Dev Workshop: Warframes Revisited

[(XBOX)ZenithLord 42]

Just a quick forum visit on my thoughts about the potential reworks. 

-Ash: yes

-Banshee: The new change kind of gets rid of her #4's "I'm a deadly boom box" which was pretty iconic. My suggestion would be that Banshee's #4 would still immobilize her, but it would allow players to focus damage in the direction they're aiming. Meanwhile, a sonic reverberation shakes the ground and causes enemies to stumble. This would work like Mesa's #4, but with more CC. (Maybe even add an Augment that when Banshee's #4 is active, enemies hit by her power are able to be seen through walls for .3 sec.) 

-Atlas: Yes, this was long overdue. 

-Zephyr: Yes, also long overdue. The one thing she still would need is a strafe/bombing run power. (Maybe a Turbulence Augment?) 

-Volt: yes 

-Ember: Hmm... I guess this could work, but her survivability comes solely from World on Fire, deactivating it usually means death. She's in a good place now, but needs to be able do more damage at higher levels. The only way I can see this working is by reducing her activation energy costs for her other powers. If you take the "Fire"out of "Fire Chicken" all you're left with is "Chicken". 

-Chroma: Finally, Chroma... Just up the damage on his #1 and reduce the damage percentage values added by his Vex Armor. I don't understand the thinking behind his kit's current or future implementation... 

My 2 cents... Please do keep up the good work DE! 

[Bladereap3r]

Warframes Revisited...anticipation for sure, just have to see how they all play out in real-time game play. Tankx for the heads up!

[FeliXtreme]

Don't really agree with people thinking that the ember change only shift the power of the ability, as due to the nature of the radius affecting the area, halving it will actually quarter the area affected, which doesn't really equal out with doubling the damage.

Edited February 7, 2018 by FeliXtreme

[ChromaUmbra]

19 hours ago, Trichouette said:

I guess you didn't read my post after all or rather you prefer to stay blind about how that "fix" is not going to change THAT much.

I guess you didn't read all the math people have been giving that shows his ehp dropping to 1/5th of what it is now.

[notHunky]

Any way we could have Atlas' petrify be an instantly casted ability which radiates outward like Harrow's Condemn or Frost's Ice Wave?

 

Also I think Ember still needs much more of a rework to become viable against late game content. Nova is pretty much a direct upgrade from Ember's originally intended purpose.

[ChromaUmbra]

4 hours ago, Himenoinu said:

No more of that please. Continuos mobs buffs and invincibility mechanics added to not upset the players who don't like changes brought no end of problems, as we can see. More damage limitators, more mobs scaling, just to avoid a fix that was obviously going to hit. Make Chroma better, yes. Give the toggle option, make the other elemental effects more desireable... wait! nevermind that, 'cause a good part of the community just wants a 1-button-win juggernaut anyway, preferably with a macro attached, so they can do something else while the game play itself.

Also also, always threatening to quit, to stop supporting, to throw the computer through your bedroom's window won't help make the game more enjoyable. Lastly 700 hours of play and 3 frames is supposed to mean?! I have 900 hours, some 12+ frames and I can say that while I do have my favorites, I enjoy most of the warframes, Banshee not so much, as her low-to-mid level playstyle is just watch-the-clock-to-prevent-afk-punishment (same applies to Equinox's and Ember). I tried Chroma and after also watching vids about how you should hurt yourself to be a dragon I just dumped him (the mechanic would make sense, but the way players seem to use the self-damage skills is always an abuse).

If we look at Valkyr's story, the warframes are not god-like creatures. Hell! Even Alad V's trailer depicts a group of 4 good warframes being at the brink of defeat for a moment.

 

Make the fights more rewarding and desireable, by rethinking the loot tables. Give the enemies a brain, not a bunker t-shirt. Put, if need be a story behind the changes (how, by some tech stolen from Corpus the Grineer have found better means of warframe or Lotus knows what!). And with the mobs changes coming gradually (as they get smarter, not tougher) have the warframes also getting more fit for the new style of conflict (and if that mean changes, then let'em change). You can't fix the monsters being dumb and strong in the game if the warframes are designed with the same traits in mind.

I actually agree with you 100% here.  If they did something like that, I probably wouldn't mind the nerfs at all.  But they aren't doing any of that, so my point still stands.

[G4d0]

Please let us cast Petrify while on the air Please Please please fast pace punching machine 

[Grave.Knight]

Bladestorm is still just as cumbersome. Why do we have to sit there marking enemies when most everyone can press 4? Why not roll it back to how it was before with this "can join the fight" mechanic?

