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Replacing Mag as a Starter Warframe?


(XBOX)Nex the Slayer
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Now, now hold on... don't jump to conclusions, here. I'm not a newbie. I'm an MR 23 that absolutely loves Mag.

I always thought Mag was terrible during my earlier time playing Warframe, and never played her. Recently, I've rediscovered (and loved) playing Mag on high level content. In the last few months, I've realized that Mag is considered bad by a majority of the player base because they:

1) Have no idea how to play Mag correctly, which I chock up to being newer players.

2) Don't have the right Mods available to utilize Mag properly, also due to being a newer player.

3) Thought one of the first two reasons when they were new to the game, and never went back to try her out.

 

The fact of the matter is, Mag is less enjoyable to play than Volt or Excalibur simply because she's more geared toward endgame when you can properly modify her for range and duration, and more readily have access to the proper weapons to synergize with her abilities. With this in mind, is it really ok to have Mag available as a Starter Frame? If DE decided to replace her, what Warframe should take her place?

 

To start with, if Mag was replaced, I think it's pretty fair to say that she should be replaced by a female Warframe. She's the only female starter at the moment, and we all would like to remain politically correct, for the sake of crybabies. In addition, we should take out any Warframes locked behind quests. With this, our roster is reduced to:

Banshee, Ember, Equinox, Ivara, Nova, Nyx, Saryn, Trinity, Valkyr, and Zephyr.

 

We also need to consider that your first Warframe should keep you interested in the game, and make you feel good enough to keep playing. In other words, they should be fun and easy to use on low level content. With that tidbit (which eliminates Mag as well), I've eliminated Equinox (too complicated), Trinity (arguably not fun / complicated), and Zephyr (NO). Now, we're left with:

Banshee, Ember, Ivara, Nova, Nyx, Saryn, and Valkyr.

 

Next we remove broken or exceedingly powerful frames. We want something for our young bloods to work towards, and don't want to give them too much power off the bat. I've removed Ember (a.k.a. WF easy mode), Ivara (arguably best stealth frame), Nova (EXPLOOOOOOSIOOOOOON), and Valkyr (arguably best tank, and never dies). Tally:

Banshee, Nyx, and Saryn.

 

Volt is a squishy caster with low armor and high shields, while Excalibur is a melee oriented Frame with relatively high armor (15 armor, 225 armor, respectively). If we remove the other Warframes that are exceedingly squishy casters, it removes Nyx and Banshee, leaving us with Saryn.

To be fair, I believe all three of these frames would be good replacements for Mag. Saryn excels at low level content, and 3 of her 4 abilities don't require you to know anything about how they synergize to be useful (her 2, 3, and 4). Banshee would be an excellent choice as a support frame, and would get newer players familiar with their mini-map and radar. Nyx, while often neglected, has lots of useful abilities for making enemies ignore you or easier to deal with, allowing you to progress easier through content where enemies might be just a little stronger than you can deal with.

My personal choice is Saryn since she's less squishy, but what do you all think? I've heard arguments for Zephyr, too, but I refuse to consider her until she gets some form of rework.

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Mag only shines in high level missions, but the problem is that there isn't a single mission that goes beyond level 100 apart from the third sortie mission if we're excluding endless missions. For lower level missions there ware way better alternatives for killing S#&$ quick than Mag. IMO she's a bad starter frame because she requires extremely heavy modding compared to Volt and Excalibur and because of the fact she's not really as effective in early game as in late game.

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Once volt gets his deserved dmg buff he will be alot more worth picking. And excal isnt bad either. Assuming that people would only pick saryn is pretty dumb. Someone who is clueless that comes to the game picks what is intresting to them not what is the best.

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While I agree with your sentiment that mag is a horrible starting frame due to complicated abilities, I have to disagree with the proposed changes to other frames to compensate. Instead, she should be replaced with a different, easy to understand Warframe. 

Proposed replacements:

1. Ash. He provides a streamlined stealth based combat experience for early game, since new players like I once was tend to gravitate towards sneaky tactics and careful play. I don’t think new players would appreciate have to farm one specific, rare, annoying as hell enemy just to get a stealth based Warframe when stealth really just doesn’t make a difference later on. Seriously, screw manics.

