Dear De, Love Hardcore Gamer.

[eXXaXion]

This is not just gameplay, but most of it it, so...

Dear DE, 

 

About me: I've been a hardcore gamer for the better part of my life. I've been addicted to and been very active/competitive in MMORPGS like WoW (4 years), Anarchy Online (3 years) and Diablo 2 (1 year). 

 

I've started Warframe in the beginning of July and just got Rank 10. I've got all frames and mostly all weapons and mods and plan to stay dedicated to Warframe for a lot longer. Once I got my new PC hardware I'll setup a stream and try to become for Warframe what Kripparrian is for Part of Exile. Before you get bored here are some of my suggestions / thoughts on how to make the game even better:

 

Minor changes which would help a lot:

 

Mod fusing: always warn before fusing already fused and rare mods.

Why: lots of players will play Warframe till deep into the night, until their brains are fried and their vision is blurry. I'd imagine waking up and seeing that you just fused away your level 10 Serration will turn away a lot of less dedicated players.

 

Mod fusing: when you decide to fuse away an already fused mod, it should get you at least 50% of the energy, that's already in it, back into the new fusion. 

Why: Just a minor thank you instead of a major f*** you.

 

Information: you should really provide at least the Wiki links on every item ingame. I mean you could start out by just including a link ingame that leads you to the steam browser. You should tag every page on the Wiki as „not confirmed“ and then have an intern look at all the pages and verify them by using your database.

Why: Most newer / less dedicated players (who will not look for a Wiki) will never find out, whether they like the game or not, since they literally can't know due to the lack of information.

 

Stats: in the arsenal you should really be able to see your Warframe's base stats, at the very least. In the long run you should make it so that you can see the modded stats of weapons and Warframes too. That would be insanely helpful and it's just a bunch of multipliers in a rather easy algorithm.

Why: Calcutlating all the stats within your head melts your brain and will rapidly decrease your incline to play the game more.

 

Bonus missions: the bonus missions are really nice, because they keep the gameplay fresh by making you go about the mission in a certain way. How about after you finish a mission, you get the next one randomly? Also, please make sure i can't get missions on my Frame, when I can't finish them. F.e. Use your first Ability / Uber when you don't have them equipped.

Why: While the 600 aff is nice, one should be able to do more and it would not make the feature „op“. Also, you finish most bonus missions way before the mission is over and you're left to do your routine. 

 

Support mods: there are a lot of really cool mods which you always want, but can't have depending on the mission level and your Warframe's strenght. Mods like Master Thief, Thief's wit, Enemy sense etc. Why not make a support class for mods, similar to auras and make an extra slot for those?

Why: A lot of good mods which just aren't being used in endgame content, although they are insanely helpful. They don't make your Warframe actively better so giving them a dedicated slot would not screw with the balance and also players would have incentive to farm for mods like Master Thief.

 

Aura mods: I looove auras, but I don't get why they should have polarities. You need different auras for different missions. They are not dependend on your frame type or setup.

Why: There's no real reason for auras to have varying polarities in the first place. They should have an „aura“ polarity so players have more choice.

 

Aura mods: Energy Siphon and Rejuvination are poorly designed. They get worse as your frame gets stronger (more hp and energy). Why not make them heal a fixed percentage of your pools, like 1-2%? 

Why: Those auras can only be used effectively when stacked by all team members and even then they're not all that good. Also it would make running flow more viable, since you don't really need flow, when you just play well and always look for energy. Flow is one of those mods, which don't make your frame actively stronger, just makes the gameplay smoother. Maybe it should even be a support mod? =)

 

Rebuffing: as is, you can't rebuff yourself whenever. Which makes no sense at all, since if anything you're prone to wasting energy by spamming buffs. So enabling the player to rebuff oneself whenever won't screw with the balance.

