Warframe changes coming soon!

Read the full post here: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1171232-2020%E2%80%99s-first-mainline-review-revise-refresh%C2%A0/

2020’s First Mainline: Review, Revise, Refresh. 

Operation Scarlet Spear is coming this March, and it’s bringing a massive Lore Event that introduces ‘Squad Link’ – now known as ‘Operation Link’. Scarlet Spear will move the stakes of the world forward with a new cinematic. Prepare yourselves, Tenno. The Sentient threat is deploying forces that the Origin System has not seen since the Old War. It will be the first of Warframe’s many major Content expansions this year. But before we dive into the new Scarlet Spear’s launch we’re bringing some of the biggest revisions to Warframe to date. In this (extremely long) Workshop, we are covering a broad variety of topics that are all receiving focused Overhauls or ‘Quality of Life’ improvements.

We were originally going to ship the contents of this Workshop with Scarlet Spear, but have decoupled the changes so you would have time to experience the revisions. We are targeting a release early next week on PC. After we’ve iterated on the revisions, you’ll jump into the biggest Operation in Warframe’s history: Scarlet Spear. Here is your guide for navigating what matters to you in this 20 part Dev Workshop!

CTRL + F INDEX:

Prologue: The thread of Reasoning
1) Railjack Onboarding Changes
2) Railjack Bug Fixes
3) Armor / Health / Shield
4) Infested Damage
5) AI Aimbots!
6) Shield Gating
7) Self Damage Changes
? Excavator Health/Shield Scaling Changes
9) Titania Changes / Vauban Tweak
10) Reward Changes: Nodes.
11) Select UI Changes from Workshop Part II.
12) 100x Restore Blueprints
13) Sentinel Mods: Shared Usage Allowed
14) Arcane Changes
15) Greater than 100% Status having meaning.
16) Status Mod Buffs
17) Grenade Markers
18) Kuva Lich Murmurs / Fixes
19) Deferred Rendering Preview (opt in).
20) Preview HDR rendering (opt in)
BONUS ITEM 21: FOV
Closing: 20 Parts Later.

 

Prologue: The thread of Reasoning.
When presented with a 20 part workshop that touches everything from specific Warframes to damage systems, you may find yourself asking ‘Why’. Each section will receive a tailored explanation to the change (some deeper than others), but a thread of Reasoning can be found woven throughout this workshop: Warframe always aims to become a better version of itself. Year after year we completely change things – from Melee last year, to Movement years ago, and so on. Enough systems have accrued to make our choice over these past 3 months a simple one: Review, Refresh, and Revise. We aim to refresh aspects of the game that have gone untouched, while addressing fundamental inconsistencies in the mechanics of the game.

Warframe is still about power and you being a destructive force in the Origin System with hundreds of tools at your disposal. Warframes have never been more lethal or powerful than they are in the current version of Warframe – we do not aim to reduce that across the board, but we do aim to let that power stand on consistency in our designs. Keep our guiding reasoning in mind while reading – the three Rs! 

PC Players will get a 2x Affinity Weekend following launch. 
Consoles will get a 2x Affinity Weekend following launch. 

 

Railjack Onboarding changes: 
The Rising Tide Quest gives you your very own Railjack, but the barrier to entry is – conclusively with months of stats – too high. We are releasing a revised series of Blueprints (BP) in the Quest that sees costs reduced between 66% – 75% for Railjack parts, and building time reduced to 6 hours each.
There are 3 situations players may find themselves in:
1) Haven’t started Rising Tide. Anyone just beginning will have fully new reduced BP costs.
2) Has started Rising Tide. Anyone with any progress at all gets 1x Rush Repair Drone, and will transition to new costs on the next Stage. Any old costs will be refunded.
3) Rising Tide Complete. Anyone with a complete quest gets 2x Rush Repair Drone. All cost differences will be refunded.

Why:
Upon Review, stats show truly the only people that saw Rising Tide to completion were our veterans, which was originally our intent to design content for veteran players.
However, to sustain the cost of future development and events like Scarlet Spear, accessibility is key and we have to adjust the barriers to entry for Railjack. For those who were early adopters, 2x Rush Repair Drones will be given out. Anyone with the Rising Tide Quest active will receive 1x Rush Repair Drone. For those unfamiliar with Rush Repair Drones: these items can only be acquired via rare drop in the Veil Proxima, as they allow you to instantly complete a given Armament or Component.

