(NSW)Greybones

Further Steel Path-exclusive rewards is only going to further the idea that players need to sacrifice the very variety they’re earning and playing the game for in order to keep up. Like, sure, players were already doing that even before SP and then lamenting that the game was too easy and limited because they couldn’t stop, but that was due to something other than what the game told them to do. Nowadays the game is implying that players need to go against the point of the game and shoehorn themselves into a comparative few builds and just be as unbalanced as possible because the game mode is unbalanced, and with the community furthering the narrative, that just means that once someone hits Steel Path (and even before if someone who thinks SP is endgame gets hold of a newbie), all notion of seeing an alternative side of the game gets lost and players quit because it’s either unbalanced and doesn’t make sense, or too grindy and they need to sink 30 forma into Sevagoth and they don’t even get to use the stuff they earn

What are you using, how are you building it, and where are you taking it?

I don’t think it’s odd if something else in your kit means you don’t need to mod a certain way elsewhere; it frees up spare slots or capacity or whatever for something else. Changing one piece of a loadout can mean you’re suddenly reconsidering how you’ve modded everything else for the content you’re doing

@Qriist is correct, I was talking about the recent buffs. Regarding shields before shieldgating; I remember Bombards and their stealth homing rockets (which I’ve since learned to identify and avoid), that’s the thing I was talking about as a “Rare instance of enemies one-shotting us”. Everyone else does chip damage to shields while the player moves around, which then gets recharged while someone moves around and breaks lines of sight and generally doesn’t get hit. It’s a good thing health has damage reduction, because unlike shields which recharge and present an endlessly replenishing resource, health doesn’t and once it’s gone, you’re dead. But you need to play to shield’s strengths in the first place instead of treating it like health, since they’re designed to recharge while not getting hit, which players have always struggled with the moment they decided that the best way to play was to not bother watching their movement and positioning while endlessly stunlocking enemies so that testing in the Simulacrum with enemy AI disabled does actually equate to field testing instead of there being a difference between the two Shieldgating was always a reasonable addition to the whole roster, even if it was a passive of the Shield-based frame at the start; the difficult part is figuring out how to make it so it stopped one-shots, but still leaves some risk to a player who hangs around too long instead of getting out of the dangerzone once their shields are gone. Not only does it prevent frustrating one-shots, it also serves a valuable and powerful feedback indicator and chance to react; I remember before shieldgating I would have difficulty noticing when my shields were down in the chaos of a fight, and then stick around the dangerzone or jump in for some quick in-and-out melee strikes with my valuable health left undefended and die. Pillage is whatever. It’s a helminth ability, if someone struggles to keep on top of their shields or wants to shieldtank even more or whatever interactions between kit and builds it lets a player utilise and engage with for how they want to play instead of using any other ability they could subsume, that’s fair. It’s not mandatory or anything edit: That said, much as I respect what Shieldgate brings to the table and how it can help preserve the fun, I do miss the consequence of one-shots from sources I can actively see; getting sneak attacked by a Bombard rocket from full health is one thing, not having to worry about that sniper trace or jumping straight into the rocket I can see coming is another

Complaints from players who jump headfirst into groups of enemies and start sucking on their guns while blindly swinging with melee in the hopes they’ll get the bad guys first before the bad guys have any chance to retaliate. Shields are good, I was fighting Archons with shields before their buff, but they require things like movement and positioning and not getting hit to play to their strengths, their recharging nature to protect non-recharging health. And this community struggles with anything more complicated than smacking with overtuned melee or AoE enemies who are stunlocked

And it was a reasonable mechanic to introduce, since in any game getting one-shot out if the blue is either not a great experience for any player, or it’s an extremely considered game design decision that the whole game has to support and be designed around. There are a tiny handful of scenarios in the balanced part of the game to this day where someone could get one-shot out of the blue despite how well they move and position and keep up on their situational awareness, and that’s what Shieldgating was meant to counter, not be a way for bad players to be practically invincible so long as they were quick on their casting fingers, movement and positioning and any sort of combat awareness be damned

