Redoing The Fundamental Aspects Of Warframe

[RedxWings]

So, a new forum user here, but I'm not a newbie to warframe. I've sunk enough hours to justify the grind, the long and epic defense waves, and the all wonderful loot.

But, some missions need a redo. And I don't mean a redo such as the ones being done to rescue, spy, or raid. I mean redoing what happens in the missions themselves. Allow me to explain:

Defense

Love it or hate it, this game mode is forced onto everyone who wants a practical chance at void keys or even the rare mods. This really shouldn't be the case, it forces people to keep redoing missions that are the easiest to grind, such as Xini or other infested defense maps.

What's worse is that there is no real incentive to go into the higher waves. The enemy gets tougher, the waves get longer, and time just drags on. The rewards reflect the lack of incentive to go into the higher waves. Use http://sunbla.de/Warframe/SedR/ for example. Choose random rewards, and see what happens in the higher waves. At certain points, you are unable to obtain certain keys or rewards you may be vying for.

So the fix?

First, I'd like to make each time you are greeted with the "claim the reward or battle" menu, it will be a tough decision. It would make you reevaluate if you could actually make it to the next 5 waves or you were lucky to get to that point.

I want to encourage teams to really extend far beyond what they can reach. To keep it aligned with the defense tier system, I tailored this more for the third tier, since usually that is where interest in going further drops.

Once you go past the third reward menu for the defense (ex. Wave 15 for Xini, etc.), Lotus will start giving you incentives to get to the next reward menu.

She will give either a common 1/2/3 fusion core or an uncommon 1/2/3/4/5 fusion core if you could reach the the next reward menu. I’ve toyed the idea with having resources as an incentive, but I’ll save that for later.

Oh and even better, once you reach the fifth reward menu for a tier three defense, you get two sets of “rewards”. First one displays the reward you would get if you accepted the reward, but the second one displays the reward you would get if you can get to the next reward menu.

For example, at wave 25 on xini, you are greeted with the first reward, a lovely heated charge. The second reward greets you with a tower 3 capture key, but you will only get it if you can get to the next reward menu. Lotus attempts to also incentivize you by dangling a uncommon fusion 5 core if you continue to battle. You barely made it to wave 25, but wave 30 looks so much better. Do you try to risk it?

Oh and you thought defense was going to be easier?

Well, sorta and kinda. I’ve made a very rustic list of each faction functions as a fighting group.

Grineer

Light Units

Close Range

Trooper

Scorches

Middle Range

Lancer

Shield Lancer

Long Range

Ballista

Stun Supplier

Seekers

Heavy Units

Suppression

Machine Gunner

Explosive

Bombards + Napalms

Confusion

Commanders

Stun Units

Close Range

Rollers

Middle Range

Scorpions

Corpus

Light Units

Middle Range

Crewmen

Long Range

Snipers

MOAs

Close Range

Green MOAs

Fusion MOAs

Close Range Stun

Shockwave MOAs

Long Range Stun

Railgun MOAs

Heavy Units

Support/Suppression

Techs

Ospreys

Support

Shield Ospreys

Mine Ospreys

Leech Ospreys

Infested

Light Units

Damage Dealers

Chargers

Leapers

Disruption

Runners

Heavy Units

Disruption

Disruptors

Support

Healers

Damage Dealers

Toxics

Now this is how I feel about how each faction breaks down. Feel free to argue since I do think this list could need some revisions.

Infested Fix

But first off, see how infested just lacks variety. It’s so abhorrently small. But even with such a small variety, the infested aren’t really using their units correctly. Who sends their glass cannons (chargers) straight into battle while those who tank and cause havoc (toxics and disruptors) slowly amble towards center with all the chargers dead?

I’m fine with leaving the first few waves with the brain dead AI. But it needs to improve after a certain amount of waves. I’d put it on the third wave of tier three defense just to be work with the new reward system I planned. The waves should start with running disruptors and runners to cause havoc to those defending. The chargers would sneak up onto you or the pod and rip it to shreds.