2. Loki. From what my friends have told me, Loki was in fact one of the starting frames once upon a time. It’s a shame he isn’t anymore. I think he would make a great replacement as his abilities require a bit of understanding, but not enough to be confusing. Sure, the invisibility right off the bat may be a bit overpowered, but there’s always room for tinkering.

As for a third replacement, I’m not sure. Maybe you guys will come up with something.

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While I can agree with many of your points, you've slipped a little at the end there. Saryn is a frame that gets better the higher you go, you will frequently find that she's completely out-damaged on low level by other frames, she's also the kind of frame that only gets to be truly amazing with the right modding, and the problem with her as a Starter is that she can't do what the other two frames can at the start of the game; kill low level mobs with her 1.

I basically can follow your logic right down through the layers, right up until the point of Saryn, but I also see the flaw in that logic; your presumption is that the balance is 'warrior, caster, something'. If you think, instead, of the warframe casting types of 'offense, defense, control' you end up at a better balance of what you might require, and if you see that each has elements of the other, like Excal's offensive build also having control, Volt's defensive build also having offense and control, and Mag's control also having elements of defense and offense... then you're seeing more and more of the picture that DE are trying to craft.

It's a bit moon-logic oriented, but the more you look at it the more you see where DE's coming from.

So in that kind of logic, it rules Saryn out of your bottom three contenders.

The requirements are 'a frame that can deal with starter enemies with its starting ability' and 'a frame that can control for its primary casting purpose' and... actually none of them fit. Banshee's 1 is the closest to that first requirement, but deals a grand total of 50 damage, while Nyx's doesn't do any better than Saryn's...

Okay, so, hang on then. Let's take a look at the choices back through the frames that we started with.

Frames; Banshee, Ember, Equinox, Ivara, Nova, Nyx, Saryn, Trinity, Valkyr, and Zephyr

Frames that can finish the first task in the game (kill enemies) with their 1 ability; Ember and Valkyr.

Ahhhh... there we have the issue.

Out of all the female frames in the game that could do the opening quest, we kind of have the only one that isn't either ridiculously over-powered at the low levels, or ridiculously under-powered at the Starter level.

It's kind of why they swapped out Loki for Volt, what were we going to do? Decoy the enemies to death?

Unless DE release a specific female frame some time after Khora that's geared entirely towards replacing Mag as a starter? I don't think we're going to see one do that.

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I was going to argue with you, but your reasoning is pretty sound. While I do think she could use some adjustments, I know she excels with a good knowledge of her mechanics and decent mod/weapon setups.

Out of every choice, I would honestly think Zephyr would be the likely choice as a replacement starter. I, like most people, passionately hate her and do not think she's worth a Warframe slot in her current state so I wouldn't expect this kind of change to be viable or acceptable until her rework.

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You chose my last option

I bought Saryn with plat on a female bundle with Banshee and Nyx. They were all fun to play at the beginning of the star chart so no regrets 

But Saryn’s 4 was the most jarring as it just completely melted everything. No skill or strat just press 4. There’s a reason her grind is locked all the way in Sedna. 

Banshee and Nyx are good logically as they are easy to get. But they’ll never replace Mag. 

Being a Mag starter is fun because you can mature with her through research, various weapons and mods. I feel like Mag was scaled down for that reason. 

The other females are too efficient in their base form to be a starter, they need nerfs or new mechanics or they’ll be too easy like Trini or Saryn 

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15 hours ago, (Xbox One)Nex the Slayer said:

To start with, if Mag was replaced, I think it's pretty fair to say that she should be replaced by a female Warframe. She's the only female starter at the moment, and we all would like to remain politically correct, for the sake of crybabies.

If all the starter frames were female, there would be "crying" about that, too.  You can scapegoat "political correctness" and "crybabies" if you like, but the reality is simply that everyone likes to see their gender represented in the video games they play.

But to your point, Mag was my starter, and I'm actually very glad I picked her.  In the early game, before you have all sorts of cool mods and resources, you don't always have much energy.  Out of all the starting frames, Mag has the most gratifying — and imho most effective — 1st ability.  For 25 energy, you can cast Pull a lot as a beginner.  The other Warframes' 1st abilities aren't terrible, but I don't think they come close to competing with Pull.

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3 hours ago, (Xbox One)Nex the Slayer said:

This is an excellent point that I didn't consider. Take your upvote, sir.