Railjack Bug fixes. 
We have over 45 bug fixes coming to Railjack in Scarlet Spear including some big ticket fixes:

• Fixed the Intrinsic skill “Tactical Efficiency” (Tactical Rank 6) not modifying the Flux Energy cost of using Battle Avionics in a Railjack mission.
• Fixed the Intrinsic skill “Reflex Aim” (Gunnery Rank 10) not snapping the player’s targeting reticle to the nearest enemy lead if using a Railjack hit-scan laser weapon.
• Fixed max Ranked Railjack ‘Tether’ Avionic not tethering up to 6 enemies as intended.
• Fixed inability to use certain Intrinsics during a Railjack mission as the Operator.
• Fixed Railjack Clients crashing aboard the Missile Platform after destroying the core.
• Fixed a loss of functionality for Clients upon loading into a Railjack mission.
• Fixed falling in an endless void after using the Archwing Slingshot as a Client into an exploding Crewship and attempting to leave the ship.

And a whole lot more!
Why: Well, this one is self explanatory! Bug-forum Reviews show the game has caused issues with players ability to enjoy the coordinated missions, and we are focused on fixing them. 

 

Armor Health Shield Changes
This section will go over before and after scenarios with our enemy Armor, Health, and Shield changes. Reading this section should give you a conceptual and on-paper understanding of what we’re changing and why, but practical experiences will tell the full story here. You may need to refresh some aspects of your Builds to truly optimize your power against your enemies.

Before: Armor, Shields and Health on an Exponential Curve
After: Armor Shields and Health on an S curve

Damage Changes:

Enemy Damage output should still be close to what is currently on the Live version of the game, but we have made a few changes that will affect how players take Damage in-game.

Damage-Type Changes:

• Slash Status now does not bypass Shields and instead deals damage over time to Shields. Slash Status still bypasses Armor.
• Toxin Damage used to apply to Armor with a 25% bonus. Now it is neutral. For role distinction, Toxin bypasses Shields (but not Armor) where as Slash Status bypasses Armor but not Shields.

Player Changes:

Player Shields, Health, and Armor used to be shared with all AI, so they had all the weaknesses and resistances that their AI counterparts did.

Now Players have their own unique Shield, Health, and Armor type classified as TENNO! These have all weaknesses and resistances neutralized (for now). Player Shields now reduce 25% of incoming damage. Player Shields now recharge with custom player-only logic. Shield recharge delays are based on depleted or partial depleted shields. Partially depleted shields (any amount) is a 1 second recharge delay. Full depletion is a 4 second recharge delay.

These changes to Player shields are in addition to coming Shield Gating changes, which you can read about in our Shield Gating section!

Why: Armor Scaling and enemy Damage Reduction was the nucleus for this change. For years Tenno have had the tools to deal with these things, but the tools were uniform: Use Corrosive Projection, or else. While this is a simplification, it removed the feeling of choice. With these changes, we hope players experience a feeling of variety and choice when taking on enemies. By changing the scaling for Armor, we could consistently change the scaling for all! 

 

Infested Damage:
We did not want to overlook the Infested in our review. Infested are close-range enemies that telegraph most attacks – and now if one of those attacks hits you, it simply does more damage. Stay agile, stay moving, and the mission is as good as won!

Why: Having Infested simply deal more Damage encourages you to use mobility in ways that is not the norm for their ranged counterparts. Rewarding mobility is a key part of Warframe.

AI Aimbots
Up until now in Warframe, the higher the enemy level, the better their accuracy. High-level enemies would be pinned at the best Accuracy they are capable of – not quite 100%, but getting pretty close! Things like your movement and Mods would reduce accuracy, but the potential for bad ‘Aimbot’ moments was too high. We have spread this progression across a greater range of AI now We are decoupling enemy accuracy from level to reduce the overall ‘Aimbot’ like behaviours you face at higher levels.

