[Why I Dislike the Operator]

Operators are redundant. That is a fact. There is nothing a starchild can do that a Warframe can't do better, except artificially shoehorned mechanics that force people to take DE's pet project for a walk like Kuva or Teralysts.

You wanna know what an Operator is? It's an Ivara who can only cloak, with no shields and minimal hp (unless you're in a specific focus school), with no parkour, limited to a combination of 3 primaries and 3 secondaries. That's it. Oh and I suppose you could also add horrid characterization to the list but some people relate to the stereotypical angsty emo teen angle I guess.

Combat Operators have not made them any more useful. The only thing it has made them is VIABLE. Yes, I can kill things up to level 50 pretty reliably with an amp, provided I spam cloak or perpetually hide in a snowglobe. I could ragdoll mobs with my 'melee', potentially disarm them with the right upgrades. I could void dash.

...But why? Why would I do that?

I have a Trinity that can perpetually full heal the party with infinite energy regen. I have a Rhino that can no-sell enemy CC/damage and double the party's damage. I have a Volt who can GO FAST. I have a Loki who can still go fast while cloaked and doesn't keel over because a Trooper looked at me funny. I have a prisma obex that can AoE ragdoll enemies and Jojo people. I have a Hek that can oneshot level 100 Grineer. I have dozens of frames and hundreds of weapons to choose from, many with a variety of fun gimmicks and easy customization. I can bullet jump as a frame, wall run, sprint, dash and slide across the map at several times the speed of a starchild and not take fall damage.

IN WHAT SITUATION, OUTSIDE OF SHOEHORNED FORCED MECHANICS, IS AN OPERATOR RELEVANT?

"B-B-But if you don't like it just don't play it! It doesn't hurt you!"

That is true. Or it WOULD be true, if DE doesn't keep trying to force people into using it. Plains Eidolons? Can't be killed without starchild. Energy Overflow? You have to take the starchild out for a second every few seconds now. Frame passives? Have to take the starchild out at the start of a mission. Not actually use it of course, just, you know, making sure you know the starchild's there. It's there, guys. WHY DON'T YOU LOVE IT YET?! Considering the direction DE's going, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more future content is gated behind using Operators.

And let's not forget that DE is not a large company. This isn't just making new skins or weapons, this is making a 'core mechanic' that'll occupy a very large portion of the development team for a very long period of time, and that means other things don't get developed. Balancing pass to make difficulty less just about stacking numbers and shutting down enemies, new Raids or just fixing goddamn JV, Nemesis system so clans have something to do that is NOT sitting in a single node farming a resource all day, new enemies that don't suck, etc. etc. Focus on starchilds mean other things, BETTER things, don't get made.

The sooner DE realizes Operators have no place as a core mechanic for the game, the sooner they can be designed as an optional supplement to Warframe gameplay instead of trying to be a replacement for frames with content designed around it, and the sooner more relevant content can be made.

[PoE is not for new players, yet DE insists it is]

Gameplay-wise, PoE certainly does not have a 'newb-friendly' feel to it regardless of levels. Compared to regular starmap levels:

• Very open area allowing Grineer to attack from all sides and snipe players from several hundred meters away
• Grineer air support bombarding players that also tend to be very tanky
• Bounties have multiple different objectives each requiring very long distance trekking, resulting in mission time and complexity exceeding starchart missions
• Enemies have the ability to literally spawn on top of the player via drop pods, compared to regular missions where they always spawn out of sight from a distance so players have time to react
• I'm pretty sure Tusk units have better stats than regular units too

Loot-wise, PoE ALSO has nothing to offer newbs. Almost all of its resources are exclusively used in the Plains' own separate economy, and low tier bounty rewards are worthless. Vitality? 3k credits? 2 Morphics? Newbies can get stuff like that anywhere else on the starmap, at 10 times the efficiency too WHILE ALSO getting starchart progress! It's just an excuse to inflate loot dilution for Gara farmers!

If anything, PoE was meant for bored and desperate veterans with nothing to farm, and even that target audience is getting sick of Plains already because of how miserable the time cost vs reward is!

