Marthrym
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Posts posted by Marthrym
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37 minutes ago, (PS4)Carnatus said:
Well, considering this game draws inspiration from anime, the whole "child with godlike power" trope is only natural.
But even Goku eventually grows up.This game draws inspiration from Dark Sector and mangas like GUYVER. Saying Warframe draws inspiration from "anime" seems rather vague to me, it's quite the blanket statement. There's plenty of pretty much everything one can think of in anime, so I wouldn't use the whole medium as comparison material, it's far too general.
How is Goku relevant here? How are these two universes related? This doesn't seem all that relevant an argument to me. I mean comparing a Saiya-Jin to a Tenno seems like mental gymnastics more than anything as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not saying I don't like the idea of the operators "maturing" in some way, quite the opposite. I'm just more interested in a maturity that doesn't have to mean "growing up" physically and have an operator that looks like me to "identify with" them, I'm more interested in their psyche, their relation to and interactions with the Void. We also have many different frames to "identify with" too, plenty of variety there. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that most of our time is spent playing as the frames, not the operators, right? Or maybe it's because I've been playing Warframe since 2013, or maybe I'm among the players that don't need to play a character that looks like them to enjoy the experience, or that I never really felt the need to identify with or as the characters I play, be they grown men, women, alien species or emo-adolescents, on a physical level?
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53 minutes ago, Airwolfen said:
you can quite literally just shoot the helmet so it breaks. this disables the aura. the unit does not need to die with that shot
Why do you so blatantly take a very small part of a sentence in a post that specifically explains that having to put oneself in danger just to get oneself out of danger is not very smart game design? I specifically state in the same post how to achieve this in CQBs players more often than not have to purposely get within the AOE of the invisible auras, therefore neutralizing their powers, put themselves in the LoS of the enemy, thus being forcefully exposed to enemy fire, all that with no possible counter?
I don't understand people like you who just take things out of their context entirely to try and make it fit their views or arguments. It's not constructive, it's not smart, it's not helpful in any way. So why? What's the point? I mean other than trolling on the Internet of course. I'm confused.
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I prefer the "child soldier" narrative personally. It fits so much better, with the frames being a "matured" physical projection of their enormous powers, while their own physical bodies stay "juvenile" in appearance, hiding that tremendous potential for destruction. It's an awesome contrast, this apparent physical frailty masking this Godlike power that can devastate anything that gets in its path. I really don't want the operator to become a fac simile of frames. They're much better the way they are now and work much better together, at least for me.
The Void energy may have affected the Zariman's children in more ways than we know, I wouldn't be surprised (and honestly I actually hope) if the devs chose to have operators remain "childlike" in both body and mind forever, immortal and immature in some ways, with minds capable of basically "living" inside these bio-weapons that they use to channel and shape their power in many different and terrible ways. It's one of my favourite things about Warframe, how different our characters are from the vast majority of the games out there where you're either a square-jawed hunk or a buxom beauty. In Warframe you're that kid with Godlike powers, trying to (re)discover who you are and what you can do, while "innocently" having fun maiming, dismembering, etc countless faceless enemies, not able to fathom or care about the horrible, terrifying and cruel acts you commit all the time unless Space Mom shows up and tries to explain it to you. It's an interesting dynamic really, very unique to Warframe. In the end it's all up to the devs though, I'm curious to see where this is all going...
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That's one of the main reasons Warframe presents no fair challenge in my opinion. Cheap mechanics that you can only "counter" by outright eliminating the unit using them is not really what challenge should be in most cases. Scrambus and Comba units are a prime example of that problem.
If you fight in wide open spaces where you can see this kind of enemy coming and avoid said cheap mechanics, they're usually not much of a threat. If you fight in tight spaces? You're pretty much screwed. Auras are invisible and go through walls, getting a LoS often times means getting inside the aura's range and within that enemy's (and their hordes of buddies) LoS too, turning every CQB into a crapfest, and most battles end up being CQBs because of tile design. The real issue is you have no other choice but to put yourself in danger just to get a shot at getting out of that danger, crossing your fingers you get lucky. Actually don't cross your fingers, you really need them when it happens.
That's one of the problems with power fantasy games, how do you challenge players when they are so powerful? Easy ways are to crank up the numbers of enemies and their survivability and damage, or to affect the player's power advantage in different ways to even things out. In Warframe the devs unfortunately don't understand that using BOTH at the same time is not a great idea : enemies become ridiculously powerful themselves, most notably in terms of damage output, and can also outright remove our power advantage in the process instead of just dampening it, which has a devastating cumulative effect. Enemies are not only way too powerful and numerous to handle without our power advantage, but turn out to also being able to take away that power very easily and often without offering viable counters other than eliminating them, tipping the scales completely off balance.
That's Warframe in a nutshell, an all or nothing where the players either faceroll they way through throngs of enemies or risk getting insta-gibbed if only one attack manages to successfully hit them.