Why: This change allows us more accurate balancing of foes at higher levels. This change alone would be noticed by simply sometimes  ‘getting hit less’, but in conjunction with the numerous other changes we are making to enemies, it is part of a holistic Refresh to the underlying mechanics behind Warframe’s enemies. 

 

Shield Gating: Friend and Foe
Friend: First, let’s answer ‘What is Shield Gating?’ when it applies to you as a player. In this implementation, Shield Gating is the mechanic of preventing an instance of lethal (‘1-shot’) damage if you have Shields active. Simply put, the goal is to reduce the number of ‘1-shots’ you take when your shields are up, particularly for Shield-based frames. When any shields are active, an incoming hit that depletes your last bit of Shields will not continue into your Health pool, and also triggers a brief time where your Health is protected. Once that period is over you can take Health damage normally. Additionally, you will no longer take Slash Status Effect damage to your Health while Shields are up.

Foe: Enemies – Corpus in particular – also have received a bit of a Shield Gating, but with skillful gameplay you can overcome this. Any Headshots or shots to Weakspots  completely bypass Corpus enemy Shield Gating. In addition, 5% of the damage dealt when hitting the shield gate will target enemy Health – this allows you to take your Forma fueled weapons back to low level enemies and hit them hard instead of hitting the shield gate. The goal here is to make Shields a mechanic you want to play against with Mods (Auras, Elemental) or to bypass with skill (Headshots). Slash Status Effects will now deal damage over time to Shields, Toxin damage remains as-is (bypassing Shields to directly affect enemy Health). Damage from Warframe Abilities will ignore the enemy Shield Gate (i.e if an instance of Damage from an ability is greater than the Shield value, it will go into health as well).

Why: Giving both Friend and Foe shield gating has two purposes: we want to reward skill a bit more in all Corpus missions, and give the ‘squishier’ frames a bit more viable edge and a chance to really explore Shield-focused builds. Toxin Damage and Status Effects are still your friend against Corpus or Shielded enemies! 

 

Arcane Changes
After years of Arcanes as a system – with several additions to the offerings and replacement locations, we are doing several things:
– Increasing the maximum Rank of Warframe and Operator Arcanes to 5, up from 3. Arcane Revives are a bonus that begins on Rank 3.
– Adjusting the power of Arcanes at Rank 5 to generally behave as if you had 1.5 equipped, list as follows:

– Removing the ability to Equip two of the same Arcane simultaneously.
– Added the ability to Distill assembled Arcanes back into multiple unranked ones.
– Operator Magus Arcanes will be overviewed in the official Patch Notes, but will also receive 5 Ranks.
– Adding Arcanes as rewards for Operation: Scarlet Spear
Why: The reasoning here is mainly toward the ability to equip two of the same Arcane. This reasoning is one of past inconsistency and time determining intent. There are a lot of builds that specialize the use of two Arcanes, but we want to encourage a variety instead of duplication. Arcanes are the only Upgrade system in the game that allow two of the exact same upgrade to be equipped – and we would rather players have variety than duplications. In the same way you can’t equip Amalgam Serration and regular Serration, you can’t equip multiple Rivens per weapon, or any duplication of Mods at all, Arcanes will follow. But we are making major changes to the Ranking (up from 3 to 5 with power changes). Instead of having 2 of the same Arcane with a double effect, you can now choose between 2 different Arcanes that behave (generally) at 1.5x efficacy than before. 

 

Self Damage Changes:
We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself – or ‘Stagger’ – to varying degrees if you aren’t careful.
The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.

With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience.

Here is a Dev-build video of this in action:

In addition to this change, some of the more powerful AOE weapons without Self Damage presently will have the Stagger added, but it should only be noticeable in cases of extreme inaccuracy on the player’s part.

As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.
Why: Self Damage had a lot of drawbacks for weapons, resulting in flow-disrupting death.This Stagger replacement system favours agility with a less harsh consequence, while allowing some of the most powerful weapons in the game to remain that way due to their unique consequence. Weapons with self-damage will be converted to this new system and as a result, Self Damage is removed from Warframe. 