[Let's talk about what we think the Operator should and shouldn't be]

I don't know if I should even bother with this seeing as DE has shown time and time again they no longer care for player opinions, but eh.

The problem with the Tenno/Operator/Kiddo/Potato/Starchild is that it suffers from the problem of redundancy when applied as a seperate playable character like they are now. Too weak (like they were before), and they're obsolete. Too strong, and Warframes are obsolete. Right now DE seems to simply have taken the path of having some things force people to take their pet emo teen for a walk, like Kuva or Teralysts, and that really doesn't solve the problem at all, if anything it makes it worse by making those who don't like the starchild hate it even more.

The tenno was supposed to be mysterious, important, powerful but frail. Instead, we got a whiny teenager that everyone seems to know about, is worthless in most non-gimmicky situations both in gameplay and lore, is not particularly impressive, and 'frail' is represented by a light breeze being able to make them run crying home. It's not fun, it's just a bore and intrusive to regular gameplay.

IMO the tenno should have been reserved as a super saiyan form that's immensely powerful but short-lived. A desperation attack that's only used in dire situations, sort of like the new Dark Blast ability in PSO2. To put that in context, Dark Blast is an ability that requires charging up over time and kills throughout a mission, and upon using gives the player a 1 minute super mode that can only be used once per mission, during which players have a different set of abilities from usual but can deal massive damage and change the tide of combat if used well. It does not attempt to replace normal gameplay in any way, you are not forced into it, but instead it is just another skill to be utilized when the player thinks the time is right.

Operator mode should have been a similar concept. A limited, short-time desperation mode during which you are practically a physical god. It's not anything groundbreaking, it's not some new game mode and it's not some kind of required gimmick. It's just like a more elaborate warframe ability for you to use when YOU think it's the right time instead of the game demanding of it of you, that's also satisfying to use when you do it. I doubt anyone would really complain then.

[Bounty and Incursion "rewards"]

12 minutes ago, Soribada said:

Honestly, I feel like those bounty rewards are punishing for veteran while useful for new players.

We need something in between.

It's not even useful for new players. Those mods, credits and resources? You could easily get them at ten times the efficiency just progressing through the starmap, and get actual progress too instead of just Ostron standing which is nigh worthless for content outside of the Plains. I mean really, what practical non-cosmetic items can you get from Ostron standing? Zaws I guess, which are already matched or outclassed by the vast majority of other melee weapons.

Fact of the matter is that the Plains is worthless for new players compared to starmap progression and barely worth the time of veterans who's really just there for Gara, Eidolons and mastery points.

[Add another way to get Breath of Eidolon]

There's so many easy and/or fun solutions to this problem.

1. Put it as a reward you can buy with standing, maybe in the mining shop, maybe from Quills, i dunno

2. Make Teralysts drop 2-3 per kill, it's called the Breath of Eidolon why does the acquisition have nothing to do with Eidolons?

3. Let players trade in Eidolon Shards for 2-3 breaths

4. New incursion-style minigame. At night, players can look for geysers of sentient energy on the plains, which they can interact with, causing the Lotus to drop an extactor on it ala Cryoatic farming. Works the same way, except instead of power cells it sucks shields off players for power (like Hijack), and both voms and Grineer will try to attack you while you're mining, resulting in a 2 minute 3-way battle to defend the extractor. Successful extraction grants anywhere from 3-5 Breaths.

Or just anything that would let a player reliably work towards the reward they want.

But why do that when you can make it entirely RNG with horrid odds so PLAYERS GET TO EXPERIENCE THE CONTENT MOORREEE??!! /s

[Fishing. What happened? No fun anymore.]

Yep, bait fishing has been broken ever since the patch before the weekend that supposedly extended bait duration and 'spawns piling up'. Now bait doesn't even seem to last half the hotspot, or it just plain doesn't work at all, fish seem to immediately despawn as soon as they spawn, everything is just plain broken. On top of that, fish regularly no-clipping through rocks and getting stuck there still happens with no sign of being addressed, and of course the economy of fishing itself still sucks.

