also count.

The s

Ranks are determined by your relative position to everyone else and reward you accordingly:

Rank 5: Top 5%

Rewards: Conclave Champion Sigil and Badge, Conclave Champion Syadanna, Auxiliary decorative Wakizashi (like the one Teshin carries, it uses default Nikana appearance or copies your equiped Nikana's cosmetic appearance)

Rank 4: Top 10%

Reward: Conclave Gladiator Armor set (chest, shoulder and legs)

Rank 3: Top 25%

Reward: Conclave Gladiator Sigil and Badge, Conclave Gladiator Syadanna

Rank 2: 50%

Reward: Conclave Challenger Sigil and Badge, Conclave Trophy (ship decoration), Conclave Challenger Syadanna

Rank 1: Everyone with a minimum score of 300

Reward: Conclave Badge

 

All rewards are cumulative, meaning that getting a higher rank also awards you the rewards of the lower ranks too. It would have to be like once or twice a year though.

 

As for seasons, I think just adding some juicy reward to the Conclave Weeklies would be enough. Currently we get 50k Conclave standing (which is great, if a bit redundant), 100k credits (another good, though not particularly exciting), 10x rare resource (or Control Module) and a random stance (ranging from Sundering Weave to Vengeful Reveant). I think adding more stuff like a guaranteed Riven mod or 50k Kuva (for those who completed TWW), or even some minor Arcanes as a random extra, would be enough.

---

Also, add to that list...

5 hours ago, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

 

1.) Ash -

  • 4th (Too low range and arguably lacking in proper CC, as well)

... "Impairs Ash for no reason and deals half the damage of every other single-stroke 'offensive ultimate' despite being aimed non-aoe, again, for no good reason"

But honestly, Ash PvP problems stem from DE's sh*tty PvE "revisit" that was 5% fix (Smoke Screen can be cast on the move), 25% nerf (Blade Storm made absolutely pointless in PvE and useless to the point of detrimental in PvP) and 70% jacksh*t done (as nothing else got touched at all, and no, Teleport on objects doesn't count as it scr*ws Ash more than it helps by randomly selecting a 1-foot-tall box as "target" over the 2m-tall Bombard whose face you were actually aiming at)

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On 8/23/2017 at 0:56 AM, Nazrethim said:

I'm not sure about the MOBA part, but we do need some new modes. Examples:

Interception/Domination: Very large maps, players must take control of Radio Towers and hold them to get points. Once either team reaches a certain point cap or the timer runs out, the match ends and the team with most points wins.

Archwing Racing: Limited only to 4 players. All 4 spawn next to each other, a counter starts and then off they go. All AWs would have the same base 3 stats: Acceleration (determines how fast can the AW reach it's top speed provided it doesn't collide), Max Speed (determines how fast can the AW go at it's peak) and Resistance (players start at 50% and affects how much hazzards affect them). Players would then be able to mod these to customize their style by increasing a stat at the expense of reducing another (for example, you could boost your Max Speed at the cost of Resistance if you are confident you can dodge hazzards and avoid colliding with terrain)

The initial mode would be Rush (get from start to finish first) and would focus on proper maneuvers rather than speed. The tiles will feature hazzards that players will have to dodge: Ion Storm (causes a passing player to be struck by a lighting spark that will stun him as if he/she just ate a wall), Gravity Field (slows down players who pass trough it) and Meteors (physical obstacles, will ragdoll the player if they collide at high speed, unlike Ion Storms, Meteors are mobile and bounce on impact on terrain or players).

 

Parkour Racing: Similar to the Parkour Course from the Dojo, these will be non-combat Parkour-intensive racing game. Could be FFA or Team based (the former won by whoever gets to the finish line first and the latter won when the whole team gets to the finish line).

 

Steal The Cephalon: Similar to Capture the Cephalon, the difference is that the match has 2 rounds of 5min each. Team Sun must capture Moon Cephalon, Moon team cannot do anything to Sun Cephalon, their only job is to prevent the Sun Team from scoring by either defending their own Ceph or hunting whoever gets it, while Sun must steal the Ceph and protect the carrier and ensure he/she scores. Round 2 the roles are reversed.

---

About the Teshin vs Lotus thing, that's not really neccesary as we already have Sun and Moon.

---

I think we need some sort of "Tournament" aside from Seasons:

I think 5 ranks would be enough. The scoring tracking your personal perfomance across all modes (you would be required to be Typhoon at least). The tournament itself would last about a 2 weeks and be announced well in advance.

Anihilation/Team Anihilation: Kills award 1 points. Every 3rd consecutive kill (a streak) awards 2. Killing a player on a Streak awards 2.

Capture the Cephalon: Kills don't grant points. Capturing a Cephalon awards 2 points to the player who scored and 1 to the rest of the team. Returning the Cephalon awards 1 point.

Lunaro: Scoring awards 2 point for the whole team. Unstable Lunaro and Out of Zone Scores also count.

