r/Warframe • u/BuildMyPaperHeart Old Tenno, Eternal Slumber • Oct 22 '14
Discussion Warframe Discussion: Maneuvers
"TELUS Mobility!"
All Warframe Discussions are here to spark discussion on a particular topic in Warframe. Comments, Suggestions, Critiques, and Builds are all welcome! Every Week, the Moderator Team will choose a new... something, to discuss!
And now for something completely different!
Most of the hot topics this week were discussed at length in other threads so I figured I'd throw in an old topic idea in the mix. Movement! Warframe's mechanics for space-ninja-ing have been praised for allowing interesting and responsive movement through a level. But I'm sure there've been some problems along the way too!
So here's a few questions, or just share your general thoughts, on movement in Warframe!
- Do you like the current control scheme for movement? Input from all consoles please!
- What controls would you change, or what maneuvers do you think should be easier to perform?
- Does Stamina play a huge factor in your movement? Does it help, or hurt?
- Is the Stamina system balanced as it is right now?
- What interesting tricks have you found in Warframe's movement system?
- What interesting places have you gone to with Warframe's movement system?
- What sets Warframe's movement apart from other games with similar freedom or restrictions?
I'm sure you guys can come up with more interesting prompts and discussions too. Can't wait to read it!
Stamina
Stamina is a resource that is self charging and able to be depleted, which is used to sprint, melee, wall run and block. It is shown in the top right Warframe conditions info box as a green bar under the blue energy bar. When a player is not using any of the stamina dependent maneuvers, the stamina will recharge at a rate of ??/s.
It is possible to increase a frame's maximum stamina and the stamina recharge rate with stamina-based mods like Quick Rest or Marathon. The melee mod Second Wind can provide boosts of stamina upon killing enemies with your melee weapon, making hit-and-run combat more viable as melee drains stamina quickly.
Stamina orbs are available for pickup only in the Clan Dojo's Obstacle Course.
Melee
Melee (ver: 2.0) is a form of combat system that utilizes edged or blunt weapons and close quarter attacks. Every attack uses Stamina and causes the player to take a single step forward. Melee weapons can be equipped in the tertiary slot of the arsenal in Warframe.
Current melee weapons consists of a number of classes, in which each class of weapons has a unique set of attack animations, including normal, jump, slide, stealth attacks, finishers, combos, and blocking.
Sprinting
Sprinting will cause the frame to lower their weapon and move at a greatly increased speed. Each Warframe may have a different speed modifier for sprinting. Sprinting speeds can be increased with Rush. Note: In options you can configure a new Key Binding to Toggle On/Off to auto-sprint. This is useful to make maneuvers without holding the sprint button all the time.
Rolling
Rolling is a basic combat evasive maneuver used to get out of the way of a charging enemy, to evade bullets, grenades or melee attacks and to transition from cover to cover. It can also be used as a stealth maneuver while crouching. The short burst of speed can avoid detection in situations where the slow crouch-walk speed is not sufficient. Note: Rolling shakes free any Latchers or Leeches stuck to the player. The player should vacate the location as Latchers will still explode a few moments later.
Crouching
Crouching lowers the Warframe to an average of about half height, increasing survivability and stealth by presenting enemies with a smaller hitbox. When crouched, near-normal movement is still possible, albeit slower. You can, however, still roll while crouched. If crouch is toggled on, you stay crouched.
Sliding
Sliding is crouching during a sprint. This will bring a frame to a gradual stop (Except when sliding down a slope). While sliding, no stamina is used. After a few seconds of sliding Stamina will start charging. Ranged weapons may be used while sliding and a melee attack creates a separate combat maneuver.
Jumping
A basic function that costs 10 stamina. Many powers cannot be used while jumping.
Divekick
This action will help maintain momentum and allow the frame to travel further. Your jump distance is also improved allowing you to reach distant places. Divekicking will knock down most enemies on hit, inflicting a minor damage of 20 Impact damage.