Not gonna bother with anything but Lungfish until this blows over, if it ever does. Lucky for me I stocked up enough on rare fish beforehand so all my amps and zaws are built, in 2-3 days' time I'll be done with PoE and never coming back. I mean, it really doesn't have anything to offer aside from an incredibly bland landscape and Eidolons, which stopped being fun after the fifth time, as well as a 90% self-contained economy. Bait-fishing was oddly one of the more fun and satisfying parts of it... until DE broke that too.

[Rare Fishs spawn rate]

Rare fish bait seems to be either stealth-nerfed or glitched. Tried Glappid fishing, the first time i did it before patch i got 60+ with 3 bait (had booster and smeeta). This time, two baited hotspots, not a single one. Tried cuthol fishing, they spawned, but it's as if the bait duration no longer lasts even half of the hotspot's duration and i'm getting less than half of what I used to.

I'm hoping this is just a glitch because DE messed with fish spawns in the latest patch (The thing about spawns piling up, which I ASSUMED to mean the phenomena where you get a few minutes with no fish and then suddenly 3-5 of them all spawn at once, which is actually happening A LOT MORE post-patch might I add) and not a stealth nerf and it'll be fixed by next patch, because if DE actually still thinks the current grind is not time-consuming enough I'm just gonna uninstall at that point. I have other games that actually RESPECT my time, thank you very much.

[How Retention through RNG Loot is Backfiring - and Pushing Players Away]

23 minutes ago, TheBrsrkr said:

*snip*

Thus is the inherent problem of designing a game with the depth of gameplay as shallow as a puddle, isn't it? When new shinies are all there is in the game for players to work for, can you blame players for farming the hell out of it to get the new shiny? And can you blame players for wanting their time spent on something to be rewarded? It's just common sense.

At least with something like a token system, players will keep coming back every update. Under the current RNG system, when a player leaves, odds are they won't come back. You can decide which is better for the longevity of the game.

[I dislike the defense part in bounties.]

It doesn't help that all the defense objectives last like twice as long as your typical Mobile Defense node. Even when it doesn't glitch the final bounty reward is 90% not worth the time.

[[PoE] Let us fish in peace!]

This problem (and a lot of others) would be fixed if DE just nerfed the Grineers' visual range back to something reasonable. I am sick of having to stop my fishing right after throwing bait and dye because some degenerate several hundred meters away who got dropped there by a gunship after I already cleared the area happened to turn in my vague direction.

[Is it too early to call for a fishing rework]

The fishing mechanic itself is fine, but it needs a lot of anti-frustration tweaking for sure.

1. Ability to change spears via fishing gear wheel. Right now it's both annoying and disruptive to fishing, as from personal experience, changing to a weapon interrupts fish spawns and nullifies whatever bait you've thrown.

2. Ability to use Warframe abilities while holding a fishing spear. This is both for utility like Sonar or Dashwire to kicking the S#&$ out of whatever Grineer PETA members decided to ruin your fishing trip, for the same reason as tweak 1, which is that changing off a spear interrupts fish spawns and potentially negates bait.

3. Bait needs to be far more effective, and there must be clear instructions on how bait works. I mean, people keep saying that bait only works for 30 seconds, but from my experience, a bait thrown into a hotspot lasts for the entire hotspot duration, and even now no one knows what might negate bait effects or the spawn rate of baited fish. Plus, due to how RNG the effects are it's hard to tell if the bait works or not. For example, usually i have no problems getting murkrays after throwing it into a hotspot, but today for some reason the bait just refused to work despite using it the same as I always do. Was I doing something wrong? Was it a bug? Was it RNG? WHO KNOWS. And of course there's the regular completely dead periods after casting bait. Bait needs to increase spawn rate by a lot more to reduce the grind considering rare fish guts are for some reason mandatory for unrelated stuff like starchild amps. Fishing was supposed to be a side activity, NOT THE ENTIRE UPDATE.

tl;dr Good concept, bad execution and integration, but easily salvageable if DE would just stop trying to artificially pad the update for the rest of the year and shoving what was supposed to be a side activity down everyone's throats.