[MickeyVII]

As far as killing enemies through walls and before squad mates can see them, essentially ruining everyone's fun, It seems like Equinox and Nova are just as much of an issue as Banshee and Ember. Why do powers go through walls? Why do they have to go through walls at all? Why and how is that even a thing? It's the worst.

[JetFuelFeelz]

On 2/2/2018 at 2:25 PM, Simmml said:

Use my account for Mag, Rebecca. I have 21 Mags, all multiformad :)

https://imgur.com/KqPPEJy

yo wth, why

[FlatScreamer]

[Klokwerkaos]

I just want to say I'm still not a fan of this ember nerf.  Here's the problem... the "fun" factor you're calculating for is only concerning "new" players.  The base game relies upon grind in order to make the business model work.  In order to make the players strive to work through the grind, they need some short cuts to make the grind a little easier on them or they want to tear their hair out.

 

I can understand why players under MR 10 would be annoyed with Ember WoF max range build, I was at one point... but you come to appreciate it over time once you figure out things like bullet jumping and not mashing melee through everything and start thinking about strategy and using multiple frames for different reasons... then you're like "oh, that's what ember is for, clearing crappy missions everyone has done a million times on tilesets I can run in my sleep now".  

 

Plus this now sets the precedent for every similar "lazy" frame build to take a hit... banshee, octavia, etc.  Active play styles are important... I'm a full on Nidus main player focussed on raw damage output with almost every frame in the game after not even 2 months of play time because i'm psycho like that, but suffice to say, it's a SUPER active playstyle.  And I love it... but... sometimes I'm just like "well I just need to farm several thousand oxium in a couple of hours.  How should I do it?" And the answer is Ember... only not anymore.  Some nerfs I can get behind, for example the MR 19 test is harsh if you don't have a banshee and a redeemer, but I can get behind it on the validation that "ok, it's a big shotgun", and it makes banshee kind of special to have for that eye gougingly awful test, which is like, OK, exploit is still there, but it's just not as blatant" which is nice.  I think it's fun to have exploits be a little hard to find and come by since it keeps players from min maxing the game to death, but they need to still be there.  

This ember nerf... it's... not the right direction imho.  There is a problem there, yes, but this isn't the right solution.

Ember is my farmer frame for knocking out missions.  Taking that away from her means A) there is no replacement frame that can do this anywhere near as well, and B) makes her kind of useless since there are other frames that will do her new job better unless you buff her numbers to a stupid extent.

My suggestion on the ember issue, since I'm complaining so much is the following:

Have it shrink and do damage based on A) the speed at which she moves and time she has been moving and B) level of enemies caught in flame, dropping off at higher levels.  This does the following:  I can still farm with her if I park her in a spot near some good spawns.  It slows the mass extinction meaning, you can still be lazy with ember to clear an execution mission, but it's going to take longer now, and other players will have the chance to move ahead of you, meaning they can still have fun and you can still clear.  This solves the issue as I see it.  It would suck, but it would still allow ember to fill her current role and it would scale with higher level content because squishy ember can't stay in one place while bombard rockets are shooting at her, causing her to have to run a lot more, making her still viable for higher content as sustained DPS rather than insta kill.

 

 

[Agilis_Prime]

I mean, the Ember nerf is honestly not needed in my opinion... The reason is I feel she does her job just fine already. She's meant to take down low armored (of course that means low level) targets. While people do wreck everything 30 and under, it's still what I always though she was meant for. What fire was meant for at least...

[Gradundulidae]

Can we pretty please stop nerfing frames because people complain about kill counts and other arbitrary stats in a PVE game? If you want kills so badly, play solo. The players who don't mind or appreciate the frames as they are can't just click the solo button to undo the changes. A vocal minority should NEVER influence game balance for the majority.

[KijiMuna]

Everything but the Ember changes look good. (though, I would have liked to see Zephyr get a different 4 as well.)

 

I'd really, really like to see DE stop with the double-whammy nerf hammer approach. It's painfully obvious that these changes aren't play-tested in any meaningful way aside from making sure it doesn't bug out.

Especially when this is literally just more fuel for the "Zenurik tree is the only one worth taking" fire.

Edited February 8, 2018 by KijiMuna

[POIKILO]

2 hours ago, Gradundulidae said:

Can we pretty please stop nerfing frames because people complain about kill counts and other arbitrary stats in a PVE game? If you want kills so badly, play solo. The players who don't mind or appreciate the frames as they are can't just click the solo button to undo the changes. A vocal minority should NEVER influence game balance for the majority.