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Oh good, I thought it was only me! I noticed this as well, it's really annoying. +1
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I do agree that the marking system is rather wonky and unreliable. I use Bladestorm much less often than I used to because of that. Allowing it to mark targets like @ForsakenEcho suggests, or at least something approaching their suggestion, could really help Bladestorm feel a lot more practical to use.
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2 hours ago, Thaylien said:
Let me ask a question, and I'm genuinely expecting to hear a thought-out answer if you have one;
How else would you limit us then?
I ask because Focus is designed to be a limited thing, it's supposed to be slow, it's supposed to be acquired after we're used to being able to grind for anything we want in the shortest amount of time possible. You're looking at players that can max and then re-max a weapon up to five or six forma within an hour of having got it. You're already looking at players that can use the current system to get 90k and over in a single run despite the game massively limiting our Focus gain to a tiny percentage of our actual Affinity gain.
You're looking at players that know how to gain Affinity in the millions. Not all of us, no, but I'm MR25 and my daily Warframe is half an hour of Sortie, Kuva, Focus dailies, maybe Ayatan on Mondays, and then go do something silly, like stick beam weapon mods on the Panthera and watch things explode, for another half hour or so... Then I sign off and play something else because I've done everything else. I, personally, know how to farm millions of Affinity points in a single evening. Even at the rate of 1.25% gain on focus, that's hundreds of thousands of Focus points. Even without stealth multipliers or Banshee farming, I could hit the cap every single day and maybe call it an inconvenience.
How would you limit a player like me and make the system actually balanced so that players just finishing The War Within and heading back to Cetus for their My First Amp can gain Focus at a decent rate, but so that players like me, who can hunt 5 Eidolons in a trip with a public team, let alone a dedicated team, and hit the current focus cap in 15 minutes, don't blitz through the grind and finish off Focus in two weeks?
DE don't want Focus to be done quickly, they want it to be slow progression. That's the point. It's a limited gain potential for some of the most powerful effects in the game that are independent of your frames or weapons.
So if it's not Lenses on maxed-out gear making you choose how you want to progress, making you choose your builds and make sacrifices with your modding and loadouts (which is the entire rest of Warframe anyway...), if it's not something to do once you've maxed out your gear and over-forma'd it, and if it's not going to have the ability for a good player to use the system to better effect than a new player... what would you suggest?
How would you make progression through the Focus system limited in the way that DE is trying to make it... without the limitations we currently have? And how would those limits be better than what we're going to have when the cap is lifted and replaced with the 'scaling down after the current cap is reached based on how much you're grinding it' method?
Discuss ^^
Slow does not necessarily mean tedious. Slow does not mean having to jump through hoop after hoop JUST to get access to a process that itself already limits player progression with an extremely simple yet tried-and-true mechanic, like "capping". It's that simple. Plenty of games have been using this very simple lever to control player progression for decades now, without using other limiting mechanics on top of it, and have been very successful. So why does Warframe employ them? And why in their "ninjas play free" game, which I'd hope means more than just "doesn't cost money to play" but "you can play whichever way you want", do they use mechanics that also limit the player's gameplay and experience of the game by adding lenses that you bind to a specific frame/weapon and have no surefire way to get and convergence orbs that spawn pretty much whenever and wherever without the players having any control over them (there's always RNG involved, always), not only limiting progression speed but ALSO player freedom? Especially since this limitation offers nothing in return and is competely pointless, the first mechanic being perfectly suited to get the job done on its own?
Using the small minority of players that worked their way around or simply "brute forced" they way through the current system by employing very specific builds and loadouts to maximize their time/efficiency ratio as a measuring stick for the ENTIRE playerbase is extremely dangerous for the game's health in my opinion. Just because I can get 250k Focus in one or two Adaro runs with a Sleepquinox, lucky kitty and a PR'ed Orthos Prime does not mean the current Focus system is good, far from it, nor does it mean every player does, or should do what I do for that matter.
Capping progression is the least worst way to go here, because it only limits pace, nothing else. You can still play whichever way you want, with whatever gear you want, whatever mission type, etc. The total amount of Focus you need to max out every school and unbind waybounds is 40 708 513 points, so 163 days, add to that Focus pool points, which adds 12 098 299 Focus points, so 49 days. That's 52 806 812, meaning 212 days, and 10 brilliant shards (by far the easiest part), providing you reach the cap every day. And keep in mind that the "average" player probably doesn't come close to maxing out Focus every day, which makes this a much more important fact to consider than the small minority that reach the Focus cap every single day. I asked around, and the average people have been telling me they get is about 30k Focus for a day of playing. I know it's not at all an accurate measure of the actual average Focus players get every day, but just for the sake of comparison, maxing out every tree would take a whooping 1761 days for a player that gets that amount every single day. So almost 5 years. I'm ignoring Eidolon Brilliant shards here because it's unrealistic to make an accurate estimate of how much Focus we can get from that source every day. Personally, I can comfortably do 8 eidolons every night, 10 if we're very lucky with the spawns, provided my teammate is online (we hunt in pairs, not in full squads, with our current setup it only slows us down), but the thing is, I don't want to spend all my time doing that, it gets boring fast. And from what I've experienced and heard from other players that don't consider themselves "vets", they tend to fall quite a few brilliant shards short of 8 to 10 a night, and don't spend hours on end every day capturing Eidolons. They do one night, maybe two if they're really motivated, and that's it. And certainly not every time they play. That makes them 4, maybe 5 Brilliant shards a night if everything goes well for them. I don't think we can say that Brilliant shards are a viable way of bypassing the daily cap so much as a way to squeeze out just a little bit more Focus for those with the time and ability to do so.
