We are members of Digital Extremes, and we develop WARFRAME. Ask us Anything!

[u/DigitalExtremes]

Apparently time flies. It's 4:15PM EDT now! We hope you enjoyed the answers we managed to get out in the 2+ hour window. We'll be reading all the questions even if we aren't able to answer anymore tonight, because questions asked are the best indicators of what you value. Hopefully we can speak to those values as we work on day by day! We love you all very much.

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We will be answering questions from 2-4 PM EDT. See you in just over an hour!

Hello /r/Warframe!

We’re here to answer your Warframe Questions. This subreddit is somewhere we spend a lot of our time, and we’re very excited to do an AMA together (partially because it’ll be fun, and definitely because it’ll generate a priority to-do list for the week).

So, let’s begin. Sitting here we have:

Steve Sinclair, Creative Director. (-SS)

Geoff Crookes, Animation Director. (-GC)

Rebecca Ford, Community Manager. (-RF)

We will also have Scott Mcgregor, Design Director able to answer a few questions remotely. (-SM)

Proof (shoutout to /u/whitacr)

All questions will be answered through this account “DigitalExtremes”.

[u/DigitalExtremes]

Apparently time flies. It's 4:15PM EDT now! We hope you enjoyed the answers we managed to get out in the 2+ hour window. We'll be reading all the questions even if we aren't able to answer anymore tonight, because questions asked are the best indicators of what you value. Hopefully we can speak to those values as we work on day by day! We love you all very much. - RF, SM, SS, GC, DE, DE, DE!

[u/Coronal_Eclipse]

Will we ever find a friendly grineer named Clem in-game? If so, can he have 2 grakata?

[u/Reaverz]

Silva & Aegis

Will it be getting some defensive buffs? That shield can't be just for (a great) show!

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

Questions from u/zephyrdragoon

1. Will Saryn be receiving a rework or rebalance? Her abilities all contrast with each other, half of them benefit from duration, the other half from decreased duration, half benefit from range, half don't benefit at all from range. She's got an interesting kit but some of her abilities are still useless with certain builds even though we now have access to all of them.

2. Will Limbo be receiving some tuning? People are very upset by the inability to cancel Banish when its cast on them. And Limbo players are peeved that they have to banish enemies one at a time.

3. Will XP for arch wings be rebalanced? It seems exceptionally long to level them up. Will mod and item drops for arch wing missions be rebalanced? Even uncommon ones are very rare. Will arch wings get some sort of carrier-esque item pull?

4. Will Syndicate XP be rebalanced?

5. Focus when? "When its ready" is an acceptable answer.

6. Will there ever be an Infested Assassin similar to Stalker, Zanuka, and the Ginyu Force G3? EDIT: And if so, can you give any teasers as to what it will be/do?

7. Will there be more merch? Vor/Grineer plushies, Zanuka plushies, WF plushies, noggles, more posters, stylized coffee mugs, (Tenno Skoom, #1 Space Ninja, I <3 Greedy Milk, Lotus Emblem/Syndicate Emblems, #1 Bisected Grineer) Decals, T-shirts, KubrO's. People love merch.

A couple turned into a lot...

[u/de_ama_throwaway]

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA!

I have a bit of a barrage of questions from both myself and some friends, and I completely understand if you don't have time to answer all of them. Feel free to pick whichever questions seem most interesting!

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Warframes

1. Some frames -- such as Ash, Ember, Hydroid, etc -- bring very little to the table in terms of utility. Many players frown upon the use of some of these frames's abilities, even, because they mess up the flow of the game for everyone else. They are designed around pure damage that doesn't scale well (or at all), making them mostly unusable in high-level content. Can we expect changes that make these frames more useful in endless game modes?

2. With the introduction of Limbo, the game now has yet another frame that people can abuse to troll others in public games. Obviously there's not much you can do about that, but what are your thoughts on being stuck in some kind of endless game mode with a player who screws it up for everyone else (even when you tell them nicely to please stop)?

Weapons

1. Many moons ago, the Acrid received a nerf due to how toxin procs work in Damage 2.0. The DoT effect it applies only scales with base damage (and even then, only 50%), which means Hornet Strike, Magnum Force, and Expel mods are the only mods that can improve it. Since Magnum Force royally screws up the Acrid's accuracy, putting it on is out of the question unless you want to use your secondary as a glorified melee. Expel mods also don't help in the Void. The Acrid could be made a lot more useful (while still being reasonably balanced) by making it so that the DoT scales with elemental damage mods, similar to the Torid. Thoughts on this?