Why: F.e. When I'm on Rhino and my Iron Skin is about to run out, but there's a huge group of enemies approaching, I have no chance but to rebuff mid combat, which is pretty dangerous. I can't really go in head on, although that's what Rhino does, bc. If the break my IS and stun me mid fight, I'm done for. Same goes for Volt, who I always have buffed up with speed. He needs his speed to be agile in combat and also to boost his melee strenght by a great marging. You can't stop on the spot and reactivate speed mid combat. If you'd be able to activate it right before combat, without waiting for the current speed buff to run out, it would make the gameplay a lot smoother and intuitive. Same goes for all buffs in the game.

 

Login rewards: as a business major and a trained IT salesman, I'm in love with the login rewards concept. They keep the players coming back for more and while they're at it, why not just do 1 or 2 or 20 missions right? And when you get platinum discount, why not spend some more money? But these strong points get nullified by the randomness of the rewadrs, albeit them being random adds the kick of the gamble.

Why: getting a reward like warframe/weapon xp, when the equipped ones are already fully leveled is terrible and demotivating. Especially if I've been logging in for 2 weeks straight and am really looking for a Platinum discount to spend some more money, those rewards just feel like a kick to the groin. Sure you guys want to make the players impatient, so they buy fully priced Platinum. However, there's the imminent danger of them getting &!$$ed and never buying any at all... 

In any case, please make sure you can't get entirely useless xp rewards, blue prints you already got and maybe rank 5+ players should not get even any credit rewards anymore, especially while they'te on a „login spree“. I understand the business behind it, but I think the losses might outway the gains big time here. 

I have no problem getting an xp reward 10 times in a row, if that xp actually goes somewhere. Outruling certain rewards for a while after you got would truly be nice though.

Edit 1:
The Nanospores situation: as we all know, Nanospores are more worthless than credits right now. Bugs that cause a massive increase in drop ratesoften happen aswell after a patchday. I think in the long run an option of trading mats against other mats at rediculous rates might be helpful.

Why: Trading say Nanospores/Plastids 100/1 would not hurt DEs sales by a longshot I think. On the other hand, all the Veterans, who spend a lot of RL money on the game already, would be extra extra thankful. This trade-option should be made available for all resources. Each resource should have individual rates, which aren't that hard to figure out. I also think newer/impatient players will be inclined to trade away their „good“ resources to get where they want to be faster. Later on they'll be forced to get said resources back and if they ever planned on spending money on the game, they'l do so. Meaning imo I don't think DE would actively lose money on this.

 

Updates and edit on the fly.

You can find this thread on reddit too:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/1kzsyy/dear_de_love_hardcore_gamer/

I falsely posted this thread here aswell:
https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/98890-dear-de-love-hardcore-gamer/

 

To be continued.

 

Love, Hardcore Gamer.

Edited August 24, 2013 by eXXaXion

[rksk16it]

Awesome suggestions, though I would like to add comments on them :

 

Mod fusing: always warn before fusing already fused and rare mods.

 

This is needed ASAP.

They should even add an option in settings, which if turned on, the game will outrightly disallow fusing/transmuting of mods which are either :

1. Rare

2. Fused more than rank 0

3. Marked by user as "Protected". There should be some way to do this.

 

Mod fusing: when you decide to fuse away an already fused mod, it should get you at least 50% of the energy, that's already in it, back into the new fusion.

 

I dont really think this is very important. Atleast not as important as last one.

 

 

Information: you should really provide at least the Wiki links on every item ingame. I mean you could start out by just including a link ingame that leads you to the steam browser. You should tag every page on the Wiki as „not confirmed“ and then have an intern look at all the pages and verify them by using your database.

...

 

Stats: in the arsenal you should really be able to see your Warframe's base stats, at the very least. In the long run you should make it so that you can see the modded stats of weapons and Warframes too. That would be insanely helpful and it's just a bunch of multipliers in a rather easy algorithm.

 

I think both of these can be combined into one point. More information should be provided to players in-game. Alt-tab is pretty annoying sometimes. Not only that, but information about loot drops should also be available. But I guess they are already working on it. It was mentioned in Drop tables 2.0.

 

Bonus missions: the bonus missions are really nice, because they keep the gameplay fresh by making you go about the mission in a certain way. How about after you finish a mission, you get the next one randomly? Also, please make sure i can't get missions on my Frame, when I can't finish them. F.e. Use your first Ability / Uber when you don't have them equipped.

