Devstream 81 aired on October 7th, 2016, @2pm EDT

This week’s Devstream was a little more hands-on for the audience at home. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of reveals or discussion. This overview will be pretty image- and gif-heavy, but to get the full experience, you should watch the full stream here. As always, the TL;DR version is ready for you down below.

^[1]

Housekeeping

• Don’t miss the 24 hour GOTL alert after the Stream (there's two of them)!
• Baro Ki’Teer has been spotted on the Relays, with new gear and as well as last week’s wares in response to past server issues.
• This year’s Halloween Contest is live on the forums!
• The next episode of The Second Stream podcast was recorded after this Devstream.
• Console Tenno can look forward to a Hotfix that will bring the Long Shadow Tactical Alert.

Decorator Mode

Tenno who are fans of… InteriorDecorating-Frame have something to look forward to: Decorator Mode. Look forward to effortless customization of your Orbiter and your Dojo in the future.

We borrowed Vlada91’s account to demonstrate:

Deluxe Skins

Ash Deluxe Skin Model

Frost Deluxe Skin Concept Art

Chroma Deluxe Skin Concept Art

Ash Bladestorm Rework

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding this rework, but no real answers. Well, Ash fans, we have some info for you:
In order to make Bladestorm more interactive, but keep the same feel behind the animation, we’re planning on making the following changes:

• You will now Mark the enemies that will be attacked.
• Ash will attack each Marked enemy only once, but multi-tagged enemies will also be taken care of by your shadows.
• Holding 4 will allow you to Mark enemies, and energy will be consumed for each Mark (instead of a toggled drain).
• A damage buff might also be included to offset the LoS nerf.

The Gang Shows Off Shiny Things

We told you there’d be lots of reveals, right? Let’s dig in. Steve brought a lot of amazing footage with him about the new vegetation, volumetric lighting, and other tech. To spare those of you who prefer GIF-free overviews, we’ve put them in a handy album here.

(okay, we couldn’t help it for this one)
The images below showcases the different ways that visual diversity will be added to the game.

Mission Customizer

Viewers would have seen this happening live, but we’re adding a mission maker for Clan Warlords to customize their Warframe experience.

Dedicated Servers

Dedicated Servers are coming for you to soon. Currently, they are Conclave specific for all PVP game-modes. Players will be awarded Karma points for hosting the server, depending on how long other Tenno spend time in-missions using them. We've been working with a small group to test them in the wild right now, but growth is coming!

The Index

Steve’s recent Dev Workshop mentioned The Index, or Corpus Arena, which PC players can expect later this month. Want an idea of what to expect? We’ve added some sneak peeks below:

Catbrow

Grumpy Kavat is getting a facelift! We’ve been pondering the age old question of “what makes a cat cute” to take the smooshed face from Ugly to Ugly-Cute. Here’s the WIP below, and a final render will be available at a later date:

War Within

A fan asked us the following question: What sort of lessons have you guys learned about development priority since starting work on cinematic quests?
There’s no use denying we’ve shot ourselves in the foot for not making sure The War Within was all locked down before we mentioned to our fans. In a way, we’re victims of our own excitement about our ideas, and wanting to share them with you as soon as possible.
Two important points were made in the discussion during this stream:

1. The delay is from purely creative issues, and wanting to hold our work to a high standard.
2. A lot of work is being done on systems and mechanics that we’re not talking about or hyping.

The Vacuum Within + Hotfix #2

Many of you have been aware of the universal Vacuum changes that happened this week (boy, what a roller coaster ride that was), and we just wanted to show you some stats from the past 24 hours:

That’s a 15% reduction in the use of Carrier. Wow!

Other tidbits

• Shield gating is still a discussion going on behind the scenes.
• Yes, changes to Arcane Distillers (as mentioned in Devstream 78) are still in the works.
• TennoGen Round 5 picks were announced here.
• HDR support is in progress for Xbox, which will pave the way for HDR support for Warframe in the future. (including PS4 Pro)
• New blocking mechanics will be added, where attacks will be buffed the more that you block. *Will add benefits for shield weapons to make killing more effective.
• The Index will be included in the next Console Build.
• Spear Gun and Sentient Weapon will be post-War Within content.
• New stances slated for post-War Within as well.

References