The game's outdated horde-shooting mechanics are showing (Challenge Discussion)

[MJ12]

13 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

@MJ12

You're generally correct with your assessment of crafted level design vs. procedural generation, but I believe you are mistaken regarding the need for pacing and exhaustion.

Dark Souls needs to be spaced out because

a) every enemy is a legitimate threat, and 

b) the game is deliberately punishing.

Warframe does not need (nor should it) to copy that particular aspect of the combat, and it can manufacture any necessary breaks by controlling spawn rates of specific enemies.

If the game isn't punishing, thoughtful difficulty isn't possible. You'll just power your way through mistakes on raw player power, and although having good mechanics skill and understanding will make the game easier, you're going to be able to just hammer your way through obstacles. I don't mind adding things to make the game's difficulty more interesting, but unless you make the game punishing it'll always be more of an option than a necessity.

This is probably why Warframe's raids (and Destiny's raids for that matter) were considered difficult, but when you look at their core gameplay they really aren't. Said raids are utterly reliant on gimmick puzzles more than complex tactical combat-they allow the game to bypass the core difficulty problem (the game needs to be balanced so most builds are viable if not optimal in core gameplay) by adding mechanics that basically are unaffected by any of the 'core' gameplay modifiers like mods or weapons/armor loot.

It's the irony of these sorts of games I think-the most challenging content, which the players seem to like because it makes the endgame 'challenging,' is also content that engages the least with the actual core mechanics, by requiring you to do things completely unrelated to the core combat mechanics to progress and largely preventing you from mitigating a lack of technical skill regarding the raid-specific mechanics with skill in the core mechanics. In fact, most of the shooting in the raids are largely perfunctory gear checks-and I've played both Warframe raids and several of the Destiny 2 raids.

Amusingly in my own experience the best raids were the DC Universe Online ones, which had relatively simple, easily explained non-combat mechanics that were generally fairly forgiving and largely did require players to understand how to play their chosen role well in tactical combat gameplay. Things might have changed in several years but I preferred those sorts of challenges to the ones in games like WF/Destiny where the main challenges are understanding the unique raid mechanics over understanding the core gameplay loop and your own character mechanics.

[Tellakey]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

Please tell me I'm not the only person who enjoys this games gameplay.. if I want to play Mass effect or dark souls, guess what, I go play those games. That's why they exist..

We all enjoy the gameplay, but certain aspects of it could use some tinkering.

[Tellakey]

17 minutes ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

And DE is working on it, I'm sure. But stuff like that takes time, and it won't go faster if people constantly bring it up.. especially when they make it sound like the game is unplayable right now..

I'm sure DE is working on many things, but their priorities could get muddled at times, considering the masses of features they keep introducing. Showing DE the number of people who care about a certain issue may serve to help them prioritize. I don't think they're all too concerned about the combat, seeing as we never hear anything about it and the fact they keep on adding new stuff that would make it harder for them to balance it out in the future.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Tellakey

[DiabolusUrsus]

6 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

If the game isn't punishing, thoughtful difficulty isn't possible. You'll just power your way through mistakes on raw player power, and although having good mechanics skill and understanding will make the game easier, you're going to be able to just hammer your way through obstacles. I don't mind adding things to make the game's difficulty more interesting, but unless you make the game punishing it'll always be more of an option than a necessity.

I am forced to disagree.

Let's use Tyl Regor as an example. He's a melee boss, yet fighting him in melee is one of the worst options because he can ignore player attacks and stagger them out of combos with a single untelegraphed hit.

Now... Let's say we give him slightly less frantic attacks with reasonable tells in exchange for giving him strong melee damage reduction. Players could cancel this reduction by stunning him through parrying an attack, baiting an overcomitting attack and landing a heavy hit during his recovery, or focusing on a specific weak-point.

Giving Tyl strong knockback to control spacing would allow him to defend against reckless attacks and prevent spamming without being overly punishing to player survival.

He could deal with heavy attack stun timing by getting his own parry and counter attack if players attempt it without first creating a recovery opening.

The weak point would presumably be self-regulating through simply being harder to actually hit.