Now I know what some of us may say, that not every player wants to max out every Focus School, and I think that's a fair argument. It's true that many players are mostly interested in getting very specific talents, mostly focusing on maxing out a single school to then farm Focus and shards for the Waybound Talents of other schools, which significantly reduces the amount of Focus needed. But it's still a hefty amount left to grind for, and don't forget the average player probably doesn't get close to maxing out their daily cap. It's still going to take a vastly more significant amount of time for them than it is going to take a "scarred veteran" to get there.
So in the end, my problem is not so much the amount of Focus we need to max out everything as it is all the pointless and unneeded added mechanics we have to deal with. We don't need lenses. We don't need convergence orbs. We just need a realistic cap, and more importantly a viable way for the average player to reach without it taking too much time or convoluted solutions that exist solely to bypass or power through the entire system. I know it sucks for vets, believe me, I'm in the same boat. What is there to do once you've reached you daily cap and done your sortie and syndicate stuff when you have pretty much every frame and weapon in the game? But that is another problem entirely, we can't blame the lack of things to do outside of the Focus system on the Focus system itself, can we? It's a larger problem that concerns only players that invest a lot of time in the game. And even with the current system it takes only between 1 and 3 Adaro runs to reach the daily cap, which makes lenses and orbs even more of a pointless, needlessly tedious added padding. The average player, which is the vast majority, doesn't share that concern. All they see is this huge, unappealing hurdle. And before someone mentions it, no, I don't consider Focus to be a thing that only veteran players should have full access to, or the ability to max out completely, or even partially, especially since it is now a requirement to be able to do certain things quite a while before a player gets near the "end" game. Nothing should be like that, other than an actual end-game content, something that Warframe lacks, but that is once again another problem entirely.
So here's my answer. We don't need anything other than that good old cap to prevent us from blowing through Focus, we just needs adjustments and fine tuning to the numbers themselves. And even if some of us do blow through Focus, keep in mind we just represent a very small amount of players, and we can only do it because we have enough experience of Warframe and time on our hands to basically do what we always do, which is bypass, or cheese, or call it whatever you want, a badly designed component of Warframe to get what we want. It's Human nature, the path of least resistance, etc. No point in struggling against it, the only viable option is to make the path enjoyable to compensate for mechanics that we have no control over, or barely any, such as capping maximum values of a certain resource that a player can get every day. Because the real problem is not the amount, but the HOW we get that amount of this or that thing that we need to get what we want. The journey is what matters the most, blahblahblah you know where I'm going here. Farming Focus should take time yes, hence the cap, there's no cheesing our way around it (farming Brilliant shards requires to have the free time to play at certain intervals and with squads, which puts reasonable restrictions on it for a majority of players IMO), which I am perfectly fine with, but it shouldn't be a tedious chore either, and we should be able to farm Focus without any restriction in the HOW we farm it. At least that's my opinion on the matter, I am well aware others think differently and want different things and experiences of the games they play.
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3 hours ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:
Kinda and then again, really not. If it's content, events etc, then yes. Absolutely.
But content actually adds to the game.
Reworks, Buffs, Nerfs, a measure to balance the game.
Cosmetics, operator cosmetics and even the room - money sinks.
But this?... that only adds something for the sake of the idea. I'd rather have them add an universal combo counter or lower the restrictions really...
I mean we got gladiator and CO allready. Might as well push it all the way.
Just because it "adds something" to the game doesn't make this something good. That's the single worst way of thinking about new content. Plenty of content adds squat to the game. Plenty of content is barely touched by the vast majority of players, not because it's too hard, grindy or whatever, but simply because no one asked for it and therefeore cares. I mean look at AW. The devs puched this so hard, they were so excited, yet most people either outright didn't care or avoid it like the plague because of how disappointed they are. Lunaro is another great example. It's just gimmicky, and while it is functional, most players don't bother with it because it's not what Warframe is for them. So again, saying that any new content is worth it simply because it "adds something" is a very bad way of thinking IMO. Think of all the time and resources spent on this content that is barely played, when they could have been spent on polishing existing content, something that Warframe sorely needs, it has for years. Personally I'd rather have no "new" content for a year in exchange for let's say... a "year of quality". You know, the thing the devs stated time and again 2015 was going to be, but then it really wasn't? Unless quality means something else in Canada, I don't know. It's like "challenge", I guess it doesn't mean the same thing there either. And I'm not even going to touch the subject of "balance" in Warframe now, no way. And yes, I get that this is a F2P, they need to release new stuff to keep getting money. But they could keep releasing weapons and cosmetics, and focus all other people resources on polishing the core mechanics of Warframe.