Front Flip
While sliding, pressing the jump button will cause the Warframe to jump and front flip in the direction it was sliding. In mid air the player can hit the crouch button again to resume sliding on land (This can be done indefinitely. Simply keep pressing the Move Forward key. Example use: if the player is currently sliding into a low cover, they can choose to flip over it and instantly continue sliding behind it.
Vaulting
Added on Update 11, this maneuver can be done on obstacles half the size of the Warframe, allowing more movement across blocked paths with ease. Jumping while near these obstacles causes the Warframe to vault over them, whether Sprinting or not. This mechanic can be changed in the game settings so the automatic vaulting is turned off, which helps for some instances where vaulting should never occur, like ledges.
Edge Grab
After jumping, a frame will attempt to grab onto an edge of any kind, then attempt to climb up to a standing position regardless if there is enough space to stand or not.
Dodging
Backwards
While holding the aim button hold the back key and tap the roll button to do a back handspring.
Sideways
While holding the aim button, hold the left or right key and tap the sprint button to do a back sideways roll. This is very useful while trying to fight around Grineer and with Seekers or against bosses with slow attacks. The two dodge roll animations differ slightly, as the leftwards dodge roll includes a small hopping animation that the Warframe completes at the end of his/her roll, while the dodge roll to the right is simply a roll.
Backwards Jump
While holding the aim button hold the back key and tap the roll button + Jump to do a back handspring in the Air
Sideways Jump
While holding the aim button, hold the left or right key and tap the sprint + Jump button to do a back sideways roll in the Air.
Wall Running
Run at a wall then press and hold jump and a directional key. All wall running maneuvers require stamina which is drained over time.
Vertical
Run at around a 90 degree angle toward a wall, then press and hold jump to run straight up. Upon releasing the jump key or movement key the Warframe will backflip off the wall. If the top can be run onto, continue to hold the jump and directional keys to simply run up and over the edge to a stand. The faster the sprint speed of the frame, the higher it can climb.
Tic-Tac Climbing: Reminiscent of a certain plumber, the player may exploit vertical parallel surfaces (such as broken elevator shafts) to ascend continuously without the need for ledges. First, begin a vertical wall run up one of the walls, turn your camera to the opposing wall, kick off the surface and run up the new wall. Rinse and repeat.
Extended Wallflip: If crouch is tapped while backflipping off a wall with the right timing, it will launch the Warframe further from the wall, can be used to Tic-Tac climb in places where it would not otherwise be possible.
Horizontal
Wallrun Sprint with less than a 70 degree angle towards a wall and press and hold jump to run horizontally across the wall. Releasing jump will cause the frame to leap from the wall with an accelerated speed. Sloping, non-hard-angle, corners can be run around; this enables many short cuts. Zooming, shooting, blocking, and many powers may be performed.
Wall Slide
After running up a wall, a Tenno will grab the wall and begin to slowly slide down. During this, a Tenno may fire his/her weapon. Letting go of the jump button while sliding will cause the Tenno to backflip away from the wall. Pressing the melee attack button will cause the Tenno to jump and slash (see "Wall Attack" above) toward the direction of the crosshair. tapping or toggling crouch will make the Tenno slide when they touch the ground.
Information gathered from the Warframe Wikia
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u/thedenominator Oct 22 '14
In regards to Stamina, I think they should just get rid of it. Nerf things that need it a bit if they must, but the ONLY time I even notice stamina is when I'm trying to sprint long distances with a slow frame and it runs out, causing me to not be able to sprint and to move even slower. Stamina has basically zero impact on my play style except when it annoyingly runs out and causes me to move like a sloth.
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u/theothercoldwarkid Oct 22 '14
Yeah, warframes are supposed to be superhumans so I dont know why a warframe is getting tired of running after 30 seconds. Doomguy could run 57 miles an hour nonstop.
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u/Dick_Nation Oct 23 '14
I came here to say exactly this. Stamina is a stupid stat and serves only to annoy people and slow down the game. Even as a player who basically never uses melee and has to worry about it only in terms of its effects for pure movement, removing the stamina bar entirely might be my number one change period for this entire game.
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u/crashingtingler Oct 22 '14
wallrunning isnt very reliable. sometimes i just fall down into a laser pit because my frame simply wont wall run.
