MechaKnight

I considered that for my rework thread. Making enemies attack and animate faster (like negative strength Molecular Prime buff) would give them sufficient fire rate increases that also factor into their status rate per second. If you want to add more status on top, sure.

This is it. Steel Path has done too little to add to the much-needed engagement factor of the game. Steel Path has failed to make Warframe sufficiently fun to want to play.

I trivialized all nodes as easily as I trivialized them in sorties before. I'm more offended that DE proposed solely durability as a solution to engage the player. We still fight the same dumb enemies in the same missions with the same victory conditions. The enemies could benefit from more options and perhaps missions should feature more variety. I discussed this topic in my thread here.

Durability is not difficulty or engagement. After Steel Path released we continued playing with the same tactics against the same dumb enemies who lack options. If you can kill an enemy, you can kill 10. If you can kill 10 enemies, you can kill 1 that's 10 times tougher. If you can kill 1 of those enemies, you can kill 10 more no problem. EHP isn't sufficient engagement to break the monotony. I did made a thread with suggestions for how to implement challenge and engagement into general gameplay, intended for the Steel Path. These suggestions could still be added to the Steel Path with extra reward incentive, or added to a higher tier of difficulty beyond Steel Path.

I just tried Steel Path and it is very underwhelming. I feel DE could add my above recommended suggestions and increase our benefits by adding resource and affinity boosters too.

DE wants to cultivate a better player base so they made a better boss battle for early players. DE can't add challenge to the game if players don't expect there to be challenge. The game was devoid of challenge for so long veterans got bored.

This isn't the exact right place, but lets say the PvE core of Fortnite officially died. Look it up. I agree with the sentiments overall but perhaps the given game examples aren't appropriate. The short story of it is players aren't happy enough with Warframe's current direction. Some of them think Steel Path is fine, some think it should try to cover for what is perceived to be lacking. The thread is for Steel Path (hard mode) so lets try to stick with it. I agree with the initial sentiment that enemies need to feel sufficiently more capable of performing dangerous actions against the player than merely being bullet sponges. I do in fact also want to be satisfied with Steel Path so an amount of challenge is welcome. I understand DE didn't want Steel Path to be anything majorly different but I think that's a lost opportunity to make some excellent fun. I understand it is true it would be better to influence the core instead of a side mode but at this point I'm so desperate to see the game give the right feel to gameplay I'd take it anywhere in-game ASAP. I understand DE should probably just rework a bunch of stuff instead of pad Steel Path to cover for all the imbalance at the game's core that's making the game feel so unsatisfying, but Warframe is in such dire need of triage to reinvigorate the game I don't even care if Steel Path is a band-aid approach to giving satisfying gameplay despite the imbalance. I just want to see Warframe be fun.

I know it sounds crazy but it feels like the game is at that point. It's not like players will let DE unleash a rework heavy with nerfs to many player options, and unlikely DE even has one planned--we all remember how Vivergate went. DE may be looking to let things simply be as they are if they feel balanced on the Steel Path's higher levels and enhanced EHP stats, but may revise things that seem too strong on this path. If this is the case, Warframe would be balanced around the Steel Path. We'll have to see.

Consider the following: some players here have been watching since Warframe closed beta or closely after. Problems of the game being trivial happened fairly early, some time after the initial introduction of the mod system, but especially after corrupted mods were released. Warframe lost its sense of balance so it lost its challenge, and lots of rushed and imbalanced content later the game has dug itself into a hole. The developers try to fix this issue but the community sometimes pushes back against the best or possibly only solution, so forward and onward into the darkness development continued. Hard mode is such a big deal to tired veteran players because they know DE will not want to add or alter base game since the community significantly pushes back against attempts to change base game. To many old players present, a hard mode is a way to revise gameplay without altering base gameplay because players would accept a new path but will not accept significant changes to the old path if it disturbs them too much. The Steel Path should not replace the base game, but the base game has been observed over the years to hardly change. A new path could mean a significantly new direction.

Hydroid's Undertow has the following behavior that could be bugs. They seem like oversights. Grineer Commanders can teleport Hydroid while he is in Undertow form, though he should be invisible to them. Companions supposedly enter Undertow with Hydroid, but they can still be attacked and killed despite Hydroid being invincible in this form. I'm not sure if the companion's position is updated when Hydroid is teleported by a Grineer Commander. I would appreciate if DE could confront these issues and offer fixes or answers.