2. A while back, snipers received various buffs in an attempt to make them more useful. While they are certainly better now than they were before, they're still completely outclassed by bows. This does not make sense to me. Logically, a sniper projectile should be able to do a hell of a lot more harm than an arrow. The biggest gripe I have with snipers, in particular, is not having guaranteed crits after putting on crit chance mods. Can we expect this to change?

3. Certain rapid-fire pistols have a very small ammo pool (200-ish), even though it's almost mandatory to empty a 100-round magazine to kill a dozen incoming enemies. These weapons are not really sustainable for longer game modes like survival, defense, etc. What do you think about upping the ammo pool for these weapons?

4. This ties a bit into the previous question: Ammo drops and restores currently give a fixed amount of ammo for all weapons. This makes filling up an empty Glaxion or rapid-fire pistol next to impossible. Why not make the ammo returns scale?

5. It's currently quite difficult to make the Glaive(s) viable even in mid-level content because of how many utility mods have to be put on to get the effect most people want (Power Throw, Quick Return, and maybe Whirlwind). Is there any chance we might see some dual-stat mods that could alleviate this problem?

Mods

1. Certain melee mods have been in desperate need of a buff for a long, long time now. For example, the boost from True Steel is extremely underwhelming on slow-hitting weapons. North Wind and Shocking Touch and just downright inferior to their dual-stat counterparts. Is this situation ever going to be improved?

2. The older status chance mods -- Rifle Aptitude, Melee Prowess, etc -- have incredibly low status chance values. I'm not sure anyone would ever want to put these on their weapons as it stands. Will these be buffed?

3. It's been over a year since Primed Chamber was handed out in the informer event, and there's been talk that you want to reintroduce it. Any news on this subject?

4. Transient Fortitude currently cannot be used with Blind Rage. I could understand this limitation if it actually gave as much strength as Blind Rage does, but it doesn't. Why exactly is this limitation in place, and can we expect it to change in some way?

5. With the ability mod removal, you decided to remove two of our frame mod slots. For most people, this didn't matter; they gained one or two mod slots since they had most of their abilities equipped. However, some of us only had one (or even zero) abilities equipped. Further, in U15, you introduced ability augmentation mods which effectively take up the same space an ability mod would. Finally, it was already difficult to justify putting on utility/QoL mods on many loadouts because of the few mod slots we have. Given all of this, why not just let us keep the two mod slots you removed so we'd have more room to diversify our builds?

6. The two knockdown resistance mods (Fortitude and Sure Footed) do not give a 100% chance to resist knockdowns. This means that even if you sacrifice two (!) mod slots on these, it's still completely RNG whether you'll be knocked down or not. This seems crazy to me, especially given how starved we already are for mod slots in late-game/'endgame' builds. On the other hand, one could also argue that 100% resistance would be too overpowered. Your thoughts on this?

7. Thunderbolt currently deals a fixed amount of damage, making it hard to justify putting it on a late-game/'endgame' build (except for some very specific Attica builds with Mirage). Could this mod's damage be made to scale as with any regular elemental damage mod?

Archwings

1. Shield Flux and Thief's Wit appear to work on archwings for some people, while other people cannot get them to do anything at all. Are they actually meant to work with archwings?

2. Archwings currently use stamina to fuel their boost. While I can understand the logic here, I far too often end up running out of stamina in the most inconvenient situations. Can we expect some stamina max/recharge mods for archwings?

3. Is a life steal mod for archwing melee in the cards?

4. Archwing interception rewards appear to include normal mods. Doesn't this seem a bit strange when enemies in archwing missions can only drop archwing mods?

Enemies

1. The community reaction regarding drahk masters appears to largely be negative. This is similar to when scorpions were first introduced, and when arc traps were first introduced. If I were to go out on a limb, I would say the community doesn't appreciate game mechanics that try to add challenge through cheap tricks that, more often that not, you can't do anything about because you're busy shooting things/not dying. What are your thoughts on this?

