Arcane enhancement UI improvements

[VegetableBasket]

Edit: I'm dumb, this is already happening. Please use this thread to make fun of me.

 

9 minutes ago, Aeon94 said:

https://twitter.com/sj_sinclair/status/962065622258479104

Arcanes will get their proper slots like mods.

 

original post:

Hey there, long time player and web designer here. Now that arcanes are going to become more mainstream, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the user experience of using them. This has been a pain point of veteran players as long as arcanes have existed, but it will soon become a pain point for most players.

Let's lay out some of the fundamental issues I see:

- They are gameplay affecting items, but they cannot be attached or detached in the arsenal. This is unintuitive, because players are taught early on that the arsenal houses the menu for every gameplay-important choice the player can make, aside from focus and arcane enhancements.

- Arcanes aren't searchable the way mods, weapons, or cosmetics are, and because there are now several arcanes for warframes, operators, amps, and zaws. the "uninstalled" page of the menu can get cluttered, but is also unfilterable.

- Distilling, equipping, and then upgrading arcanes makes switching between warframes slow, assuming the player wants to continue benefitting from their helmet's arcanes.

- Arcanes being attached to syandanas and helmets is counterintuitive to the distinction between cosmetic and gameplay affecting decisions. I know this line is blurred a bit with syndicate sigils and the energy color or Chroma or Equinox, but aside from those exceptions, the separation is healthy for the players sense of expression. For example, I used to use multiple syandanas on different frames, but I don't want to switch arcanes any more than I have to, so now I use the same one on all of them.

Here's my proposed solution:

- Put warframe arcanes in the same menu as warframe mods. Give them their own category filter and "mod slots" so to speak, which are visually distinct from normal mods (semicircular slots?), which could exist beside the aura and exilus mod slots. The first one would be for the helmet arcane, and the second one would be for the syandana arcane. If the player has no syandana equipped, a tooltip should explain that they must have a syandana equipped to use the arcane enhancement. Unequipping a syandana would unequip the arcane in this slot. A tooltip for an empty arcane slot could indicate where and how they're acquired for players that aren't familiar with the system.

- Give zaws a similar treatment. Hide the slot and category filter on non-zaw melee weapons, unless general melee arcanes come out.

- Once the player has access to operators/amps/focus, add a button to manage your operator loadout. That menu should include the ability to choose a focus school, equip an amp, and equip operator/amp arcanes in a similar fashion described above.

- The mod collection menu could be adapted to have another button to manage arcanes, which would then be categorically filterable by warframe, operator, amp, or zaw, with filters for rarity/recent/duplicate etc. From the arcane version of the mod management menu, allow players to "fuse" their arcanes together to rank them up, and distill them to break them out into stacks of one.

- Update the codex to reflect the drop sources of arcanes

Conclusion:

This solution would require some rework to the existing menu structure and possibly the creation of new pseudo-mod assets, although I believe it would result in a strictly more intuitive user experience. This would give players a smoother transition between loadouts and more freedom cosmetically. By connecting gameplay affecting operator customization to the arsenel/loadouts, tasks like changing which amp is equipped or swapping focus schools for certain content would be faster and easier, without compromising the original functionality of the system.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.

Edited February 18, 2018 by VegetableBasket
clarified a sentence. Bolded some stuff for skimmability.

[Aeon94]

https://twitter.com/sj_sinclair/status/962065622258479104

Arcanes will get their proper slots like mods.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Aeon94

[VegetableBasket]

 

Just now, Aeon94 said:

https://twitter.com/sj_sinclair/status/962065622258479104

Not sure if I should be happy my dreams are coming true or sad that I wasted my time writing this post.

Edited February 18, 2018 by VegetableBasket

[(PSN)i7081277]

Im sorry I need to do this

Spoiler

lol

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by (PS4)i7081277

[ganjou234]

On 2/19/2018 at 2:04 AM, (PS4)i7081277 said:

Im sorry I need to do this

  Hide contents

lol

 

^This.