"Active invulnerability rather than passive": Warframe director explains rationale behind Valkyr rework

The rework for Valkyr has caused quite a bit of a stir in Warframe, so much so that the developers had to emphasize and recontextualize their framework behind the rework. In a recent Devshorts, Warframe's Creative Director, Rebecca Ford, and Digital Extremes CEO, Steve Sinclair, sat down to explain the design decision of reworking invulnerability and address concerns among the players, stating,

"I think what the intention right now is, even if the gray bar is gone, what we are trying to achieve is active invulnerability rather than passive."

Valkyr is one of the oldest Warframes in the game, with almost 12 years under her belt. She represents the berserker-style of gameplay, where her abilities aim to maximize violence by always staying on top of enemies. Her kit includes Rip Line, which lets her close distances between her and her enemies; Warcry, which buffs her and her allies; and Paralysis, which incapacitates enemies. It also includes her ultimate skill, Hysteria, which allows Valkyr to become invincible and use her Exalted Talons to maximize damage.

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Why are Warframe players worried about the Valkyr rework, and how are developers addressing the concerns?

Valkyr now uses a dedicated stacking passive, which is literally "too angry to die" (Image via Digital Extremes)

Valkyr's Hysteria has a long history of being a broken ability, giving players a free invulnerability phase and damage bump due to how Exalted weapons work. Said power scaling meant it was bound to be reworked or scaled down sooner rather than later, given Warframe's ever-evolving state and constant introduction of balance changes to make every playstyle as relevant as possible.

In the recent Devstream 188 held at PAX East, Digital Extremes came forward with their plans to rework Hysteria into a more active ability, by removing the invulnerability but buffing all of the other aspects of the skill, such as boosting Health Leech, reducing Energy consumption, and buffing status effect negation. This was met with mixed reactions from the playerbase, who were excited for the rework but also skeptical about its viability in higher-tier content.

In the Devshorts 56, Creative Director Rebecca Ford explained the studio's decision behind the rework, stating,

"Based on extensive laboratory testing, which is contextual gameplay, taking Valkyr builds to ETA (Elite Temporal Archimedea) and EDA (Elite Deep Archimedea)."

They went on to provide further explanation, stating the general idea was to take away the "gray bar invulnerability" and replace it with a much more proactive damage mitigation obtainable through active gameplay, i.e., killing enemies.

"The gray bar is gone. But the rage meter, that is a consumed god mode, is there. And when I say god mode, I mean safe from death. So in something like EDA, as long as you're actively playing, you will build your rage meter up to be invulnerable."

The Creative Director concluded the explanation by stating that the studio fully expects there to be some growing pains with the rework, as there are with almost every significant change to well-established features, but that the developers will be actively making changes to iron out any issues.

"I don't think...it will be working perfectly day one, but it's going to be pretty close to the intention, and then it'll get tweaked."

She added that these problems can be ironed out as per the player base's general opinion. Digital Extremes has a decent track record of listening to player feedback when it comes to concerns about gameplay and balance changes.

"If we see way too many deaths in certain content that we built this for,... and if you're telling us that, no problem!"

While a lot of the feedback doesn't get translated into the active game, the developers do try to bridge the gap between player expectations and the studio's intention.

It should also be noted that Valkyr's rework includes her exalted weapons, which are her main armament while Hysteria is active, and are also getting some major buffs to their lethality. For example, the new Talons will have updated stance combos to preserve the forward momentum, and have increased damage effectiveness and guaranteed slash procs for certain attacks. So, maintaining rage and staying alive shouldn't be that big of a problem.

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