Also I’m not sure why crawlers aren’t placed in the enemy pool. I realized this when I made the little list; I skipped it entirely. It is probably hard to utilize crawlers, but we need more variety than hordes of chargers and ancients.

Now I know the next question probably floating around your head. But...M Prime, or Bastille? Doesn’t that nullify everything? Yes. But, that shall be discussed later.

Corpus Fix

Along with the usual AI nonsense it does, I’d really like to see a little less corpus crewmen spam and a little more variety. Corpus snipers need to appear more and need a slightly penetration and accuracy buff. Techs should appear a teeny bit more. Also, spawns of each unit should stagger, the tankier units first (in this case, really only the tech is capable of tanking) , the units that disrupt (shockwave moas and leeches everywhere) second, the grunts afterwards, and then the glass cannons.

Grineer Fix

Ok, we know their armor scaling is ridiculous. I’d love to cap it at a certain point, and then have shields and health scale, but that’s up to DE. Plenty of other people have suggested brilliant fixes, so I’ll let them do that. But I like to suggest some stuff in addition to staggered spawns:

Grineer Gunners: These guys shouldn’t be used solely for damage. These guys should be scaring the F*** out of tenno. A hail of bullets flying towards you, and you have no courage to step out of cover and the rest of grineer units slowly creep up to you. That’s how they should be. Adding a bullet trail fx on each shot of the gorgon would really give this the scarring visual that keeps people pinned or at least more cautious.

Grineer Commanders: Not sure why these guys aren’t included in the defense pools. I understand that they can cause some extreme grief, but they cause some much needed havoc into an otherwise serene snow globe or bastille. Maybe a nerf on how far they can switch teleport.

Rollers: These buggers are annoying in defense, and even more annoying when they stack an attack the pod. I’m not sure what the fix this should be, maybe this should be used against snow globes or bastille?

Ballista: Yes, this unit needs to be buffed. And it needs to appear more tactically. Everytime I see a ballista run up to me and start shooting, I cry a little inside on how poorly it is using it’s advantages.

Trooper: Needs to move close. It shouldn’t be fighting back with the lancers, because that makes no sense. I don’t even differentiate between the two, and there should be. There needs to be a separate AI for troopers, they should not function as lancers.

And maps for grineer NEED a fix. The one inside a ship turns the defense into a clusterbomb that really doesn’t allow for units to differentiate from one another. I found the other map with the reactor really enjoyable, although sometimes units get a little displaced (i.e. lancers hanging with ballistas (bad)) and the reactor is an annoying pain to protect. But maps need to have an open view, that allows the enemies to utilize the different ranges given to them.

Please, are we done with defense suggestion?

Almost there, bear with me. Now I’m going to suggest something that would get people to stop spamming infested defense for the sole reason of being so damn easy.

Warframe 3 and 4 skill synergies

There I said it. The reason why people find Nova’s molecular prime to be so op is because it doesn’t allow for team play. I’ve played nova, and it just ends up being “press 4 BOOOOOOM look no enemies”. The argument against this is that high level enemies don’t die but that’s not my gripe. M prime shouldn’t be extremely effective by itself.

I’d love enemy units to start reacting when warframes use the 3 or 4 skill. When nova uses m prime, enemy units should start moving away from each other to avoid the chain reaction of explosions. Then nova needs some help, maybe a bastille or radial blind in order for the enemies to group up and start an exploding chain reaction.

Other skills should illicit the same reaction. Snow globes should force corpus to send in more shockwaves or railguns, rollers and scorches, or bastilles should force enemy units to spawn longer ranged units to counteract. Infested don’t really have a choice since their enemy variety is small, so I’ll let DE fill the gap. I’d suggest stalkerified versions of infested, meaning they are resistant to most skills, but that may be too much.

My point here: There needs to be SYNERGY between skills. This gets warframe at least some teamwork woven in, because it’s very boring when warframes don’t work off of each other.