Also, just to come back to the subject of this thread (sorry I kinda derailed it there, my bad), I did mention that although I understand where it comes from and I do agree that melee weapons and Exalted weapons being bound by mods is not a good thing, I don't find this particular way of separating them appealing.
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The biggest offender for me is not so much the amount of grind (it's kind of a necessity in a game like Warframe) as it is the "HOW" we get focus. Lenses, orbs, shards, it's all utter garbage. This system is just plain stupid and only pushes away players by discouraging them with a thoroughly unenjoyable experience. Lenses and convergence orbs should not exist, period. Focus should be earned by simply PLAYING the game, with ANY frame and loadout, not by jumping through tedious hoops and limiting ourselves to specific frames and weapons because lenses are a thing, and having to run after convergence orbs to get pathetic amounts of focus for limited time unless we play a Sleepquinox with a "Primed Reached" Orthos Prime on Adaros or a soundquake Banshee on high level Grineer defense maps like Hydron.
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27 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:
Is it really worth having DE spend weeks coding somethig completely new just to get something for the sake of having it?...
You do realize that's pretty much what the devs have been doing more often than not for about 5 years now, right? Just saying...
I do agree that Exalted weapons can make it "impractical" to use quite a few melee weapons because they use very different builds. That being said, I'm not sure this is a good solution. It just makes the whole modding more tedious and grindy. Creating and maxing out duplicates just for the sake of separating melee and Exalted weapon builds is really not appealing to me.
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On 1/8/2018 at 3:54 AM, DroopingPuppy said:
Only Soma, Baza, Grakata, and Tenora are acceptable for that. The funny thing is these weapons are alreadly able to stack corrosive proc than slash triggered by Hunter Munitions in the first place, despite of their not that good proc rate. And, they are not that good weapon either.
None of them are able to make 100% critical either unless you are activating Argon Scope, and you should remember that crit build weapon needs other two mod slots so there is not enough place to put Argon Scope easily. Hunter Munitions procs slash by 30% if you score a critical hit, so if you score critical hit by 75% then it only procs by 22.5%. I don't think that it is a fair reward for dropping elemental mods. Why these will results so absurd damage output?
You don't need to get anywhere near 75% crit chance on a high firerate weapon to make good use of Hunter munitions though. Their firerate is enough to make up for even relatively modest proc rates. Also if you use a good corrosive build, why bother with HM in the first place? I mean the one selling point of this mod is that it bypasses armor and its ret@rded scaling at higher levels, good corrosive builds on viable weapons make short work of any armor at any level, so it's kind of a pointless... point you're making here, it's pretty much axiomatic to begin with, don't you think?
And there are other weapons that can use HM and perform better than they otherwise would, ironically not so much because it makes them good, but because it allows them to bypass one of the worst parts of a poorly thought out scaling system. Semi-automatic weapons too can benefit from HM, especially if they do a lot of damage with each shot, since HM scales directly off that damage. You don't need to trigger 10 instances of HM per second or per shot with a weapon like the Corinth for instance. A single proc nets you over 2250 damage per tick, and each pellet can trigger it. You can also use it on the Lenz, or the Argonak, or any version of the Sybaris, just to mention these weapons. That way you at least get an alternative to corrosive builds. Is it as reliable? Maybe not, but it's better than nothing.
On 1/6/2018 at 8:19 AM, Dr.Evergreen said:I think weak weapons are still weak and some strong weapons are getting stronger, regardless of dat munition. this is not a problem about a mod. DE need to invest their weapon balance now.
Yeah, so many players have been saying that for so long, even posting very detailled posts, turning into hundreds of pages long threads, with surprisingly enough pretty much everyone in these threads agreeing, all that for pretty much nothing, I think you can understand why many "older" players have bailed quite a while ago, while newer ones keep repeating the same pattern of mentioning this issue, discussing it at lenght, to then see pretty much nothing happen, at least nothing good, and finally leave in turn. And all that piles up with time. It's sad really. This game has so much potential, so many strengths, yet so many glaring flaws that don't get addressed for years if at all, and not often in good ways... It's madness, madness I tell you!
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On 1/7/2018 at 1:28 AM, DroopingPuppy said:
Honestly, I don't get it. How much 'other weapons that already were' in the game? Perhaps, Lenz would be one, but is there really anyone else?