Dark Souls is stessful because the player dies in just a few hits and dying carries significant consequences; Warframe can copy a thoughtful and telegraphed combat model without copying its punishing difficulty. It's just a matter of making fights mechanically challenging with a fairly generous amount of room for error, and blocking players from outright ignoring limitations.

NOTE: I am drawing a distinction between my example and existing boss design, because players can actively manufacture their own opportunities to inflict damage instead of needing to passively wait for the boss to give them that chance.

Firearms and powers are different beasts, but the same general principles of requiring players to circumvent active defenses and fairly limiting their use (through ammunition and energy economies, respectively) still readily apply. There are supplemental mechanics like suppression, aggro management, and stealth which can be taken into consideration, and this approach can also be scaled down in difficulty and complexity as-needed to suit non-boss enemies.

Unless that's what you meant by interesting vs. thoughtful, in which case I'm confident that OP would be mostly satisfied with something "interesting."

6 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

This is probably why Warframe's raids (and Destiny's raids for that matter) were considered difficult, but when you look at their core gameplay they really aren't. Said raids are utterly reliant on gimmick puzzles more than complex tactical combat-they allow the game to bypass the core difficulty problem (the game needs to be balanced so most builds are viable if not optimal in core gameplay) by adding mechanics that basically are unaffected by any of the 'core' gameplay modifiers like mods or weapons/armor loot.

Agreed.

6 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

It's the irony of these sorts of games I think-the most challenging content, which the players seem to like because it makes the endgame 'challenging,' is also content that engages the least with the actual core mechanics, by requiring you to do things completely unrelated to the core combat mechanics to progress and largely preventing you from mitigating a lack of technical skill regarding the raid-specific mechanics with skill in the core mechanics. In fact, most of the shooting in the raids are largely perfunctory gear checks-and I've played both Warframe raids and several of the Destiny 2 raids.

I contend that this is a direct consequence of lacking thoughtful difficulty.

If the only thing necessary to bring down any enemy is to point and shoot or press E, the game necessarily devolves into simply comparing stats and increasing the burden on players through distraction (in this case via puzzles).

Obviously, player damage output is another factor - enemies can't rely on complex behaviors or counters when they die in 0.1 seconds, but balancing that out is far from impossible.

6 minutes ago, MJ12 said:

Amusingly in my own experience the best raids were the DC Universe Online ones, which had relatively simple, easily explained non-combat mechanics that were generally fairly forgiving and largely did require players to understand how to play their chosen role well in tactical combat gameplay. Things might have changed in several years but I preferred those sorts of challenges to the ones in games like WF/Destiny where the main challenges are understanding the unique raid mechanics over understanding the core gameplay loop and your own character mechanics.

Can't really comment on this, as I haven't played DC Universe Online.

With all said and done, I am perfectly happy for Warframe to decide on being a brainless and unchallenging shooter. However, I want Warframe to pick one or the other.

If we're gonna throw up our hands and say Warframe can't be engagingly challenging due to its nature as a looter shooter, I would like to see it stop placing any emphasis on trying to continually challenge players by locking rewards behind continually inflating enemy stats and arbitrary handicaps.

Let players manually increase enemy levels as they please, and leave the rest of the game in a level range that is accessible and non-frustrating to the average player.

[Neightrix]

I completely agree enemies need to be more significant to fight, and Mass Effect is a good example to use, but the power creep in warframe is immense by comparison. The biggest issue is that you don't want to invalidate the power players already have, which means it is the enemies that have to change. They need more than scaling health/damage, auras, spamming knockdowns/staggers, status, and cartoony animations and hitboxes. You need individual enemies (not auras) that can live Peacemaker for more than 2 shots at normal level (Nox is a good example but has dumb toxin damage and only 2 spawns per wave). You need enemies smart enough to try to shoot an invisible frame when they're attacked. You need individual enemies that can threaten tanks (but not massive, fast, untelegraphed, disjointed attacks).

Having said that, it's really discouraging to see players defending hordes dying as quickly as they appear. It's fine at low level, but It is not good gameplay and reveals the grindy nature of the game for what it is rather than being based on fun with rewards being secondary. DE already said they don't really want AFK or semi-AFK gameplay, but they may not always know how to make large core changes and figure out how to find the time for issues this complex.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Neightrix

[(PSN)Deadwood_Lane]

9 hours ago, Tellakey said:

I ah... don't think that's what they meant. The post you quoted had less to do with new end-game content than it had with the ever-aging mechanics upon which the game is built.

