Tyreaus

This is why I've pushed for things like kill cams and easy access to weapons for mirroring (checking if a weapon behaves how it's supposed to e.g. Mios). Taking a gander at OP's video showcasing the cheating-in-progress, I've run into players I'm pretty sure aren't cheating, but who can hit me at that same rate with that same Braton. I'm experienced enough to recognize names, at least, so I can give them the benefit of the doubt in those cases. A new player doesn't have that. But one look at a kill cam, like that video, and you don't need to be a Conclave wizard to see something's awful sus—or looks natural.

To add: There's certain unspoken "rules" Conclave has to follow when it's tied to Warframe proper. For example, the roster has to pull from items in PvE, not all of which are suitable for a PvP environment—and vice versa for PvP weapons that could exist but, because they aren't in PvE, don't. Same goes for many animations. Crazy flips and such are just style points in PvE, but introduce a level of utter insanity in PvP that even old arena shooters never touch. But because it's part of Warframe, that can't be changed, even if it could be for the better. Plus, like you allude to: advertising and marketing. Warframe is largely intellectual. You win via builds, not crazy shooter skills. Conclave is the precise inverse. And the thing is, if you'd like Conclave gameplay, you'll be dissuaded by mandatory PvE. It filters in both directions. That's why I've said, so often, that PvP equipment should not require PvE engagement at all. It's not just a "no bleedover" principle: that you need to engage in PvE means you're filtering players who could enjoy PvP, but simply won't get to that point via the PvE slog they dislike.

I think a core problem is that there's no ending. If I boot up The Binding of Isaac, I know I can win. How difficult it is might vary based on items provided, but the game is so designed that, with sufficient skill, I can win with anything. If I boot up the Circuit, I can't say I can win, because there is no "winning." It's endless. There's no victory condition, other than the one I arbitrarily set. In the former, items don't determine victory, but difficulty. In the latter, there is no definition of "victory" other than what we set for ourselves—a certain round number, for example. Chances are, however, some setups aren't going to make the cut. And that means items do determine victory. It becomes "losing by RNG", a notion heavily disliked since before Liches, despite the fact "losing" in this case is arbitrary. Of course, that arbitrary notion of "victory" also explains why tolerance of randomness is varied. If your win condition is one round, most everything can cut the mustard. The RNG is just determining difficulty, as with TBoI. Make that ten rounds in Steel Path and it's a different story. That also changes how much one can tolerate "bad" setups. It's one thing to have a bothersome self-knockdown explosive setup, another for that to end the run in a loss.

This is half of it. But it misses the other half: guns and gun arcanes / stacking mods. This suggestion fixes that half, though. It allows us to go from guns to melee without suffering damage loss, as we no longer lose combo counter stacks. However, the same doesn't apply to the inverse. If we muck around with melee, even if we use Dexterity, we may lose out on galvanized mod stacks. The result ends up maintaining a focus on ranged weapons. Using ranged weapons means we can maintain combo counter and weapon arcanes / galvanized mods. If we use melee weapons, we only get half the deal. So it ends up being better to primarily use ranged options. That on top of what's mentioned regarding ranged weapons being good anywhere and melee having more limited niches. Open worlds will seldom be kind to a sword. So if we want to really mix gameplay together, we'd best look at all those "focused stacking" elements, not just the combo counter. E.g., changing out the likes of Merciless or Galvanized Diffusion to be on any kill, not just a kill with that particular weapon. The more those are unified, the more painless swapping weapons becomes. Not just ranged and melee, mind; it also bolsters swapping off an empty (AoE) primary weapon by maintaining damage stacks on the secondary.

I believe some fighting games have tried this, enacting abandonment penalties for people who quit but not those who disconnect. The result was people unplugging their ethernet cable to force disconnections and avoid penalties. As stated, the smart idea—really, the only sure-fire solution—is to fix host migrations so abandonment simply isn't as much of an issue. Even punishing players won't keep them from leaving when they have to. And, penalty or not, if host migrations are still buggered, you're still losing your stuff. Retribution does nothing to stop that.

I'd say the opposite. The main problem with incentivizing Steel Path is that it comes with expectations. Rewards have to be achievable by a really good portion of the playerbase and all that sort of jazz. You have to balance for it, because there's an expectation a vague percent of weapons can handle it. Remember the whole melee dominance fiasco that led to weapon arcanes? That came only after Steel Path. It was always there, endurance players would encounter that regularly. But Steel Path popularized it. That led to changes in the entire balance landscape. All that balance skewing makes Steel Path equivalent to—or at least tend towards—the starchart. And at that point, what's special about it? The main purpose of Steel Path as a hard mode efficacy notwithstanding and a stress test for weapons got erased. For the most part, we're back where we started. Barring, of course, the resultant power creep and all the issues that causes. Wasn't that long ago that reaching level cap was a feat reserved for old Covert Lethality. Now it's becoming a regular occurrence. That keeps up and the game won't have the upward mobility for a hard mode, or anything resembling "more difficulty".

Do you hate it when you deal 90% of the damage to an enemy, only to have someone else swoop in and take the kill, leaving you with nothing more than an empty mag or quiver? Do you absolutely suck at Conclave and get sick of landing ~200 standing per match because you can't get any kills? I-I don't, uh. I don't know anything about that. Introducing: Damage-based standing! Getting you what you finally deserve! Now, you might be asking, "Ty, how do you even say that username Why would I need damage-based standing? I get by just fine in Conclave!" Ohhoho, my good chap. This isn't a replacement for how we get standing now, but an addition! There have been plenty a-thread well at least a couple about how abysmal the grind for Conclave can be, so why take away what we have? This is meant to reward all players for their efforts in Conclave. New, old, mouse-and-keyboard, controller, steering wheel—you name it, your contributions matter. It's a straightforward idea: you do damage, you get affinity, affinity translates to standing at the end of a match. Perhaps the simplest numbers to put would be the affinity gained for a regular kill—no aerial or anti-air bonus or the like—and distribute that along a fairly "standard" 300 point (150/150) health pool. A bit large, but to err on the side of caution. If players get 1,000 affinity for a kill, that means 1,000 / 300 ~= 3-4 affinity per point of damage. From that starting point, we can adjust up or down or left or right however we see fit. This not only implements an "assist" form of standing gain, and boosts standing gain in general, it also encourages being aggressive and putting yourself out there, even if—in the absolute worst case—you're getting bodied on the regular.