High firerate weapons with decent crit chance can stack procs so fast you can't see enemies because they're hidden behind the damage numbers. Or a shotgun with good crit chance can see most pellets proc the slash, and since it scales of weapon damage, each proc ends up dealing several thousand points of damage with each tick. You can melt level 200 heavies in a few seconds with a Corinth for instance.
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The problem with what you're saying OP is that you use a Riven mod that specifically enhances Hunter Munitions and from there say that Hunter Munitions is broken. See the problem here? Hunter munitions itself is only powerful because it bypasses one of the most broken parts of enemy scaling : armor. It's the one and only reason slash damage in general is the only physical damage type worth anything, and can still make "quick" work of heavily armored enemies at high levels. Impact and puncture both suck majorly because they're both afflicted with gimmicky and mostly worthless effects and pay the bill when scaling goes crosseyed. Again, see the problem here?
Scaling is broken, and basically the main lever the game uses to try and challenge us (and utterly fails at it), therefore any mod, ability or whatever that can bypass even a part of it becomes "OP", especially at higher levels because it still works, while anything that doesn't hits a wall, further amplifying this impression that the forementioned "whatever" is broken. Hunter Munitions is a prime example of this sad state of the game. It gives a shot to weapons that so far weren't viable, while making other weapons that already were even more power creep material. Kinda like Riven mods now that I think about it...
Welcome to Warframe, where "balance" never was and probably never will be a thing. DEScott quite eloquently demonstrated his contempt (and sadly apparently complete lack of understanding) for the concept in the last devstream of 2017 if I recall correctly. You broke my little heart Scott...
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Impact is going to suck because of how it's going to make it a pain in the @ss to reliably target weakpoints, Puncture is going to be as worthless as it is now, and Slash is going to get nerfed to hell.
Thanks DE, nice to see you listen to your community's feedback. And then promptly do the exact opposite of what we all ask for. So basically business as usual.
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Players have been asking for the Commanders to actually BE Commanders, meaning a unit that coordinates and improves the combat capabilities of their squads, not just glorified grunts with a single broken ability that robs players from all control without offering any real counterplay other than outright killing them (so basically like every other enemy in the game...) and, "fun" fact, is NOT LoS dependant (meaning they can teleport you through closed doors and cover, even walls if they had a visual of your frame withing the past 5 seconds or so) for years. Litteraly years. They're not fun, they're not interesting, and they're certainly not challenging (nothing in this game is, unfortunately). They're just plain, basic grunts with a different helmet and color scheme, and different scaling values.
Lately we've seen a few new enemies that actually have interesting mechanics and quirks to them. DE has made progress in that area (finally...), which is a good sign. Now if only they could apply that to all the old, boring enemies, or rather to the game as a whole, it would be nice.
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I agree OP. I think an automatic mode, or something similar, would be best to avoid physical strain. It would also allow these weapons to reach their full potential, just like all the others. Everybody wins.
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They could very well "update" the older Primes and keep the first versions as free skins. Or make the updated versions free skins. It's hard to deny that the old Primes look more... bland than the newer ones, although some prefer it that way, this special "vintage" feel they have to them. I know I do. This way, everyone wins, no one has any valid reason to be upset, they get updated, more complex looks thanks to DE's accumulated experience, but the originals that some may prefer are still an option.
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I wouldn't make it a toggle with a drain personally, it tends to penalize frames a lot more than a time based power ever could. But, if I were to change the way it works, I'd just make it a plain old summon. Press 3 to summon the Metal Cat, it stays in play until it goes down or you send it away by holding the key down. The thing is killable already, we saw enemies actively target it, and we all know how companion AI tends to be brain dead, suicidal even, more often than not. So I'd make it a 75 or maybe even a 100 energy cost "fire and forget" ability, with no drain, no duration. Just an actual pet tied to an ability, that you directly command.
Or we can leave it the way it is now and wait to see how it fares once released, and if Khora's other abilities suffer too much from having to build duration to make the Metal Cat worth the trouble to begin with. If it's even worth using in the first place, no matter duration.
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Focus gain overall is garbage. Nerfing the one way to get some in a slightly less than unbearable way to hell and barely making the worst possible way slightly less terrible than it was before is the single worst possible way to go. "All" the devs need to do is make the overal experience enjoyable instead of it being an enormous grindfest that effectively locks away this part of the game for a vast majority of players because they don't have the time nor the will (or simply don't care) to spend hours on end every day doing one single solitary, painfully tedious and boring thing for wildly varrying rewards.
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5 hours ago, BeeOverlord said:
Woah woah @Marthrym why do you think I'm attacking you, I had no such intention :[
Problem with rivens is that people are still perfectly willing to pay tons and tons of platinum for them. There's no direct microtransaction system but they're still psychologically unfair. Because the system is so horrible, people end up wanting to spend money to "beat" it.