[Plains of Endlessgrind]

16 minutes ago, Neothel said:

Sure, they have adjusted some things. But this Time DE really went too far with the grind (especially with all that RNG and waiting Time (Eidolon Cores, Fish and Mining inside the grind). You never know which Time it is. Instead of 120 & 60 minutes they choosed 110 & 50? Why?

Much as i criticize PoE, this part I understand (and it's 100 minutes day, 50 night). They basically detached the day-night cycle from our 24 hour system, so even if someone has a very restricted time period to play each day, let's say 9pm - 10pm, the Plains will still sometimes be day and sometimes be night during that time period each day.

[Maybe I just don't get it?]

The process of fishing itself? I quite like it. Something about listening for fish, tracking it down, anticipating its movements and spearing it in feels rather satisfying for me, just the methodical nature of it. It's the same reason why I like taking the stealthy route in games where that's a thing instead of just charging in screeching. I'd totally fish even if it was entirely optional and the only thing to be gained from it are trophies and standing.

But fishing in the context of how it interacts with the rest of PoE?

HELL NO.

DE's problem is that they made fishing MANDATORY for 90% of content in PoE. And it's not even just small amounts of generic fish parts you could get from 10 minutes of fishing. Archwing? Large amount of fish oil for CONSUMABLE CHARGES when the AWs themselves are practically paper airplanes in terms of durability. Ostron rep tiers? Rank 4 and Rank 5 both need rare fish parts. Zaws? Fish parts. Operator amps? RARE fish parts.

And let's not forget how one's supposed to get rare fish parts. You have to farm the basic fish to make bait for the advanced fish which you need to farm to make bait for the rare fish, and bait doesn't even guarantee the rare fish spawns! There was never even instructions on how bait works, it took lots of player experimentation and wasted bait and time just to figure hotspots out, and even now most of the things we know about bait are still conjecture and unconfirmed! And I don't think I even have to remind anyone how it was ten times even worse than it was now when PoE was first released, the sheer disconnect between DE and the players to think that THAT release state was actually OKAY!

Most players play this game to parkour through maps slaughtering hordes of AI en masse with interesting weapons and abilities in fast pace action, not stand on a rock staring into a pond chucking spears at fish once every few minutes for hours until their eyes go blind from trying to peer past the reflective surface, just so they can get their new shiny and go back to the rest of the game that also happens to be one massive grind anyway.

tl;dr Fishing was a decent concept with decent execution that was HORRIBLY integrated with the rest of the game by enforcing it in large amounts upon all players who want access to content entirely unrelated to fishing, in a TPS horde-shooter where we play as space ninjas.

[Gara part drop rates]

1 hour ago, shinydunsparce said:

Someone bought that plat, and all DE sees is that someone bought the frame with plat. The more people who do that, the more grindy they make acquiring the frames for free. If you're so loaded with dosh and strapped for time, why didn't you just buy it in the first place? That's why you seem impatient, you tried and gave up.

^This

What some people don't seem to understand is that it doesn't matter if you're the one who paid the money or not, SOMEONE paid real money to create that plat, and when it stops circulating among players and goes into the game market, that plat is deleted and DE cashes in (figuratively speaking). It doesn't matter who paid with plat, if it's a plat sell, that means real money currency is taken out of the player community permanently and someone's going to have to pay for more. So it doesn't matter if YOU didn't pay money, a plat sale is a plat sale, and when DE sees that statistic they're gonna see they're successfully strong-arming players into forking out plat and KEEP DOING IT FOR ALL FUTURE CONTENT.

The only way to make DE dial their strong-arming tactics back down is through statistics. Less players bothering to access the gated new content, less sales, less active players at all even. It's like how people keep complaining about companies like EA shoving nickle-and-dime tactics into their games but buys the games anyway. If the company keeps getting money, if they don't see an actual change in player behavior, THEY WON'T CARE.

[Mining Type and Rep for Mining]

I agree with the point about rep gain, it would've been far better if all minerals and gems (and refined ones) can be donated for standing, just use the same system as the fish donating UI. Also increase the standing gain too, I've found absolutely no reason to donate my gems instead of keeping them for crafting considering how meager the standing reward is.

