Stormhawkaro

Seems like player skill is a foreign term for you. Two players of different skill levels can use the exact same setup and still perform differently and pushing gear beyond its limits is where challenge begins. I defeated SP on my main account before guns got arcanes without relying on the old melee combo counter that multiplied damage on all hits and think that the "only melee works in SP" argument was just a an excuse from bad players to get weapons buffed and compensating for the melee nerf sounded good. Fwiw, i mostly used Vectis Prime since its (headshot) damage ramps up rather quickly as long as the player can keep hitting enemies with it, its innate punch through allows to kill rows of enemies per shot which can be easily maximized through positioned and that's without even mentioning warframe powers. But then DE showed usage stats where the most used weapons are AoE (and Wukong as the most used frame) which quickly explains why players claimed that guns can't deal with SP enemies (hint: the ones that can do that before gun arcanes and galvanized mods require aiming, a skill borderline forgotten in this shooter) First: care to point where did i mention a "constant defined power level"? Because i'm certain i never used "constant" only "defined" when talking about power levels and that alone makes a huge difference since "constant" is something added by yourself in yet another dishonest argument by making it look like i was talking about a stiff concept when i wasn't. Second: Even the most casual games have some degree of difficulty which relies on player skill and knowledge about the mechanics to fulfill an objective so that's just a misconception of yours. Again, that's why i never talked about a "constant defined power level" (that was your own addition) but about a "defined power ceiling" instead. A defined power ceiling can be elevated as new harder content is developed which is what pretty much most MMOs do (add expansion with harder content and also increase level caps to a point where the content becomes manageable as long as the player also posseses certain skills). The issue with warframe is the power ceiling not being defined but still way higher than the content being released by the devs. Shield gating was added a way to prevent instakills from full EHP since shields were pointless, not as an attempt to let players exploit it and become immortal. I think a full rebalance to define a power ceiling for enemies and players would have been a much better approach, it just requires a lot more of effort and the constant addition of gear and mechanics only make the task even bigger. Who is gatekeeping anything in the first place. Having no reason to go into sp lvl cap doesn't change the fact that having the power to do it means there's nothing in the game to challenge a player, shield gating builds play a role to that lack of challenge by making the player immortal for little effort (and use of an external item) so of course these would end up nerfed sooner or later. Hell, one could argue that people who defend the about to die shield gating builds do it as an attempt to gatekeep SP lvl cap only to those using this borked survival method while anyone using "lower effort builds" should stay away from "their" content while projecting their own gatekeeping on everyone who understands the current shield gating as an oversight that stayed too long and should be addressed.

Nonsense. Keeping a defined power level for all players allows devs to know player capabilities and develop content to push their limits. Tmw this is the current state of warframe and the reason why DE changed the focus towards challenging player patience by increasing the grind instead. Just some food for thought. You got everything wrong (again). The demand for challenging content comes exactly because we can already take on enemies in levels much higher than what we should be able to reach due to how out of hand is our power. It happened to different activities which where meant as some sort of challenge for players back in their day (once again, nightmare missions, sorties, arbitrations and perhaps some more) and is slowly happening to SP as well with the addition of new more powerful gear and buffs to player durability. The "never nerf, only buff" mindset from a loud chunk of the playerbase is what keeps the game unable to get any sort of challenge. What's getting fixed is the ability to use the gear wheel as a free slot to exploit the system; the change is still an overall (unneeded) buff to player survivability which is bound to make the game easier. Care to point where did i say anything that can be read as implying that "everyone should aim for level cap" and the mental gymnastics used to get from said statement to your conclusion? Sure Which implies players should/are reaching those points regularly enough that they have to worry about it. Oh, you're funny and blatantly taking quotes out of context. You claim that i was saying that everyone should aim for level cap as a benchmark and then proceed to quote a post in which lvl cap isn't even mentioned.. I never said that players should aim for levels where life bar becomes a binary value either; what i've actually said several times (and also seen others mention) is that there's certain content which we aren't supposed to reach (such as level cap) and that shield gating builds allow players to survive in that content, which only (further) proves how poorly balanced is warframe. Guess you won't even try to have an honest discussion at this point seeing how you only keep repeating yourself, using all sorts of fallacies to justify your points after these are debunked, moving goalposts, twisting what others said, and even downplaying the dumbest method of survival in the game atm even though it's so dumb that it's about to be changed.