The s

Ranks are determined by your relative position to everyone else and reward you accordingly:

Rank 5: Top 5%

Rewards: Conclave Champion Sigil and Badge, Conclave Champion Syadanna, Auxiliary decorative Wakizashi (like the one Teshin carries, it uses default Nikana appearance or copies your equiped Nikana's cosmetic appearance)

Rank 4: Top 10%

Reward: Conclave Gladiator Armor set (chest, shoulder and legs)

Rank 3: Top 25%

Reward: Conclave Gladiator Sigil and Badge, Conclave Gladiator Syadanna

Rank 2: 50%

Reward: Conclave Challenger Sigil and Badge, Conclave Trophy (ship decoration), Conclave Challenger Syadanna

Rank 1: Everyone with a minimum score of 300

Reward: Conclave Badge

 

All rewards are cumulative, meaning that getting a higher rank also awards you the rewards of the lower ranks too. It would have to be like once or twice a year though.

 

As for seasons, I think just adding some juicy reward to the Conclave Weeklies would be enough. Currently we get 50k Conclave standing (which is great, if a bit redundant), 100k credits (another good, though not particularly exciting), 10x rare resource (or Control Module) and a random stance (ranging from Sundering Weave to Vengeful Reveant). I think adding more stuff like a guaranteed Riven mod or 50k Kuva (for those who completed TWW), or even some minor Arcanes as a random extra, would be enough.

---

Also, add to that list...

... "Impairs Ash for no reason and deals half the damage of every other single-stroke 'offensive ultimate' despite being aimed non-aoe, again, for no good reason"

But honestly, Ash PvP problems stem from DE's sh*tty PvE "revisit" that was 5% fix (Smoke Screen can be cast on the move), 25% nerf (Blade Storm made absolutely pointless in PvE and useless to the point of detrimental in PvP) and 70% jacksh*t done (as nothing else got touched at all, and no, Teleport on objects doesn't count as it scr*ws Ash more than it helps by randomly selecting a 1-foot-tall box as "target" over the 2m-tall Bombard whose face you were actually aiming at)

The MOBA mode, I feel, would work rather well and fit into the game equally well, given that (like I said in the post) the pieces for it are all already there and are literally just nearly ready-to-go as is.

  • The characters have set identities and unique move/ability-sets and personalities to them
  • There's a leveling system, with a built-in ability-scaling/stat-scaling factor already active innately
  • A monetary system is already present in the game in multiple forms
  • There's an 'Item' (Mods) system that could work easily with the mode as is
  • etc. 

It'd just be a bit of a strange/different transition for us players, getting used to a full-scale MOBA mode being in Warframe and there'd definitely be a matchmaking/player population issue if not advertised, both, correctly and constantly.

I'd at least give the idea a chance, though.

--- (I'm going to steal your post formatting a bit for this~ ;3)

1.) I wouldn't start Inter/Dom off by saying "very large maps," given that PvP maps are already kinda large for player-only combat as it is.

2.) I'd say that the races shouldn't be limited to 4 players and should still easily allow for 8-player racing.

Other than just these two things, I don't have much of anything in the way of gripes with any of the example game modes you listed off.

The only criticism remaining that I could add is that, while these seem fun, they weren't quite what I was after with the necessitated team-play of a MOBA mode, outside of the final one you listed. So, I still stand firm on the idea of the mode taking priority -- especially, given the success of it's free peers, like League and Smite. It's easy money, press and publicity, if they can just learn to balance it out properly.

---

I think you've missed my goal there with that.. The MOBA mode would be a relatively big addition and could potentially even be a staple mode in the future. So, I wanted to bring more personality to it than just the standard 'Sun' and 'Moon.' I was looking for a chess-game-like interaction between two figures at once, with the Tenno caught in-between, like within the story.

The Sun and Moon system isn't even excluded in this fact, either. DE could decide on either one of them (between Teshin and The Lotus) to be 'Sun,' while the other would then obviously become 'Moon,' by default. 

I haven't ascribed either of them to anything, just because it's kind of based in perspective, so I'd rather just let DE make the decision of which is which themselves.

 

This also doesn't have to stop at just Teshin and The Lotus, by the way. Since this would be based in simulation, they could easily have banter between any number of well known figures within the game. Corpus bosses could interact with the Grineer ones, or with The Lotus, or Teshin, or The Queens, etc. The hosts of each side could also determine the outcome of the map's look and the lane-minions present, as well.

---

I would prefer there be large-scale tournaments present with Seasons, not in place of them, and to keep the Rankings the way they were to allot for the inclusion of PvE players (since they're kind of the majority of players, yanno?) and let them earn something from the lower tiers.

I also much prefer the R6:S, or Halo 5 way of going about Ranked play over the idea of something slightly smaller in scale -- especially since a tournament would span a few weeks, maybe, where as Seasonal Rankings would be spanning several months, to allow for a longer set of time for gameplay and not be as restrictive on your set time to play to earn your Rank. I can definitely get behind the general upgrades to the earnable items present, though. Both the items earned from Teshin and those earned through Weekly Challenges need to be definitely more-so significant.

But, either idea would do, really. I just want something to actually be there for competitive players to work away at and show their level of skill through (not to mention, having it there to eventually improve the quality of matchmaking with.. lol).