1 hour ago, KijiMuna said:

I'd really, really like to see DE stop with the double-whammy nerf hammer approach. It's painfully obvious that these changes aren't play-tested in any meaningful way aside from making sure it doesn't bug out.

All of this. Please, DE, just stop it. If you're going to do changes like this, we'd like to see more livestream testing too - and not just have one dev running solo in Mot! Do sorties, do group plays, don't be lazy and bury the feedback under the mindset, "we made the game, so we know better than the players." I get you guys have the ultimate say in what happens to the game, but please be considerate to your fans. It's frankly frustrating at times because sometimes it really feels like whoever's in charge of the decisions simply doesn't care for our input.

That being said, at least the developers who do take their time to communicate with players through social media have been pretty nice. I appreciate that.

 

[SteamlordD]

Okay, here's a take on the Ember situation, after giving it a lot more thought:

Through the combination of Fatal Accelerant and the addition of heat damage on shots fired through Fire Blast, she can put out a lot of damage, much more than she ever could with World on Fire. The change to WoF makes it, well, not particularly useful? Maybe if it didn't shrink, but it just WAS smaller, and did more damage, and more drain, at base, so it could be useful for stumbling a big guy into the ground. As it stands, most people will just turn it on and off to keep the range long and the kill counts high, this isn't really a fix, just adding more button presses. Turn it into a short range randomized series of flame bursts that can do high damage, and it might find some value.

World on Fire, currently, is a survivability tool more than anything, and she'll need that replaced if she's going to be even remotely usable. I'd like to propose bringing back Overheat, but as her passive, considering her current passive is pretty much worthless. On the off-chance that you run across one of the few enemies that does heat damage, and they manage to proc you, you can get, what, 20 energy out of it, while taking damage? Not particularly useful. Imagine, though, if her passive were a defensive buff that promoted active play.

Overheat could have, say a meter of some kind. As you deal heat damage, the meter goes up, over time, it gradually goes down. The meter could determine what sort of damage resistance Ember has, wreathing her in flames that melt incoming bullets and stagger melee attackers, reducing damage drastically when kept full, which could be done using her abilities, both through directly damaging enemies with them, and through increasing heat damage on your weapons.

 

Of course, I can't imagine this will get done. I'd like to have faith in the development team to bring us a reasonable kit, and they've done much better in recent times, but we've still got an Ash that doesn't function, etc. Just, hey, maybe if you want to promote active play, actually promote it, instead of harming other sorts of gameplay. Positive reinforcement works best.

[Himenoinu]

5 hours ago, Bladefeather said:

I actually agree with you 100% here.  If they did something like that, I probably wouldn't mind the nerfs at all.  But they aren't doing any of that, so my point still stands.

A warframe has only this much room for adjustments. Our damage output and survival capabilities don't scale with the content. We're quickly becoming gods walking around mere mortals on the star chart - regardless of the frame we take there - but sadly, our foes don't get more challenging in endless missions. No, they just turn into walking, talking, bunker-grade bullet sponges.

It's nigh impossible to balance the frames for this. Our foes really need to enlist in a military academy, study their - and their enemies's - skills and gear and lear to face us in better formations, while maximizing their own gear as they level up.

I remember the dwarves we were facing in hard mode dungeons in GW1. They were, basically the same with the normal mode one (just sligthy hier stats), but with more skills that were synergizing great. If our dear enemies here would use the mods they drop, if they'd form squads when assaulting (or defending against) us instead of mindlessly throwing themselves against in our bullets... Then we'd have something to work with, a warframe would get balanced so that it stays relevant (with no extremes) in most situations, or requiring some degree of team-work too for others. I mean, it's possible to eat soup with a fork, but it goes smoother if using a spoon.

It was during the heated debate that I realized this. Any warframe buffing or nerfing is subject to change. But it is NOT to balance it for the challanges ahead. The changes are almost always aimed at us and the way we're abusing an ability or another. So we'll rant or rage, then find another way to mow down the same zombie-like foes of ours.

And here's the last hiccup: your argument is valid for the situation you're referring to, but so is DE's. People arguing Ember is getting a big hit to her survivability are correct, but so are those pointing out the dull gameplay and excessive power she exibits across the star chart. A warframe that can face and defeat hordes of mindless level 120+ enemies will always be wrecking balls for anything lower. Now, most of the game's content falls in the 2nd category (where you also find most of the creative work). So what should the warframe be fine-tuned for?

No matter how I look at it, the result is the same: it's the enemies that need being looked at and improved, not the warframes nerfed. Granted, Zephyr and others like her needed some love badly, but when talking balance, we're focusing on and trying to address the effects, not the cause.