That's my reasoning for dissing rivens here, I think it's pretty justified. Either way I don't think you're wrong in anything that you've said so far ;p
Edit: I guess there's one thing I disagree on, and that's that rivens need to be RNG-filled to make money. If people had to work their asses off to make nice rivens, they'd still have huge prices, just without any of the negativity of RNG. So no, I don't think RNG is needed to make money from rivens at all. I still do agree with the rest though.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come out so angrily at you, it was more directed at Riven mods and RNG systems in general, and since I'm a short fuse moron sometimes, I go full carpet bombing instead of taking the time to "compose" myself. I went crosseyed and I apologize.
I don't want Rivens mods to be RNG based either by the way. I mean I don't want Riven mods period, they just worsen the whole "lack of balance and challenge in Warframe" issue for me, they're part of the problem, not the solution. But as far as the prices of Riven mods go, it's all on the players IMO, Riven mods make our own greedy side come out, in part due to RNG permeating them so much, yes, but also because people are... people. I guess DE is to blame for their implementation though. We didn't ask for Riven mods after all, we asked for balance and fair, fun and challenging content.
And I'm sorry again for lashing out at you like this. Why does hindsight always have to show up too late?
1 hour ago, MillbrookWest said:It's easy to villanize Andrew Wilson as the face of this whole debacle, and while i wont argue his direction led to this, at a base level, Andrew Wilson (CEO that he is) answers to the Board of Directors.
Not that i have any idea who makes up EA's board, but typically, the Board and its investors know sweet diddly about the industry they are in - You could have a guy who's expertise is in Rain-tree Logging sitting on the board of a Pharmaceutical company for example - These guys really only care about money; if $1 goes into the company, does $1.50, or $2 come out? You never want to be the guy who tells them less is coming out than is going in.
As much as the Senior staff work to the numbers, at the very top, there is nothing but numbers - and Wilson answers to these guys. If the board saw the revenue from the Ultimate Team sales and started asking questions (like "how can we get more money?"), Wilson would be obliged to act as is expected of his position.
The fact that this forum exists, as an extension of a game that survives on MTX's, shows that the model is viable. However, EA were way off the mark with how they thought the show would go down (so to speak). Wilson is probably going to bare the brunt of the furore (and indeed he should, it's his idea) but all the blame can't be placed squarely at his feet. This shows the mentality and direction of EA's top executives (all of them) and where they intend to take their gaming company (The Board typically decides on the direction a company will take). It doesn't look like the industry and its consumers want to follow, however.
That's just the thing, i'm not villanizing him. He did it all by himself. MTXs are not intrinsically bad indeed, it's how and where you use them that turns them into exploitative and devious little things like in Battlefront 2. Or, like in Warframe, a more fair, consumer-friendly business model. And personally, I am against ANY kind of MTXs in paid for games. The ONLY games where I tolerate them are games like Warframe. That's where Andrew Wilson plays a part, he's the one who screwed us all over, he opened the way for all the others by refining and standardizing this crap in the "AAA" games industry.
EA's board didn't create the "Wilson lootbox", again, he did it all by himself. Well he probably had help, but back then he was lead on games like FIFA and/or UEFA if I recall correctly, he wasn't CEO. It's precisely what got him the position. Shareholders don't care how you get them money in this industry, as long as it's legal, mostly because as you say, they have no clue how the industry they invest in works, and frankly I don't think they even care. That doesn't mean they are above reproach of course, far from it. If anything, they are just as slimy as Wilson's "business model", but the idea came from him, not them.
You know, ironically enough, I don't think the shareholders/investors ever did ask Wilson "how to get more money" because he and they always did everything they could to have "all of the money" to begin with. That's how EA works, they don't want "more money", they want "all of the money". Unfortunately, unlike Wilson, these... "people" are not public figures, they are mostly faceless, much harder to expose. But at least it's a step in the right direction, it leaves them just a little bit worried, tugging at their collars, thinking that maybe, juuust maybe, they screwed up, and it's time to change the way they run their "business". Sadly I do agree with you though, unless EA in its entirety, with all its Golden geese, ends up in jeopardy, it's highly unlikely they'll ever truly care enough to stop with this kind of exploitative business. But hey, it's still a victory, might as well enjoy it. Hopefully this warning shot and its consequences will force publishers to step back enough to make things fair enough for consumers in the future.
In the end, the only reason why this whole mess came to light in the first place is because Wilson and EA went too far, too fast, with the worst possible franchise to try this one on. Over the past 8 years, the consumers' tolerance threshold for that kind of scummy business practices has been slowly eroding, getting smaller and thinner every time some publisher went a little bit too far before swiftly backpedaling. Wilson and EA were somehow too disconnected with that reality, too unaware, or maybe simply too greedy to realize that they would just blow so far past that threshold that it would cause a truly massive backlash and attract the most unwanted of attentions. They tried their best to use the organizations they "finance", the ESA and the ESRB to say "no no no, lootboxes are not legally gambling", but unfortunately for them, and in my opinion, unfortunately for us too, several governments had to step in to call them on their bullsh!t. And now, their last line of defense, "lootboxes are not LEGALLY gambling" (emphasis on LEGALLY, that's how scummy they are) also just went right out the window when officials answered by saying "ok, they're not LEGALLY gambling, but they have similar effects on human psychology and are dangerous for kids and young adults, and ultimately for everyone". With the public opinion made aware, and more importantly angry and scared parents stirring sh!t up the world over, several law projects are either being discussed (and even at least one in the writing that I know of) right now.