Exactly, because players have enough power to deal with everything in the game so the only way to get a sense of challenge was waiting hours in a mission for the fun to begin. Making players stronger in terms of either durability or damage output can only lead to SP becoming the norm and eventually get us back to the point where the only way to get challenged is waiting for hours in an endurance mission but now with SP modifiers like happened before with nightmare missions, sorties, arbitrations, etc. Shield gating in its current state enables easy to reset damage immunity which is a step back in the sense of challenging players. That's the DE's view, not mine. They've said that on stream quite some times and how they usually develop new content in levels that are also accessible to new players is further proof of that. That said, the current iteration of shield gating is obviously an oversight that allows to negate all incoming damage, making enemy damage output meaningless, so of course it's gonna be fixed no matter how you hate it even if DE took far too long to fix it and you grew fond of it. Care to point where did i say anything that can be read as implying that "everyone should aim for level cap" and the mental gymnastics used to get from said statement to your conclusion?

Steel Path was added as a hard mode, buffing players will make it easier and even more if it's used as the measure stick. Just like Nightmare missions were endgame at some point before powercreep made them trivial and the same happened later to Sorties, Arbitrations, and seems to be slowly happening to SP so i wouldn't be surprised to eventually see going full cycle once again. When did asking for exploits (such as Decaying Dragon Key) to be fixed become "gatekeeping"? Trying to impose others how to play? Of course if i'm able to take down SP lvl500 enemies or whatever with my lato (extreme case) i'll see no reason to mod it in a way where it struggles in normal starmap earth. It takes less resources in terms of setup, and the "effort" you talk about is just spamming powers, something you want to be doing anyways in non-shield gating builds as well with the only difference that you're recycling energy into shields while using a free slot to downgrade your shields to reset gates faster. Because any new content isn't developed around such levels, making it trivial right on release. DE loves it when players trivialize content, you know? That's nonsense and blatantly downplaying the build since, as pointed above, shield gating builds only recycle the used energy into shields and the Dragon Key in the free slot make the process a lot easier since casting pretty much any power costing 50 energy fills shields in a game where you want to be spamming your powers and burning energy nonetheless.

I'm sure i already mentioned that -at levels high enough- enemies turn our HP bars into a binary value no matter how big it is so that 330% more health and 82.5% more armor becomes meaningless, we can still die to a stray bullet. Additional strength is meaningless if you can't survive. Yet shield gating builds can go without any sort of EHP boost since these exploit the invulnerability time from shield gates so can just slap Arcane Energize (desired in a game where you want to keep spamming powers with the added benefit of turning energy to shields) along whatever other arcane you want in the setup while all of your shards can focus on powers or utility instead, reason why that argument doesn't take flight. Because, as mentioned by someone else, the game isn't designed around high level; the devs have pointed that they want warframe to be a bite sized casual game where players can jump in and out of quickly at any time; new content they develop isn't too hard because of this reason which keeps the same line, but then people like you ask for players to be buffed around a content we aren't even meant to defeat and just happens due to the nature of endurance runs. Why would we need to become even stronger when we can not only defeat level cap enemies, but also survive against them? It's not irrelevant, it's actually a key detail since, in the end, you're "giving up the possibility to take a weaker build over a more powerful one" based on how you defined opportunity cost before jumping into the example. "Giving up a downgrade to.take a straight upgrade" doesn't sound like opportunity cost in the slightest. What the playerbase does is actually irrelevant. Exactly, something we agree with so no reason to keep builds able to go places where the devs don't want us to be able to go, this includes the counterintuitive shield gating exploit with decaying dragon key where reeucing your survivability keeps you invulnerable to damage. Exactly this: removing the enemy capability to deal damage removes risk from gameplay, turning enemies into nothing but walking crates to break and loot which become harder to open over time.