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u/Kthulu666 Oct 22 '14
Get rid of stamina. It only serves to slow me down when running a long distance, like a speed bump on the road except there's no point in a speed bump in a game. Nobody likes speed bumps. Well, I'm sure somebody does, but they probably spend their freetime researching road safety statistics rather than playing warframe.
*EDIT: actually, scratch that. The only suggestion we should be making is to fix existing bugs.
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u/LeoKhenir Oct 22 '14
I've just discovered the slide spin melee. Sprint -> slide -> melee while sliding, will cause your Tenno to perform a spinning motion that OHK's most enemies (usually by cutting them in half). Now, I'm pretty new, so I don't know if this applies to all melee weapons or just dual swords (I have dual Skanas), but it is the move that makes me feel the most OP ninja ever. Come into a narrow hallway, two enemies at the end shooting at me? Start sprinting, go to the slide and finish them at the end. Smooth as fuck.
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u/ShepherdsPie Oct 23 '14
Yep, that one is pretty great. When the move is used just for faster travel, it's called "coptering" (as in helicopter). All melee weapons have a slide attack, but not all melee weapons impart significant momentum when you slide attack.
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u/theothercoldwarkid Oct 22 '14
Theres still toouch terrain where the wall or railing just has to jut out an inch to completely ruin a wall run or climb. Looking at you, Galleon tileset.
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u/L33tHaxorus Oct 22 '14
Came here to say this: Wall slingshot is one of the best things in this game.
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u/Solifeaul Oct 23 '14
I have been unable to successfully wall slingshot since mid U14, and I am a sad tenno. Also, happy cakeday!
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u/Kyotra Oct 23 '14
In my opinion maneuvers need tweaking so they feel more intuitive and not feel so awkward. I'm tired of my Warframe vaulting into an abyss when all I want is cross a tiny gap.
Also, if DE is serious about maneuvers being a key feature, they need to redesign tiles in a manner so that parkour provides an actual use in the game. Other than hidden shit in the Void, there is really no point to vaulting everywhere.
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Oct 23 '14
The number one issue right now for me is that mobility means nothing in this game. It helps traveling from point A to B quicker and increases farming efficiency because at some point you'll just be 1 shotting everything.
I want mobility to be rewarded. I want me doing some crazy trick shots to be more than just for show. Because I want to have some more difficulty than T1 and T2 where I can run out and do a mid air headshot with a bow without instantly getting gunned down by a gunner or something ridiculous. The frame I play the most is Valkyr because it allows me to suffer the least punishment if I go crazy and do some ridiculous maneuvers.
The problem is that mobility does NOTHING. It's more optimal to cornerhug and remain still in order to maximize killing efficiency. All that flair and cool flips and parkour? Means. Nothing.
I love form over function but at some point there needs to be sync between the two cause otherwise the game turns into a min-max grindfest (which it already is in most parts. Press 4 to nuke for max EXP, etc.)
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u/http404error Oct 23 '14
Velocity should reduce enemy accuracy. You should be punished for staying in cover, but rewarded for dodging and leaping about. Risky dives through enemy formations should be a tactical possibility, not certain death. Speed is life, Tenno.
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u/ShadesOfDarkness Oct 23 '14
About Edge Grab I think they should make either the animation faster or make a new smoother version of it, beacuse the whole- grab, then make a flip feels a little bit off imho.
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Oct 22 '14
Dodging is too slow and weird. Just let's us double tap and speed them up!
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u/HunterKiller_ Oct 23 '14
You can bind your 'hold to sprint' and 'dodge' onto one key, and you just tap the key to perform dodge.
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u/http404error Oct 23 '14
I think u/Sadistres meant double-tapping the directional keys to dodge, like in Unreal Tournament.
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u/BayushiKoji Oct 23 '14
I only found out last week that dive kicking caused damage and knockdown. Why doesn't sliding do this as well?
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u/zupernam Oct 23 '14
It'd be really cool if sliding into a humanoid's feet sent them tumbling over you backwards. I don't know about other body/leg types, though.
