Energy, Energy, Energy...

[SteamlordD]

I've noticed lately that energy orbs seems to spawn more frequently, and that's great! I haven't seen it documented anywhere, but in the past couple months I've definitely seen more energy orbs than previously. I really appreciate steps to combat the issue of energy drought!

However...

The system of energy, in general, is lacking.

Hunter Adrenaline(Rage), Zenurik, Trinity/Harrow, max efficiency builds, consumables... If you're not doing one of those things, chances are there will be long periods of time where you just can't cast stuff. Even with some of those, it can be tiresome to keep up with the demands on some frames.

I understand that this idea is most likely going to be ignored by the developers, and trashed on by a big chunk of the community who fear and hate change, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway.

Warframes with similar energy mechanics to operators, without the recharge delay on usage. (Primed)Flow would need to be reduced greatly. All powers with a static cost. Efficiency affecting the rate of recharge, rather than the cost. Drain powers having a maintenance cost instead of a consistent drain, reducing your maximum energy for as long as they're active.

It's a thought, anyway. Feel free to discuss reasons you may or may not like the concept, that's what we're here for. Feel free to vent and flame if you must, but consider painting some happy little trees instead.

Edited March 17, 2018 by SteamlordD

[RayxAyanami]

The reason why Operators "recharge" is because they use pure void energy and are connected to it, Warframes can't enter the void, they are basically Infested. But then again we have limbo so screw this..... Fix your lore DE.. Geez.

[bluepheonix13]

3 minutes ago, RayxAyanami said:

The reason why Operators "recharge" is because they use pure void energy and are connected to it, Warframes can't enter the void, they are basically Infested. But then again we have limbo so screw this..... Fix your lore DE.. Geez.

Void is not the same as the rift which Limbo enters. Fix your lore knowledge RayxAyanami.. Geez.

[motorfirebox]

I've always thought that frames should have specific moves they can do to recharge energy. Like if you're Ember, Fireball should cost no energy, and doing damage with it should restore your energy. Instead of energy, your energy-restoring move would run off a stamina bar so you couldn't just spam it constantly.

[(PSN)EmilyRoze]

Energy should just recharge a base amount on all frames with mods adding to it, why do I get life and energy off of random stuff I kill. Makes no sense that this guy had a blue orb of energy in his pocket. 

[lukinu_u]

il y a 11 minutes, RayxAyanami a dit :

The reason why Operators "recharge" is because they use pure void energy and are connected to it, Warframes can't enter the void, they are basically Infested. But then again we have limbo so screw this..... Fix your lore DE.. Geez.

Infested have no problems with the void. The only lifeform that have problem with the void are sentient as they constantly try to adapt and, as the Void physic is unstable, they tend to adapt to an illogical physic and decay.
For Warframe themselves, they can enter to the void, there is a tileset called void and it's definitely void. If you says "nah, it's not the same Void", you can also put a Warframe in the void by using Void Shadow from the Unairu Focus tree.

About the main topic, I think energy is fine right now, Hunter Adrenaline/Rage and efficiency mods provide a good balance between power spamming and slots used, but all this balance is broke by energy regen powers (mainly Trinity because Harrow is fine) and energy consummables.
I think Trinity should be looked at, and for consummable, they should be looked at too but there is no real ways to balance them for both low and high level missions.

[Stoner]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)EmilyRoze said:

Energy should just recharge a base amount on all frames with mods adding to it, why do I get life and energy off of random stuff I kill. Makes no sense that this guy had a blue orb of energy in his pocket. 

Yes. There's cooldown as well but I know people generally hate this idea. Destiny did it and its pretty well made and balanced. 

[(PSN)salovel1991]

23 minutes ago, Stoner said:

Yes. There's cooldown as well but I know people generally hate this idea. Destiny did it and its pretty well made and balanced. 

On that note I have to somewhat disagree. Without specific perks or exotics it seems like the powers take far too long to regen. Maybe if they had timers and doing specific actions regenerated energy it would be okay. 

[Radical_Dragon]

4 hours ago, SteamlordD said:

 

Hunter Adrenaline(Rage), Zenurik, Trinity/Harrow, max efficiency builds, consumables... If you're not doing one of those things, chances are there will be long periods of time where you just can't cast stuff. Even with some of those, it can be tiresome to keep up with the demands on some frames.

 

I mean yeah, if you don't run any mods or abilities or anything that either help refill energy or help energy efficiency you're gonna have trouble casting a bunch. That's kind of the trade-off for a lot high effectiveness warframe builds is energy problems.

