Home Gaming Digital Extremes: There’s “more work to be done” on Warframe’s newest addition Khora

Digital Extremes: There’s “more work to be done” on Warframe’s newest addition Khora

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Warframe’s big Beasts of the Sanctuary update went live a week ago on PC and with it brought a new game mode in Sanctuary Onslaught as well the game’s latest frame in Khora, a “master of beast and ensnaring her foes”. Unfortunately, it would appear that Khora is not as masterly as developers Digital Extremes may have liked. Khora was originally supposed to be the herald of the new Damage 2.5 model, but that approach was walked back when the radical proposed changes were not met with an all-around positive response from fans. She was then reworked to have a more traditional skillset, but it seems that this may have left Khora a bit… well, meh.

Just days after Khora went live, several of the most prominent members of the Warframe community posted their reactions to the new character and most of them seemed to suggest that she needed some tweaking. And Digital Extremes agrees.

Warframe’s Design Director Scott McGregor took to Twitter recently and revealed that they were “sifting through feedback over the weekend” and that there was “more work to be done on Khora”. While some are happy with her first ability, Whipclaw, there have been some criticisms levelled at Khora’s second, third, and fourth abilities  Ensnare, Call Venari, and Strangledome, respectively. While the first action of Ensnare – wrapping up an enemy in living metal – works as advertised it then takes too long to then pull in other nearby enemies, negating its crowd control effectiveness.

As currently designed, when ensnared targets are hit with Whipclaw, it dispells Ensnare dealing a bunch of damage to enemies caught in it. But if it’s taking too long actually trap enemies, then what’s the point? A suggestion was made that maybe that maybe instead of dispelling Ensnare, Whipclaw actually ramped it up to trap enemies further way/more effectively. Whipclaw itself was also a bit buggy as it sometimes worked brilliantly and other times had a terribly small hitbox and massive damage dropoff.

Venari, Khora’s metal Kavat (think space cat with attitude), is currently based on duration, i.e. she stays summoned for a certain amount of time depending on your Warframe’s duration stats. While she’s out, you can then toggle her between three different modes – attacking, disarming, and healing – but a better alternative may be to just keep her out permanently and then every time you press your third ability key it takes a little bit of energy to toggle between modes, similar to Equinox’s duality switch.

Strangledome is probably her most problematic ability at the moment though. While throwing out a dome of chains which then latch onto enemies and cause them to swing around in the air sounds and looks cool, it offers a number of issues. The ragdoll effect on the enemies make them hard to hit and finish off while in Strangledome, the “dome” itself goes all wonky on uneven landscapes, and because it’s just some chains stretched around Khora, it doesn’t help at all with an enemy shooting right through the big gaps and killing you while you’ve put it up. Unfortunately, McGregor didn’t offer anything about possible fixes for Strangledome.

He did go on to address some bugs that have been popping up in the game though, specifically Venari’s stats sometimes not being affected by Kavat mods as they should, as well players losing all their loot (including the parts needed to build Khora) when a host migration occurs during games of Sanctuary Onslaught. These bugs and more are all being worked on, with possible solutions being rolled out as soon as they can.

It’s this combo of not just listening to what their fans are saying, but then also reacting to those comments quickly (not to mention just being awesome people) that has really given me the utmost respect and admiration for the team at Digital Extremes. There’s been no official word yet on when the Beasts of the Sanctuary update will hit consoles, but when it does it’s almost guaranteed that Khora will be in a much better place than when she launched.

Last Updated: April 24, 2018

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