---

I'd figured as much, honestly. I don't know what it is with DE, but they just seem so incredibly skittish when it comes to balancing anything.. They're not as bad as, say, Bungie with Destiny and it's balancing, but they definitely aren't all too great with balancing their game for either PvE, or PvE as a whole.

I'm afraid to think of how nightmarishly long a list like this would be for PvE...

Edited by (XB1)Shardz
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9 hours ago, SevenLetterKWord said:

Wow, so brave. Shall I start applauding?

Unfortunately, your liberal use of line breaks means that your post is half a scroll-mile long and incredibly difficult to approach.

I recommend you use spoilers for organization.

d7b4b5a085.png (809×116)

1.) Oh, wow! Thanks so much for the amazing advise, man~! :))) Now that you've been so nice as to tell me about that little feature, I just have to ask... Could you have been any more patronizing in your delivery? (-_-)

2.) I had no idea that was even a thing I could do to begin with. But, since you told me about it, I went ahead and added it in to help with browsing through each portion of the post. Happy now?

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18 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

Steal The Cephalon: Similar to Capture the Cephalon, the difference is that the match has 2 rounds of 5min each. Team Sun must capture Moon Cephalon, Moon team cannot do anything to Sun Cephalon, their only job is to prevent the Sun Team from scoring by either defending their own Ceph or hunting whoever gets it, while Sun must steal the Ceph and protect the carrier and ensure he/she scores. Round 2 the roles are reversed.

I like this idea a lot...might need some elaboration and refinement, but if implemented right, it could be really awesome.

My main idea would be Tenno sharpening their skills against other Tenno in order to perfect their abilities in taking on missions against the Corpus/Grineer/Infested/Sentient.  In order to do this best, you have Tenno doing their normal mission, with other Tenno attempting to prevent them.

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2 hours ago, Nighttide77 said:

I like this idea a lot...might need some elaboration and refinement, but if implemented right, it could be really awesome.

Indeed, it's my favorite gamemode in Soldat. I'm up for some refinement ideas, so long as it remains simple to understand for the average joe and not turn into Attacks of Opportunity.

2 hours ago, Nighttide77 said:

My main idea would be Tenno sharpening their skills against other Tenno in order to perfect their abilities in taking on missions against the Corpus/Grineer/Infested/Sentient.  In order to do this best, you have Tenno doing their normal mission, with other Tenno attempting to prevent them.

Well, that's the whole point of the Conclave in-story, Tenno training against each other (since we are pretty much the only ones able to match our power on a one-on-one fight).

Amusingly, taking Conclave as a hardcore training excercise to get better at the game is actually a good mentality rather than "players compete with each other for glory, loot and pride in the ancient art of shooting/stabbing each other" and makes the whole experience more enjoyable to some degree.

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1 hour ago, Nazrethim said:

Indeed, it's my favorite gamemode in Soldat. I'm up for some refinement ideas, so long as it remains simple to understand for the average joe and not turn into Attacks of Opportunity.

Well, that's the whole point of the Conclave in-story, Tenno training against each other (since we are pretty much the only ones able to match our power on a one-on-one fight).

Amusingly, taking Conclave as a hardcore training excercise to get better at the game is actually a good mentality rather than "players compete with each other for glory, loot and pride in the ancient art of shooting/stabbing each other" and makes the whole experience more enjoyable to some degree.

It really needs to be emphasized much more from within the PvE side of the game and should likely even have a full-fledged and well-made side-quest/lore-quest to introduce it to players in a more official -- and hopefully even interesting -- capacity, in all honesty.

Most players I've met on the game didn't even know Conclave existed, unless they were either relatively experienced, or until I told them about it. And players I'd introduced to the game almost never noticed it after months of play-time, unless I asked them about it, or unless they got confused about what console to go to in their ship for 'x' reason and just accidentally came across it that way.

This goes back to that "lack of commercialization" I'd mentioned in the post, initially. If DE can add a way for Conclave to become a more core component of the game's story and simultaneously start advertising it, both, in the game itself and in the public media sphere, too, then it'll likely draw in a lot more players to not just play it, but the game as a whole, considering that obtaining new Conclave frames and weapons is linked to PvE. So, PvP-only players that were drawn in by outside advertising will still need to play PvE to some extent to earn new items.

Though, they'd absolutely have to fix Conclave's core issues before doing so, otherwise they run the risk of attracting players, only to make them feel as though DE spit in their eye with unpolished mechanics and unrefined gameplay.

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On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

2.) Conclave Has Horrible Balancing..

Aside from new weapons and bugs where PvE changes somehow carried over to Conclave, weapons are generally very balanced, with damage vs utility in mind.

As for warframes, EHP is balanced around mobility and vice versa. Warframe abilities aren't meant to be spammable, and Conclave shouldn't revolve around whoever can pick up the most energy orbs.