[Recel]

4 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

I've always thought that frames should have specific moves they can do to recharge energy. Like if you're Ember, Fireball should cost no energy, and doing damage with it should restore your energy. Instead of energy, your energy-restoring move would run off a stamina bar so you couldn't just spam it constantly.

You know... something like this actually sounds fun, and would add to the "magic space ninja" feeling of the game.

[TKDancer]

 

6 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

I've always thought that frames should have specific moves they can do to recharge energy. Like if you're Ember, Fireball should cost no energy, and doing damage with it should restore your energy. Instead of energy, your energy-restoring move would run off a stamina bar so you couldn't just spam it constantly.

i mean, thats basically what they did to nidus, but they never implanted a similar system to any other frame

[SteamlordD]

17 hours ago, Radical_Dragon said:

I mean yeah, if you don't run any mods or abilities or anything that either help refill energy or help energy efficiency you're gonna have trouble casting a bunch. That's kind of the trade-off for a lot high effectiveness warframe builds is energy problems.

Forcing players to either do one of 3 specific things or just not cast stuff isn't fun though. It becomes stale meta builds pretty quickly.

[Darkuhn]

if you don't have enough energy, try to play with Zenutik Fucus School and Energy Siphon Aura Mod that should give you all the energy you need. If you need More Build Team Restores with them you can keep spamming even if the Build is as hungry as hell.

Also a Trinity or a Harrow on the Team can solve any Energy Problem you might have. 

[TKDancer]

5 hours ago, Darkuhn said:

if you don't have enough energy, try to play with Zenutik Fucus School and Energy Siphon Aura Mod that should give you all the energy you need. If you need More Build Team Restores with them you can keep spamming even if the Build is as hungry as hell.

Also a Trinity or a Harrow on the Team can solve any Energy Problem you might have. 

i think you missed the OP's point entirely

 

On 3/17/2018 at 2:43 PM, SteamlordD said:

 

The system of energy, in general, is lacking.

Hunter Adrenaline(Rage), Zenurik, Trinity/Harrow, max efficiency builds, consumables... If you're not doing one of those things, chances are there will be long periods of time where you just can't cast stuff. Even with some of those, it can be tiresome to keep up with the demands on some frames.

 

 

[BlackCoMerc]

On 3/17/2018 at 2:41 PM, Stoner said:

Yes. There's cooldown as well but I know people generally hate this idea. Destiny did it and its pretty well made and balanced. 

Destiny does it terribly. Cookdowns aren't fun or Engaging. And Warframe enemies are way too powerful for us to rely on cooldowns now 

Edited March 19, 2018 by BlackCoMerc

[Stoner]

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Destiny does it terribly. Cookdowns aren't fun or Engaging. And Warframe enemies are way too powerful for us to rely on cooldowns now 

I had a blast playing the first Destiny, its far from terrible. A thing with cooldowns is it makes you think before using said ability. It also makes people use weapons instead of relying on abilities all the time... What I dislike about Warframe is the availability of energy that causes the majority of people to carelessly spam powers. There is no challenge whatsoever and it becomes boring very quick. (My point of view might be tough to understand if you're only playing Warframe)

And yes, enemies are very powerful I have to agree on that. Warframe has major balance issues in my opinion. I think they should balance the gun-play, melee system and the energy system in a way that it benefits from one another. But thats just my opinion. Warframe is a weird game.. its like a mix of everything. 

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 17/03/2018 at 6:32 PM, motorfirebox said:

I've always thought that frames should have specific moves they can do to recharge energy. Like if you're Ember, Fireball should cost no energy, and doing damage with it should restore your energy.

Personally I've always noted that her passive let's her regen a base 60 energy (10 per second, for as long as the fire proc lasts, which is by default 6 seconds unless refreshed by another proc) from a Fire proc against her, and thought... why can't she set herself on fire with Fireball? They could nerf that passive back to something more balanced, and allow her to set herself on fire to regen, but at the same time this regen would still be blocked by WoF to preserve the drain balance DE seems to insist on.

I don't think that all frames should have this kind of function, but there's one or two that do and some that kind of need it. Saryn has energy regen from her 1/3 combo, and that's not bad, but why can't Nova reclaim energy from, say, hitting things with Null Star? She's sacrificing her defense with every orb lost, so getting energy back would be the counter-balance to it, rather than just the poor damage, and you could even balance it like Nidus, where the more orbs you produce from the ability, the less energy they return, and vice-versa.

