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After a digital press preview for the upcoming Techrot Encore update, we had the opportunity to chat with Warframe's beloved Design Director, Pablo Alonso. The visionary behind some of the most popular frames and the architect of modern reworks and lite-reworks, Pablo has been with Digital Extremes since long before Warframe. He has steered the boat as the Design Director for over three years.
Techrot Encore is the upcoming Echoes (follow-up content patch) to Warframe: 1999, arguably one of the most game-changing major updates in the evergreen looter-shooter's decade-long run.
We were originally angling for questions on all the new stuff this update is bringing, but we ended up talking about a lot of the fundamentals on what drives innovation and balance in Warframe.
Warframe Design Director [DE] Pablo talks about Techrot Encore, Temple's nu-Octavia musical gimmick, FOV clipping woes, the difficulty of Raid content, and more
Q. We got to see the four new proto-frames, which are all amazing. And while it is a bummer that we can't date them, we're still getting four new faces for the KIM messenger. Are we still going to get more new friends to expand that friend-list post-Techrot Encore, perhaps?
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Pablo: I don't think I'm allowed to talk about that. I'm sorry, but I think Rebecca would snipe me if I were to mention anything about that. (Tatum says “Good answer!” in the Google Meet chat.)
Q. Is there a possibility for something like the KIM system to be expanded into non-1999 content? Like, we have the actual pager and vastly superior communication tech in the present-day Origin System. But we rarely ever talk to, say, Loid. You just have a little transactional relationship. You just come do some gambling, and then you peace out.
Pablo: Yeah, it's kind of interesting for us. The KIM was like - we really didn't know how well it was going to go. We did it a little weird.
Generally, whenever you do branching conversations, if you play any Mass Effect or something like that, you'll have three options. And then no matter what you choose, you almost always end up at the same place. Whereas, we (the KIM conversations) really branch a lot.
So we went a little crazy in the way we did it. So now we don't know. They do take a while to make, but they also are so fun, not only for players, but also for our writers.
Every now and then, when I'm talking to one of the writers… it's almost like they have a day off when they're writing for the KIM. So they're almost relaxed that day because they're working on that. So, yeah, because of how much players love it and how much the team loves it, you know, we'll definitely try to figure out ways to do more of it.
I don't know. I cannot really tell you exactly how, but I can tell you that we are very, very much in love with the system. And then we also saw the very strong reaction from players about it.
Q. Now that we have Temple coming up, we will have two bard-frames, but still no spider-frame. Are there any sort of unexplored frame-o-types you would personally like to see come alive?
Pablo: Well, I mean, I literally have lists of different ideas for ones. Obviously, I wouldn't want to spoil one that will come. I can spoil one that I always wanted that probably will never happen.
I always wanted to do a shapeshifter. Yeah, I did have some ideas for that, but the problem is the tech is just too complicated to actually allow you to control the different units and stuff like that. So, yeah, that one's probably dead in the water, but maybe one day, who knows?
Jason (Sportskeeda): Maybe you could make it just copy someone in your party. I mean, it would require you to have a party, but that would be pretty cool.
Pablo: Yeah, I think the original idea of the alt is you would change it to a random warframe with infinite energy and like a bunch of strength. It was just fun. But yeah, the problem is that the shapeshifting to enemies is very complicated.
Q. Will players who are rhythmically challenged suffer while playing Temple? Or will their abilities still be decent even if they're offbeat?
Pablo: They're definitely decent offbeat. So it's not like if you're not landing it, you're in a terrible situation. But, you know, you can compensate some of it with mods. So for example, one of the big benefits from landing it on beat is that you get extra power efficiency of 50%. So obviously, if you're landing on beat, you don't even have to care that much about Energy, right? You already have essentially more than a streamline just baked in.
But again, if you're bad on beat, just put on a streamline, put on Energize, and you don't care, right? So there's that. And you do get some extra bonuses for how strong it is, how much status some of the projectiles on the floor do. So does it matter? Absolutely.
It is pretty forgiving. If you just spam it, you still land like 40% of the time. Literally, if you're not even looking, you still land it like 40% of the time. Because we also didn't want you to be like staring at the metronome when you were playing, right?
Like it was not something we wanted. So, you know, if you land some and not others, you're probably fine.
Jason (Sportskeeda): You don't want players to be trying to count a beat while they're also running and parkouring. I don't want to do it.
Pablo: We don't want to demand it. We just want to encourage it.