Other Missions

Yes we are done we defense. Now time to address the other boring missions that usually encourages rushers unless you want to farm resources.

Little side missions are fun no?

There is one thing that regular missions should always outshine defense missions, the ability to get resources consistently. For this suggestion, I’m drawing for what they did in the void. I love doing those timed rooms, it really gives me a rush to reach to the end for the many, many mods.

Redoing resource incentives

How do I apply it here? Well, here’s the fun little side mission:

Upon opening a locker, (here, to avoid massive locker loot complaint, maybe an orange locker would designate a chance that the locker might have a datamass.) a datamass pops out. Lotus will decrypt it for you, and playback the datamass. There you learn that one unit (I’d prefer it to be an e-tech, gunner, or toxic, dependent on faction) is holding a stash of resources locked up.

There a secondary objective marker pops up prompting you to kill the target. Once you’ve killed it, the location is revealed. However, Lotus informs you that defensive mechanisms have activated and the room in the stash would close in a certain amount of time.Get yourself or a teammate to that location asap before it closes!

There you are greeted with containers that have a 100% drop for resources and an x% to drop additional resources.

This OPTIONAL side mission gives some incentive for people to stop grinding defense for the end all be all.

Slightly redoing mission end incentive

And another thing, missions should grant an end reward mod.

This helps filter out some of the rng complaints, especially for newbies. First missions should grant necessary mods such as redirection, vitality, fast deflection, etc.

Highler leveled missions should give serration, hornet strike, point blank, ap mods, mods that allow people to boost their damage output. This helps filter out some of the RNG of a person never being able to get these mods.

I’ve decided to leave the missions themselves alone, since they are being reviewed and changed, but changing how the enemy works turns playing regular missions from being a grind to something fun or new.

And just one more thing...

Having all of these extra mods and resources is going to benefit the casuals, but overflow the hardcore players.

Here’s one thing I’ve entertained of doing to try and alleviate this. This benefits players and hopefully DE as well:

We start expanding how much you can rank up the mod. What do I mean by this? Look at redirection, serration, steel armor, etc. They take ages to level and  provide something for players to work for.

We can “expand” armor piercing, elemental, fast deflection mods. Some mods should or should not be expanded, such as stamina mods or fire rate mods and the like. But those might break the game and needs proper scaling.

But I’m not going to give everyone “expanded” mods, you’re going to have to use resources to expand them. The resource requirement differs for each polarity, but I have one request. MAKE THEM ALL HAVE NANOSPORES. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF NANOSPORES.

With the need for more mod point space, forma will be in even higher demand. (like it isn’t already) This helps people either buy forma or slowly grind it out.

And now, we are done.

So thanks for reading, and feel free to make some counter suggestions or altercations. Hopefully, I’ve separated and organized enough for DE and readers to read.

Edited August 11, 2013 by RedxWings

[Vashlion]

Gotta say I heavily disagree with your defence fixes for the enemies. You're pretty much saying, make everything absurdly strong. I don't see why a Grineer gunner should ever be a threat. If the fodder becomes a threat this game will no longer be fun.

 

Seriously how would taking away every advantage we have and buffing all the enemies = fun? It won't be at all.

[Cleesus]

I like it

[RedxWings]

Gotta say I heavily disagree with your defence fixes for the enemies. You're pretty much saying, make everything absurdly strong. I don't see why a Grineer gunner should ever be a threat. If the fodder becomes a threat this game will no longer be fun.

 

Seriously how would taking away every advantage we have and buffing all the enemies = fun? It won't be at all.

 

I'm not saying to supercharge the fodder. I'm saying that fodder shouldn't be dumb enemies that wander slowly towards you shooting with horrible accuracy.

 

And grineer gunners should be threatening, it's a heavy unit that appears rarely out of the many fodder units.

 

I'm not taking advantage away from you, I want people to start synergizing their skills rather then have a person simply pressing a button and doing all the work.

 

What I'm getting at is each unit should be noticeably different from one another and that warframes should work together to repel the enemy.