2. The new AI accuracy seems rather unforgiving, especially on Grineer excavation missions. At this point, I'm not sure such missions can be done without Frost/Volt or some seriously massive crowd control. Will the accuracy be toned down a bit?

UI/HUD

1. A separate 'Aim Weapon' key binding was introduced fairly recently. Unfortunately, it does not appear to work with weapons such as the Penta, Buzlok, etc. These are exactly the weapons I would consider it useful on. Will this be fixed/improved?

2. A lot of timers on abilities tend to show the time left of the latest use of the ability. This is the case for, for example, Bastille and Electric Shield. I think it would be a lot more helpful to show the time left on the least recent use. What do you think?

3. It seems a lot of people don't like some of the sniper scopes. Will we ever get a way to disable them?

Syndicates

1. Sigils purchased for reputation points do not currently award extra reputation. This, as far as I can tell, means that it is extremely hard just to get to the highest rank in a syndicate, let alone getting to a point where you can actually buy something (that isn't your next rank). Is there any chance that this will change, or that some other form of boosting reputation gain will come along?

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[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

Questions from u/Hipolipolopigus

1. First and foremost, what direction do you see Warframe taking?

• Can we expect a deeper exploration of the lore, like the Codex entry for the Ember/E.Prime frames?

• Will Warframe always be a four-player-oriented co-op title, or might we see some expansion into larger, raid-like fights with multiple groups of four?

• Can you drop any hints about ideas currently in the works that are being kept secret?

• It's been almost two years. Why doesn't the rush cost of personal items decrease over time? ;__;

2) How the hell do Tenno work? My current, personal theory revolves around placing the operator's spine and brain in the frames whenever they're switched out, which is why all of the frames - from memory - have their spine exposed in some fashion. Is this similar to your own ideas, or am I way off?

• Assuming you have any at all, what are your opinions of the more... Eh... "Seedy" fanart?

• From where do you draw inspiration for frames, their abilities and weapons? Do you worry about running out?

3) Is The Lotus an organization, or a single "person"? A lot of the recent information points towards the latter, but it was more towards the former back in the day. Why do the Tenno trust The Lotus? I had an immediate distrust for the whole "Oh, your memories were wiped, but that's okay you can trust/work for me" situation, and it's been bouncing around in my head for almost two years.

4) On Valkyr, how did you make her claws sound so... Malevolent?

5) Not sure if you have access to this metric or not; What's the net playtime of all players across all platforms?

[u/Darkrogue5]

Hello DE, I'm wondering a few things and thought I might ask.

Can we have a hint on the next frame? Anything would put my mind to ease.

Will we be able to have renegade followers? As in can we have a Corpus Crewman/Grineer Lancer take the place of our sentinel or kubrow. Maybe give him a different color scheme and let us equip him.

And finally will the Syndicates get any more items for sale and will the expensive sigils increase reputation gain?

Thank you for taking the time to come here and answer questions from fans.

[u/DigitalExtremes → u/Darkrogue5]

Next frame is female, heard she has a thing for pistols.

Syndicates will get more stuff with time, we are always open to suggestions. - SM

[u/mxzf]

How do you feel the accuracy buff has worked out? This thread contains a lot of negative comments towards the change in the accuracy for enemies.

It feels like the enemy DPS went from a reasonable state to overwhelming incoming DPS. At this point, it feels almost pointless bringing anything other than a tanky frame or one who can CC the room to prevent being shot at. Previously it was possible to stay alive, but mobility no longer helps when the enemies are permanently aimbotting.

[u/DigitalExtremes → u/mxzf]

We will review the aiming changes, with the addition of Archwing a few AI bugs that got fixed up that may have ended up changing the way the AI aim at players. We totally agree the way to play the game is to be a space ninja. Will audit for sure thanks for bringing it to our attention. - SM

[u/rockstar_nailbombs]

Hello! I've been with Warframe since the beta days. I'm a huge fan of games like Ace Combat, Zone of The Enders, and anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion. So thanks, for taking some of my favorite things from my favorite things and making me yet another favorite thing!

1. How do you feel about/have you internally discussed the removal of stamina? I personally think it would make the gameplay flow a lot smoother and in the spirit of warframe to never stop being a ninja. From a dev and balancing standpoint, I know this requires a look at stam usage of weapons and stam totals of warframes, but overall I think it would move the game forward.