But ultimately the saddest fact that we shouldn't lose sight of is that the ESA and the ESRB were originally created to prevent governments from interfering with the video game industry in a terribad way back in the day. And now, because of that very same industry, we applaud these governments for doing what a few years ago we were hoping to avoid in the first place. So yeah, F*** YOU Electronic Arts, F*** YOU Activision Blizzard, F*** YOU Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (we really shouldn't forget about these last two either, they're just as bad as EA, with for instance Bungie Activision actively trying to pull one under the rug with Destiny 2's "The Curse Of Osiris" DLC). You screwed us all with your rampant greed and you made the job a lot harder and trickier for the good developers and publishers out there, like Digital Extremes Limited themselves for instance.
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4 minutes ago, MillbrookWest said:
This just looks like a case of utter incompetency from EA's senior staff (CEO included). They were probably too into the "numbers" when they were drafting their '5-10' year plans.
Point in case, the shutting of Visceral Games, and EA's "pivot" in design.
Well, Andrew Wilson is pretty much the "father of lootboxes" in "AAA" games, so he probably just wanted real bad to push his idea even further. I mean he basically created a system that made billions for EA since 2009 I think(?) and got him the chair of CEO. All these sports games that make so much money with their card system, their "ultimate team" crap that so many people buy into, of course when he saw "STAR WARS", probably the biggest franchise out there, he just couldn't help himself, he had to call his buddies and say "Hey! MOAR MONEY!" and they all came running and now we have "Gamblefront II". EA's not the only one though, they just went too far too fast, look at WB's "Shadow of More Dollar" (Thank God for Jim sterling), and a few others in the works like UFC 3 (EA just can't stop I swear) that showed in its beta that it was apparently even worse than BFII, which is quite the feat... Hell, even Overwatch has lootboxes. The only "redeeming" thing about their lootboxes is that they don't affect gameplay on a mechanical standpoint. They still prey on gambling addictions though. And ironically Activision Blizzard hasn't made that much money out of it, they released the numbers for the game's first year and they were surpisingly "low" when it came to their lootbox sales.
EA is the serial killer of video game studios, Visceral Games is just one of many, have you seen the list of all the studios they murdered these past few years? And now they got their hands on Respawn Entertainment! Can you imagine Titanfall 3 now? The horror. THE HORROR. And Anthem with, as you mentioned, this stupid 10 year plan when the BASE of that plan isn't even out and might crash and burn, especially with what happened this year and the backlash? Dear Lotus...
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26 minutes ago, BeeOverlord said:
It's still a garbage system, and here's why:
When you get a good riven, it's RNG.
Your work isn't being rewarded, it's RNG.When you buy a good riven, you aren't paying the seller for his hard work, you're paying him for his luck with RNG.
When you farm kuva, you aren't working towards anything, you're getting tokens for a slot machine.
In fact, Riven mods, through their very existence which is literally just RNG make plenty of people angry.
Compare to the relic system.
Fight RNG by making radiant relics.
Fight RNG even harder by setting up teams with the same relics, or the same radiant relics even.
Not to mention that the numbers are weighted to begin with.
Rivens don't offer something like this, they just sit there with their potentially infinite RNG walls and laugh at your face by existing.
The point is not to define whether it is garbage or not. We ALL know it IS garbage. The point of this here thread is to discuss whether it is a form of GAMBLING or not.
RNG is an entirely different beast. An entirely different matter. And yes, it can have a huge influcence on people and if systems using microtransactions and lootboxes are built around it like we saw "AAA" publishers do these past years, they are dangerous, scummy, greedy, prey on gambling addictions and shouldn't exist. But that's not the topic of this thread. Riven mods don't have an entire microtransaction system built around them, do they now? You're veering off the topic there mate. You talk about fighting RNG, not gambling. You want to discuss that? Create or find a thread about that topic instead. Don't try to drive everyone else off the road and into a ditch.
Also did you not read the part where I mention how Riven mods are the biggest mistake the devs made this year and that they should be entirely removed? What kind of sentiment does that convey to you, that I like them? That I think they're fair? That they contribute to the game's balance or general health? I don't see how it could but if it did then let me clarify for you : I HATE Riven mods. With the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. They are an abomination in Warframe, and they rely almost entirely on a system that I hate even more, Random Number Generation. Oh and most computational methods of RNG are incapable of being anything other than weighted, they all tend to have patterns. And then of course when people "tweak" them it gets even worse. But when you see "common", "uncommon" and "rare" items thrown in the mix you get instantly that indeed, "randomness" is pretty much out the window and that yes, chances are it's going to be tedious and boring. And it sucks, yes, I agree completely. But what can they do, it's a FREEMIUM game, they needed to build some form of economy to get money, and we haven't seen any miraculous business model that makes it perfect for everyone. I hope that day comes too.
