Sentinel Overhaul - Detailed Description & Ideas!

[r0ckwolf]

Hi everyone,

first of all this is going to be a long post, i will do my best to structure it in a way that sorting through it won´t be too tedious.

For everyone who is up for reading this, feel free to add your own ideas, criticize on mine (in a polite way please^^) or just give you thumbs up on it.

 

Before i start i just wanted to get one thing out there: I LOVE SENTINELS, every single one of them. And that is the only reason for this extensive design suggestion. So please don´t blame me on trying to make something better.

 

 

*Note*: English is not my native language, so i apologize for any mistakes i make. If something is not clear or makes no sense to you, please ask me and i will do my best to explain it again.

 

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What is the Goal of this post:

Obviously i´m not satisfied with the way the Sentinels are implemented in the game right now, in my opinion they are bursting with potential of cool game mechanics, but are generally underdeveloped. I hope that enough people will like what they are going to read here and add their own cool ideas so that the Devs may notice us and consider the ideas of their community.

 

What needs to be done to make the Sentinels better:

While the Sentinels are everyones favorite Pets, i think they could do soo much more. I´ve found that their implementation in the game can be seperated into 3 categories: 

 

-WEAPONS

-ABILITYS

-PLAYER INTERACTION

 

In my opinion all of these categories are largely underdeveloped.

For Example: All Sentinels have only one Weapon, even though they have access to the Weapon selection menu, there are none to choose from, not even those that the other Sentinels posess. You are restricted to one main Ability that is passive on all 3 current sentinels and pretty much defines them, so you are more or less forced to choose your pet based on how much you value their Ability. As far as Player Interaction goes, there is none. The only thing that comes close to that is, for the Sentinels to recharge your Shields and "protect" you, while you are reviving an allie.

 

In some cases fixing or changing these problems seems quiet obvious and has been suggested mayn times in other Threads, so i will only talk about that for the sake of completing my case here. Other things have not been mentioned as far as i know and would probably require so larger rework from the Devs.

 

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WEAPONS:

The Sentinels already have conection parts on their bodies on which the wings and masks can be added, so i was always wondering why weapons are not treated the same way.

Every Sentinel should have one body conector where a weapon could be equipped on, this would solve the akwardness of them shooting out of thin air and would open up further customization for them and last but not least wold look so much better.

 

Which leads directly to the next point, it´s fine that the Sentinels have a "Trademark Weapon" of sorts, but is that really necessary?! It would make much more sense if the Sentinels had no weapon by default and you could choose which weapon would suit your playstyle best by building or buying them. If they come with a default Weapon though we should be able to swap then freely between all of them or buy different ones that may be added in the future.

 

The last thing that really has to happen with Weapons is to ive us the option to toggle them on or off!!!

This is really, really important for the whole game design in my opinon. At the moment, 2 of the Sentinels make a stealth approach impossible since they start shooting everything on first sight. I´m aware that you can unequip the Weapon Skill, so that the Sentinel won´t shoot anymore, but that is a rather bad soltution. In a Situation where you have been stealthy for 50% of a mission for example and then get caught, you are stuck with the decision that your pet wont shoot at anything.

So the "weapon mod" needs to completely dissapear in my opinion and an ingame "Sentinel Context Menu" needs to be added. I will add on that menu a little bit down the road, but the first thing you would be able to do with it, is turn your weapon on and off!

 

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Abilitys:

 

The Abilities itself are fine at the moment, apart from some needed tweaking maybe. The Main Problem is that the whole system how and when they are used and how we are able (or not able) to track and influence that is a complete mess right now! They are used in some sort of order, which is very unconsistent, we can´t tell if an abilitie is still on cooldown or if our Sentinel has enough energy to use it. It´s an disaster! The Sentinel HUD, on which the Devs are working on right now, acording to them will hopefully fix some of that issues, but more needs to be done in my opinion.

 

Why are the Sentinel abilities not active?! 

Assuming we get a HUD, which tells us all vital information about our Sentinel we need, it would be best if the Abilties would be made active. Then we could choose when to vaporize something or when we want crowd dispersion to trigger. My Idea is basicly to turn the former Weapon Mod into a second sentinel specific mod and bind both abilties to 5 and 6 on our Keyboard. Now we have full control over our Sentinels abilities. This would open up much more creative freedom for the devs, since these abilties could be active buffs (for speed, armor or regen), damage abilties, defense abilties or something else. The creative freedom is boundless.

 

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Player Interaction:

 

This is the most important point for me, as right now the Sentinels are soulless little machines that hover next to you without any connection to you. Impoving on that via creating game mechanincs that make you feel you are connected to your Sentinel would go a loooong way in making Warframe a better game.

One way would be my before mentioned "Sentinel Context Menu" (someone give it a better name please?!). When we press or hold a certain key, for example "C" or "Alt", your Warframe kneels down, like when in the Dojo, and the Sentinel starts hovering in front of him (i imagine the camera zooming in a bit focusing the sentinel). In this "mode" you can do severall things: 

 

-you can turn your Sentinels Weapon on or off!^^

-you can access your inventory, to refill ammo or HP.

-you could be able to change your Sidearm (maybe).

-he could carry a certain amount of Mods that you could change while in mission(on your Frame or the Sentinel).

-you could change his weapon.

-you could take CONTROL of him (yes i said that..^^), scouting ahead, or reaching areas you could otherwise not reach!

 ->this would open up great options for level puzzles and other things.

 

Since this is a large imaginative Overhaul, there is one last thing i would change. Assuming all my suggestions would be implemented, you should be able to choose one Sentinel at the start of the game! (THATS RIGHT!!!^^) Since the focus has turned much more towards player interaction, the only thing missing is implementing that into the Lore of the Game, so maybe the Lotus would send you one Sentinel of your chosing, through which she communicates with you and which acts as your Guardian until you choose to replace it with another one.

 

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Thats it, it´s out of my system! For everyone who actually took the time to read all of it, thank you and i hope you like what you´ve read. Feel free to flame or praise me now, but maybe someone could explain to me how i forward this post to another person. (DESteve maybe^^)

 

Greetings from Germany

Edited July 24, 2013 by r0ckwolf

[r0ckwolf]

bump*

[r0ckwolf]

apparently peolpe seem not be able to reply to this topic???!!!! WTF?!

[r0ckwolf]

gonna repost then