You also undermine the usefulness of many abilities that you listed. Here are some examples:

Spoiler
On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

1.) Ash -

  • 1st (Too low damage at the base level for the cost.),
  • 2nd (Everyone can still see you while you’re invisible. Make invisibility moves properly invisible..),
  • 3rd (What’s the point of having a teleport if I don’t teleport right to them and don’t cause any sort of effect? They’ll just bullet jump away before I even finish the animation)
  • 4th (Too low range and arguably lacking in proper CC, as well)
  1. It can still be used as a finisher.
  2. It can throw off people's aim.
  3. You can teleport to surfaces, allowing for quick re-positioning or escaping.
  4. It deals about 1/2 of a player's EHP and can't miss.
On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

2.) Banshee -

  • 1st (Too long of a cast timer to be practical in combat for just a simple CC move)
  • 2nd (Too high of energy cost to only gain 1 weak point on a nearby enemy)
  • 3rd (Surprisingly enough, this isn’t necessarily a bad ability. Just.. why’s it on Banshee exactly..?)
  • 4th (The radius size doesn’t fit the movement level. Players will just have gotten out of the radius by the time you finish casting the ability. The ability is also too high in DPS and is basically just a guaranteed free kill if they’re within the radius, with no way for most of the enemies’ frames to be able counter it. Only frames with built-in immunity would be able to counter this.)
  1. A knockdown is very potent and allows you to set up quick kills, like a shotgun blast to the face.
  2. Players who can aim well can use Sonar to effectively cut their TTK/STK in half.
  3. What other warframe do you expect to be able to use Silence? It allows Banshee to even the playing field by disabling press-4-to-win abilities.
  4. The high DPS is to make up for the small AoE. The more AoE an ability has, the more problematic it becomes for other players.
On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

3.) Excalibur -

  • 1st (Not enough CC to make up for the lower damage and cost, or not enough damage to make up for no CC and the cost.)
  • 2nd (The stun is not nearly harsh enough and should fully blind the player for brief moment, like a flash-bang)
  • 3rd (Either too short of a radius for the cast time, or too long of a cast time for the radius. Take your pick, DE.)
  1. Impair is a strong CC. It effectively cuts off any chance an opponent has of running away, which allows a good player to follow up with high DPS weapons for an easy kill. Plus Slash Dash is lock-on, so it pretty much can't miss unless you're not even facing the opponent you want to hit.
  2. IIRC, Radial Blind could cancel abilities with long animations or channeled abilities. This allows you to counter certain players trying to press-4-to-win.
  3. It hits like a truck when it's successful.
On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

4.) Frost -

  • 1st (Way too low damage/CC for the cost),
  • 2nd (Wayyyy too low of range/damage combined for the cost..),
  • 3rd (Not enough bubble health for it to last long enough to be worth the energy cost)
  • 4th (Is designed to be one guaranteed free kill with no actual skill of use)
  1. It locks on and slows the target, on top of being one-handed.
  2. It does a considerable amount of damage, and with the augment you can basically turn an area of the map into a death field.
  3. It has more than enough health. Plus. you can shoot from inside and it slows all enemies inside.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

No weapons should be missing at all, otherwise it'll feel like you're playing favorites with your PvP weapon carry-over choices and will end up excluding and losing even more of the PvE audience because of it.

Some weapons should be excluded because they cannot be balanced:

  • Gunblades are essentially unlimited ammo guns. If the damage is too low, then they become useless, but if the damage is on par with that of regular guns, then they are too strong.
  • Flamethrowers literally require no aim. If it does negligible damage like the Glaxion, it's useless, but if it deals enough damage to kill, then it becomes too strong.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

Pay to Win (People buying Mods from the player-traders and dominating the Conclave over those who don’t.)

That's not what Pay-to-Win means. Pay-to-Win means being able to purchase an advantage not obtainable by playing for free. Conclave mods are available to everyone, thus it's not Pay-to-Win. Plus, you can trade things other than platinum.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

And for newer players to be objectively disadvantaged for simply being new

That's the case for many games. But at least Warframe allows you to obtain the gear before you actually start.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

4.) The Movement Is Too Unrefined to Enjoy.

With Conclave, your Warframe’s movement – while not being exactly the same – is almost that of what it is in PvE. While this may sound good at first, to have a more-or-less seamless movement experience, it really isn’t..

This system is not a sustainable one, due to the fact that it makes players nearly impossible to not only keep up with during combat, but to kill, as well.

Some could argue: “that’s the point;” I would argue: that it’s not fun. No one likes Halo jumpers from the Halo games. No one liked people who boosted around endlessly in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. No one likes crouch-dodgers/prone-shooters, who abuse the crouching and prone mechanics of a game during a gun-fight. And I can say with certainty, that the movement in Warframe’s Conclave is no different.

Trying to hit a player while they’re jumping insanely high over and over, bouncing off walls and sliding, or rolling around 24/7 is not fun and even impairs different forms of play. It’s also already hard enough to aim a sniper in Warframe at a moving target. This is made all the much harder by the horrible peer-to-peer connections, usually poor map design and extreme levels of movement, to make the experience feel excessively annoying and movement-spam filled, rather than well-paced and highly rewarding.

The movement doesn’t have to be utterly nuked and reduced to being next to nothing, considering that high mobility is at the core of Warframe’s fundamentals of gameplay, but there definitely are some changes that need to happen there to make the experience more enjoyable to players.

I disagree. There are games that revolve around high mobility:

High aerial maneuverability was the selling point of GunZ the Duel. High speed terrain traversal is the selling point of Tribes Ascend.