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DE's business model as a whole is far more consumer firendly than that of the so-called "AAA" industry, honestly I believe it to be one of the best out there, even for a FREEMIUM game. There are a select few long standing things here and there that DE should really take a look at like mod and relic packs, but these are really relics (wink wink) from the "old" Warframe, they're only still a thing because DE hasn't taken the time to get rid of them yet I think.
I am among the players that strongly believe Riven mods were the biggest mistake the devs made this year, and should simply be removed completely from the game, but are they "gambling"? Rerolling them is a game of chance I'd say, yes, but again, is it that scummy and dangerous form of gambling that EA/Activision/WB tried to shove down our throats? You use kuva to reroll Riven mods, not money. And you can't buy kuva, as far as I know. So I don't consider it gambling at all. As for the costs of the Riven mods themselves, it's all up to US, the players, not DE. WE create inflation, not them. It's a free market, they don't interfere with it at all. It's all on us if things go crosseyed there.
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1 hour ago, Tokens210 said:
i never had an issue with the old way with people hanging out behind my wall, it was actually the exact opposite, most veteran players that could hold their own would view it as, sweet i dont gotta sit still at this point for the next 10-20min and id never see them again they go off killing having a blast not worried about the point, newer players or weaker characters would usually hide in it as theyd go down alot and often which i didnt mind cause its all coop, if your a little under par for these enemies or got a weaker maybe support type frame, here i got you and wall them up let them spend all their ammo killing 1 enemy if they want but their included in the team still
usually if it wasnt a especially hard missions and people would hid in it id give everyone the storm and start breaking my wall, and again players who knew what i was doing would be off to the races and new players or people that didnt know what i was doing would eventually think i was trolling, venture out of the wall and see they're taking no damage and start running around killing as well as myself cause with my wall having a 55sec duration i had about a minute of killing i could do before worrying, and if it was a more difficult mission i could give everyone a smaller storm buff and id sit at the point alone if needed to man my wall while other ran around killing
(dont disagree with anything you said in particular was just stating i personally had a different experience on the wall part)
Same for me. Finally being able to do something other than 24/7 pod babysitting if we didn't have a Frost felt so good...
Especially with the "Wrecking ball formation" we had created... Now I can't have fun while my buddies still run around shredding anything that comes too close to them while I have to press 4 and wait for 8-9 seconds for the "wall" to go as far as possible to ensure it refreshes their Shatterstorm, run all the way near the outside of an intact segment, break it hoping my buddies are close enough to other intact segments for it to buff their 2 even more so that they can keep having fun, and then run back to the pod, rinse and repeat... It's tedious as f!ck... I mean it works really well now still, it's a real 3-man meatgrinder, but man is it high maintenance stuff... and a pain in the @ss for the Gara.
I am sad and salty as you can see... I just want to have fun with my mates for Lotus' sake, is that too much to ask for? I'm sorry.
Hey I've been thinking about this and... since this version of Mass Vitrify has been deemed "viable" by our dear devs, maybe we should request to have Snowglobe receive the same treatment? I mean surely, it wouldn't break it at all since it "works" with MV, right? I don't see any problem there. It's not even an ultimate, unlike MV, so... Seems fair to me! No more stacking, no more invulnerability phases! Hey it even has that mechanic that makes it explode when you use Frost's 1 on it! Just like MV only not really! It's only logical to avoid applying unfair double standards and "adjust" Snowglobe in the same way you did Mass Vitrify, isn't it?
That entire last paragraph was sarcasm, please stay away from Snowglobe forever dear devs. This is why we can't have nice things, you know? You keep breaking them and then the kids are sad and angry and throw tantrums. Basically same as that strange thing they call the "real world", except less people die. And it's a game. So not really like the real world. You know what I mean.
Maturing to Adulthood (Spoilers)
in General
Posted
I don't mean to sound like an ass, but you seem to have a very strange and limited notion of what the Manga culture is. Most shonen =/= most Manga, Manga =/= Anime. There's a reason a Shonen is called exactly that : it's a very specific genre in a very broad medium. I urge you to inform yourself on what the manga culture is, so as to avoid making such nonsensical statements as "most Shonen Manga/Anime follow the same tropes and have similar styles, so you copy one and you're really copying them all". Believe me I really want to take you seriously and see this conversation go somewhere productive, but you're not helping me or yourself here.
I never said I liked that "schtick" you seem so strangely obsessed with. I said I prefer actual character development over superficial character development, aka psychological over physical. I would rather see operators evolve on a deep and meaningful way than a surface one. Especially since the frames already represent this more physical aspect, with a quite varied roster to choose from.