You have no idea how excited I was when I heard Warframe had introduced a roguelite mode into the game. I was ecstatic. Then I found there was a warframe rewarded for running that mode, and I was elated. I'd check on this game every once in a while, hoping to get the same rush as I felt the first time i got my Braton Mk1 and Excal out of the tutorial, fell through a wall, struggled to find the 86'th and last guy to eliminate on an extermination mission, and hope the map marker was in the right spot for extraction. The idea of taking a random loadout, using whatever the game gives to me, try and make a cohesive build using weapons and frames I normally wouldn't, learn the intricacies of items I wouldn't use, and make decisions and choices smartly to increase my chances of success, slowly increasing in power as my enemies get tougher and tougher, and see how far I can push the limits was immediately enticing enough to reinstall and give it a whirl. That's the rush I was missing, trying to figure everything out before the game was essentially solved, because if I can't simply pick and choose the optimal choices from thousands of players datamining the game, I'd have to simply challenge myself to come up with something that works.
So I start running through the story, understand that it's basically a tutorial for this mode and take note of some changed mechanics, go through without issue, enjoying using basically a stock Mag like the old days, and finally can start my grind for the new frame.
So I go to grab a warframe, noticing I can either take it, or customize it. So of course, I select customization, and get met with mixed emotions. Those mods seem... familiar. Then I recall the build I had on a banshee prime from way back in the day, trying to make her sound quake viable (spoiler, I couldn't.). So I checked the rest. Yep - I can pick my build, or the stock build.
Then I check the "default" build on each frame. And now I'm disappointed. I was expecting the pre-selected build to take the frame and play to its strengths and weaknesses. Instead, we get a generic spread of everything gets a little. Well, this isn't too different than how I'd mod a frame way back in the day, just slap on some defenses, add strength, range, duration, and efficiency. I played hundreds of hours like that, so it can't be that bad right?
So I fire up a solo run of the Duviri experience, not wanting to slow anyone down and just take my time with the mode, reading through the wiki a few times to understand what I need to work towards to unlock the new frame. So I start running around as the drifter, collect some mats, figure out the melee combat a little more, and get a decree.
OK - So here's the roguelite part! I've got a few options to pick, unsure of what all of the options possible are, I start taking what I feel is the most effective things for fighting as a drifter. An extra hit with corrosive, lets grab that! My HP is low, healing is slow, so lets give ourselves some distance and just pick enemies off from afar.
Except with this one single augment, every enemy on the map just became trivialized. Maybe they already were, but now my amp is killing everything in 3-4 headshots, they don't move particularly fast, I can hop on a horse and run away until my healing comes back up... but OK. Maybe the drifter combat isn't really meant to be tricky, I haven't even used most of what I had to pick anyways, so lets keep going. I found a chest, did a "maze" thing, killed a few more guys, then headed into the undercroft.
And it went about as expected. The Tiberon Prime stock build was effective, but from what I remember in lower levels, any reasonably modded gun will do OK. Banshee's abilities were mostly useless for the mission, as the decrees I picked made it so everything besides the eximus died in a single shot anyways. So I click their heads a few times, they fall. Mission complete, nothing really unusual here.
So I keep going, grab 20 something decrees, and go fight Kullervo. I quickly realized I probably don't need 20 something decrees, as his three phases take about three shots. Well, looks like we can move a little faster next time.
I wrap up the main quests, hop on the orowyrm, ride it through the portal, figure out the mechanics of the fight fairly quickly, and cash in. Success! I get 6/42 required bane, so I'll need to run this eh, 7-8 more times based on the drop rates of the bane, not too bad. I can go quicker next time.
So I run it 2-3 more times, moving a little quicker each time, trying out some new weapons with the default builds, and occasionally picking a frame or weapon I've used extensively in the past, just to see how it compares.
But I couldn't really compare them, since I'd grab a few decrees before I even got the chance to use them, and most of the time they made more of a difference than a mod or two would.
Then the spiral type changes to Joy, and I remember I can't farm the frame on that mode, so I decide to try out the circuit.
Now this is what I'm really after! Endless missions, alternating mission types, random frames, weapons, bonuses picked at the end of each round, this sounds awesome! I find a frame that i've never played before, some weapons i've never used, and go to try them out, all while being rewarded with otherwise difficult or tedious things to farm normally.
Then I start to realize something. I don't have these weapons and frames because they're just awful. Then I realize something further. These weapons and frames are awful because I don't have them.