[(XBOX)Harbinger XK5]

21 hours ago, ApocalypticFlameFury said:

EXACTLY! See, this exactly what I was saying. I really appreciate your support and reply to what I said. I kept telling the other guy what Chroma mains would say....and I agree with all of you. I love Chroma. He's not my top, top main but he IS one of my top favorite frames in the entire game. When I want to eradicate something for good, I pick Chroma. Because it takes a lot of forma to build him up and eventually you got one top notch dragon. I 100% agree with you man, we all need to unite and tell DE that nerfing Vex Armor is wrong! 

I'd very much like to no what gun there is that can actually take the teralyst down without chroma, because nothing i've tried puts the slightest dent in it health

[(XBOX)Harbinger XK5]

4 hours ago, Gradundulidae said:

Can we pretty please stop nerfing frames because people complain about kill counts and other arbitrary stats in a PVE game? If you want kills so badly, play solo. The players who don't mind or appreciate the frames as they are can't just click the solo button to undo the changes. A vocal minority should NEVER influence game balance for the majority.

I wish everyone thought like you, it's so stupid to complain about something so trivial when the solution is as simple as changing to solo mode, I feel that DE has completely lost their minds with these ridiculous nerfs that drive things into the ground until there's nothing left to salvage

[(XBOX)Harbinger XK5]

2 hours ago, POIKILO said:

All of this. Please, DE, just stop it. If you're going to do changes like this, we'd like to see more livestream testing too - and not just have one dev running solo in Mot! Do sorties, do group plays, don't be lazy and bury the feedback under the mindset, "we made the game, so we know better than the players." I get you guys have the ultimate say in what happens to the game, but please be considerate to your fans. It's frankly frustrating at times because sometimes it really feels like whoever's in charge of the decisions simply doesn't care for our input.

That being said, at least the developers who do take their time to communicate with players through social media have been pretty nice. I appreciate that.

 

I'm pretty sure that they don't care for our input, personally i think they've lost their freaking minds, and when people say that these nerfs are making the game balanced, they obviously don't know the definition of the word balance, because the enemies seem to be getting stronger and the frames and weapons weaker, it's the exact opposite of balance.

[Himenoinu]

29 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Harbinger XK5 said:

I'm pretty sure that they don't care for our input, personally i think they've lost their freaking minds, and when people say that these nerfs are making the game balanced, they obviously don't know the definition of the word balance, because the enemies seem to be getting stronger and the frames and weapons weaker, it's the exact opposite of balance.

I'm pretty sure you're pretty wrong :D check the Part 2 of this topic for the evidence to support my claim. After clearing the star chart and the occasional sortie, he frames and weapons are getting weaker because the frames are pushing for those level 5000 enemies (for no logical reason other than seeing where the frame actually breaks). Regardless of the mechanics behind monsters scaling, or the lack of any (scaling) in the rewards department. And yet you want the frames balanced for the latter, even if the "real" content is actually the former.

"I want my warframe strong to brave the level 500 monsters I want to fight for no reason! I don't care the star chart is turned into a joke in the process" is a bad approach I think. It means WE don't care about everything there, all of DE's work to make it better, that we're only interested in a niche segment of the game that brings nothing new - no special mobs mechanics, no epeen rewards, no shift in mobs behavior. But that's what we want to play. And everything else can go to hell! That's certainly bound to make this game better, right?! :<

[Duffy1]

On 2/3/2018 at 5:03 AM, [DE]Connor said:

EMBER

World On Fire - 5 seconds after casting, a percentage will begin counting up on the ability icon. As this percentage scales from 0% to 100% over 10 seconds, the ability’s energy cost and damage dealt both grow to double, while the ability radius shrinks to half.
 

Ember is the original damage caster frame, offering low survivability in exchange for high offense. Her ultimate, World on Fire, is unmatched in terms of widespread lethality - while many Warframes specialize in certain mission types, Ember’s specialty is “anything under level 30”. By simply bullet jumping through levels with World on Fire active, enemies become a non-factor, making Ember a ubiquitous pick across most of the Star Chart. Like a mobile Resonating Quake, this monopoly on kills can leave squadmates struggling to keep up, in an attempt to see the enemy before they melt. These changes increase lethality at higher levels, while addressing the ability’s huge range.

World on Fire will continue working similarly to how it does now, but with changing effects over time. The gradually increasing energy cost should encourage most players to toggle the ability when needed, instead of the current “set and forget” approach. Players who can afford to run the ability at max charge may need to get more up close and personal, but the increased damage should help Ember out against higher level enemies.  World on Fire is still very capable of clearing rooms and sweeping hallways, but should now be applied more deliberately!