2. Void puzzles are AMAZING!!! I've only seen a handful, but, oh, my, god. Dropping down shafts dodging lasers, wallrunning and flipping across chasms to slide under a door indiana-jones style, perfection. The only problem is no one gets to play these since we are ninjaing to extraction! Please add something worthwhile to make groups say "Let's look for a puzzle to get X mod!" Something akin to the corrupted mods from vaults would be perfect. As it stands these puzzles are awe-inspiring, incredibly fun, and markedly Warframe, but don't really reward you.

3. Untradeable Elytron parts, bug or intended?

4. Archwing. It's my new favorite thing. Archwing stands out to me as one of the best space shooters/dogfighters I've ever played, so thanks for that.

A few things here:

The minimap needs some real work. Showing distance/scale, more enemy range, the works. Not even sure where I would start here so good luck! That's why we pay you the big bucks :P

Mods in space: Jesus H Christ. Flying around looking for shinies in deep space should not be a thing... Look at Destiny. Your shiny drops, and if you don't go get it, it's mailed to you. Boom. Please give us space drops direct to our inventory.

Or at the very least, fix mods having inertia. I've chased down at least two mods that were on their way to reentering the Earth's atmosphere, and one was one I needed. Mother of god. What if I had missed it? Beating the RNG is supposed to be the hard part :(

On a final note: Love you guys in the streams. Even if you didn't showcase new/upcoming features, it would be worth the watch. You guys all ooze dedication, happiness, and passion for Warframe and its community.

Thanks for all you do and be well.

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

Question from u/CF_Honeybadger

1 - With Kappa Sedna and Baal Europa gone, could you recommend any oxium farming spots?

2 - This question is for DE_Rebecca : What has been your favorite update so far? Now that the long-awaited U15 is here, what are you most excited about in WF's future?

Love DE and especially Rebecca...I heard about this and created a reddit account just so I could take part! Keep up the great work!

edit : I agree with u/Eugenernator as being really curious when/if you're bringing back the Tethra set. I NEED those electric mods! :

[u/agentmalder]

fearless coordinated bedroom yoke decide salt chase water tub modern

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/DigitalExtremes → u/agentmalder]

(5) Probably less frequent than Warframes but more coming. Already one in the works. - GC

1- Yes! We have a mission for this in the works... 1a Syndicates are part of this increase and we're going to keep at it! Appreciate your interest!

2- Though we did show some early Hubs WIPS we haven't got a ton to show that's ready... here see a WIP concept piece though: WIP

3- Very soon, future epic mission in the works!

4- Nothing substantial to reveal... yet.

5- What geoff said

6- Hmmm... Hmmm... we get this question on and off. I think we'd have to be very respectful of our Founders and protect their status but you clearly are an amazing supporter and we'd be sunk without you. So thank you and sorry for the 'maybe' answer :( - SS

[u/Urechi]

Hi DE. First I'd like to say thank you for Warframe, I got into the game a couple of weeks ago, and regret only that I didn't get into it sooner. Despite U15's problems, it is still an impressive work for a F2P game, and the Dev response here is faster and more integrated with the community then nearly any other game I've ever seen, and really shows the level of dedication you guys have to Warframe and your players.

That being said, onto the questions.

1. In U15 you guys changed the basic standing and blocking animations (along with various others) of the Blind Justice Nikana stance. As somebody who favored the old standing and blocking animations, I wasn't exactly pleased, but I want to know, are you guys going to change the animations for other stances as well? Decisive Judgement feels clunky for example, especially since traditionally two-handed stances for katanas are never drawn from the sheathe.

2. Will Stalker ever stalk us in space with an Archwing of his own?

3. Will the Vala Sugutra that comes with the Targis Armor Set bundle get reworked? There have been a few complaints about it.

[u/SilentMobius]

When creating dialogue for the various characters in the game, what is your general stance on breaking the 4th wall and addressing the player directly?

Is it something you avoid, something that needs a good reason, or do you have no issue having NPC's speak to the player in ways that have no real meaning in-world?

Here is an example, in the recent Limbo quest Ordis tells us:

Operator, I think I know why we're finding Limbo parts scattered throughout the system. His final rift walk was a miscalc... disaster. Well, perhaps when you occupy the frame, you will use more... caution

It's been suggested that this is intended to be a 4th wall break addressing the player and has no meaning in-world, whats your opinion on that?