If true, one was fighting against the players, the other gives them what they want. That causes concern, since if the majority of players were actually in charge and got what they wanted, the game would become not so much a game as an AFK simulator, and any alternatives to the contrary would be culled for not being valuable components

Come to think of it, there wasn’t a reason to run Steel Path before it came into existence, yet players were still building like it was there and wondering why there wasn’t a reason to do so. I think it was always doomed to fail as “Just an optional bit of content”, since even before it existed players were stuck in a few builds and loadouts

Mm. I love seeing newbies jumping in, but I’m always afraid they’re going to get swayed into doing what the Veterans do; it’s like “We get it, human nature and all that; how about you veterans help them not succumb to primal instinct to their own detriment and to actually enjoy the game on their own terms at their own speed using what they want to use instead of trying to dictate what they should do and ultimately end up shortcutting them to treating the game like a second job and only hanging around because of that oh-so-influential serotonin hit from obtaining a new thing that ultimately never gets used because someone convinced them it wasn’t worth using”. I was a newbie once, and was let down in the “Learn how to play the game your way” department until I actively went against what I was being told to do and discovered an actual game under the grind; I like the whole hands-off experimental discovery thing that this game does, but if someone needs to learn, I’d much rather they get their knowledge from the game hitting them over the head with basic knowledge that they can then use as they see fit instead since it doesn’t pass judgement or press someone into feeling like they need to rush. The non-SP game from the modless start makes sense; abilities make sense, mechanics make sense, gameplay makes sense, limits make sense, damage types make sense, roles make sense, how you build with consideration for what you’re equipping and what you expect from it for the content you’re doing makes sense, all of it makes so much sense if someone learns the fundamentals and actually plays around with them without fear of whether they’re being optimal or not. And then SP throws the rulebook out the window along with most options and any sense of balance in order to be the place for minmaxers to go and minmax, when the game already doesn’t need a player to sink 30 forma into Sevagoth or equip Umbral polarities on every frame or abandon the weapons or builds that someone would like to use. And if someone’s pressuring a newbie into getting into Steel Path like it’s where the game starts, then that newbie is in for a rough trip and an unsatisfying destination

Go on. The only reason any element of player interaction in shieldgate abuse (an odd interaction for sure that only got its mod because DE identified that players were making their own fun with it and, being a game designed around the notion of “Make your own fun”, it made sense they’d keep it as an option in some form) is necessary is because players haven’t figured out how to stand around invincible for an infinite amount of time without input; any element of skill is due to the lack of being able to remove it and is not desired, and it’s not even a very good example of gameplay design

Platinum Path; enemies start at level 1 million. Bigger numbers mean better fights, yeah? Veteran Validation for those who are fine with sacrificing every option until one choice stands out amongst all, and that choice needs to squash the content or it’s not worth chasing Oh, energy is constantly draining too

God I cannot help but pity any newbie who gets told that the game starts at Steel Path by a bunch of power junkie veterans. edit: In fact, if any newbies are listening right now; don’t listen to the community. They’re a shortcut towards hating the game. DE don’t realise how badly they’ve trained their monkeybrain players and put too much reliance on being taught by something other than the game, and you newbies are going to pay for it

Honestly I’m kind of not surprised that DE heard how much players love talking about Steel Path and using it as the warped ruler to determine both viability of equipment as well as validation for the player, and were like “So I hear you like Steel Path; here’s more reason to play in it”. Do I like it? No, it’s a mode that enables a handful of options and is the unimaginative player’s form of determining capability. Am I surprised? Not really, this community suffers from more power than sense and has something to prove (“blah blah Opportunity Cost something something Can’t stop human nature blah blah Meta”), and can only shoehorn themselves into the few options that let them prove it while complaining about how boring and limited the game is