Conclave fulfills a niche. If you remove what makes it niche, then it loses a reason for people to play it.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

6.) It Lacks A Solid Reason to Return.

You can blame this on how the player base is reward driven.

Almost nobody does endless runs anymore because they can't get infinite prime parts from one key anymore.

Nobody does Infested Salvage anymore after they've unlocked Nidus.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

Unironically enough, though, Conclave won’t actually allow for you to enter team-based game modes with a team.

This is to help prevent seal clubbing. It wouldn't be fair for the opposing team if they had to face a premade team consisting of 4 of the best players in the game.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

4.) The Addition of Either a Stamina Bar to PvP, Or a General Limiter For The Movement.

This is opposed because it would create a huge discrepancy between PvE and PvP mechanics. It would make it harder to switch between the two.

There's already a limiter on movement: the highest a warframe's default mobility can be is 1.0, with most warframes at 0.8~0.9 base mobility. A stamina bar in a game with 3D movement only ruins fluidity.

 

On 8/22/2017 at 7:43 PM, (Xbox One)Shardz said:

I came here to play Warframe, not Dark Souls 3..

Ironically, adding a stamina bar would bring Warframe one step closer to being Dark Souls.

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13 hours ago, Heckzu said:

Aside from new weapons and bugs where PvE changes somehow carried over to Conclave, weapons are generally very balanced, with damage vs utility in mind.

As for warframes, EHP is balanced around mobility and vice versa. Warframe abilities aren't meant to be spammable, and Conclave shouldn't revolve around whoever can pick up the most energy orbs.

You also undermine the usefulness of many abilities that you listed. Here are some examples:

  Reveal hidden contents
  1. It can still be used as a finisher.
  2. It can throw off people's aim.
  3. You can teleport to surfaces, allowing for quick re-positioning or escaping.
  4. It deals about 1/2 of a player's EHP and can't miss.
  1. A knockdown is very potent and allows you to set up quick kills, like a shotgun blast to the face.
  2. Players who can aim well can use Sonar to effectively cut their TTK/STK in half.
  3. What other warframe do you expect to be able to use Silence? It allows Banshee to even the playing field by disabling press-4-to-win abilities.
  4. The high DPS is to make up for the small AoE. The more AoE an ability has, the more problematic it becomes for other players.
  1. Impair is a strong CC. It effectively cuts off any chance an opponent has of running away, which allows a good player to follow up with high DPS weapons for an easy kill. Plus Slash Dash is lock-on, so it pretty much can't miss unless you're not even facing the opponent you want to hit.
  2. IIRC, Radial Blind could cancel abilities with long animations or channeled abilities. This allows you to counter certain players trying to press-4-to-win.
  3. It hits like a truck when it's successful.
  1. It locks on and slows the target, on top of being one-handed.
  2. It does a considerable amount of damage, and with the augment you can basically turn an area of the map into a death field.
  3. It has more than enough health. Plus. you can shoot from inside and it slows all enemies inside.

 

Some weapons should be excluded because they cannot be balanced:

  • Gunblades are essentially unlimited ammo guns. If the damage is too low, then they become useless, but if the damage is on par with that of regular guns, then they are too strong.
  • Flamethrowers literally require no aim. If it does negligible damage like the Glaxion, it's useless, but if it deals enough damage to kill, then it becomes too strong.

 

That's not what Pay-to-Win means. Pay-to-Win means being able to purchase an advantage not obtainable by playing for free. Conclave mods are available to everyone, thus it's not Pay-to-Win. Plus, you can trade things other than platinum.

 

That's the case for many games. But at least Warframe allows you to obtain the gear before you actually start.

 

I disagree. There are games that revolve around high mobility:

High aerial maneuverability was the selling point of GunZ the Duel. High speed terrain traversal is the selling point of Tribes Ascend.

Conclave fulfills a niche. If you remove what makes it niche, then it loses a reason for people to play it.

 

You can blame this on how the player base is reward driven.

Almost nobody does endless runs anymore because they can't get infinite prime parts from one key anymore.

Nobody does Infested Salvage anymore after they've unlocked Nidus.

 

This is to help prevent seal clubbing. It wouldn't be fair for the opposing team if they had to face a premade team consisting of 4 of the best players in the game.

 

This is opposed because it would create a huge discrepancy between PvE and PvP mechanics. It would make it harder to switch between the two.

There's already a limiter on movement: the highest a warframe's default mobility can be is 1.0, with most warframes at 0.8~0.9 base mobility. A stamina bar in a game with 3D movement only ruins fluidity.

 

Ironically, adding a stamina bar would bring Warframe one step closer to being Dark Souls.

1.) Weapon Balancing:

Spoiler

 

The idea of being able to eviscerate a player almost immediately with early-game weapons like the MK1-Braton, or the Boltor feels too excessively quick and relatively easy to manage accomplishing. Do I want their damage to be nerfed into the ground and back? Not even close.. I just ask that their damage numbers be taken a look at again and possibly slightly tweaked down a notch, or two, so I don't get lit up from across the map near-instantly. During your early-game matches for Conclave, these earlier-game weapons are pretty much all you'll end up seeing, because people recognize that they're powerful.