 

Excav Scaling Changes:
Excavation missions have had the same property since launch: all Excavators have 500 Shield, 2500 Health no matter the mission level. As of our coming PC mainline update, both Health and Shields will scale following the same formula as Mobile Defense Terminals. Shield Regeneration of Excavators will be a percent of health vs. flat value to deal with scaling shields. 

Why: This change will bring Excavation in line with existing mission types that have scaling properties after several years of having flat values. True to our initial goal of fixing inconsistencies, we are making these mission objectives scale in a consistent manner to other mission objectives. 
Titania Changes + Vauban Tweak:
This is a summary of the Titania changes announced in Devstream 137, plus confirmation that it is shipping with our coming PC mainline update:

• Spellbind: Hold her 1 to cast Status Immunity on yourself. Previously you had to cast it while looking at the ground to accomplish this!

• Tribute: You can now select which Tribute to cast, by cycling through the different buffs like Ivara’s arrows, or Vauban’s Minelayer.

• Lantern: Lanterns are now locked in place, allowing for more easily-controlled CC.

• Razorwing has a new FX upgrade!
• Razorwing flight model to be brought more in line with Skywing controls.

Why: Titania is a powerhouse in capable hands. The above revisit may encourage more people to pick her up and master her for the upcoming War… 

Vauban Armor:

Facts: Vauban’s Base Armor is changing from 50 to 150, and Vauban Prime is changing from 100 to 200.

Why: A minor bump in survivability if your CC or strategies fail you! 

 

Reward Cleanup: Base Missions.
Base Missions are getting a small cleanup for this Mainline. For reference, all tables are currently available at www.warframe.com/droptables.

This change will be told from the perspective of a single node for example purposes, but the logic applies gamewide to Base Missions – which is to say, the Node on the Star chart (excluding special missions like the Index, Open Worlds, Rathuum, Assassination).

Consider the node Memphis, Phobos.

Base Missions like Memphis are receiving a bit of ‘fat trimming’ in terms of the lowest-point rewards available within them. For example,‘Memphis’ on ‘Phobos’ will have its 500, 1,000, 1,500 Credit Caches removed, as well as the 15 and 50 Endo. This will only leave the 2,000 Credits Cache, and the 80 Endo drop for each category, with a drop chance of the sum of all prior denominations.

Why: This is more of a Review and clean up for some of the less-rewarding aspects of missions. Right now the base Solar Map nodes exist to progress from planet to planet, while providing either general rewards (Mods, Credits) or specific return rewards (Ivara, Nidus, etc). By getting rid of the lower value items on the general rewards, people playing for the first time should come across a bit of a bump in their resources and credits. We have more plans for this to write about at a later date. 

UI QOL:
This is a summary of the UI changes announced in a recent Dev Workshop, plus confirmation that it is shipping with our coming PC mainline update: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1166994-why-do-we-ui-like-we-ui-part-ii/#comments

 

• ‘Item Labels’ are now set to ‘On’ by default, but can still be turned off in your settings.

• Avionics Screen no longer uses ‘Hold to Confirm’.

• Intrinsics Screen no longer uses ‘Hold to Confirm’.

• Hold to Confirm added to Revive to avoid accidental aborts, particularly on controller during Arbitration missions.
• Death Screen (i.e you are dead but Squad goes on) now preserves the HUD so you can see mission and Squad status.
• Added a ‘Forge All’ button on the Payload screen in Dojos.
• More stats on DPD.
• General scrollbar usability improvements with controllers.

Why: As outlined in the original Dev Workshop, we are looking to course correct some UI decisions based on feedback. 

 

100x Restore Blueprints (Scaling Costs).
We are adding a new series of Restore Research and Blueprints that yield 100 of given Restore. Visit the Clan Dojo to research, and prepare your Railjack Resources accordingly!
Upon research, you will be able to build in batches of x100 with costs scaled from the x10 Blueprints!!

Why: The frequency at which players use these in missions vs. the 1 minute wait times for building 10x meant we could level up the batches here. Railjack Resources are being used for Research to give another use for what you are picking up! 

