Urlan

The tier rewards, outside the creds being there are a fine idea mechanically for incentivizing the replacement for the old challenge system. Before challenges just gave a relatively small amount of affinity for completion per mission! I don't think the merging of the alert reward system with the Cred Store should have been merged in such a limited fashion to Nightwave's tier rewards.

Never liked situations were something is obviously kill-able but I am not allowed to kill it through contrived reasons. Golden Maw works because of the situation you are in, and the resources at your disposal, not the invulnerability of the construct. Similar for the Berserker in Gears, its only that normally infantry size weapons are ineffective against Berserker skin and this is true for enemies and players; they are killed instead by vehicle weapons or hammer of dawn weakening them enough to be eliminated or directly killed by the satellite laser. Nemesis from RE2 is often used as an example of this, but that creature actually is capable of being defeated if only temporarily the problem is that Nemesis mutates its form into more unstable mutations each time, while also being animated by an infection that essentially makes it so its cells can not self destruct, which causes the player to require weapons significantly bigger than the standard anti-zombie fare to finish off (at least to the point where its not chasing you for a while and the city gets nuked shortly after) in a story scenario. Cat and mouse situations work when they are not occurring against what the setting deems some of the most destructive forces in the setting - mind that is without the warframes - while with the warframes most folk in setting view us as walking army killers. An infested its important to build up through its strengths; they are a combining of the still living but twisted in eternal pain and anguish bodies and minds of their component victims and our warframes are made of the same stuff. Mind, our warframes are not made from composite people like the standard infested, but its telling that infested bosses refer to the warframes as "we are of like flesh, why to defile us". and "empty hollow shells". These unified minds believe the infestation is a gift - as Mutalist Alad V was starting to believe, and a method of immortality which was probably given to them back in the Orokin Empire era, as a way of honoring the sacrifice of lower castes.

The sake of Cetus's people being the death of all of them without some form of protection against constant unrelenting Grineer and Eidolon attacks? Hek would kill everyone there, and claim the rumble with Grineer flags and amp speakers announcing his awesomeness (and his love of infested boils and ghouls probably). Quill Onkko seems to have precognitive abilities, and is explicitly stated as being able to see and understand different potentialities and results of those possibilities; but also that his visions were part of why he left his life to join the Quills in the first place. A full functional ground siege-line would make sense really yeah, but Grineer and Corpus do call for reinforcements when peeved on the Plains and Orb Vallis. The Space Battles are going on in the background, but if we are lucky, some of them might have us get involved with Railjack.

How would one define 'end-game players'? By their mission play-time; other stats; or their fashion for those that value the decoration aspect of the game?

Yeah, the Unum would likely have lots of kuva inside, but think about it like this; the Queens have the tech to siphon off kuva from an area; but Worm wants or needs the Unum's Kuva right? That would imply that Kuva from Grineer is either not as good, maybe due to their degraded lifespans and cybernetics; or that the people and animals of Cetus are just better for it. The people of Cetus would never destroy the Unum, and it would never destroy them, as they are more or less symbiotic in their relationship to each other even with the Tower telling folk where they can cut off chunks of itself to feed themselves, and it in turn siphoning and refining their life force and that of the creatures and attackers around the tower most likely. Vay Hek could have been sent simply because the Worm Queen wanted to find something to keep him busy, due to his passion but also insanity. Its pretty likely given the events of the Ghoul Purge webcomic that lead to Hek's current transformation, that Worm finds him funny but not someone she tells secrets like Kuva to. I would figure Hek doesn't really even know he is just supposed to secure the Tower itself, and the people are not an immediate concern to the Queen - the Refined Temple Kuva is. The other purpose would be that Earth is officially still considered one of the hearts of the Grineer Empire and the constant blockade of Tenno allies like the people of Cetus show activity while keeping more unhinged commanders occupied. In the meantime, the Worm Queen still has her more competent Fortress forces collecting Kuva here and there, but she is likely more than a little impatient, thus this two pronged approach. Also Bounties can give Kuva after all.

I totally agree on the topic of content drought; but I think its simply a matter of how for 2017, we had several planned expansion updates teased from 2016 like Kingpin for example, that got shelved entirely, while in the end many of the content updates started getting pushed to the side of backburnered for rework, graphical, or tweak updates moving the remaining planned content to the big updates like Plains and Orb Vallis later. Sacrifice which was talked up as an epic story quest like Second Dream or War Within instead became more a cinematic, which is fine; but really just felt like a prior warframe quest like Chains of Harrow. The content drought wasn't due to the Plains areas in my view, but rather in as DE said previously, they were slowing down upcoming content to focus on improving what was there already, the reasoning might have changed later for them, but that was what they initially said following Plains. DE has hinted that their earlier drawn roadmap was likely to hit delays; and if I was betting on it based on the past two years; I would go with what I said; Rail Jack this year, New War as a story quest fitting into Sacrifice's spot around early to mid 2020, and Planes being around Fall of 2020. I would expect that the finale of melee 3.0 would be put out as part of a "milestone" update to show work has been done, though low on meat as they would say it still takes effort to change textures and tweak weapon stats after all even if its not content.

True, but those are from ground based mortars and shelling that it would may be more for the morale effect on the Cetus locals and testing the Unum's shield than actual destruction. Honestly speaking, even as crazy as Hek is by now, he would have understood that an orbital bombardment if capable of breaking the shields would destroy the Tower as it is in fact the generator of the shields; and being the core landmark for marking the bombing would be devastated being a bio-mechanical organism. Top it off, the Kuva Tower likely needs the locals around to harvest their Kuva, so killing the "rats of Cetus" would be counter productive. Military wise, the operation needs surgical precision not the hammer of mass bombardment. Tyl Regor would probably be a better fit for such an operation; but Hek acts as a great distraction.

LIkely because the Worm Queen specifically wants the Kuva Temple Tower, the Unum intact; so she can use its Kuva to resurrect her sister. Hek is reckless, but he might want to use his superior ground forces first before potentially being declared too stupid to live for destroying the only thing of value he is supposed to be securing for his Queens.

Not trying to be pessimistic, just what going by the last two years seems the most likely to me.

No stuff has been discussed since the last roadmap showing, really dates and such, but I would figure Loza is right, Railjack taking the place of the last two years' Plains and Orb Vallis; with New War being Winter 2020 and Planes of Duvari probably being fall of 2020.

Seems very interesting as always.

Very one-sided trades like say giving an ammo drum (not in your example I know) for platinum would also flag the account for such activity, but Support decides it on a case by case basis according to responses we have gotten from DE in the past. I hope it works out, but the guy you helped will be getting their accounts likely banned if they go through with their plan which is a shame, but what it is.

Hope it goes well in Azeroth Nazrethim.

Oberon is not anywhere near immortal, even with Phoenix Renewal. Iron Renewal helps, but his low base armor and requirement for high power to get the most out of his abilities can make it restrictive for some folk to have durability mods in the first place. I would absolutely agree, that both Rhino and Oberon are in better places personally, having had small boosts to their stats or abilities, but enemies also got boosts at those same times. Arcanes have existed since before Nidus existed, but I would agree that Eidolons are a far better way to get them that the more exclusive and puzzle oriented Trials. Life strike is equivalent to Adaptation in that it is a conditional mod, but yeah, you can make without it if you have some other manner of reliable life restore - like say a quick twitchy finger ready to use Magus Elevate or Repair geared Tenno for example - healing abilities like Oberon; or Vazarin focus.

I can feel you there, I too feel like the gilding and forma feel too much like just an attempt to get rid of resources rather than a challenge.