 

Meanwhile, projectile-based weapons like bows not only usually have a moreover unholy travel time for the current movement system, but also don't always reward with a one-shot even upon hitting a target after a full charge attack -- which is already hard enough to hit as is. Kunai are in a similar position, especially if they're best-used when they hit and attach to a target. They have a decently punishing travel time and don't always pay out on their damage, unless you get a head-shot, which would be a nightmare with a projectile weapon.

I'd recommend either upping the travel speed to be much easier to hit (while not quite moving to a hit-scan level of registration), or decrease movement even further to make them more viable.

 

Melee weapons also are all over the place.. In the time that someone can swing a Galatine twice, I'll have already killed them with a few quick swipes of a Nikana. While two-handed heavies should have a slow swing speed, they should still have a high pay-out for DPS to equal that of their dexterity-based counterparts.

If you want a fully-detailed list of every weapon and what I feel about them, like I did with the abilities, I mean.. I can do that and we can have a full-length discussion over each weapon. But, it's going to give me cancer and is going to take quite a while to do.

 

There's also a discussion to be had over the implementation of Prime weapons/frames and Vandal/Wraith weapons, as well, given that it adds unnecessary needed balancing for the same weapons multiple times, making DE's job even harder. I'd suggest making only the original version of the weapon usable (unless it only exists as a special edition -- I.e. Reaper Prime) and having the extra versions of the weapon be aesthetic only skins for PvP.

 

Now, for missing weapons:

1.) Add an ammo-count to Gun-Blades if they're an issue. And if you're going to say: "Well, that'll just create a disconnect between PvE and PvP," then just stop yourself beforehand, because it literally doesn't matter if it would or not.. There's already a disconnect between the two just from the fact that it's missing alone and I'd rather it have an ammo-count than not exist at all.

2.) While it's not the easiest to balance damage for weapons like the Ignis, it's not impossible. Most of it's DPS could likely come entirely from the fire proc itself, as well, to help keep it from being a beam of insta-death and allow for more control.

2.) Warframe Balancing:

Spoiler

 

Alright. Then, if you don't think they should be spammable, then there's an easy solution; give them ability timers. It can stop players from ability spamming, while not removing the ability to hold more energy and continue use of abilities without having to fight every other player in the game for pick-ups. I personally don't mind whether the game becomes spam-based, or turns to timers. But, either way, one route is needed to help make abilities more easily available to use and decrease the excessive wait between each use. Yes, with a timer, you'll still have to "wait," but I'd rather wait 5 seconds to use an ability again, rather than wait for 50 seconds for my Energy to refill, due to the fact of having to fight over those pick-ups.

Secondly, you say that it shouldn't be all about Energy and Energy pick-ups.. But, it already is.. and so is the rest of Warframe.. Players essentially traverse the map repeatedly, looking for pick-ups over and over when they're not directly engaged in a fight already. The idea of pick-ups can be done well and I don't mind the idea itself. But, it's currently moreover annoying than it is enjoyable, because of having to trudge through forced, unenjoyable gun-play while you wait to even be able to engage another player with an ability that will likely change very little, unless it's broken/OP.

 

On the note of ability balance, let's go back through each character and ability you mentioned for this..

Ash -

  • It's hard to be a finisher when it has pathetic damage and horrible tracking. I can understand the sentiment with trying to use it this way and I think that's about the only way it would be best used for a melee/assassin character, but I'd say it's not as useful as you're trying to give it credit for being.
  • And then what? Do you think that's going to help you kill them, or get away? I mean, if you were fully cloaked, with no particle effects, or team-based coloration in the invisibility, then this would be a viable claim, but not as it is currently.
  • Great. So, it's useless to catch up to players with, because of broken movement spam, but helpful to jump to things with? That's a flimsy ability for the tune of 25 Energy a pop and could easily be remedied by simply adding a stagger effect when teleporting to enemy players.
  • Half their health is great and the knock-down is "meh," but you have to be close enough to smell their breath and have to stare at them for ages while at point-blank melee range to even be possible to use, for the tune of all your energy in one go.Compared to literally any other game with assassination abilities in it, this ability is a potato -- ESPECIALLY given that you can't jump during it's use and everyone else can instantly run away from you, again, at Mach 5.

Banshee -

  • The knock-down would be great if it lasted a bit longer. Not long enough to make it impossible to escape, but long enough to be able to actually secure a shot with more than just a hair's timing to even take your aim to begin with after use. The ability also takes a decent second to cast and within shotgun range, that's easily the death of you. So, I'd welcome them either increasing the knock-down time, or decreasing the cast cost and cast time.
  • In what universe is it possible to hit a singular, small little dot on a frame moving at Mach 5 in multiple different variously rotating ways? Certainly not in this one, unless you're enjoying a good round of Aimbotframe. Add a second, or third dot per cast and I'd be pretty much fine with it, even if they reduced the damage increase to a very minute degree.
  • I have no other frame I'd suggest moving the ability's function to, considering that Nyx would be my only choice and she already has a function for Chaos that I feel suits her decently well. However, I still hold my stance in feeling that Silence's functionality doesn't quite feel like it suits Banshee. Like I said in the post, the ability works and I have no issues with the function itself, just the frame it's on doesn't really feel quite right. It can stay where it is, but I'd recommend seeing if it can get moved to a more well-suited frame in the future and have her Silence's new function be a momentary stun, like in PvE.
  • The OSK Ult is poorly designed, in that it rewards a kill either too easily, or not at all and has no real skill-of-use to be had, outside of just pressing the button when an enemy gets stuck in a corner. I ask for it to have a bigger radius and decrease the DPS significantly, then add in a repeated stagger effect, like in PvE, wth the ability to roll out if timed correctly.