Nice! I think it's worth keeping in mind that warframes have only 10 mod slots, 2 of which are exclusive to a particular type (Aura and Exilus) so 4 mods slots is half the slots available for a build. These 4 mods also consume a minimum of 30 mod capacity (assuming 3 Umbra formas) which can go up to 60 points (extreme case assuming no umbra forma nor vazarin polarity in the frame). Then you have Shield gate build on the other hand, which uses an Aura mod (benefits the whole team, doesn't consume mod capacity but increases it instead) and a single Augur mod which can provide strength, duration or range (useful stats for any frame) on top of converting part of the energy spent into shields. To keep in mind: > You need all 3 Umbral mods to get the most out of them in these builds; a single mod from the Augur set is enough for shield gating. > All mods in the Umbral set are warframe mods; Augur set has Augur Pact, a secondary mod that allows you to use your secondary to increase energy to shields conversion and clear a mod slot in the warframe (leaving you with all 8 mods and 74 mod capacity available to play with your build) > Each umbral mod consumes 16 mod capacity unless equipped in a polarized slot, where it will consume 8 mod points instead; Augur set mods consume 9 mod points which is reduced to 5 when in a polarized slot. > Polarizing slots for the Umbral set means you're committing to a certain kind of build since there's no other warframe mods with Umbra polarity; Augur set mods have common polarities. > Umbra formas are scarce, so using them comes with its own oportunity cost; Augur set mods use common polarities so no commitment required due to how common are formas. Gloom is just too cheap to keep up for its effect and having it available as a helminth ability without any tweak makes it obnoxious; at least the helminth version should be tweaked. Not gonna comment on the matter even though locking the player into a single helminth choice for your example is making yourself a disservice since any power with 50 energy cost works for a shield gate build, there's variety of those to choose from and some frames have decent ones which can't be infused to others. You're forgetting a key detail: Shield gate builds exist because at levels high enough, player HP and Armor don't matter, so even if gloom keeps enemies slow and your HP maxed as long as you deal damage, there comes a ppikt where a single stray bullet os enough to delete a player's HP bar and making passive gameplay impossible nonetheless while with shield gating your shields get depleted, you cast a power (in a game where you want to spam powers and the borked energy economy allows you to do it) and reset the invulnerability timer anyways. Yes, you'll have less EHP, but it doesn't matter when you will spend most of the time invulnerable to damage anyways and can focus practically your whole build to maximize warframe powers instead. That said, reducing EHP to increase durability by exploiting a borked implementation of a mechanic meant to simply prevent the player from getting insta-killed is counterintuitive, even more when the item used for said purpose is an outsider with its own free slot. PS: If it was up to me, i'd have just made the key remove shield gating entirely while equipped on top of its shield reduction and call it a fix or something, idk.

This is the dumbest argument i've seen since the same can be said about pretty much any piece of gear in the game. Do you even know what does "opportunity cost" mean? We have limited mod slots, we have limited mod capacity, we have limited arcane slots, we have limited shard slots, neither of said limitations apply to the dragon key since it's equipped in the gear wheel, where we have unlimited slots which means there's no opportunity cost to it. Fwiw, i'm currently on the simulacrum, made a build using Brief Respite + an almost full Augur set (removed Accord since it increases shield and didn't equip Pact in secondary either); a single cast of any basic 25 energy power returns 77 shields; however, the key reduces shields to 75 so a single cast of any cheap power is enough to reset a full gate (for the record, a single cast of a 100 energy power adds 310 shields in this setup) With Brief Respite alone a single cast of any power costing 100 energy gives 200 shields which may not be enough to go back to reset a full gate on a frame with 300 shields, however, a single cast of any power costing 50 energy returns 100 shields which is more than enough to go back to full shields on the same frame with 300 shields after reducing them to 75 by equipping the Decaying Dragon Key which cleared 3 mod slots from compared to the previous build while at it while keeping the energy required to a manageable level and works for frames with up to 400 base shields (usually 375 on rank 30 which is reduced to 94 w/Key,) So yeah, i call nonsense in your whole point which has been taken down over and over again yet you stubbornly try to keep going by the sheer power of ignorance and stubborness.