As for the whole mineral/gem distribution, while I really like the fact random minerals and gems can be found across the map so I can possibly mine any material without having to go out of my way to find them, having certain caves have particularly high concentrations of a specific mineral + gem would be great. There'll be less reliance on RNG and encourages more exploration, and since the specific resource cave won't be the only way to get that mineral/gem, it's fine to let the community figure out which cave spawns what on their own.

[Corrosive projection shouldn't affect bosses]

You know, if you're such a fan of not getting anything done you can always just solo the boss with Mk-1 braton and mote amp. No one's forcing you to be efficient, just play the game your own way and let the rest of us suffer a little less burnout.

Also, way to attention @#&*( with the title, what are you, 12?

[Two Words : Gara Neuroptics.]

Funnily enough, I got Gara Neuroptics the first time i ever did B3.

...Then consequentially used up all of my bounty luck and has never gotten another Gara part since after 20+ B1s and B2s, not even counting the times the bounties just glitch out and can't be completed, and of course for every one of those runs I got nothing but trash because 'lol new-player friendly' despite the fact those rewards would be insignificant even for a new player considering the time investment versus starmap missions.

At this point I've just accepted never getting Gara. Buying it from the market would just be letting the terrorists win and telling DE that's how they should do new content from now on to strong-arm people into forking out money. It honestly kind of goes to show that DE just isn't the company they used to be, and they're only getting worse and worse.

[Fishing+volt not supposed to work as intended]

I swear, if Volt fishing gets patched without DE allowing switching spears from the fishing gear wheel without having to switch back to weapon and THEN to another spear, I'm straight up quitting. Since fish only spawn when you have a spear equipped, having to switch spear to catch another fish right now effectively interrupts fish spawns, and I'm like 90% certain it also instantly nullifies whatever bait you've thrown. Even if that's not the case, it's still clunky as all hell to switch spears right now, it adds an unnecessary level of complexity which's only purpose seems to be giving rare fish more chances to leave and despawn, and all the extra gear wheel slots given are basically negated by having to carry 3 spears equipped at all times.

This entire update has just been a mess of horrid decisions. I can only pray DE spends the next month at least improving it and doesn't make any more bad decisions to worsen the grind, because a lot of veteran players I know have been left on a very thin line of tolerance and it's not gonna take much more before we all collectively snap.

[Eidolon Vomvalysts should die instantly]

TFW mobs have death-gating but players still don't even have shield-gating.

And then sometimes it glitches out and the vom just refuses to die no matter how many times you blast it. It's sitting there, it's at 0 hp in ghost form, I'm shooting it in the face like 5 times in a row and it's just like "lol no :)" and you have to wait for it to go solid again to re-kill it. Considering how fragile voms tend to be and not dangerous when in ghost form it's not really a problem but it's still weird and annoying.

[Please remove trash from the Cetus Reward tables]

If DE actually wanted to help new players, they would've just given them the fundamental mods from the tutorial mission, things like vitality, redirection, basic damage mods for guns etc. Newbs would still need to go get endo to grow the mods, so it's not like they'd be 'OP' off the bat. But no, instead newbs are given worthless 'broken' mods that become obsolete 10 minutes into the game, and these fundamental mods that drop everywhere and instead thrown into mission reward tables as a slap in the face for players. Ever since upgrading mods used endo instead of mod duplicates, getting more than one or two of a mod is essentially meaningless unless we're talking about ultra rare mods. In other words, players are trudging through a 10 minute bounty or multiple waves of defense just to get something completely worthless to anyone who already has the mod... which is pretty much 90+% of players over MR1.

Or how about the credit caches? Another regular starchart mission, with only one single objective, gives credits AND its own mission reward. Even CAPTURE gives you something on top of credits. A bounty with multiple objectives across an open map that can include multiple defenses lasting longer than a mobile defense panel? A 2k credit cache that players can get faster from the starchart on top of earning other stuff while they're at it. Insignificant to a new player, outright insulting to anyone else. Or how about the 'rare' resources? The rarest drop from the pool is 2 morphics? I could get more than that speedrunning a CAPTURE. The Void shoves so many CMods down my throat I'll never run out of them without a dedicated sink!