Kind of DE's fault really, they backed themselves into a corner with the Vor's Prize quest, they needed it to be cinematic and introduce things in an order of 'this is the world, this is a warframe, this is a power, these are weapons, look at our amazing movement system, hit things that glow for loot, that's a boss for later... enjoy!'

By putting the emphasis on the 'waking up and dealing with bad guys' they've just limited the pool of warframes they can work from. There are plenty with direct damage first abilities, but they are (actually by an overwhelming factor) the 'male' ones. You've got Ash, Atlas, Chroma, Excal, Frost, Hydroid, Nekros, Nidus, Oberon, Rhino, Vauban, Volt and even Wukong, while the female side has Ember, Gara, Mag, Nova, Octavia and Valkyr. I mean, technically if you scale those first enemies wayyyy down, you've also got Banshee, but... yeah.

Quest-locked frames include Gara and Octavia, themed-to-the-boss frames like Valkyr... I mean, technically there are only two frames that are 'available' if you think of the other frames as all logical progression, and that's Oberon and Vauban, since they drop from things outside of bosses and quests. Rhino should technically be the first frame you get, although they've dropped Gara into that pool too, and if you join a Clan that gives you access to Volt (if you didn't choose him), Zephyr, Banshee and Nezha.

It's funny really, but I'm fairly sure that as far as progressing through the game, through frames and content, that DE have done the best they can with the existing materials ^^

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What if instead of having to pick between 3 starters, we could just pick any of the 8 original frames?

That would leave us with Excalibur, Volt, Mag, Ash, Loki, Ember, Rhino and Trinity.

However, I would like Trinity to get a revisit first since she's... you know.

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2 hours ago, Nazrethim said:

That would leave us with Excalibur, Volt, Mag, Ash, Loki, Ember, Rhino and Trinity.

The issue I have with this is only the effect that (as most are seeing it) DE are attempting to achieve. You get the smallest choice pool at the start, and can build anything and everything as you progress through the game.

Keeping this Starter pool small allows the Devs this more cinematic style for Vor's Prize, while at the same time giving players this huge array of things to earn. No new player knows how good or bad these frames are, not to mention that how good or bad they are has changed year upon year over the last 5.

However there are some frames that are, just by default, better than the Starters when you get them, those include Rhino and Ash. If obtained at the start, the actual start of the game, these frames would vastly out-power Volt or Mag in their current state. Maybe not Excal, because Excal is sitting pretty much exactly where he should be, even with one weak cast on his 3, for both new players and for experienced ones.

In short... there may be better Starter frames, but the question kind of is... should there be? For what the beginning of the game is, and for what the early game is, there really doesn't need to be better frames, it would devalue the accomplishment of getting the better frames if they were just... there at the start.

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35 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

The issue I have with this is only the effect that (as most are seeing it) DE are attempting to achieve. You get the smallest choice pool at the start, and can build anything and everything as you progress through the game.

A lot of that was based on only have 8 Frames in the beginning though and we were given the choice of more than 1/3 of those , we have dozens of Frames now. And you'll still only be picking one at the start so you'll have exactly the same number of Frames to build as you progress through the game whether they force you to use a specific one or give you the choice of any one as your starter.

35 minutes ago, Thaylien said:

No new player knows how good or bad these frames are, not to mention that how good or bad they are has changed year upon year over the last 5

However there are some frames that are, just by default, better than the Starters when you get them, those include Rhino and Ash. If obtained at the start, the actual start of the game, these frames would vastly out-power Volt or Mag in their current state. Maybe not Excal, because Excal is sitting pretty much exactly where he should be, even with one weak cast on his 3, for both new players and for experienced ones

New players don't typically know, correct, so that shouldn't be a deciding factor. Between the current starters, since his rework Excalibur is actually equipped to be consistently the most powerful across all levels of content and is the face of the game (not among my favorite frames though) so if they wanted a powerful one he's already a choice that they can't go wrong with. He already vastly out-powers the other two with the (unnecessarily excessive) ease of his kit, as well as his damage/control/scaling.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a better solution than actually reworking one of the subpar Frames and using them as a replacement, but I don't think the option would be unwarranted given the development of the game.

Edited by (PS4)Riko_113
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