I know, the definition includes people overestimating own knowledge in any particular matter as well (on top of inability to recognize mistakes because of said overestimation), reasons why i'm tossing it right back at you. I read that segment and instantly got a throwback to this: Not sure if you're lying in either of the quoted messages or if both are true and your Dunning Kruger reached a point in which you're dirt broke despite all of your experience in running businesses, marketing understanding, ROI, projections, etc. Sources have been cited already by other users, one of them even mentioned the prime unvault in which a big youtuber or something (Jimquisition?) made the final push to make a complaint -very similar to this one- be heard by DE and add a cosmetics only pack to it. I'm sure any player old and active enough here on forums remembers such discussion since it's probably the most notable example of DE making changes based on feedback. That said, it's really hypocritic of you to demand "actual sources" (where "actual" is a blatant attempt to move goalposts over the ones already provided) when your main point is built completely on: With all of that in mind, no wonder people are also saying you're just blindly defending DE.

Pots and kettles or something along those lines. Not sure if you lack reading comprehension, Dunning-Kruger applies perfectly to you or both: Yes, DE knows how to run the business and that's why in several occasions -already mentioned before- they ended up adding a cheaper bundle with cosmetics only due to player feedback (fun enough, most of the warframe we know today was built on player feedback during warframe's early years) The weird thing is how -despite listening to such player feedback several times already- they keep doing the same mistake of making new collections without a cheaper cosmetics bundle right from their first implementation; that's not a big deal in most stuff since pretty much everything is bound to come back at some point unless stated otherwise. And yes, once again, this bundle being both, bloated with stuff players may not want AND containing items which are stated to never come back is the main reason for the fuss about Heirloom collections.

It's simple, basic, and player response has been the same every time DE adds a new bundle without a cosmetics only option yet for some weird reason they keep doing the exact same (while saying that they listen to the community or talk about learning from past mistakes) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fun enough, DE had already tried similar things before and was always met with a similar "we want a no bloat, cosmetics only pack" response: On one hand one would expext they (DE) would do their best to avoid going through the same again. On the other hand, they may have thought "third time is the charm" expecting people to just go ahead and buy it blindly to avoid missing out on this "one time, never coming back offer"... with founders pack they've set a precedent of respecting that aspect of their marketing after all.

This could be a book example of "appeal to tradition" fallacy.

People say "cash grab" in a spiteful way simply because the product they re offering isn't worth its price which in this case gets reinforced by the addition of premium currencies (platinum and regal aya, which players may not want nor need) to inflate the price of cosmetic bundles. Yeah, they are in closure danger due to financial failure so badly that they have no choice other than holding their own convention in the headquarters, doing giveaways of multiple customized gaming devices, buying rights to use copyrighted music in their game (Nine Inch Nails - Into the Void) and do huge donations on charity events. All of that is the bare minimum for an indie dev to stay open, right? They were upfront about the "never coming back" aspect of the skins, that alone makes is a predatory practice due to abusing the "fear of missing out". Gotta love broke customers who defend anti-consumer practices by big corps. You really haven't noticed that in these 84 pages thread the complaint isn't the prove of the bundle itself, but lack of choices instead since there's no way to get the "never coming back" skins without premium currencies to inflate bundle prices. Nobody asks to get them for free and, fun enough, a cheaper bundle with the skins and no premium currencies would probably make DE earn a lot more from the overall sales than just keeping only the overpriced options. On one hand, nobody is asking to get the skins for free, just for a cheaper bundle without the premium currency inflating its value. On the other hand, it really sucks that any player with a 10 years account can miss out on the "10 years supporter" accolade while a brand new player can get it for the right price. That sounds more like:

So? Warframe may be a free game, but DE still relies on monetizing it through microtransactions to keep it going; stuff like premium currencies (Regal Aya, Platinum), supporter packs, prime access (with Prime Vault), tennogen (at least on PC) and now the Heirloom Collection are proof of it. Like it or not a "free" game with micro (and not so micro) transactions can turn out to be a lot more expensive over time than a one-time purchase. Hell, No Man's Sky is 60 USD (at normal price); that's 10 USD cheaper than the Celestial pack which is the cheapest one that includes the skins, so not even sure what's your point.

Yeah what a deal... *Laughs in buying 4300 platinum at 50USD (~€47) with a random 75% discount from login rewards*

Why would i buy an overpriced pack filled with unwanted clutter in a free game when i can get a lot more value for less money. I mean, Armored Core 6 is 60USD, cheaper than the Celestial bundle at 70USD (which is not even the most expensive bundle containing the skins) and it's a brand new game released a week ago. Seriously, what in the hell, DE.