What is a more controversial topic: Leeches, or Difficulty?

[Quait]

Which one requires our attention more?

[Kierlak]

Leeches are an actual problem.

 

""difficulty"" or ""challenge"" are fictional problems invented by people trying to make the game into something it isn't.

[Lahared]

3 hours ago, Quait said:

Which one requires our attention more?

 

Do you mean which one will continue to fuel itself for a couple of days before people start throwing out personal insults? Both of these topics don't really lead anywhere in my opinion. As they generally just continue to repeat on the same couple of notes until debating seems like a pointless endeavor and then the thread is abandoned.

[RX-3DR]

Leeching.

Difficulty is a subjective topic that has multiple factors involved, being from the build you run, the enemies you fight and more unreliably, your perspective on what exactly is "difficulty". Difficulty is also a problem that has no actual end-point solution as the goal posts are constantly shifting from one player to another.

Leeching is an objective topic. A person flipping outside the elevator on his K-Drive on a Bounty is not participating in the game mode he selected, regardless of whether you feel it is important or not. Leeching has a definite end-point which is that people play the missions that they choose to participate in.

[Quait]

1 minute ago, Kierlak said:

Leeches are an actual problem.

 

""difficulty"" or ""challenge"" are fictional problems invented by people trying to make the game into something it isn't.

B-but... If the game is not difficult by community standards... Are leeches really a problem? It's not like one guy can't carry the entire team. Unless, the game is difficult? Oh god I'm confused now

[Lahared]

14 hours ago, Quait said:

B-but... If the game is not difficult by community standards... Are leeches really a problem? It's not like one guy can't carry the entire team. Unless, the game is difficult? Oh god I'm confused now

 

Edited December 17, 2018 by Lahared

[(XBOX)SpectralRyder]

Leechers

/thread

 

But seriously, difficulty is subjective, with everyone having different viewpoints on the matter...

Truth is... Nobody will be happy regardless of difficulty changes...

Edited December 17, 2018 by (XB1)SpectralRyder

[XenMaster]

New player experience?

[Kierlak]

6 minutes ago, Quait said:

B-but... If the game is not difficult by community standards... Are leeches really a problem? It's not like one guy can't carry the entire team. Unless, the game is difficult? Oh god I'm confused now

 

The problem of leeching has nothing to do with difficulty. It's the principle of the matter. If someone asks me to help them with something they are having trouble with, sure. Try to not die and I'll kill it/bring a Nekros so you get more of it/bring an Oberon so you have way less trouble with incoming damage, etc. You just show up in my mission and expect me to do it for you so you can get rewards for nothing without asking me first, and you can burn in hell.

[Quait]

10 minutes ago, Kierlak said:

 

The problem of leeching has nothing to do with difficulty. It's the principle of the matter. If someone asks me to help them with something they are having trouble with, sure. Try to not die and I'll kill it/bring a Nekros so you get more of it/bring an Oberon so you have way less trouble with incoming damage, etc. You just show up in my mission and expect me to do it for you so you can get rewards for nothing without asking me first, and you can burn in hell.

What if everyone is leeching, will the mission fail?

Edited December 17, 2018 by Quait

[PoisonHD]

What leeches? Seriously I've barely come across any, and if I have I've never noticed because it doesn't really effect how well you can do the mission. Difficulty is more of a problem, and would get rid of some leeches in my opinion. I would think that someone is more likely to leech if they find the mission boring, which comes from the lack of difficulty.

@XenMaster This is always quoted for new player experience now, but Steve said in the NoClip documentary, that results of upgrading the new player experience doesn't impact player retention, so it's not as much of a focus anymore.

[SirTobe]

Leechers has not really been a problem for me. Although a bit frustrating to see, I'm just playing public for more spawns, and usually I can handle it by myself or with the rest of the squad.

Lack of challenge however is what eventually just makes me bored of the game, leechers or not, and that's not good for the future of the game, if DE really wants to keep their old players that is. Statistics of activity speaks for themselves. And no, just bumping up levels on enemies is not a solution. They need to add more engaging mechanics to fighting enemies in more challenging modes. The various abilities of the new Fortuna enemies are a great example where they did it right. Invulnerability and scaling in Arbitrations, not so much.

Edited December 17, 2018 by SirTobe

[Loza03]

Consider this: They might be the same problem deep down. Why do people leech? Because they only want the rewards not to play the game. But why wouldn't they want the intrinsic reward of playing the game?

Well, nestled amongst the various factors of why people like challenging gameplay is a concept called Flow - which is basically the psychological state where performing the action is its own intrinsic reward. Ever been in that state where you're totally immersed in a game and basically shut out everything else, becoming unaware of time? That's flow. The conditions for flow are: concentration, clearly defined challenges and objectives; constant feedback on performance and balanced challenge. If it's too hard, it's anxiety-inducing, too easy it's boring. Some people get a kick out of it being a touch harder than they're comfortable, and a lot of Warframe currently occupies a touch below where it's relaxing. But neither's quite as inherently engaging (fun isn't necessarily the right word).

