Exploderizer

Hey, this is something! The rest of em are pretty par for the course on just adding more challenge, but this sort of stuff is cool to see. Holding out hope for a couple more of these coming our way in the future.

That's not what this post is about. I'm not complaining about it being too difficult to complete, or even how difficult it is at all, just that the difficulty is added in a way that isn't interesting beyond "it's a lot". It's fine that you like it, I'm not saying this opinion isn't allowed or is wrong, but all you really said in response to "this mode could be improved somewhat, here's why and how" is "I like it, but people think it's too hard." This doesn't really provide anything to the conversation. Squabbles aren't the point of this conversation, either. I insist your time would be better spent keeping this nonsense off my thread, thanks in advance. While I appreciate everyone's subjective view of fun, and I also agree that the tuning of E/DA being for a full squad of people actually does add a layer of interest to it most of the rest of the game lacks (RIP Trials), I feel it's not enough, and personally, I find the fun in E/DA to be had in spite of the mode and modifiers, and not directly building out of how DE has implemented the challenge. My post wasn't really about how E/DA sucks and you shouldn't do it, how it's too hard and I can't complete it, or how the rewards are insufficient, because I don't think any of these things are true. Arguing about that is missing the forest for the trees, this isn't a post complaining about the mode, rather how I feel it's a bit joyless compared to its contemporaries both off-game (DRG's Deep Dives) and in-game (Duviri Circuit). I have read through and am thankful for the thoughtful comments on the thread. I understand that DRG, the game I compare this to, presents a very different game with very different balancing and scaling, but I disagree that it's so much more difficult to throw the player a bone with the modifiers in E/DA to try and make it different instead of just difficult.

Truthfully I have no qualms with the randomized loadout, I agree with others that allowing players to bring whatever they want would remove too much of the friction and challenge present in E/DA, I just think there's room for DE to remove some of that friction themselves to incentivize people to play differently other than just "hey, don't you want a shiny tau shard?" I personally don't think it would be too interesting if people just brought their best gear and trivialize the mode, but I also think the limitation should read like "look at the shiny toy, you can do more with these things in your loadout" rather than it feeling like they're smacking your hand away. It's not literally like that, but it's the closest example that comes to mind. Netracells allow you to bring anything and are trivialized by this, but it also seems like a bit of fun gameplay was let in by accident, with the Wampyri Glyph (take constant damage, kills restore health) being a good example of a mechanic that both harms and helps the player. That modifier reads more like one of the anomalies in DRG rather than the stacking hazards of Warframe's E/DA. You are genuinely being a nuisance in this thread (and from the looks of it, other threads as well) and mostly picking fights instead of contributing meaningfully. Please start your own thread and keep your epic Reddit downvote clapbacks somewhere else.

I also don't think it makes any sense to buff us to hell, I don't mean to give us +300% p str or +500 health like archon hunts or arbitrations, but I didn't want to be too granular in my post and so left it vague with "small buffs". Something like +2.5% chance to dodge if you have a chosen frame and a weapon on, upgrading to 5 and 10% if you add more chosen items to your loadout, or making energy/health pickups slightly more effective. The loadout limitations are fine, Duviri is proof that they can work, but the thing Duviri does with its decrees is it makes you look for different ways to leverage your limitations to work for you. Sometimes you get a bad streak of luck and get useless decrees, but that's not a thing that happens every time; E/DA posits the question, "what if every single reset was a bad streak?" I think it's important to reward the player not just when they're finished playing, but also as they play.

The thread has been hijacked by people being mad at each other, at DE, and at invisible people, and has not contributed anything useful to the discussion. This post isn't about whether or not you're meant to skip or do the E/DA. It's about introducing more rewarding gameplay into the mode to bring it more in line with its contemporaries, namely DRG's Deep Dives or Warframe's own Duviri Circuit. Anything past that directed at DE is a distraction and does not provide anything of substance. I really don't care about the internal politics of the decision-making of anyone involved, either player or dev, I just want the game to be more fun to play in correlation with the challenge provided. E/DA fails at this, and that's what I want to talk about.

Deep Archimedea's influences are important to what it attempts to be. At its core, it is a challenge mode where you lock your loadout and do 3 missions in a row with modifiers for challenge. Deep Rock Galactic's Deep Dives are just this, although the systems in DRG are not as deep as Warframe's. There can be modifiers on missions that serve to add challenge or change the experience, and sometimes, on a "bad" week, the missions can be more frustrating than fun, and you just end up not doing them. For Warframe's Deep Archimedea, this is every week. In the Deep Archimedea experience, various gates for the player are put up. Rewards are set behind limits that the player can choose to impose, and the Elite adds more challenge to this. Unfortunately, "challenge" is all that was considered during this. To get the "most" out of a DA, you have 3 negative modifiers each for all 3 missions, lock yourself to a random loadout, and turn on a further 4 self imposed modifiers, some of which turn off game mechanics. You can choose not to take some of these challenges for fewer rewards. What DA forgets is that the gameplay can also be a reward. Notably, Duviri also limits the player by turning off gear and locking you to a random loadout. What sets it apart, and makes not just the end, but the means rewarding, is found in the decrees. Some of the decrees also have negative modifiers, but they all serve to change the experience and alter the gameplay of the player, eventually building up such that the challenge itself is fun, and the game turns limitations into possibilities. Deep Archimedea offers no such reprieve. You put all these limits on for the rewards you want, but the way your gameplay is changed is in not having an Operator or your shields become unreliable. The reward is what happens at the end of the gameplay, and you just have to grin and bear it. You don't get any bonuses for your limited loadout, and every single modifier is weighed against you. In its contemporary, DRG's Deep Dives, not every mission has a modifier, and sometimes those modifiers can be to your benefit! The best equivalent to DRG's "Critical Weakness" modifier (do more damage on weak spots) is Warframe's "Sealed Armor" (Enemies take 90% less damage from non-weak point hits). There is little to nothing to incentivize actually enjoying the mode, just to mitigate its mechanics. Perhaps add something beneficial to the limitations, and make it so that the player gets bonuses for Individual Parameters. Weapons or Warframe can get small buffs, adding a little for every loadout piece conformed to after the first. For every "curse" selected after the first, one of the negative modifiers on a stage could become a positive modifier, such as Sealed Armor becoming more like DRG's Critical Weakness. As it stands, there's no reason to actually enjoy Deep Archimedea, just get through them.