 

This will be nice to have, spicing up things a bit when levelling a frame.

 

Support mods: there are a lot of really cool mods which you always want, but can't have depending on the mission level and your Warframe's strenght. Mods like Master Thief, Thief's wit, Enemy sense etc. Why not make a support class for mods, similar to auras and make an extra slot for those?

 

Agreed, why will I put Master Thief when there is continuity, constitution, stretch, etc. Ofc I can switch some mods before missions like putting on Master Thief when going for loot runs in tower, but it soon gets tedious and then I abandon the idea and just go with the mods I have on my frame by default.

 

Aura mods: I looove auras, but I don't get why they should have polarities. You need different auras for different missions. They are not dependend on your frame type or setup.

 

Hmmm, I think they have polarities on Auras for the same reason they have polarities on slots of frames. Different frames have different polarities. The way I build my frames, some frames seems to have PERFECT polarities from start (Nova, Nyx), whereas some others like Saryn, I had to forma twice (stupid double D, I built her pure dmg, not tank).

 

So I think they are there to add some "luck". If your favourite frame has matching polarities, good for you, otherwise... time to forma :/

 

Aura mods: Energy Siphon and Rejuvination are poorly designed. They get worse as your frame gets stronger (more hp and energy). Why not make them heal a fixed percentage of your pools, like 1-2%?

 

I may agree on Rejuvenation a little bit, but certainly not Energy Siphon. In end game situations, energy siphon is arguably the best aura currently in game. The only other viable aura I can think of is Corrosive Projection, but it needs to be stacked atleast by 3 players to be effective. Energy Siphon is VERY effective even if only one player is running it. You will realize it when you play end game defense to very high waves, when there wont be enough orbs around to pick up.

 

Rebuffing: as is, you can't rebuff yourself whenever. Which makes no sense at all, since if anything you're prone to wasting energy by spamming buffs. So enabling the player to rebuff oneself whenever won't screw with the balance.

 

I know this is annoying, and especially since most other games allow you to refresh your buffs, BUT, the buffs in this game are a bit too strong. So not allowing you to refresh it pre-emptively adds a small amount of "skill cap" which this game is severly lacking in almost all aspects. Still there are utterly overpowered skills like snow globe, bastile, molecular prime, which you can refresh as many times as you want. And then there are very weak spells, which you cannot refresh, like Saryn's Contagion. Even though a large majority of Saryn players consider it a total trash skill, you cannot refresh it.

 

With spells like Contagion, which are weak compared to other buffs (like Iron Skin, Blessing, etc), they should allow you to "add" the duration while refreshing upto the maximum of 50% of original duration.

 

Login rewards: as a business major and a trained IT salesman, I'm in love with the login rewards concept. They keep the players coming back for more and while they're at it, why not just do 1 or 2 or 20 missions right? And when you get platinum discount, why not spend some more money? But these strong points get nullified by the randomness of the rewadrs, albeit them being random adds the kick of the gamble.

 

Yeap some login rewards are utterly useless... like credits.. CREDITS ?!?!? I have millions of them and I dont know what to do with them...

 

And then there are some good rewards like Forma, and then there are SUPER GOOD rewards like platinum discounts.

[eXXaXion]

I may agree on Rejuvenation a little bit, but certainly not Energy Siphon. In end game situations, energy siphon is arguably the best aura currently in game. The only other viable aura I can think of is Corrosive Projection, but it needs to be stacked atleast by 3 players to be effective. Energy Siphon is VERY effective even if only one player is running it. You will realize it when you play end game defense to very high waves, when there wont be enough orbs around to pick up.

 

You are right on Energy Siphon, I got carried away. Rejuvination still needs a lot of work though. It's just a drop of water on a heated up stone and can't evne outdo the nightmare debuffs. I like making it percentage base since it let's the player combine the mods intelligently. Often times in warframe the mods just work on their own and independedly, causing a "Ah, I'll throw that one in there aswell." instead of a thoughful mentality.