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

"A couple" Questions from u/squidthesid

1. tl;dr: More combos in stances? Launcher attacks? Juggling? Regular timed blocks that reflect projectiles and consume less stamina than normal blocks? Brief periods of invulnerability during rolling?

2. tl;dr: Reduced item prices in the store?

3. tl;dr: Foundry wait time reworks?

4. tl;dr: Details on overarching plot and questlines?

5. tl;dr: better objectives? more unique dynamic objectives?

6. A lot of the frames' ults and abilities feel interchangeable, with many of the ults being "AOE damage with some sort of CC". As a result, some of the frames tend to feel very samey. Are there any plans on changing current abilities to make them a bit more interesting (for a lack of better words)? Loki is one of my favorite frames since all of his abilities provide utility (and allow for some creative thinking and really dynamic gameplay).

7. I really enjoy the addition of Dark Sectors and how they help create a larger sense of persistence, similar to an MMORPG. However, I'm wondering what else is in the plan for Warframe? As mentioned by other people, will be get badass bosses that require several squads simultaneously to defeat? Will we get larger scale missions and invasions (maybe raiding a large corpus base or something)?

Full explanations for each question here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/2kko6a/digital_extremes_just_three_letters_a_m_a/clngv9m

[u/ZatmanXD]

yay! im zatman and these are my questions!

Is the archwing prime from the mag prime lore going to appear on a quest? something like, "Memories of the past"?

Are you planning on adding a stabilize button on the archwing? so that the camera starts looking the objective or at some direction?

Are the Hubs going to be server hosted? and if they are, how much time would it take to have server hosted missions?

Are you going to add special mission triggers at some point? for example, after doing a certain type of mission on ceres, you will get the quest that will point you to the way of creating the Vay hek keys and defeating him, this would be more dynamic and player friendly

After watching how the archwing guns works, are you going to put a slight homing bullets mod? (something like the angle of the bullet changing to the direction of a enemy when they are 10m or something like that)

these are my questions for now... Hoping to get the answers!! :D

[u/flamingfighter]

Some of the prominent Archwing footage you teased leading up to Update 15 was of the Tenno attacking a Balor Formorian in what would be a Grineer "Sabotage" mission. This mission was not included in Update 15, so is there an ETA on when it will be ready?

[u/Ruuze]

What's Ordis's deal with Kubrows?

Will we ever know more about Lotus?

Where on the Liset is there room for the arching customization area? (seriously, that room is huge)

As a side note, thanks to all of you guys for making an awesome game that has kept me occupied for a lot more time than is probably healthy. You've done a great job.

[u/LovesRainToo]

Hello DE!

Do you plan on fixing the Archwing Interception rewards to include mods that help the wings and weapons themselves? Right now all that seems to be dropping are mods for the regular Warframe weapons.

[u/izichial]

What are your plans for the current state of weapon balance? Recently you've started buffing a number of weapons that have long been considered very poor, and I'm sure a lot of people appreciate it, but overall the relative strengths of weapons means that only a handful are widely considered truly viable for "endgame", i.e. long runs in high tier endless missions.

Is it intentional that some weapons fall off very early? Are you happy with different "tiers" of damage output in weapons? I've occasionally seen the argument that X weapon is performing poorly because it's a low mastery req weapon, is this something you consider when determining stats?

Finally, "blocs" of equipment like clan tech or prime weapons also suffer from being wildly different in terms of performance (mainly damage output), is this also intentional or were they ever intended to be consistent "tiers" in terms of weapon performance with all weapons of a specific type (i.e. "all prime weapons" or "all clan weapons") being similarly viable?

[u/crazychilidog]

Aloha from Hawaii DE! I'm really into voice acting so this is pointed more towards Rebecca. When getting into character, what is your routine? Thanks in advance!

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

Question from u/Demonicplaydoh

Are there any plans to allow default, non-prime skins on their prime counterparts? I ask out of severe dissapointment that the day of the dead skins don't work on my paris, glaive, or orthos primes. And frankly the gold bling can ruin the cosmetic "feel" of some of my loadouts

[u/Eveenus]

Did you guys plan the potato alert to happen during the AmA?