Excalibur -

  • I'll admit I, both, worded it incorrectly and a bit too strongly in the original post and will likely change that in a minute. However, I still hold to the fact that his 1st lacks range if it intends to be a CC in the manner it's currently presented and it lacks damage if it's looking to be a combination move with lesser of each. Between which would be the best course of action to take, I'm not sure. But, one or the other needs to happen to make it feel less clunky and more easily applicable.
  • I still hold to the fact that his 2nd needs a flash effect to blind the player. You know? That "blind" thing, where it's sorta in the name itself, yet somehow doesn't actually do so in practice?.. It just feels out of place and would make it feel more worthy of taking half your Energy amount.
  • Even if they don't decrease the extreme cast time, the AOE should still be at least slightly larger than it is for the amount of movement we have. If the movement was reduced, I could see it being just fine as is, but not with our movement being unrestricted.

Frost -

  • The slow is only momentary and at the tune of 25 Energy per use, it's not worth your time, unless they make it as auto-targeting as Ash's 1st and increase it's range. The other option is to increase the area effected on the ground, but I feel that would be better used on other abilities.
  • "With the augment" -- It should still be viable without the augment and it has a relatively bad cast time-to-range ratio -- especially when considering that it's in a forward cone.
  • A single player can destroy it in a few shots. 4 players can destroy it near instantly. In what world is this useful for 50 Energy a cast, if it just get's destroyed after a moment? Do I want it to be an indestructible tank in the map, that slows everything to being able to be insta-killed inside? Not even close.. I'm just asking for it to have an at least moderate health increase to last just a bit longer and I'll have no problem with it. In fact, on the interior, it could even be argued to be a bit too powerful in some instances, but I'd leave that portion be for the moment.
  • I also noticed you said nothing about what I'd mentioned for his Ult being poorly conceived, so I'm guessing you agree with me on that?

 

If you still disagree with my points for their abilities now, we'll likely just have to disagree on this.

3.) Mod Balancing:

Spoiler

 

Anything that advances a player faster through something in the game using money is pay to win, by definition.

Yes, there are two forms of P2W that can exist. There's:

  • Full-Blown P2W (Allowing for an advancement not accessible to others)
  • And there's the slightly more watered-down P2W Faster (Enabling a player to use money to instantly gain a lead over others and dominate them until the others catch up)

But, the game is still P2W nonetheless, due to it putting an objective advantage based in possessions into the system and having the player be disadvantaged if they don't get them beforehand like most others. Trying to pretend it's not P2W is to be entirely, intentionally ignorant to the fact of the matter.

With all Mods being accessible from the start, eliminating the system of even needing to try and earn them to begin with, you run no risk of a possessions-based disadvantage. There are no downsides to removing the Mods progression system, unless you're just greedy to earn items, or Plat through trading noobs Conclave Mods, or are looking to Pub-Stomp new players.

 

Players also should never be disadvantaged through anything other than skill for simply being new to the game. Being worse at the game than others, due to player-owned possessions is entirely unacceptable.

 

4.) Movement:

Spoiler

 

There's a difference between being "niche" and having entire frames and weapons be a joke in combat, because of unrefined movement. Having NO limiter is worse than having A limiter, due to the fact that:

  • Melee weapons are about as useful as potatoes when your opponents travel at Mach 5
  • Projectile weapons are near-impossible to land a hit with -- let alone miraculously get a kill with.
  • Certain frames have abilities that simply aren't as useful, due to players never having to stop moving, or touch the ground

These things don't make the game "niche," they make it broken. It's why most PvE players refuse to play, is because most of the time spent in the game is either spent watching everyone roll their face on their keyboard, or controller to jump around like mindless, idiotic monkeys, before just one-shot-killing each other -- or, the player is having to do that themselves 24/7 and flop their character model across the sky like a mentally handicapped, on-winged bird, just to avoid being insta-killed.

You've also missed the point that the changes I presented wouldn't remove the movement, it'd only slow it down marginally, to allow for a broader span of combat and gameplay.

 

And the "niche" that the game fills will also still be present, considering that the movement mechanics themselves ARE the niche -- not the amount of movement. It just won't be as hopelessly broken and frustrating as it is now.

Even games with high mobility have to make sacrifices to keep the gameplay balanced and enjoyable.

 

Lastly, dissonance between PvE and PvP is something to be considered, as well. But, not at the cost of gameplay viability and integrity.

There are also already a flurry of changes between the two, so making a movement format transition to enable the use of more items and take away the unneeded extra frustration from the Conclave is not going to be the end of the world.