Meanwhile I don't think that Atlas needs an energy regen when he has health and tanking regen from Rubble. There does need to be a balance on which frames can heal back up and which frames can get more efficient and which frames can regain energy.

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Destiny does it terribly. Cookdowns aren't fun or Engaging.

53 minutes ago, Stoner said:

A thing with cooldowns is it makes you think before using said ability.

Hi, old player here! BlackCoMerc is right, actually. Cooldowns have already been tried in Warframe, they were thrown out because players would find out what combinations worked best, walk into rooms and use them, then drop back or hide while their cooldowns returned, slowing the pace of the game when DE's goal was to keep it fast and mobile.

The stats showed that while the weapons were and still are great, un-availability of powers due to a timer limitation is less engaging to play than a limitation based on resources. With the energy system as it is, players have a resource to manage, gain, lose and so on, and death is a matter of player error that can be corrected with consumables, team-based interactions, or just killing things more. With Cooldowns it was always just a matter of moving to the next room before your timer finished that got you killed. A situation where you CC'd some enemies because you were going to die then led you to another situation where you were going to die again and couldn't CC because... you moved too fast... that was it, that was the mistake, you moved too fast. While Energy means that the CC from the first set would grant you kills, often restoring your Energy from drops or giving you time to drop a Plate, and allowing you to engage the next group in a more reliable fashion, faster and faster, expoiting Warframe's fantastic movement system and large tile sets to the fullest.

It's much like the Stamina bar, we used to only be able to Sprint for a limited amount, like other games. Removing it allowed for massively free-flowing movement and mobility around enemies, traversal and game completion was vastly improved. I mean, imagine if we still had it and the Plains was released... we would be forced, literally forced to use mobility-based frames, or the archwing consumables in order to get anywhere at all, because we'd only be able to sprint for 8 seconds at a time.

Basically, if you want to keep Warframe moving as fast and as smoothly as it can do currently, Cooldowns are a bad idea.

[TKDancer]

5 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Basically, if you want to keep Warframe moving as fast and as smoothly as it can do currently, Cooldowns are a bad idea.

agreed

 

 

5 hours ago, Thaylien said:

With the energy system as it is, players have a resource to manage, gain, lose and so on

but without some baseline energy regen that is worth a damn and most abilities following the 25/50/75/100 base energy cost scheme its more about minimizing energy costs with efficiency and/or maximizing energy gains with energize/zenurik/pre made teams with trin/pizzas because energy drops are just pure RNG  and never really made a lot of sense tbh

 

like, the difference in gameplay when i finally was able to do 175% efficiency on frames(and later zenurik regen) was so ridiculous because i was actually able to manage my energy and use my abilities instead of having the "too good to use" issue due to how much energy abilities cost and how random energy drops were

 

this is really bad for new players, as its gonna take a long time till they can get maxed streamline and a properly ranked fleeting(unless they buy plat early with actual money) and its also gonna take a long time till they can acquire and max the energy regen node for zennurik(and if u picked another school at the start, too bad i guess?)

 

[Siilk]

Let me shamelessly quote my post from a focus/energy discussion from some time ago:

 

[Caelward]

I'd just like it if they granted a small amount of base energy regen based on MR, but that's probably too crazy to consider.

[Zext]

Give out a damaged energy siphon with no polarity as a starting aura for new players. Something like that. There are so many ways for more advanced players to restore energy, that it's not really much of a problem once you get there.

[TKDancer]

34 minutes ago, Zext said:

Give out a damaged energy siphon with no polarity as a starting aura for new players. Something like that. There are so many ways for more advanced players to restore energy, that it's not really much of a problem once you get there.

even then it wouldnt help a lot

 

maxed siphon is 0.6 energy per second, most 1st abilities at 100% efficiency  cost 25 energy, thats 41.6 seconds for 1 skill if u are the only one with it and i'd imagine ur suggested broken energy siphon would be 0.3 or smth

 

and there arent actually that many options for advanced players:

 

1. zenurik which locks u out of all other focus trees

 

2. pizzas which are consumables

 

3. energize which is VERY rare and a set ridiculously expensive

 

and im not gonna count harrow/trin

[Darkuhn]

vor 15 Stunden schrieb TKDancer:

i think you missed the OP's point entirely

 

 

I didn't, but I don't see any problem with how energy is working right now.

if the OP refrains from using all the tools we were given to manage energy consumption than that is his choice. With such Builds/Playstyles you will run out of energy rather quickly but with the right weapons/Arcana you can play certain frames (e.g. Inaros/Valkyr) without ever spending Energy.