Well I made a new break section commenting about endgame, outdated core is still what i feel it is with this game and old reused props. For eg, just look at Lephantis being reused in the plains, not the best way to get new and improved mechanics for a game now is there?

 

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Dark Souls is stressful because the player dies in just a few hits and dying carries significant consequences; Warframe can copy a thoughtful and telegraphed combat model without copying its punishing difficulty. It's just a matter of making fights mechanically challenging with a fairly generous amount of room for error, and blocking players from outright ignoring limitations.

It's also stressful because it's a complex game with complex gameplay. That's fine for playing it in shorter sessions, but it gets really old really fast the moment you start grinding the same content over and over again. I'm fine with a complex multi-stage boss if what I'm after is a cool boss fight. If what I'm after is Frost Prime Neuroptics that have failed to drop for me the last 20 times I fought this boss today, my appreciation for content is going to decrease substantially. It's why voice barks from Ordis and the Lotus can come across as annoying, or why I can hear Alad V talking about Zanuka in my sleep. It's why people mash keys to skip cutscenes, jump past enemies and don't want to fight Kayla de Dayum. Part of why, anyway. Games like Dark Souls and The Surge sell themselves on complex combat with hidden tricks and depth, but I don't think that does or indeed really should apply to Warframe. Not with controls as loose as they are and grind as harsh as it is.

And then there's the fact that some of us just frankly don't want that out of a video game. I've been trying to dance around this fact because the moment I say it is the moment people tell me how I'm lazy and stupid and I need to "git gud," but I can't help how I feel. If I'm going to spend enough time in a single session to get multiple warnings that I've been "playing for over an hour," then I simply cannot handle substantial complexity. Not at this pace, not for this long. It'd be like trying to eat a whole turkey for every meal of the day - great once, damaging in the long run.

While my own history with MMOs doesn't extend as far back as the likes of EQ, DAoC or SW:G, I've played my fair share of grindy games - which Warframe definitely is. What I feel helps maintain interest, enthusiasm and activity is a sense of "flow." Rather than trying to break me out of my comfort zone with every encounter, I have a much easier time sticking with the game if it'll let me develop a rhythm and play it almost subconsciously. I'm obviously not talking about sleepwalking through the motions, but I AM talking about forming a sort of habit and familiarity with the system. Any time you force me to break what I'm doing, back off and re-think, you're introducing a disruption in my flow. You're introducing a stopping point. It's why I don't like dealing with mods when I'm on a roll - because the moment I have to drop what I'm doing, Alt-Tab to the Wiki and crunch numbers, I've already stopped so I might as well log out for lunch. The same goes with throwing me against a tough boss that requires research and experimentation to beat.

Again, fighting a complex boss every so often is fine. Some amount of breaking the flow is necessary lest we start falling asleep. However, when that becomes the norm rather than the exception, you put people in the position of trying to optimise out the challenge in order to smooth over the process. I like fighting Eidolons, for instance, because the semi-complex mechanics are a nice change of pace. I don't like fighting four of them per night, because that gets REALLY boring REALLY fast, but I still kind of have to because how else am I going to get Eidolon Shards? I guess do Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, which is arguably even more boring?

I don't think complex gameplay and grinding mix very well, is my overriding point. You can either have memorable, engaging encounters or you can have long play sessions, but I simply don't see myself being able to do both.

[(PSN)teacup775]

11 hours ago, (NSW)SerRaven said:

Warframe is Diablo III or 2 in space.

No, wframe doesn’t get to D3. D3 is excellent in  all ways. While I have not played in it sine time, of the times I have gone back everything is shinier, improved. D3 has replay value.