 

5.) Reasons To Play:

Spoiler

 

Well, to start, I'm afraid you're playing the wrong genre of games if you don't like people being reward driven, my man..

Secondly, that's why I recommended my own form of a Ranked Play system as a new add-in. What were your thoughts on that, since you didn't give any in your initial response?

There aren't really any down-sides to adding one in, so I'd imagine you wouldn't have anything overtly negative to say about it.

 

6.) Playing With Groups:

Spoiler

 

I'm not going to lie and I'll just be blunt: I'm actually surprised at the pure stupidity of your comment on this...

Firstly, I don't want to hear anything about 'seal clubbing' from you, when you're defending the Conclave Mods progression system in the same post....

Secondly, lacking the ability to play with friends is literally indefensible and has no excuse being this way in a modern game. They have to add in the ability to stay with your searching squad and anyone who's solo-queueing needs to put up with the enemy team being more organized like in literally every other PvP game ever created..

 

7.) On The Dark Souls Comment:

Spoiler

 

"Did you see that?.. That was my point flying right over your head.." 

This is painful to read every time I see it.. I'm guessing you've never played DS3 before, otherwise you'd know I'm referencing the roll spam present in the DS3, which was known for having ruined the PvP in the game. I put it in there as a simple joke for players who've played the game to recognize as a metaphor for me saying the game is too movement-spam-centric. But, I'm honestly considering just deleting it from the post entirely, given how dense everyone is.

 

 

In Closing:

Is there anything else you want to go over, for one?

Secondly, what did you think of the MOBA mode idea, or the addition of a Custom Games, Map Editor for Conclave, or a Community Playlist for DE to utilize both of the last two items mentioned?

Lastly, while I may not agree with your points in the slightest, thank you for at least offering genuine feedback, unlike the mass majority of people who read anything of this post and said/posted nothing.

Edited by (XB1)Shardz
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9 hours ago, Heckzu said:
  1. It can still be used as a finisher.

Except that it deals half the damage of a Kunai, which due to the nigh useless nerfed tracking is just as effective. If it was meant as a finisher, it should deal about 30% of the average EHP, which is ~287, therefore Shurikens should deal about 90 Slash or about 60 Puncture. Right now they deal 38 Puncture. A Kunai for example deals 70 Puncture (and a bit of Slash and Impact too but that's minor)

IF it had nigh infallible tracking then we can argue about lower values, but since it's tracking got nerfed to the point it may as well not be there and be a skillshot, then it's damage needs to be buffed in accord.

Quote
  1. It can throw off people's aim.

At long range maybe, but for close encounters you are very visible. If anything, it should allow Ash¡s silhouette as it does now when you are less than 8m from Ash, not from 20-30m.

Also, Tear Gas needs a range buff from the current 3m to about 6m.

Quote
  1. You can teleport to surfaces, allowing for quick re-positioning or escaping.

Yes, though it could use a 5-10m buff as it's rather short. No other change I would make actually.

An Augment to give it a radial (3-4m) impair on nearby foes on the target location but increasing the cost by 10 would be nice though.

Quote
  1. It deals about 1/2 of a player's EHP and can't miss.

Every other single strike offensive ultimate deals in the 300s, which is enough to kill people most of the time and those are non-aimed AoEs with the same radius as BS has range. Objectively BS should deal, with it's current mechanics, 350 damage or flat out oneshot anybody regardless of EHP or defensive abilities (Warding Halo, Iron Skin, Hysteria)

And while on paper you cannot miss, it has so many burdens that it doesn't need to. To note:

-Mark costs 100, 10 if you are invisible. While this seems good on paper, in practice it means you have to Start marking mode, cast smoke screen, then mark someone before the 4s SS ends, otherwise you won't have enough energy to mark. No multimarking.

-If the target dies by something that isn't you, mark is not refunded.

-Ash is not invulnerable at no point during the ability, meaning you can be shot down or AoE'd to death before the blades even make contact, and opponents know you are about to unleash BS because Ash gives away it's intent with smoky aura. If you die mid cast or with a mark active you lose all your energy.

-If target dies while you are in the 1s cast animation before the actual attack, the attack is canceled, but your energy is gone anyway despite you doing nothing.

-It has 8m range, which is not that bad, but ALSO has 8m falloff, meaning that anyone can get out of range very easily as the average bulletjump covers 10 to 15m. Ash can't follow because marking mode Impairs him for no reason, he can't jump or parkour (and for a time he couldn't even sprint or roll!)

 

Simply put, the ability is too weak and too clunky to actually be worth using.

What changes does it need to be on par with every other ultimate?

-Damage buffed to 300 (minimum) and Mark reduced to 15-25  with no multimarking. Alternatively it can remain a single target ability but killing the target regardless of EHP or defensive abilities active at the time.

-Mark Range left as 8m, but Fall Off range buffed to 20m. Mark being lose if the target breaks LoS.

-Remove that stupid impair.

-If the target dies by any means while the mark is active or Ash dies while the mark is active, or if Ash dies mid animation or the target dies before the BS attack connects, Ash gets refunded 50% of the cost.

Edited by Nazrethim
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