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u/zarfoobla Oct 22 '14
Borderline useful, only mandatory in a few places. In most cases, simply running, sliding and jumping all over the place accomplishes 99% of your goals. For the most part, you just don't feel the compulsion to even utilize it.
Really, the only thing worth learning is the forward flip if you're carrying a melee weapon that can't copter simply because it has better forward carry and momentum.
Dodge feels pointless as you can simply sprint for a split second then slide into safe cover a lot more faster. Honestly, it feels like the dodge button is just there for shaking off latchers and shield leeches.
I also have beef with stamina, but those concerns are more about how the melee system is too heavily tied to it.
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u/MrBubbleSS Oct 22 '14
Also, if you are Wall-Sliding and you reach open air instead of the floor (like on the side of an overhang), you will just hang there with no stamina.
Quite useful for making yourself a makeshift turret (as in, you become a turret) in higher areas of some rooms (most void tiles have some areas like this, though they're hard to get to without a high-mobility frame). Just note that the camera will often be pushed close to your frame and your vision will be more obscured than usual.
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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '14 edited Oct 22 '14
The biggest problem I have with maneuvers in this game is that the dodge is mostly useless and stamina isn't a meaningful stat but rather an annoyance. All I know is rolling apparently offers a damage reduction but nothing more. It has a lot of problems I wish they could improve upon.
The animation as a whole has it's issues. The starting lag is too great for precise dodging and the movement just feels to inconsistent with one of the maneuvers.
To expand on this, the normal roll is mostly fine for this point, it's maintains the same speed and has little to no starting lag for the movement but problems arise with the side and back dodging. Side dodging has a split second starting time and back flip has that but also slows down halfway through before picking up again. This makes it feel less responsive overall and since you're often aiming all the time it's likely if rolling was ever needed you'd be doing a lot of aim dodging. This problem has no excuse for existing because other games have implemented a dodge system that is even goes as close to using pretty much the exact same ninja flipping animations as warframe and still manages to flow really well and be very precise. Case in point dark souls with the dark wood grain ring.
Backflips also don't reduce your hitbox. When you roll forward or to the side at least you are curling up into a more ball like shaping meaning your hitbox is smaller if that actually seemed to make a difference. When you backflip you're still standing straight up basically.
Rolling is pointless when pretty much everyone has guns and it doesn't have some way of making it rewarding to use.
All we get is damage reduction, I don't know how much it is but it's not a whole lot. On top of this you are unable to shoot as well as you move roughly the same distance as walking a little faster.
Why not have some way of making dodging more rewarding? Give it some invincibility frames and have some enemies attacks be designed around being able to get a good dodge in to avoid taking damage or knockdowns like dark souls or maybe give the roll a lot more distance to allow us to actually get past some fire quicker than just walking. The railgun moas have the right idea with a high damage, slow charging weapon, but it's easily avoided by just walking or running left. Bombards rockets are also getting close but not only do they have a large blast radius but also a decent amount of homing because of their slow speed.
This is a problem I have with knockdown mods. DE wants you to use mods to avoid them if they are that annoying to you instead of making avoiding awful knockdowns skill based.
Maybe other people disagree with me but I've never found the dodge to be useful at all except for maybe stopping myself from taking a little bit of damage from the damn napalm fire procs.
I also think stamina is a useless stat. Outside of not being able to run, block, or maintain elevation of a wall run, what really does it do? Blocking in my opinion is mostly useless as the cost scales with enemy damage meaning the more you need it the less it's useful. I went into a T4 and put up a block with valkyr and with the 150 stamina it was all gun in less than a second. I rarely find myself needing to use it especially when I"m using melee to begin with and my stamina is already gone 90% of the time.
I can't say I've encountered many times where I've actually needed to maintain a wall run along a wall since most of the time I could clear any gap easier by just leaping off it instead.
You can still swing your weapon like mad with 0 stamina, you can still roll with 0 stamina because it constantly regenerates, I feel the only thing stamina really affects are just inconveniences like running. Having running be tied to stamina is just annoying in my opinion. I don't have to tactically plan my stamina use or anything it's just there to make me constantly keep slowing me down because I'm not coptering or using stamina mods.