Now I start to look at the weapon mods a little more. Magazine size? Wait why isn't serration or split chamber in the V polarity slot? Well, it has most of the mods I'd use... but certainly not ideal. My warframe builds have arcanes, but the default ones don't... Shouldn’t be too big of a deal. But no adaptation, quick thinking, rage… some of those mods completely change how a frame plays… Nothing was min/maxed to take advantage of what a frame is good at, just meh everything. I didn’t even play most of my frames enough to fully min/max them, just be maybe a little specialized, and they’re all still better than the default builds.
The argument of the roguelite, being able to try new things, problem solve with whatever is given to me just fell apart. The best choices to pick are the ones I've already made, years ago. There's nothing new here, my strongest option is the one I made, not the one the game makes me pick between. I have no incentive to try a new weapon or a new frame, since its just going to be weaker than the one that I have. There was even a hope that some of the weaker weapons and frames would have stronger mods or impossible drain configurations put on them just to make them on-par with some of the higher tier choices, but after seeing everything that was certainly asking too much.
I decide to check something else, just to see if my intuition was right. I complete a few rounds of the circuit, do a Lone Story mission to unlock the steel path, and go back into the circuit with the steel path hoping I was wrong.
I wasn’t. The same, generic, awful mods on every frame, where it matters the most, even on the steel path. Now not only is the frame I built better in every case, the default ones are simply unusable, as they have no cohesive build on the frame and simply die in a matter of seconds.
So I look up a few guides to see what people’s solutions were to consistently doing the steel path circuit, since it looks like the rewards are worthwhile. And I came to two sad conclusions:
The number one result, on reddit, on how to solo the steel path circuit, is to simply ignore every random element and simply use your operator and amp to kill everything. Take every mechanic introduced, throw it out the window. Ignore everything that the game tried to do in being a roguelite.
The most popular youtube guide? It’s a 6 minute video, 5 minutes of which explains effective ways to re-roll and the 6th minute goes over some frames that are good for defense missions, as a player who made it to the steel path needs to be told what those are.
There’s so much potential in this mode, so many interesting frames and weapons in the game, so many unique modifiers that could be introduced, and the most effective solution is to ignore all of it.
So, I’ll grab my Kullervo when it’s done crafting in a few days, as I played a little more hoping I’d find something redeeming about these modes. After that, I’ll uninstall and check back in periodically, as I have been the last few years.
Here’s the suggestions I’d like to leave as I depart:
· Remove the ability to select your own mod loadout from all weapons and warframes.
· Using either community rankings, or the riven disposition, set maximum mod drain of a weapon or warframe inverse to its associated power level.
· Utilize the community to create 2-3 builds for each weapon and warframe with the above restrictions.
· Double the mod capacity for the steel path, then do the same as the above step for a set of unique builds specific to the steel path.
· Disable any operator powers not unlocked through intrinsics.
The philosophy behind these changes are simple. It’s a roguelite game mode. You bring nothing in from the rest of the game, and your power level inside of this mode is limited to this mode only. Your intrinsics give you more choices and some slight changes to increase the amount of options you have so you can make smarter and more cohesive decisions. Each weapon and frame is curated to play to its strengths, to show you what it’s really capable of. Your power level in this mode is NOT dictated by the items and builds you made outside of this mode.
Will there be balancing issues? Absolutely. However, I'll counter that point with the fact that there is currently no balance. Its either you get something good because you made it good, or you don't.
Maybe you’re reading this (and somehow managed to get this far) and think that this change would be awful. Maybe you spend weeks just going through old weapons and frames, trying to optimize them so you can use them in this mode.
Do you think it’s a good thing to have to do that? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the entire purpose of the mode? Should this mode only be fun when you get a loadout you would have used in a normal mission anyways?
I’m not saying that the only fun way to play this mode is the optimal build with the optimal frame, I was actually hoping for the opposite. With the aforementioned build philosophy, ideally every weapon and frame becomes equal in power level. We have the rest of the game to make our optimal builds, to grind out the 6th forma on our Burston Prime to try and make it worthwhile. But if the options are a B tier weapon with a C tier build, or an A tier weapon with a B tier build, I have to consciously decide to pick the objectively worse build if I want to try something new. This is counter to the point of every roguelite game that I’ve ever played. Sure, there’s some luck involved, but you try and pick the choices that make sense, and give you the biggest advantage to overcome the challenges ahead typically based on the choices you made previously.
Anyways, I feel like I wrote enough. I’ll monitor and reply to this thread for a while, but I don’t see a reason to continue playing this mode, and unfortunately that was the whole reason I came back.
-Whackhat