UilliamNebel

Fair, I am just that annoyed with them and it comes through in the post. Insurmountable barriers? No, but also not content worth going through all the time and effort grinding to get all the items needed to make them less of a pure time sink nuisance as well for a solo player that has no interest in them.

Mostly intercept, it serves no purpose, none, but to force many solo players to need to rando up. And when they cannot rando up, beg and plead through ingame or Discord for a squad to do the node everyone else only did because they were clearing the Starchart and never went back to ever. These would be greatly fun missions, with a lot of potential in the context of 'clan missions', as a form of content to get people in a clan or alliance, and way to learn game mechanics from vets and the like. But just dropped on the Starchart, no, that is brain dead design, and just an annoyance. Wanna have a way to heard people toward grouping DE? This ain't it, this is dis-incentivizing. Make them clan focused, node alternate missions, that incentivize people to squad up and do. Starchart 'vanilla' should remain a gradual climb, learning experience, focused on the solo player, farmer, grinder, and 'I only have an hour or two to play most days' disposable income adult male with two kids that is your key freaking critical demographic. This isn't a big ask, this is not a hard technical challenge, this isn't asking for a rift or parallel version of the game that will 'solo silo' the player base. This is the accepting of reality that MMO designers seem to be wildly, like delusionally blind to, 'Hell is other people' and forced grouping in a game is the last circle of it. Stop, it ain't gonna happen, every other place this is tried, fails and just leaves 'oh great, forced rando grouping' distaste in player's mouths. Take a commonsense approach here, and accept that people work like people, and need incentives to do things, and that as artist, engineers, and designers, no human being who is or has ever existed is so clever as to crack the nut of making them conform to developer fiat or 'vision', I am begging you here, like someone trying to get an alcoholic to exercise a minimal amount of honest self-reflection as they go to take a drink, and accept that this is a bad design element that can be easily undone, retuned, and made a net positive if you just aren't lazy about it or stick to some 'truism' that Jody in some made up sounding pseudo consumer research think tank sold your industry on.

I think, getting a 13th now, I am the unluckiest WF player ever, or the RNG is that crap. Been cracking Lith B11 relics, and ready to say they do not drop at the odds stated, as I have more Knell Prime BPs than I'll ever use. But not a one, despite bringing to radiant, giving anything other than the common items.

I've bothered to upgrade to the highest level about twelve times, and each time got a lowest tier item from the relic. So I just do not bother with it anymore, just RNGesus rabbit hole as it is designed now to an absurd degree. So, par for the DE course. Please, just let us pick a specific item in a relic to work toward, with even minuscule bumps of about 3% in percentage for with upgrade levels. Be a lot better than the current not even grind, just stuck, failure of design. Really, current is bad, like truly awful, just atrocious. You literally in an effort to maintain a concept of artificial scarcity that exist ONLY in DE staff's head (not even best interest of the game), are off in Soviet era economic territory insanity, quite literally insanity, with it. Honestly, hire an outside economist to balance these things, please, because none of you at DE will ever be qualified to do this, and it shows, painfully to your own detriment. I feel more like I am addressing an alcoholic on how they have lost the plot on knowing if they have their drinking under control, because that's how DE approaches balancing, like an alcoholic unable to even consider that vast field of reality outside their anecdotal and flawed view of the situation's reality.

If I had to guess, Stalker is a Tenno, the Stalker we've seen so far is where their transference manifest in a Warframe like the others, the WF possibly like Ash from an assassination organization in the Orokin structure. The Stalker operator physically (likely the body in some sort of stasis that amounts to being dead) are in the containment of the Second Dream facility on Lua. Persona wise, like Rell, their mind is completely within the Void at this point, to a degree where they've lost a lot of their orientation and clear memories. Their motivation is they were not a Tenno included in the uprising against the Orokin. Like Rell, the other Tenno possibly excluded them, a possibility could be that perhaps the Stalker was not so much loyal to the Orokin, but might have been influenced in their perception of the Orokin much differently by Margulis than the others. Perhaps, unlike the other Tenno, Stalker on some level was aware that the Lotus is not Margulis, maybe the likes of a Ballas (after he had conspired with Hunhow, he may have had Stalker put in a place to be some sort of contingency plan. A Tenno specialized in assassinating other Tenno, be a useful resource if he saw they betrayal of the Orokin coming). There is a lot to pontificate on there, but with how Hunhow speaks to Stalker, it does more or less hint strongest at him being a Tenno operator, not a more semi-autonomous WF as Umbra Excal is. Hunhow's conspiracy, to have himself brought low, really makes no sense with the way the story has been unfolded so far. The only way it does is if Hunhow, like Ballas, was so desperate for a change among his kind, to address some flaw they saw, that they sabotaged the course they were on in the only way they had control to. Unlike Ballas with ego, and narcissism, Hunhow I'd speculate stopped the Sentient exterminatus campaign of the origin system because he was not convinced that the Sentients were wise enough to know what the actual consequences of it would be. I wouldn't be surprised if the seed for how Natah developed to be the Lotus was not planted by Hunhow themself as a part of some plan to stop the situation from developing past some point, to force Tenno, Sentient, and Orokin on a course that was not just a three-way winner take all game of genocide. But, eh, with where the writing has gone, wanting to explore eternalism, as concept, it sort of leads to the same multiverse tropes, soft retcons (well in that version sure that happened, but in this version...), etc, etc. So in escaping being written into a corner, it more so feels like there is no fate, or deterministic quality of the story now, it can literally go anywhere, for whatever reason, because of the wizardry of parallel realities.

^^^ This. It's like someone at DE is a player of Elite Dangerous, looked at how you grind there for engineers and powerplay, and asked how they could top the pain of that with conditional grind. If the thing is about K Drives, than it is falling flat on it's face, as K Drive is fun by being sporty. I want K Drive to be like the fun of riding the BMX about GTA:O, pulling tricks as chaos breaks out about me. This isn't that, it is very stale, very rigid, and has a checklist over substance grind to it. EDIT: Also, biggest clue that DE doesn't actually play with the K Drive... Having to dismount to start dialog with the NPCs to start a race. No really, that is just a real 'You all released without trying, didn't you?' demonstration. Further EDIT: Worst part. Typical DE design. K Drive should have flow. There are no spots whereas you are riding that between the controls, and the environment, there is a legit feeling of flow. Instead, it is the usual DE afraid of possibility for progression over actually having something that is FUN TO PROGRESS IN. You can never just get lost in the thing that should be riding for FUN on a K Drive, because DE is so afraid, you'll get a rhythm of progression they like a cranky jerk, glue rice to a sidewalk to make you flat spot as a kid skating down the street. If DE owned a half pipe, they'd have design a feature where at random intervals sand and pebbles are dumped down the ramp, just to stop you from being able to roll on it and have fun.