Q. Not too long ago, we did an interview with Megan and Rebecca, where we asked about the possibility of increased FOV during melee gameplay. When we were talking about it, an anecdote came up where you did a top-down pivot camera, so it was more like Vampire Survivors or Ikari Warriors or something. And it kind of worked, and it was hilarious.
Can you tell us a bit more about that, even if it was an experiment that led nowhere?
Pablo: Yeah, honestly, that was just a meme. It literally took me like 10 minutes to make. Generally, making a prototype generally doesn't take that long. What takes a long time is like solving all the problems around it. For example, in the idea of something that pulled further back on melee, you start running into problems with camera clipping. That's a classic one because, obviously, all of the ceiling heights that we made and all of the objects that we made are designed around the distance that the camera is at.
As soon as you push it further back, you start getting a lot of push-in-and-out as you move around because there's a lot of things that collide with it. And that tends to create a lot of motion sickness. Now, that being said, it worked totally fine on Path of Exile or on any kind of open thing where there's no ceilings, right?
So that's where you kind of run into things where it's very easy to prototype for one place, but to make it work everywhere, that's where you really start to stumble with those sorts of things.
Jason (Sportskeeda): You would have to separately design areas for that kind of melee gameplay.
Pablo: Yeah, and you can see it. You know, if you look at something like Diablo or POE or whatever, there really is no ceiling. That's what allows it to kind of work, right?
If it was like an actual space where they had a ceiling, obviously, then you start running into troubles with the camera, troubles with occlusion and whatnot. We need a ceiling because you can look up. So because of that, you kind of run into these sorts of issues.
Q. Something we saw in the preview that I'm super excited for is the Rainbow Ride mode. Very, very Mario Kart Rainbow Road. And it's probably the best minigame that's been added to 1999. And it fits the era and Warframe so well. But are there any plans to add any race-type content in the Holovania missions with the Atomicycle?
Pablo: For now, this is it. Essentially, we went a little ham with it, to be honest.…We were very excited about doing something with Ollie, you know, because we had James (Conlin) doing the voice for the Make-A-Wish.
And it was just a thing that we really wanted to make as good as we could. But it is a minigame that probably took way more time than we should have been allowed to spend on it. So yeah, this is probably as far as we're gonna go for now.
We'll see how the reception is to it, and if there is appetite for it, we might flesh out on it more. But generally, minigames… people will play them once or twice and that'll be that. And so we'll see.
Jason (Sportskeeda): I don't know. Just looking at the press reaction (during the press preview), it reminds me, and I don't know if you've played it, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Queen's Blood. I couldn't stop playing it. I put dozens of hours into deck building and just replaying, trying to get the most ridiculous numbers possible. Because I play a lot of card games. So I think it could have a similar, like a big blow up if people really get a look at it.
Pablo: I think there's like a meme that Gwent is the real game in The Witcher. So yeah, I definitely, I could see that. So yeah, I mean, if it goes similarly to how we were talking about earlier about KIM — that one, we didn't expect it to be as well-received as it was.
So, you know, similar to that, if this is super well-received, we might put more work into it.
Q. About Temporal Archimedea: are we getting some debuffs or gimmicks unique to Hollvania enemies with it? And are you also bringing something like the sticker system to the Whisper's Archimedea?
Pablo: So the Sticker system is exclusive to this one. We're not changing that. But we are adding, I think, its seven personal modifiers. Those do go back to the old one. Then there's actually 15 new deviations and 11 new risk variables. Those are just for the new ones.
Essentially, you will see a lot of different mission modifiers that you don't see on the previous one and vice versa. So they definitely feel different.
Q. Are the Technocyte Coda closing the curtain on Acolyte-type content? Or would you, in the future, consider maybe creating new types of Acolytes? …As we have some new faction types, like the Scaldra.
Pablo: We never say never, really. When someone finds a cool idea for something, that's kind of what we latch onto and then just kind of go from there. In this case Rebecca had the idea of a boy-band that turns into a virus that you fight in the future in a space stadium. I was like, what?
I don't know what sis was cooking, but she was right.
And, you know, finding those sorts of interesting ideas is what would make it. …The reason Infested Liches took so long is because we didn't just want to make out of obligation - like - oh, we got to do Infested Liches, you know. It had to be when we had a really cool idea that we were passionate about making. So will we make more in the future? If we have a cool idea, we will. So this is kind of up to that.
Q. I want to jump to weapon mods. In the last couple of years, we've seen some mods that enable status damage with the Elementalist mods, and more recently, an attempt at making precision weapons great again with some of the new 1999 weapon mods. And we've come a really long way from the boom-and-zoom meta. So do you think single target precision weapons are in a good place right now? Or do they maybe need a little more sauce?