If OP wants to field a Max Power Strength Min Power Efficiency Saryn to wreck whole Tilesets then he should use the means DE gave to us to sustain such a build. Or he should find a Team willing to spend Energy Pizzas for him.

Back when I started Playing we only had Trinity and the Aura Mod to generate Energy. With the many ways we can generate Energy now, I think we are in a good spot.

[Birdframe_Prime]

5 hours ago, TKDancer said:

because energy drops are just pure RNG  and never really made a lot of sense tbh

Then let's make it make sense ^^

Rather than RNG based drops, have it more reliable, where either certain numbers of enemies killed generates a certain number of energy orbs, and/or killing specific enemies always rewards an energy orb.

Target priority has always appeared to be a challenge to most of the new players that I've taught, if there was a solid reward for making sure they took out Ancients, Nullifiers, Heavy units, Mutalists, Eximus units and so on first, then gameplay overall would improve, good habits would be drilled in from the start, as it were.

That kind of thing would be easier to implement and balance for DE than a universal passive energy regen. It would fall in line with their previous changes and policies about energy where you have to perform an action in order to get a reaction, earn energy from doing things. Even the current Zenurik is like that; earn all the Focus for it, then every time you want it you have to activate it with the little Operator dance.

While I'm convinced that we're never going to get actual passive energy regen...

There's still options to work with what we have, instead of trying to break DE's back over their existing policies.

[BlackCoMerc]

12 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Personally I've always noted that her passive let's her regen a base 60 energy (10 per second, for as long as the fire proc lasts, which is by default 6 seconds unless refreshed by another proc) from a Fire proc against her, and thought... why can't she set herself on fire with Fireball? They could nerf that passive back to something more balanced, and allow her to set herself on fire to regen, but at the same time this regen would still be blocked by WoF to preserve the drain balance DE seems to insist on.

I don't think that all frames should have this kind of function, but there's one or two that do and some that kind of need it. Saryn has energy regen from her 1/3 combo, and that's not bad, but why can't Nova reclaim energy from, say, hitting things with Null Star? She's sacrificing her defense with every orb lost, so getting energy back would be the counter-balance to it, rather than just the poor damage, and you could even balance it like Nidus, where the more orbs you produce from the ability, the less energy they return, and vice-versa.

Meanwhile I don't think that Atlas needs an energy regen when he has health and tanking regen from Rubble. There does need to be a balance on which frames can heal back up and which frames can get more efficient and which frames can regain energy.

Hi, old player here! BlackCoMerc is right, actually. Cooldowns have already been tried in Warframe, they were thrown out because players would find out what combinations worked best, walk into rooms and use them, then drop back or hide while their cooldowns returned, slowing the pace of the game when DE's goal was to keep it fast and mobile.

The stats showed that while the weapons were and still are great, un-availability of powers due to a timer limitation is less engaging to play than a limitation based on resources. With the energy system as it is, players have a resource to manage, gain, lose and so on, and death is a matter of player error that can be corrected with consumables, team-based interactions, or just killing things more. With Cooldowns it was always just a matter of moving to the next room before your timer finished that got you killed. A situation where you CC'd some enemies because you were going to die then led you to another situation where you were going to die again and couldn't CC because... you moved too fast... that was it, that was the mistake, you moved too fast. While Energy means that the CC from the first set would grant you kills, often restoring your Energy from drops or giving you time to drop a Plate, and allowing you to engage the next group in a more reliable fashion, faster and faster, expoiting Warframe's fantastic movement system and large tile sets to the fullest.

It's much like the Stamina bar, we used to only be able to Sprint for a limited amount, like other games. Removing it allowed for massively free-flowing movement and mobility around enemies, traversal and game completion was vastly improved. I mean, imagine if we still had it and the Plains was released... we would be forced, literally forced to use mobility-based frames, or the archwing consumables in order to get anywhere at all, because we'd only be able to sprint for 8 seconds at a time.

Basically, if you want to keep Warframe moving as fast and as smoothly as it can do currently, Cooldowns are a bad idea.

Exactly.

Cooldowns are not universally bad...but they are bad for this game.

Warframe needs a balance pass...over the entire game.