[DiabolusUrsus]

Just now, Steel_Rook said:

It's also stressful because it's a complex game with complex gameplay. That's fine for playing it in shorter sessions, but it gets really old really fast the moment you start grinding the same content over and over again. I'm fine with a complex multi-stage boss if what I'm after is a cool boss fight. If what I'm after is Frost Prime Neuroptics that have failed to drop for me the last 20 times I fought this boss today, my appreciation for content is going to decrease substantially. It's why voice barks from Ordis and the Lotus can come across as annoying, or why I can hear Alad V talking about Zanuka in my sleep. It's why people mash keys to skip cutscenes, jump past enemies and don't want to fight Kayla de Dayum. Part of why, anyway. Games like Dark Souls and The Surge sell themselves on complex combat with hidden tricks and depth, but I don't think that does or indeed really should apply to Warframe. Not with controls as loose as they are and grind as harsh as it is.

That's largely why I would argue in favor of taking notes on what Dark Souls does well (telegraphs, i-frames, dramatic pacing) without really suggesting that Warframe should seek to emulate it directly. Similarly to how Warframe would definitely benefit from examining how Devil May Cry handles hitstuns, knockbacks, and attack-integrated mobility but the biggest problem with Melee 2.0 was that it copied DMC far too closely.

Also keep in mind that part of the reason we're stuck with crappy % drop rates on parts with no real room for exchange tokens is specifically the fact that we can nuke bosses in a matter of moments. If every boss run took more time, there'd be more wiggle room on the monetization front (I'd also argue that separating Warframe drops from bosses entirely would make more sense in the long run).

Dark Souls has plenty of complexity when it comes to character stats and development, but its combat mechanics are actually very simple and straightforward (especially within the context of enemy behavior). However, I think we're straying down a bit of a rabbit hole with the Dark Souls comparison; boss fights can actually be mechanically complex and still be fairly short. In fact... if DE cut down on the sheer amount of cutscene time and had Tyl spend more time in a straight-up fight rather than running away in tele-dashing circles or summoning minions, total fight time could conceivably decrease relative to its current state.

My complaint is not actually with the brevity of the fight, but rather its "skippable" nature. Shoot boss > Wait for cutscene > Shoot mook > Shoot boss > Wait for cutscene. The same thing applies to Kela. Smite > Void Mode > Ignis > Smite > Rinse > Repeat.

Just now, Steel_Rook said:

And then there's the fact that some of us just frankly don't want that out of a video game. I've been trying to dance around this fact because the moment I say it is the moment people tell me how I'm lazy and stupid and I need to "git gud," but I can't help how I feel. If I'm going to spend enough time in a single session to get multiple warnings that I've been "playing for over an hour," then I simply cannot handle substantial complexity. Not at this pace, not for this long. It'd be like trying to eat a whole turkey for every meal of the day - great once, damaging in the long run.

To be perfectly clear, I'm not really suggesting that Warframe should be decisively "difficult," or "hardcore," but from my perspective it plays a little bit like Halo Firefight with damage set to 400%, enemy health set to 25%, and infinite ammo switched on for the rocket launcher. Is it relaxing? Yeah. Cathartic? For sure. Hedonistic? Maybe a little bit (I kid). But it's only fun for 15-20 minutes at best, after which it becomes monotonous and in the case of Warframe its nature as a Skinner box becomes far too obvious.

I wouldn't want Warframe to become the sort of game where I need to stress over whether or not I can complete a given objective, or stay hyper-alert or else risk sudden death. However, I want some enemies to do a little bit more than shoot at me in futility while throwing themselves by the dozen into the meat-grinder that is my gun or sword.

Warframe bills itself as a co-op game, but outside of meticulously crafted groups designed to straight-up break the game's difficulty mechanics there isn't really much room for cooperative efforts.

Just now, Steel_Rook said:

While my own history with MMOs doesn't extend as far back as the likes of EQ, DAoC or SW:G, I've played my fair share of grindy games - which Warframe definitely is. What I feel helps maintain interest, enthusiasm and activity is a sense of "flow." Rather than trying to break me out of my comfort zone with every encounter, I have a much easier time sticking with the game if it'll let me develop a rhythm and play it almost subconsciously. I'm obviously not talking about sleepwalking through the motions, but I AM talking about forming a sort of habit and familiarity with the system. Any time you force me to break what I'm doing, back off and re-think, you're introducing a disruption in my flow. You're introducing a stopping point. It's why I don't like dealing with mods when I'm on a roll - because the moment I have to drop what I'm doing, Alt-Tab to the Wiki and crunch numbers, I've already stopped so I might as well log out for lunch. The same goes with throwing me against a tough boss that requires research and experimentation to beat.