Pablo: I don't think they ever will. By remaining true to their identity, I don't think they can ever really be as good as an AoE weapon because for the most part, power creep has gotten to the point where you can nuke most enemies with any AoE weapon and you only need the high precision ones for if there's an Eximus, or there's a particularly VIP unit, like a Nox or something that requires more damage.
So I think they have their place, but I don't think they'll ever replace something that is more… Laetum or something like that, that everyone uses because they can just nuke a bunch of enemies at once.
I think where they end up kind of having a bigger role is with cases … (such as) Quincy that can do the headshot and that turns into “AoE”, you basically kind of lean on those sorts of ideas. There's a Marked for Death and a Sniper. Those are builds that people still do. So you can still do a few things.
Do I think they're as accessible as - just point an Incarnon Torrid and plaster the whole room with clouds of death? No, and I don't think it'll ever be, just because of the nature of the game. If we ever make a game mode where there's less enemies but they're beefier, then something like precision single-target weapons would matter more. But then again, that's not quite the game right now.
Q. The pseudo-exalted rework is kind of a nerf for some players who main these frames and maintain stat-sticks, especially Khora. My Magistar Riven is going to collect some dust now, not to imply it's not a cool weapon, of course. Are these frames or pseudo-exalted abilities going to be getting any pick-me-ups to maybe offset that impending nerf?
Pablo: So it kind of depends on how you look at it. (There’s) players like you, who have managed to squeeze out every ounce of damage that Khora's One (Whipclaw) can do. The overwhelming majority of players, a lot of them don't even know that pseudo-exalteds are a thing.
So they don't know that stat-sticks even work because there's no surfacing of it. So, obviously, they're doing terrible because they don't know it. A lot of them do know, but they don't bother to, for example, build combo and snapshot it, which is a complicated thing for most players.
You know, a lot of them don't have the proper Arcanes or don't get the Riven or so on and so forth, right? So is there a 0.5% of the population that would do more damage before (the update) than after? Probably. But the other 99.5% will do way better. So it's one of those things that, you know, sure. I'm sorry for the Riven.
You know, literally, there's so many people (who) don't even know that stat-sticks are a thing. It just needed to change, really. It's one of those things that I think it will be way better for most players.
And the reality is like, you'll still do a bajillion damage with Khora. It'll be fine. You know, like, it'll be fine. It's not like Khora will now hit like a wet paper, you know? It'll still be super strong. Most of the things that worked before work now.
The base stats are all kind of adjusted so that they're, you know, obviously the loss of base stats from the Incarnons, we did compensate for that, so on and so forth. So there's a lot there that I don't think will be a problem. Building combo is so much easier, you don't have to do any crazy interactions to do it.
You just literally hit and that builds the combo. Yeah. Overall, I just think it's a very good change, but I totally can own the fact that for those super-elite players that have all the things, this is going to be a slight nerf, but there's nothing I can do for that. Because if I gave everyone the same power as the top Magistar Riven, then it's now crazy, right? I kind of just assume everyone had that Magistar Riven at the same time.
Jason (Sportskeeda): I mean, it's a super deep game if you want it to be. There's so much to it.
Pablo: Tell me about it. This change has been crazy. I've actually learned things I didn't know were in the game.
Q. Speaking of nerfs, how do you guys go about gauging “this is too powerful for Warframe”? As an example, the Incarnon weapons have been the top dogs of the meta for a while — and they're supposed to be end-game, so maybe that's on purpose. But part of it is also because Riven Disposition is not calculated separately for those. Still, nerfing that is a bit of a landmine. So where do you personally draw the line where, yeah, this thing has to go?
Pablo: Yeah, so basically we came up with three rules and none of them are how powerful something is.
One, can it be automated? You know, is this something that you can just put in a macro and the game just plays itself? If so, then that has to go.
Two, does it make players feel dumb if they're not using it? Basically, it's so good that if you're not using it, you're just playing wrong. If you got to that point, then… that's a problem. You gotta change it. And that is an approach from two sides. One is how much does the game push you to optimize? So something like Eidolons, because you have to do it super fast and stuff like that, players optimize within an inch of their lives. But for most content in Warframe, there's no reason to go that crazy. Most content in Warframe, you can do with pretty much any item. And if you're choosing the most powerful item it's just because you want to. That's about it.
And then the third point is, is it disruptive to other players? So this happened with the AOE meta a few years ago when we nerfed that. Essentially, we were getting a lot of complaints from players and it was just obnoxious to play with someone creating explosions all over the place. And they just could not play because someone else was exploding.
