NinthAria
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Posts posted by NinthAria
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7 minutes ago, Angrados said:
You know, it's curious that you bring up this point, since I just got in an argument with my professor over this.
Basically, the moment that you release your story into the public eye the story is no longer yours, the canon is no longer yours, most things about the story are no longer yours--the author has the least say over what people think about their story. This, arguably, flies in the face of what you're suggesting, and frankly I have to disagree with your point. As much as I like the concept of the operator, and as much as the sentiment that they apparently don't exist is out there, I also have to look at the outrage surrounding it as quite valid. Basically, we cannot invalidate the opinions of the fanbase, as they are as much generators of the canon as the writers of the story are.
To a degree that's true. When a story gets out, there's nothing the author can do to control people's opinions. (And even if they could, they'd be foolish to do so for a lot of reasons.) I wasn't trying to say people's opinions are invalid, or that they're not allowed to like (or dislike) certain developments in the story, but that rhetoric like "the story would be better if _____ happened instead" is a matter of opinion, and a matter that can be debated endlessly at that. Such things are useful, but only if change is realistic; few authors would commit the time required to rewrite an entire story once it's shipped, and considering DE's (already somewhat slow) development cycle and the effort they've put in already, I don't see them doing any rewrites around the Operators any time soon, if ever.
That all said, feedback on the story can be useful going forward, as long as it focuses on problems with the story and not trying to write the story ourselves.
19 minutes ago, Angrados said:I think that the outrage, while justified, is somewhat disappointing. I like the concept of the Operator, and I like the changes that TWW brought with it, even if the system itself feels horribly, horribly skeletal in nature and in need of some serious work. That said, I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops, and I think that the longer that we spend dealing with the operators and bringing them to a point where they're actually usable, the more we'll get used to the concept. It's gonna take a while, though.
On this, we're in agreement.
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I just assumed she was designed from the outset to look like a war-scarred veteran. She's a berserker, after all, and it's not like she's the only person in all of existence who's been through hell. The Orokin fought a war that spanned their entire empire; I doubt they were short on tortured souls to inspire the design.
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8 hours ago, Shockwave- said:
So you look like you are disagreeing with me, then agree with me considering evagelion. That would be part of the "etc". There are lots of examples. Regardless your issue with the fact that "years ago" there were hints doesn't mean much considering those hints post date everything I mentioned, so I think I missed your point there.
My point was that this is something they've clearly been thinking about for a long time, not a snap decision they made to cater to trends. If your argument is that they're copycatting or caving to popular culture because Warframe includes a teenage protagonist and elements of a coming-of-age story, then I don't know what to tell you besides those kinds of stories are hundreds, even thousands of years old.
8 hours ago, Shockwave- said:In any case the Warframes were much better as silent question marks as to what was inside. That let everyone project what they wanted. Pigeon holing people into a prepubescent puppermaster safe in his liset was, I think, a bad choice for a game.
Whether or not it was better is a matter of opinion. Personally, I really like the whole setup, even if it went against what I thought the Tenno were originally. It added a new dimension to the Tenno that wasn't there before (namely a weakness), and in the process shed a lot of light on other elements of the universe, like what the Orokin were really like. It does also constrict head-canons. A lot, even. It's understandable that people might not like that. As I said before though, the unfortunate truth of filling in the blanks of a story is that they might get filled with things that challenge the story we wrote for ourselves, or things we just plain disagree with. But I don't know that it's any better to just leave people wondering for eternity either.
Also, I think War Within made it pretty clear that the Operator's not as safe in the Orbiter as he/she might think.
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I guess I'm just not seeing how design similarities between Valkyr Prime and Valkyr classic necessitate the latter being the actual in-character inspiration the Orokin used to design the former.
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My guess is Banshee Prime next. Weapons are harder to guess at, but I'd love to see primed versions of the Magnus and Kogake.
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9 minutes ago, Stoner74 said:
But Valkyr prime is designed from her tortured form, how is that not lore breaking?
Valkyr's a berserker. It's entirely possible she was designed to look like a battle-scarred warrior from the beginning.
Just because it looks similar to the default version doesn't mean the Orokin somehow used that as the direct inspiration.
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They're decorative ribbons, not chains.
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2 minutes ago, ultimatumcore said:
While I do feel that everything you've said here is true, I'm afraid none of it can change the opinions I have about the operator. I've tried to like them, but that only bothered me more than anything, so it seems like that design choice will always be something I hate, and I'm just advocating that. Thank you for your rather Herculean effort in trying to help.