Again, fighting a complex boss every so often is fine. Some amount of breaking the flow is necessary lest we start falling asleep. However, when that becomes the norm rather than the exception, you put people in the position of trying to optimise out the challenge in order to smooth over the process. I like fighting Eidolons, for instance, because the semi-complex mechanics are a nice change of pace. I don't like fighting four of them per night, because that gets REALLY boring REALLY fast, but I still kind of have to because how else am I going to get Eidolon Shards? I guess do Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, which is arguably even more boring?

I don't think complex gameplay and grinding mix very well, is my overriding point. You can either have memorable, engaging encounters or you can have long play sessions, but I simply don't see myself being able to do both.

I think we are closely aligned in what we want from the game; you're just a tad more content with what the existing status quo is than I am. To put it in perspective, I'd want the described sort of complexity from something like a Juggernaut, Stalker, G3, or Zanuka Hunter appearance. I'd want elite enemies to be marginally more troublesome than trash mobs (Nox would represent the upper-end of acceptable difficulty, and even then I would want to adjust Nox to make it more melee-compatible). I would certainly want to keep a healthy supply of trash mobs available to casually mow down.

I'm just looking for something a little more... polished and potentially engaging, with better diversity in terms of enemy behavior and combat roles.

[(PSN)teacup775]

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

OP's underlying complaint is that Warframe's combat is actually rather unimaginative and unengaging.

It goes beyond that. Ability attack (and quest) animations are recycled, old and tawdry (yes Chimera Ballas, I am taking to YOU). There is simply nothing elegant in the way ability readiness is telegraphed on the frame itself. Nidus is the only frame that memorably communicates stack levels in his frame, but even it is crude.

Combat is unengaging because AI and mission state is a creaking critcal mass judging the by the number of bugs that explode on every quest or update. DE will lavish attention on SSX tricky and arcade game knock offs, but pass on in game, core game, mechanics.

Frame fighter prolly has combat mechanics. The main game? Nope. Why did creative leads not direct energies into the main game?

Why are facial animations and something as simple and essential to NPC engagement like head and eye tracking, attention shifts, missing? When DE does it we get Rude Zude’s creepy, and inept, dissonances.

I literally have not experienced a game where the basic UI is so inept, clunky, buggy and unconcerned with player workflow. Trading with another player is a retarded repetition of repeatedly typing in the same search terms to post bp set for warframe or weapon parts. Why? No commercial website today would survive 5 minutes with appalling crap like that.

Anthem may come. BL3 may come. Chances are they may see Warframe and raise the bar by 3x. A bl1 or bl2 runner outclasses k drive by a mile because hit and fun is straight out of the box.

DE has focused on shiny, Vallis is remarkable at being big and mostly empty, but Destiny was an even shinier and ultimately soulless game. Games galore may sport the cheesiest graphics but the most engaging play.

why is it I keep the minimap expanded (because situational awareness is king) and just blindly press melee or fire on most content? Or most importantly simply run past it? Sabo, rescue, mobile defense, defection and spy don’t need dead bodies.

cap needs one kill. Interception is most effective by locking down spawned mobs suppressing further spawns until the end of a round.

that leaves exterm, defense, assault, salvage, fissures and survival.

then in valis enemies simply spawn on top of players then poop cc. It’s s joke because void dash but still.

so yeh some work might be nice

Edited December 21, 2018 by (PS4)teacup775

[Tellakey]

Ooh! I like the discussions in this thread. Keep going!

[Steel_Rook]

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

To be perfectly clear, I'm not really suggesting that Warframe should be decisively "difficult," or "hardcore," but from my perspective it plays a little bit like Halo Firefight with damage set to 400%, enemy health set to 25%, and infinite ammo switched on for the rocket launcher. Is it relaxing? Yeah. Cathartic? For sure. Hedonistic? Maybe a little bit (I kid). But it's only fun for 15-20 minutes at best, after which it becomes monotonous and in the case of Warframe its nature as a Skinner box becomes far too obvious.