Sharing Sentinel Mods:
Sentinel Weapons and Warframe weapons cannot share Mods,which is to say: if you have 1 Maxed Serration Mod, your Sentinel’s Weapon cannot use it if you have a Primary Weapon with it equipped. You either switch your Sentinel Weapon to a different class (Shotgun, Melee), or acquire and max a duplicate Mod.

We are removing this condition and now your Mods can be simultaneously equipped.

Why: Over time, the amount of systems to put your time into have increased. The appeal of grinding out a Duplicate Mod for Sentinels just isn’t a proposition we want players to be faced with in the context of everything else the game has to offer!

 

Greater than 100% Status having meaning. 
Years ago we added Orange and Red Critical Damage numbers when you land a Critical with greater than 100%. For years, Status being greater than 100% has done nothing except guarantee Status – which is good, just not an added incentive to go over 100%. We are changing that this update.

When you hit a Status Chance greater than 100%, a single damage instance will be able to create two Status Effects. This means if you have a Shot with 200% Status Chance modded with both Blast and Toxin Damage, that single shot will result in both Status Effects!

In addition to being able to achieve two Status Effects on a single shot, we are also adding new meaning if you get a duplicate Status Effect on an enemy. For example, AOE knockdown would occur on a second Impact Status on an enemy already inflicted with one! Stay tuned for the full breakdown of each Status’ enhanced effect in the Patch Notes!
It is worth noting we are fixing a UI inconsistency that is ‘Display Only’. Right now the Arsenal shows Status Chance affected by Multishot, which makes reading the new >100% value confusing. For example, the Arsenal might say 120% but really the Status Chance is 80%. We don’t have Multishot affect any Critical Stats (Chance or Multiplier), so we are fixing this display inconsistency. Multishot now has its own Stat.

Shotguns have a unique Role here based on a very patch-work history with how they interact with Status Chance. A Shotgun that shoots 99% Status Chance would give you 35% (roughly) status per pellet. 100% Status Gives you 100% Status per pellet. This huge jump in performance happens with just a 1% gain – why? Well, to answer that we have to look at our choice to make what the UI conveys reality. It would feel broken to shoot a Shotgun with 100% Status and not see a perfect spread of Effects. In reality, to make Status consistent we have to treat Shotguns as a special case.

Shotguns as a special case means we have buffed the Status Chance of all Shotguns by x3 or greater. The UI now behaves to show the reality that you are determining Status Chance per pellet.

In further additions, previously unstackable Status Effects (Puncture, Cold, Magnetic, Radiation, Viral) will now have stacking effects. We’ll have more information on this later as it develops!

Why: Critical has long been king – and while we are leaving Critical as is, our goal is to bring Status into the Arsenals in a new light for all Primary, Secondary, and Melee weapons. 

 

Status Chance Mod Buffs 
The Status Chance Mods we released many years ago have not been considered worthwhile – there are simply better options within the Status Mod builds (Dual Stats) or Critical builds are more appealing. We are buffing all Standalone Status Chance Mods to increase the appeal of building for Status on your Weapons:

Rifle Aptitude increased from 15% Status Chance to 90% Status Chance

Melee Prowess increased from 15% Status Chance to 90% Status Chance

Sure Shot increased from 15% Status Chance to 90% Status Chance

Shotgun Savvy increased from 30% Status Chance to 90% Status Chance

Why? This is a long overdue change that will thrive when paired with the above change of giving >100% Status meaning. The goal is to give your Arsenals a shake up in terms of what Status may mean for some of your Collection! This is a power output increase across the board for Status. 

 

Grenade Markers.
Sometimes the devious enemies of Warframe decide they’d rather stay safely behind cover and throw explosive surprises at the Tenno instead of rushing in. They do this when you are stationary for long periods of time. Some time ago we added an audio warning so that thrown grenades would chirp or tick, but experience has shown that they are still easy to miss during the chaos of fighting. A visible HUD marker and a warning glow have been added to grenades that are thrown at you to give you a better chance to react. PLUS, you can now shoot the grenade before it explodes, allowing for increased tactical revenge!

Why: More awareness on where Grenades are has been a longstanding community request to help the flow of battle. We are adding it to allow for more player tactical choice.