Seriously, the things the communitu don’t use is like basically the whole game; it’s not like the greater community actually does anything fun or seeks out the situational cases that’s not blowing everything up and turning the game off, which lost its interest long ago. Let them stick to their whatever optimal choices they want to live in, they’re not interested in mixing anything up and I’m not interested in every mod becoming popular with the majority when the majority suffer a lack of imagination

No thanks. You stick to your whatevers, I’m fine with the situational nature of these mods and the interactions that can come about

More enemies weak to the damage types would be a start. I like the AoE of Gas; if I wanted to bring an AoE weapon to the fight, I’d do that. Just like if I wanted to have zero nuance or gameplay I’d go full Meta. Otherwise I like that, if I want, I can give an AoE element to my sniper or whatever when I give it Gas, and part of the fun in buildcrafting is making it work edit: I also don’t think we should be trying to balance for Steel Path and its bonkers armour scaling, or for whatever the Meta does, because the game is far more than just whatever the Meta is

What questions are you asking in chat about mods?

That’s a tricky one, since I’m a big proponent of the “Guide a little bit, but don’t give away too much” idea that facilitates experimentation and rewards discovery. I think the Codex does an okay job at informing players and being a reference for how to mod, but it could do with a polish and passover to make it the source of information that doesn’t give everything away, but can still guide. And also I’d like to see more lore information for scanned enemies beyond what they’re weak to and what mods they drop, expanding on the little descriptors. Oh, and what damage type they do, so that I know what I’m being hit by and how or whether I need to act on that information. Regarding hidden mod descriptions though…. personally I prefer the discovery. Not sure how to fix it while keeping it appropriately vague? You can bypass it by linking in chat and clicking, but I like that some things are kept in the dark with a bit of guidance, since the mods do show where we can get them from even if it doesn’t say what they do. edit: 🤔 Maybe the descriptors could be vague enough that it conveys the idea behind the mod, without going into the nitty gritty

Haha. The worst part is that the more they stress over going faster, the deeper they sink into the mindset and the more justified they are the faster they go, since there’s always little tips and tricks to try and speed things along. An excellent bit of spiralling out of control

I’ve got like 4 Umbral forma kicking around and gathering dust… I could take that mod off your hands if you can’t stomach removing the polarity that’s always matched a handful of mods

That’s right. Humans are kind of dumbasses when it comes to not letting their lizard brains take charge; it’s why predatory tactics work, it’s why “Given the chance, players will optimise the fun out of the game” isn’t a rule about how to design games, but is instead a lament and a warning to any game designers that your players don’t want to let the game entertain them, they want to ruin the experience for themselves, and you as a game designer are going to have to figure out how to stop them from taking the strengths of some games and turning them into problems, which will have an impact on the gameplay design as a whole (hello, timegates). Humans need to be babysat, told how to play a game and given one clear option cleverly disguised as an illusion of choice, where there should be trust that there’s a thinking brain behind the keyboard capable of making judgement calls on whether they’re harming their own experience, but in reality it’s a blob of primordial instinct that only knows how to self destruct

Haha. Don’t let a few posts get you down, you’re very much in good company in the land of players whose efforts can be defeated by turning off damage numbers in the interface. Like I said, I think it’d be a popular addition, and will incentivise (they’re big on incentivising, so long as it leads to bigger numbers and easier grind) chasing things like g-rolls and narrowing the amount of options, which can only be a good thing for the discerning player

I’m pretty sure you missed the point of my “Have you tried something else”. I even responded to OP with clarification when they asked.

Do you want suggestions on what you can do if you want to get more out of Warframe?

That’s the point of the game; you don’t need any of this extra stuff once you can do it all at least once, but it can be pretty fun to play using the stuff that you’ve earned while earning more stuff to use. If you want to do whatever Minecraft lets you do, do that; if you want to do whatever Warframe lets you do, do that. 🤔 What did you get into Warframe for in the first place?