I think part of the disconnect here - and mine might be an unpopular perspective because of it - is I typically don't have access to builds which turn the game into what you describe. Since as far back as City of Heroes, I've been a "good enough" player. That is to say, I won't shoot for the absolute best, most powerful, most min/maxed build. Rather, I'll typically shoot for something that's "good enough" to run most of the content relatively comfortably, and use the slack that leaves behind for fun stuff. In City of Heroes, that meant building for character concept, grabbing powers which I might not necessarily NEED, but which I can afford to have fun with. Zone Teleport (essentially fast-travel) and Afterburner (substantially faster form of Fly) were good examples of this. I mean... I can already cross zones pretty dang fast with Teleport already, but it just makes so much fun for the Grand Archmage to be able to "bamf" directly to the mission door.

I'm kind of the same way in Warframe. Sure, I WANT effective gear and builds... But up to a point. If my build can comfortably fight enemies levels 40-60, then I'm good. Don't really feel the desire to fight 150s or stay on an endurance run for two hours or farm seventeen Eidolons per night. Not that I don't WANT to, but I can do without. I remember watching a video on Inaros builds, where the guy offered a number of options with stacked Umbral Vitality, Umbral Fiber and a bunch of other armour and health mods and... Yeah, I COULD make that build, but it would involve getting rid of Master Thief, Negation Swarm and my ability strength. "But you shouldn't put strength on Inaros! He should be doing no damage and just be used for control!" Maybe, but I use Scarabs for healing. "No, use Dessecation and Executions instead." Yeah, but I like to heal AND control AND be able to fight at the same time without relying on fiddly execution hit detection.

I'm arguing with Google there, obviously, not with people actually in conversation with me 🙂 But the point is that I'll typically stop optimising at "enough" and build for fun stuff with the slots I have left over. As a result, my builds typically can't absolutely break content to the point of making the game utterly dull. Consequently, my perspective on how the game's typically played and what needs to change is a bit... Unconventional, maybe? I remember a developer once said that "If you let them, players will optimise all the fun out of the game." That's part of why I'm typically wary of over-optimisation and why I tend to "just play for fun." What that typically means is picking random alerts regardless of what they offer and opening every sodding locker on the map. It's why I love Master Thief and hate the new Corpus lockers 🙂

So fair point there, is I guess what I was trying to say.

 

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I think we are closely aligned in what we want from the game; you're just a tad more content with what the existing status quo is than I am. To put it in perspective, I'd want the described sort of complexity from something like a Juggernaut, Stalker, G3, or Zanuka Hunter appearance. I'd want elite enemies to be marginally more troublesome than trash mobs (Nox would represent the upper-end of acceptable difficulty, and even then I would want to adjust Nox to make it more melee-compatible). I would certainly want to keep a healthy supply of trash mobs available to casually mow down.

I'm in general agreement here. Having bosses be more than just a minion with tons of health, damage and the occasional invulnerability phase (i.e. Captain Vor) would be nice. As long as the main body of the game is a relatively straightforward horde shooter, then I'm perfectly fine with - and indeed welcome - the occasional disruptive enemy. If anything, I kind of wish the Stalker, the Grustrag Three and the Znuka Hunter would show up a little bit more often. I haven't even SEEN a Zanuka Hunter EVER 🙂 I also wouldn't mind the occasional disruptive elite enemy, as long as they're not too common. Ancient Healers, for instance, are VERY disruptive by their sheer presence. The problem is that the game's vision of "difficulty" is spawning them in batches of 10 every minute or so. Noxes are also a nice change of pace, but spawn too many and players are forced into taking heavier weapons.

My main concern when it comes to difficulty spikes is making them so common that they stop being "spikes" and instead become the "status quo." A good example, I think, is Eidolon Fights. During the first few phases, a player can be reasonably expect to dodge the majority of the Eidolon's fire by jumping into Operator Void Mode just before they connect. Towards the end of the encounter, however, the Eidolon is firing so many different attacks at the same time that it becomes effectively impossible to dodge all of them AND still do anything more than camp out in Void Mode. The only solution, then, is a "tanky Operator" who can ignore the bulk of the attacks and just trade with the Eidolon, instead. Right there, you've lost all complexity not because complexity doesn't exist, but rather because you've forced the player's hand into circumventing it entirely.