That's entirely understandable. Even DE said there'd be a lot of people who wouldn't like it; that's the truth of any big revelation, no matter how cleverly written (or not). Best advice I can give is to turn the Operator voices off and toggle the hood on. It's not a perfect solution, now that they're pretty directly involved in the story, but it helps preserve that silent-protagonist fantasy for day-to-day playing.
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11 minutes ago, Shockwave- said:
I just wish DE hadn't caved to the prepubesent hero a la harry potter /hunger games/divergent/ maze runner/the 100, etc etc. the trope is getting played out.
Considering there were hints in the game about the nature of the Tenno years ago (as early as U14), I don't think this is something they caved on. Also, it's fairly well documented that the devs take a lot of inspiration from other games and early animes; if there's anything they're taking cues from with the Operator/Warframe relationship, it's Evangelion.
3 hours ago, ultimatumcore said:But all the animations and things are interchangeable, I can literally make Rhino walk around and blow kisses like Mirage does if I felt like it, writing a story isn't necessarily free range to entirely take away room for interpretation that people previously had.
I used to play under the belief that Operators simply provide energy that the warframes need in order to move, and that the warframes take care of the Operators and do as they say in return. This would have probably been a far better turn to take. Nobody really liked the Operators originally, and DE ignored all of us. Which kinda stings, because quite a large part of the people they ignored previously thought that their opinions mattered.
In most games where you get to create your character, they're very careful to write them in such a way so that it feels like these things are happening to your character, and you get to choose how to respond, rather than outright telling you who your character is and how they'd act. Back to the Samus thing, Samus is literally a named, voiced character, not yours, but the game developers succeed in making you feel like the way you played was yours, you could choose to use different weapons or abilities to beat the game. Here, the warframes used to belong to us, but are now, and reinforceably, no longer ours, the operator controls them, whether you like it or not, and it'll be uncomfortable for people like me for as long as that persists.
The trouble with a story that's constantly growing (especially one that grows relatively slowly, like Warframe does) is that sometimes those blank spots that we love to fill in are things that the authors just haven't gotten to yet; any attempt by the devs to fill those in is, inevitably, going to take away some of that wiggle room for us. There were a million different headcanons about who (and what) the Tenno were prior to The Second Dream--I certainly had mine. Then the mystery was solved, and those of us who filled in those blanks for ourselves--sometimes in great detail--had to adjust. Was it for the best? Hard to say. This is the paradox of mysteries: They can't stay a mystery forever, but they stop being interesting once the truth is out.
Also, I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that nobody liked the Operators when Second Dream came out. I remember pretty clearly that there was a sizable divide on the forums, with a great many people both liking and disliking them. I won't argue which side was right, because it's a matter of taste to a large extent, but I'm quite fond of the whole arrangement.
That all said, if the issue is that the warframes don't feel "yours" any more, I'd remind you that the Operator, too, is in large part your own creation as well. Even if, in-character, the choice to dress up Rhino Prime in bright pink with Titania animations is made by the Operator, what the Operator does is still dictated by you; by extension, they're still your decisions, and therefore your results.
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38 minutes ago, ultimatumcore said:
Respectable. I just kind of hate that they don't feel like they belong to the player. You can toggle the operator messages off, but there's still that kid sitting in the back of your ship, managing your focus. My friends and I used to have a joke that that kid is just the mechanic of the ship, not actually anyone of importance. I might go back to that head canon, but in the mean time, it's incredibly unfair of DE to add in this thing with no choice involved. They're telling us who our warframes are, not letting us imagine for ourselves, and that's kind of a horrible idea, considering the million different ways people can feel about something.
Its different for Samus, she's a defined character, belonging to the person who wrote her. But these warframes used to be ours, and honestly aren't anymore.
I respectfully disagree. There's a pretty good case to be made for warframes having their own (perhaps animal-like) intelligence and personalities. They don't speak, but there are other cues, like their animation sets (both poses and idle animations), the way they look, their powers, etc. Not to mention some of the stuff we've seen in things like The Second Dream or the warframe quests. Put another way: They were never completely ours, save maybe in the very early days of Warframe when every frame used the same basic animation set (and even that's debatable), but they're about as much "ours" after the establishment of the Operator as they were before. The Operator isn't the one who makes Chroma a hunter, Ivara an archer, Limbo a mathematician, and so on; they just add a new angle to the picture.
The unfortunate truth of any story you don't write, though, is that other people are going to tell you who the characters are. Even in games where you're given a lot of freedom to design "your" character, you're still exploring a possibility that somebody else designed.