Players are reacting to DE's current Steel Path implementation because they are waited so long for Warframe to become more engaging, and DE's only answer for our lack of engagement with the game is bullet sponges. We wanted more fun, and expected enemies to adopt new options within general gameplay or missions to come with new conditions to sufficiently challenge us in a fun way. Boosting EHP on top of level scaling isn't fun because the gameplay did not significantly change enough--all of our options work the same and strategies stay the same, but for most builds enemies won't die so quickly. If you want to experience what Steel Path is now just remove all the strength mods from your warframe and damage mods from your weapons, it wouldn't feel very different. Arbitrations and unlocking Grendel through his Modless condition felt very different from normal gameplay. Playing Lich Territory missions feel a bit different because thralls have a couple abilities on them. Previous events tried to introduce fun by introducing scenarios or enemies that made us play differently. Gate Crasher reduced our mod strength, Scarlet Spear added new sentient enemies and put them at the forefront, Rathuum tried to replace swarms of weaklings with a few unique field boss enemies that would attempt to match players in power. This stuff was more fun than general gameplay. For many of us, players were waiting to feel passionate about the game, and when DE couldn't give us that satisfaction we already dreamed of a hard mode coming to bring fun to the game however it would--through adding obstacles, reducing our power, making some condition that made us behave differently, anything. The Steel Path is hardly that, we're just expected to do the same thing we do in sorties, though maybe these enemies will be slightly more durable. Arguably, even sorties and nightmare missions were more fun because the condition isn't the same each mission. So I did what any concerned player would do: I crowd sourced player feedback in my own thread in an attempt to tell DE what players find fun and engaging. I'll always support options that get us to play differently, but bullet sponges just feel like taking the same gameplay and trying to stretch it out as if it was a scarce supply during a famine. For many of us, Warframe felt crucially lacking to the degree that players felt starved for fun. DE has been missing its goals to hold player activity because players chased their fun somewhere else. The statistics from DE that Loza03 posted show players are tired of grind. Grind is repetition. We're tired of slogging through content that feels the same.

I noticed at least one topic come up multiple times in a mix of approval and disapproval, so it has been placed in the new Controversial section.

I don't yet fully understand this logic. Removing knockdowns from the game is one mod away, or players can keep the knockdowns but significantly reduced for a lower point cost. DE adds magnetic procs and nullifiers in almost every update now, and arbitration drones indirectly act as nullifiers by disallowing abilities from being applied to enemies. There aren't nullifiers in the other two factions or space yet proper, but that can change at any time. I've become jaded to encountering this obstacle, but some players consider them monumental. Maybe it has something to do with stopping extreme options like Chroma, Revenant, and Octavia dead in their tracks if they're nullified, or hooking glass cannons like Mirage when not paying attention, but at this point one needs to ask what DE's expectations for gameplay are if they keep adding these features to the game. They seem to intend for these scenarios to happen. I'll keep accepting feedback for the thread and relegate some of the more controversial issues for DE to confront if they ever choose to do it.

I have played arbitrations and still do. "Weak points" was an idea submitted by a player in another thread, and they referenced the Glass Maker enemies with invulnerability so I rewrote it a bit to more closely imply something like Banshee Sonar. Knockdowns are already mitigated by 3 exilus mods including a prime variant, and a nightmare mod so it's not the worst obstacle. Nullifiers are already routine for Corpus and we adapted just fine, simply use a gun or more range on your melee and use an energy pad occasionally. As for needing help, I'm fine using Khora, Saryn, Titania, Gara, Mesa, Inaros, Hildryn, and Frost but that doesn't change the fact that for most kits the EHP boost just makes everything take longer. I recall the changes to enemy EHP by implementing an S-curve and the rework to Tenno health, armor, and shields with the addition of shield gating but that surprisingly doesn't change much since players were still running arbitrations to level 4,000 enemies anyway and are still capable of killing level 9999 demolysts within 5 seconds of encountering it. Just because veterans can deal with that though doesn't mean it's worthwhile for Steel Path to feature no changes besides tankier enemies in exchange to a paltry boost to resource and drop chances. The goal of making this thread was to make challenging obstacles outside of making enemies bullet sponges. Some people will consider some of these obstacles more difficult than enemies that are supposed to be tougher to kill but are still fragile against some player kits, and that's intended. The goal is difficulty that isn't just a durability increase. Edit: If more players believe providing enemies weak points to compensate for their EHP would be excessive and in poor taste for the Steel Path this idea can be sent to the retired list.

After reading player feedback, temporary mod magnitude reduction has been moved to the retired list and given a description of why.