So, if most of Warframe's activities are unable to illicit this response, then that can result in a disproportionate amount of leeching because, after all, why actually play if it's not engaging to play and you get the same rewards for not playing? So, that's why I want Warframes difficulty to be raised somewhat, to be able to bring people into this state more consistently. This should decrease the number of leechers due to the actual game itself being rewarding outside of just the drip-feed of loot. Also, since such a process would likely eliminate a lot of AFK strategies, it'd reduce it by making it less easy to do, but that's besides the point.

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

This thread is going to be good entertainment

[Quait]

1 minute ago, SirTobe said:

Leechers has not really been a problem for me. Although a bit frustrating to see, I'm just playing public for more spawns, and usually I can handle it by myself or with the rest of the squad.

Lack of challenge however is what eventually just makes me bored of the game, leechers or not, and that's not good for the future of the game, if DE really wants to keep their old players that is. Statistics of activity speaks for themselves. And no, just bumping up levels on enemies is not a solution. They need to add more engaging mechanics to fighting enemies in more challenging modes. The various abilities of the new Fortuna enemies are a great example where they did it right. Invulnerability and scaling in Arbitrations, not so much.

I think it would be cool if there was an enemy who was only damaged by primary weapons, and it can change forms to only take damage from secondary or melee, ect. Also, enemies with "weakpoints" (besides the head, duh) and extremely tough shells would be cool. 

[Goodwill]

And here I thought it was Excalibur Prime.

[deothor]

1 hour ago, Kierlak said:

""difficulty"" or ""challenge"" are fictional problems invented by people trying to make the game into something it isn't.

I disagree here. Overall 'difficulty' is all subjective. No need to downgrade or besmear the issue simply because you can't handle sedna mobs.

Edited December 17, 2018 by deothor

[MagPrime]

1 minute ago, deothor said:

I disagree here. If the game gives you tools to handle level 200 mobs, but the biggest level you can find is 80'ish, then there is some problem.

Everyone threats difficulty differently, but overall you do have to admit that when you can oneshot everything around you with no issues, then game is not really challenging, right?

That's where subjectivity comes in.  I don't find surviving until level 200 content a challenge, it's simply following the meta. 

Lua puzzles, and a few others, are a challenge because it requires paying attention to small cues and a lot of practice with timed jumps and wall latch.  There is no meta for those, just skill.

[deothor]

Just now, MagPrime said:

That's where subjectivity comes in.  I don't find surviving until level 200 content a challenge, it's simply following the meta. 

Lua puzzles, and a few others, are a challenge because it requires paying attention to small cues and a lot of practice with timed jumps and wall latch.  There is no meta for those, just skill.

Tbh I just edited it out as you quoted me :)

[Kierlak]

1 minute ago, deothor said:

If the game gives you tools to handle level 200 mobs, but the biggest level you can find is 80'ish, then there is some problem.

 

They go all the way to 9999.

 

3 minutes ago, deothor said:

Everyone threats difficulty differently, but overall you do have to admit that when you can oneshot everything around you with no issues, then game is not really challenging, right?

 

The vast majority of the playerbase isn't asking for a challenging game, now are they?

[Quait]

1 minute ago, MagPrime said:

That's where subjectivity comes in.  I don't find surviving until level 200 content a challenge, it's simply following the meta. 

Lua puzzles, and a few others, are a challenge because it requires paying attention to small cues and a lot of practice with timed jumps and wall latch.  There is no meta for those, just skill.

There is absolutely a meta for Lua puzzles -- Be Limbo, press [shift], go through the pew pews with no damage

[Kyoresh]

15 minutes ago, MagPrime said:

Lua puzzles, and a few others, are a challenge because it requires paying attention to small cues and a lot of practice with timed jumps and wall latch.  There is no meta for those, just skill.

got to stop you there. 9/10 People use guides for those things, removing all Challenge again

[wtflag]

On the matter of leeching, how about having to pick up the reward at the location of the bountry completion in between each stage? 

That will at least force the leecher to come over, making leeching much less effective.

[NeopetsMaster4432]

I'd say Difficulty. But not in the sense of adding in more end-game content, but rather looking at enemy scaling, weapon/frame balancing, and overhauling the entire riven system.

But do you mean real leeching where the player AFKs for the mission? I think there's already a system in place to kick people if they don't put in any inputs for a while.
Or "leeching" where the player is busy gathering resources? 😛 Getting upset over someone trying to gather resources in a public party is silly IMO. Not everyone desires to or is required to play the same way~ LFG chat is useful when looking for teams with specific goals.

[kgabor]

Difficulty, since there is almost none in Warframe. :-/

At least with some difficulty, the game could be fun in solo where you wouldn't find any leechers anyways, or if you pug, you can always leave teams with leechers, but you can't fix the game simply by removing leechers.

You can raise the difficulty for yourself by playing a squishy caster glass cannon, but that's usually not enough difficulty by itself as there is little to do in each objectives/bounty stages, making it either easy to trivialize with the right setup or if you're new you can be overpowered by artificial difficulty aka. bigger numbers unless you use the proper cheese that ignores these numbers, making the game nothing else than a gearcheck.