So those are our three parameters. Obviously, there's some subjectivity within those. But that's the way we evaluate those things.
Generally, it's never because something is just “too powerful” unless that power kind of turns into “everyone has to use it now”. But really, we found that that's just more a combination of power and convenience that makes players all gravitate towards one.
An example would be back in the day when we nerfed Catchmoon. Catchmoon was literally used by 50% of players. That was… out of 50% of all the weapons, that one weapon was used. So when it's 50, you have to do something. Because it also gets boring for players when they feel like, oh, I always have to use a Catchmoon because it's so good. And that's kind of what you're trying to fix.
So yeah, that's what we do. Honestly, I mean... obviously, players will highlight any nerf we do.
But generally, if you look at our updates, it's like 200 buffs to maybe one or two nerfs. So it literally is like an overwhelming sea of improved things as much as we can.
Q. And sort of on that topic, let’s talk about Overguard, both on players and enemies. How do you feel about it? Do you think it's overpowered or maybe undertuned or just right? Where do you stand? Do you have any future plans for the mechanic?
Pablo: I think maybe we leaned a little too much on it for players now. Especially like some of the numbers, particularly with Dante, got out of control. I think the maximum that you can get there is pretty insane.
Some of the crazy numbers that you see, for example, with Rhino — I mean, he could do that before. It was just not called Overguard, but it was the same thing. So I'm a little less concerned with those.
In terms of the enemies, I do think they give an odd feeling for players where they feel like, oh, because of that, because of Overguard, CC is not effective… and things like that. Generally, I'm not super in agreement with that. I think CC is not only useful, but it is used. You go into any mission right now and play, you'll see a bunch of enemies that are set on fire, electrified, stunned, staggered, blinded. You know, there'll be CC all over the place.
So I feel like when people say like, oh, CC doesn't work. And I was like, oh, look at them. They're all slowed. They're all on fire. Enemies are CC'd pretty much all the time. So I think it's actually good that every now and then for one enemy, you have to switch how you play. And that's basically what we refer to as “peaks and valleys”. You know, you don't want the gameplay to always feel like a valley. You want the little peaks where you're like, oh, I got to switch up a little bit right now to pay attention to this other thing, right? So that is kind of the role that plays there.
Q. So... let's talk about Raids. Some of us remember the good old days of Trials, and that's never going to come back. It just isn't, as far as I can tell. But with the new face-off mode in 1999, you did kind of revisit the idea of eight-player content. Hypothetically, if you had no limits and nothing to stop you, what would be your ideal way to do eight-player endgame content in modern Warframe?
Pablo: Yeah. So for me, like the foundational problem of raid content is that you kind of want it to be challenging. And by nature of most of the population, most of the player base is very on-board with just power creep and zero nerfs, everything always goes up.
And that makes it kind of impossible to make truly challenging, finely balanced content. When you have frames that have essentially god-modes, or you have frames that can, you know, deal billions of damage, you just cannot really make very challenging content unless you do what we did back in those Trials, which was puzzle-type things, you know?
And essentially it's like, you got so much power that we just cannot even compete with our power. How about you solve this little puzzle-teaser? And he's like, well, why are you doing a brain teaser? This is not Warframe, right? Like the whole point is you should be shooting things.
So I think those two things are in a collision-course, it's just, I honestly don't know a solve. I honestly don't know a solve for that.
Yeah, that is my honest answer on that. In terms of the Trials… sometimes the people ask us like, oh, why don't you just bring those back? I mean, it makes me feel sometimes like they're trying to do a Morbius with us.
You know, it's like when they were there, a lot of people were not playing them. Like, very few people played them back when they were out.
Jason (Sportskeeda): And now that they’re gone…
Pablo: Yeah, it's like, oh, I think you're trying to do a Morbius where it's like, oh no, bring them back and we'll play it for sure this time. This time will be different. And I'm like, oh, I don't know about that.
Jason (Sportskeeda): You'd almost have to do something like in Final Fantasy XI's old days where the end-game raid boss takes like two days to beat or something in XIV where you make them do math. Like in the Final Fantasy Tactics raid, where you have to do a math problem or you die.
Pablo: The final enemy is math.
Jason (Sportskeeda): Oh, I'm screwed.
That's all the questions we had time for, and we hope we'll get the chance to talk to Pablo again later this year. Warframe's Techrot Encore update is coming to all platforms this March, alongside the 60th Warframe, Temple, and the long-awaited Infested Liches.
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