And for those who keep saying that the low tier bounties aren't meant for veterans, guess what, I'm MR23, I could solo T5, but if I want Gara without forking out cash I have to grind T1-3 bounties just for the 7% chance for a part, not even talking about the craft costs. Since the drops are 'newb-friendly' (which they really aren't), anything other than the 7% drop is literally me having wasted 10-15 minutes of my life. And the more time i waste on bounties, the more I wonder whether wasting my time on this game at all is worth it. Oh and, let's not forget the fact that once you get the component, that 7% chance drop also becomes completely worthless since you only need one, unless you sell the frame for whatever dumb reason and want it back one day, which the vast majority of players won't do.

Unfortunately, much as we whine, I know DE isn't ever going to change the drop tables to be anything acceptable. They already have a track record for putting trash drops in mission reward tables, like an inexplicable 10% chance for 15 endo on T2 defense A-rotation. 15 ENDO. LESS THAN AN ENEMY DROP FOR 5 WAVES. There is literally no logical reason to put that there besides diluting drops to artificially extend grind. So it is there, so it shall be for bounties.

[Cetus Wisps]

Wisps have specific spawn points, as others mentioned. It's not a guaranteed spawn, but at least you know approximately where to look and their spawns get reset every time you leave and reenter the plains. It's certainly annoying, but at least less luck-based than things like fishing or bounties.

Acquire a map from the wiki, bring your fastest frame (like Volt), stack loot radar mods. Go to the big lake with the geyser to the left of the gate and scope in from afar, there's multiple spawn points so odds are you'll see one wisp there to get, then race back to the right where the gigantic Eidolon river is. Run a lap around that, there's up to four spawn points along the shore, then go back to gate and reset. You should average 1 wisp per run, more if you're lucky. From there it's just a matter of time...

[Bounty progression still bugged - Particularly buggy mission types]

Bounties continue to be a pain up the rear as they regularly glitch out and do not progress to the next objective. However, from some personal experience and that of my clannies:

Sabotage and Rescue types seem to be most prone to the progress glitch where the objective is achieved but the game does not recognize it, not giving the banner stating the part is completed, Lotus not saying that the objective is complete, and the next objective not being given.

Mobile Defense (locked vault) is prone to its own bug, where the vault car does not open even after the timer runs out.

This isn't to say other objective types aren't bug-free, just stating the most problematic ones right now.

[Fishing 101 (Active Updating)]

So, now that bait bps are usable I've finally started bait-fishing, and I noticed something interesting, thought I'd share it and see if we can learn something together.

Specific scenario:

Location: 1, sea fishing

Spear: Tralok

Bait: Twilight

A lot of people keep saying that bait only lasts for 30 seconds, i.e. it stops working when it starts sinking. This seems to be FALSE. I've allowed my bait to disappear all the way without throwing any more, and I've still gotten continued Sharrac and Karkina spawns for a long time, possibly for 10 minutes afterwards. It's possible that bait effects actually last a lot longer than imagined, which means we can really save up on bait and increase efficiency.

Also peppered bait seems to be schmuck bait as it doesn't seem to do anything. At the very least, I was sea fishing (at the windmill base) with peppered bait and didn't see a single sharrac/karkina spawn.

[Tier 5 Bounties seem impossible in Solo mode]

5 minutes ago, Kiryuin-Satsuki said:

Tier 5 bounties are basically Tier 1 Sortie difficulty (level 40+ enemies).

More like T2 or even T3 sortie. The enemy levels on the plains can be deceptive, they seem to have much better stats than regular starchart enemies at their level, and that is combined with the insane range at which they can shoot you from, a very large amount of CC units (Twin Khrohkur guys being much more common than Scorpions and having both hook AND ground pound comes to mind), heavy units blending in with regular units due to similar appearances, and the fact enemies can literally spawn right on top of you via orbital drop, and ALSO the appearance of air units and turrets that are incredibly tanky at high levels, T5 bounties can easily reach T3 sortie levels of difficulty if not further.

[I'm done with fishing and PoE]

*reads patch notes*

...Huh, they actually did what I suggested. We'll still have to see whether the bait-induced fish spawn chances are acceptable now, but it's a good start.