As someone who mains Ember, I'm not sure how I feel about the change, I use ember in very high levels, as a superior, close proximity CC. Standard range with the Fire Quake allows ember to survive with my weapons doing the damage, knocking down enemies as you get near with WoF, with the fire status also doing CC, the use of Accelerant to stun larger groups. Ember gets very little kills, Survival-ability is relied on the CC and fast movements and kills with melee and medium to long range weapons. I know of no one who uses Ember like this, but that is how I feel she should be used, an unseen potential, so much CC potential, overlooked. With this change, it will definitely allow her to scale in high levels... as a wipe out frame. However, despite my concerns I do think you are heading in the right direction.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

On 2/6/2018 at 8:26 AM, Xzorn said:

@(PS4)Rasmus_ep88 @Bladefeather

Yea, the closer you get to 99.99% damage reduction the more drastic a difference 0.01% will make.

The reduction in armor value also makes him more vulnerable to damage type modifiers. Similar to how Puncture damage seems to work well on lvl 30 Grineer but doesn't work well on lvl 300 Grineer.

Sadly, if the right damage type hits Chroma it can be much worse than a 100% increase in damage taken. In this example the old Chroma is hit with 1,000 Puncture Damage. Lets say a Nullifier's Lanka (Yea they're Puncture) which has a +50% Damage modifier against Ferrite and then the New Chroma is hit by the same damage.

-Old-
damage = 1000 * (1 + 0.5)  * (300 / (300 +  30,593.64 * (1- 0.5)))
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * (300 / (300 +  30,593.64 * 0.5))
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * (300 / 15,596.82)
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * 0.0192
damage =  28.85

-New-
damage = 1000 * (1 + 0.5)  * (300 / (300 +  6,755 * (1- 0.5)))
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * (300 / (300 +  6,755 * 0.5))
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * (300 / 3,677.5)
damage = 1000 * 1.5 * 0.08158
damage =  122.37

(122.37 - 28.85) / 28.85 = 3.2817 = 324% More Damage Taken

The lower the numerical value of armor the more vulnerable something is to damage type modifier double dips.

This is in addition to his eHP being effectively 20% of it's original value.

Very good my friend, but also consider the builds. My 299% Power Strength Chroma has 7014 Armor, but with vitality has only 18k Effective health. With puncture damage, you gotta halve the armor, increase the damage by 50%. I theorize that against puncutre damage, my 299% PS chroma if I were to use only vitality as my health, turns out my effective ehp against puncture damage is 6260.4. This is ridiculously less than any DR frame in game

 

[Cytobel]

Wow, so I've seen quite a few complaints raised over Ember here.  The one thing I can agree to is that all BUT the range reduction would be a feasible answer.  In fact MOST posts that bother to talk about this agree that the range issue is the killer here.  Turning WoF off every so often to reset drain is something that could be done.  As has been repeated ad nauseum however, nerfing range on a (the) survival tool in Ember's kit seems totally excessive.  I would love to see this point of the change leave the table entirely, at least for now.  Ember should also have a bit more added to her toolbox for staying alive, given that her only solution until now was to hide behind Firequake.

As to Chroma, the fix to his damage scaling is just that: a fix, and one that's been a long time in coming.  At the same point I'd like to see some way for Chroma to recieve a bit of something in return.  He's really only able to do the one thing, and no matter how well he does that one thing people would've done other builds if viable.  That's sort of not been a thing for Chroma.  As such, I'd like to see some general utility work done on his other abilities, if for no other reason than to make him more interesting to play.

Volt needs higher sprint speed, lower Strength scaling on Speed, and base Volt needs a touch more armor and a larger energy pool.  Adjustments to his Discharge aren't looking promising just yet, and it's going to take quite a bit to replace the Speed build for some people (I hate it, but I'm not all Volt players in the game).

Ash concerns me.  Where Volt need Capacitance for any decent Discharge-centered build, Ash REQUIRES augments for his teleport and shuriken abilities.  I'm not a fan of required augments.

I know people will point out that Ash can benefit from the bleed procs on his shurikens and that the teleport allows for quick finisher attacks without the augments, but realistically this is just a costly bleed proc or a silly movement power without the benefit of the attached augments.  In this case, it's not that the augments are powerful, but rather that the abilities are not.  Not too sure if this is what a 'Frame should require in order to be played: an entire mod slot devoted to an augment that doesn't even come with the base 'Frame.

Eh, I can wait and see about some of these, but Ember is hurting.