  

Kuva Lich Murmurs / Fixes
Requiem Murmurs from failing a Kuva Lich Parazon stab will now again be shared with the entire squad!

Why: If we take a trip down memory lane, we’ll arrive at The Old Blood: Hotfix 26.0.5, where we fixed all players receiving Kuva Lich Requiem Murmur progress whenever someone in the squad failed to kill their Kuva Lich. Our intentions to have the Kuva Lich tied exclusively to the respective player were genuine, but the feedback has shone light on what is a worthwhile feature for the Kuva Lich system given its pace towards success. We have bigger plans for connecting Liches to other Systems, but this change is the only one ready for Mainline! 

On that note, we do have a chunk of general Kuva Lich Changes & Fixes coming in this Mainline:

Kuva Lich Changes & Fixes:

• Added fancy new FX when Valence Fusion has been successfully completed!
• The Kuva Lich section of the Codex now has tabs for Active, Vanquished, Converted, and Traded Liches!
• Decreased the chances of Kuva Lich controlled sectors forcing an Exterminate situation to allow for more gamemode chances.
• Fixed only 1 Kuva weapon maintaining its innate bonus damage attribute and respective Kuva Lich name when claiming multiple Kuva weapons using the ‘Claim All’ button in the Foundry.
  • This retroactively fixes the Kuva weapons that lost out on their innate bonus damage by giving them back their random buff. Unfortunately, the Kuva Lich name can’t be easily associated with the Kuva weapon, so these fixed weapons will have the default Kuva weapon name (Kuva Tonkor, Kuva Bramma, etc).
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Kuva Lich to slide when downed while doing a dodge.
• Fixed downed Kuva Lich still proceeding to break backs (which was removed in 27.1.0) in an invisible state.
• More fixes towards Kuva Liches with the “Ruse” ability not having the same Warframe Helmet on the clones if an alternate helmet is equipped upon Lich creation.
• Fixed the Kuva Lich button not appearing in the UI in the rare case where a Nightwave season is not active.
• Fixed small FX offset issues with the Kuva Bramma when reloading.
• Fixed being able to bypass the cooldown between scoped shots with the Kuva Quartakk and Quatz by scoping and unscoping between shots.

 

HDR Preview
Players with a Graphics Card and Monitor that supports High Dynamic Range will be able to preview our new technology!

Why: Warframe is a vibrant game – and including HDR support will allow those with the hardware to experience a new richness! 

 

Deferred Rendering Preview:
For the past several months we’ve mentioned that our engine is getting graphical upgrades. The time has come in this Mainline update to give you the option to preview Deferred Rendering! This will make Warframe look the best it’s ever looked – with better shadows, reflections, lighting responsiveness, and more!

Why: Graphics Matter Too – we have team members who thrive on integrating the latest graphics improvements to our technology! 

 

BONUS ITEM 21: FOV
Fresh from the oven comes a hot bonus change: we’ve increased the max FOV value from 78 to 90!

Before at the max of 78:

After at the max of 90:

Why: Out of the players that do change their FOV setting, ~84% change it to the max. You may be wondering “why not max it even further??”. It comes down to the potential of the diegetic UI, FX, etc breaking when going plus ultra FOV. We hope you enjoy this bump for now! 

 

Closing: 20 Parts Later.

You’ve made it to the end and it bears repeating: Warframe always aims to become a better version of itself. You may realize something after reading: Warframe’s Meta might change. But if you’ve been playing for a while, you’ll realize something else: Warframe is always changing. Warframe is still about power and you being a destructive force in the Origin System with hundreds of tools at your disposal.

 

Warframes have never been more lethal or powerful than they are in the current version of Warframe – we do not aim to reduce that across the board, but we do aim to let that power stand on consistency in our designs. There are few sentences that can convey our sincere gratitude for you taking the time to read this, and hopefully taking the time to put your thoughts together once these changes launch. See you in Early March with this, then soon after with Scarlet Spear!
Bonus Section:
If you are holding out for New Content – 2 Major Updates are coming! Operation Scarlet Spear soon with a major Event and Lore, then The Deadlock Protocol in after with a deep Corpus Remaster and the release of Protea!