Sometimes there's a lot of room for interpretation; sometimes there's not.
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Honestly the most shocking thing about this to me is that it's maxed out.
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Zero so far, because I got a Dread mod and I'm relatively happy with how it rolled.
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Make sure you've got the Pluto-Sedna junction finished. Replay Second Dream if you need to (assume that makes it in before War Within, and not at the same time) so you've got everything fresh in your memory. Trick out your Operator and your warframe of choice so they look good in all the cutscenes. Make sure you've got some good anti-Grineer weapons/mods handy. Brush up on your Archwing skills a little. Make sure the music is on and high enough to be audible. Ditto for voices. Endo/credit farming for riven mods wouldn't be a bad idea but they're surprisingly cheap to level up, so don't sweat it too much.
Perhaps most importantly, make sure you've got an uninterrupted block of time to play it in--not just because it's a hell of a ride, but also because there's a point where you're locked in and have to finish the quest before you can go back to anything else.
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I've still got a few more to go, but I like them a lot. Interesting to get a glimpse into what Cephalons really are, and getting to know more about the Orokin era is always cool.
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Always nice to hear the insight behind dev choices. Keep doing what you guys do.
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I've loved Teshin since he appeared in Natah. It was nice to see more of him, and to learn more about him. Also really enjoyed seeing the Operator interact with other characters on a meaningful level. There's a little bit of cliche teenage rebellion in the whole "Don't treat me like a child!" thing early on, but it's played somewhat appropriately (children or not, Tenno are pretty badass) and they don't harp on it too much. Also loved seeing the Tenno try and square with Lotus on all the stuff she's omitted, or outright lied about. More than that, I loved seeing some of the details of the world filled in, like how the Orokin achieved "immortality," or what actually went down on the Zariman Ten-Zero.
Also, seeing the warframe burst through the glass at the end of the quest was awesome. I had hoped from the moment it fell down there that that would happen, and I was not disappointed in the slightest.
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13 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:
But even then, why use it over your Warframe? Why use your Warframe over it? It takes you out of normal gameplay just to do more damage in a different way?
Those are, unfortunately (for me), questions better answered by someone with a better grasp of game design and balance than me. It's a tricky act to make both of them useful without one overshadowing the other, at least to the point of making it a non-choice. (As the center of the gameplay experience, warframe gameplay is probably going to overshadow Operator gameplay to a certain degree.) I don't really have any ideas on that front, but I think it has the potential to be really exciting if Operator powers could be made relevant to more parts of the game.
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Would be nice if the Operator's health and damage scaled somehow. I keep thinking back to the end of The Second Dream, and how amazing the Operator's Void laser felt, being able to just melt through Sentients like they were made of twigs.
I loved the hell out of the quest, but that's what the Operator powers (both the new stuff and focus) should feel like.
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Tangentially related to the quest:
SpoilerAfter finishing the quest and gaining the ability to walk around the Orbiter as your Operator, I noticed something terrible while interacting with the incubator segment: You can't "interact" with kubrows as the Operator. It's a little thing, I know, but come on! What cruelty is this that the Tenno aren't allowed to play with their faithful space dog companions?
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Another, more minor issue:
SpoilerAfter finishing the quest, moving around the ship/Orbiter as the Operator nulls your sigil color selection. It shows up fine if you visit the Transference room while controlling the warframe, but once you switch to the Operator the sigil returns to its default coloring.
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Having some trouble with the riven mod I got at the end of the quest. I did the challenge to identify it, but it's still unequippable, even though my mastery rank is more than high enough (19 versus the 10 required for the mod).
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Games take inspiration from other games. And sometimes books. Movies. Real life. Whatever you can think of.
I mean hell, watch some of Evangelion and tell me you don't see some of it in The Second Dream. Warframe's external inspirations are well documented at this point.
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Chilling Reload is excellent on weapons like the Tigris, where you're spending a lot of time reloading. It's only 5 mod points, it offers better reload speed than other mods, and it comes with bonus cold damage to boot.
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Pretty much all of them except Collaboration can be done solo. Endurance can be a pain if you don't have some sort of health replenishment (Trinity, health restores, etc.), but it's doable.
If you're a solo player, I highly recommend the Power, Stealth, and Cunning tests, as all three of them are quick and easy to do regardless of loadout.
Design meaning of new weapon (TWW Spoilers)
in General Discussion
Posted
I believe one of the dialogue options during the Lotus/Operator conversation at the end of The Second Dream mentions that Margulis loved lotus flowers. I can't remember exactly, but I know it's mentioned somewhere along the line.