The same applies to a lot of Warframe, actually, with the Terra Corpus faction being probably the best example of this. It's a faction with a heavy Armour presence (at high alert levels), a heavy shield presence, heavy damage, high mobility and flight, heavy status and control effects, turrets, elite bosses... Any one of these things could be a faction-defining characteristic, such as high shields and control. Most combinations of these can result in decent difficulty spikes, such as Ambulas spawns on Pluto. All of these, however, present the kind of challenge that's really not worth approaching in a refined, structured manner. Why bother trying to tailor my defences and damage types and tactics when no matter what I do I'm not going to be well-suited against a large chunk of it? It's much simpler to just throw all of the numbers onto my build and override game balance entirely. I'm not going to bother bringing Mangetic damage, but instead bring an anti-armour weapon with just enough damage to ignore shields anyway. I'm not going to bother with specific defences, but instead just bring lots of effective health. I'm not going to bother, because it's too much of a bother, because it's constant complex challenge all of the time.

There are always going to be min/maxers who want to boost their stats to the point where they can ROFLstomp the game in their sleep. That's fair enough. The problem with the pursuit of challenge, however, is that adding too much of it pushes people into cheese, thus countering itself. Like I said above - A Nox is fun to fight. Four Noxes isn't. A Nox every 30 seconds isn't. Up to a certain point, it's a challenge that I'm going to take on and defeat. Past a certain point it becomes a nuisance that I'm going to want to optimise out of the game entirely. It's honestly the same thing with Payday 2 and Bulldozers. At one point - especially in Payday: The Heist - they were meant to be bosses. That game's answer to the L4D Tank. Then Payday 2 started spawning them in twos and in fours every 60 seconds, so you were effectively constantly fighting at least one Bulldozer. That wasn't a boss fight at that point and nobody treated it as such. We sighed and picked good Bulldozer-killing weapons - your elephant gun, your HE shotgun, your rocket launcher. Eventually due to power creep, we were able to just hose them down with standard sidearms, and they turned into just another Special.

Difficulty spikes are fine, but I'd rather those were reserved for special and rare boss fights or "crescendo" events. As long as the baseline difficulty that regular players not looking for a challenge face most of the time allows for a state of flow, then I don't have a problem with infrequent events which throw off that balance. But the frequency and difficulty of those needs to be considered carefully.

[(NSW)SerRaven]

12 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

No, wframe doesn’t get to D3. D3 is excellent in  all ways. While I have not played in it sine time, of the times I have gone back everything is shinier, improved. D3 has replay value.

So true. I bought the switch for d3. Warframe was a pleasant surprise.

 

Ever since I've moved into adult life my work computers have been provided and I've not been able to justify a $1000 machine for gaming. Cause that's all I'd use a personal laptop for..

So I ended up getting back into Warframe on switch. Alot had changed since I had quit when focus 1.0 was out and war within had not debued. 

Rivens are great. Arcanes being at least pug leachable are great. I never had any at MR 18 on pc. 

The odd focus on mining, fishing and space kid as the keys to content past PoE just seems weird to me. 

 

It's like someone decided to take Warframe in the direction of chibi Korean MMO instead of Diablo. I don't care for it.

But if it gets too bad I'll just play Diablo immortal on my phone I guess..

[DiabolusUrsus]

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I think part of the disconnect here - and mine might be an unpopular perspective because of it - is I typically don't have access to builds which turn the game into what you describe. Since as far back as City of Heroes, I've been a "good enough" player. That is to say, I won't shoot for the absolute best, most powerful, most min/maxed build. Rather, I'll typically shoot for something that's "good enough" to run most of the content relatively comfortably, and use the slack that leaves behind for fun stuff. In City of Heroes, that meant building for character concept, grabbing powers which I might not necessarily NEED, but which I can afford to have fun with. Zone Teleport (essentially fast-travel) and Afterburner (substantially faster form of Fly) were good examples of this. I mean... I can already cross zones pretty dang fast with Teleport already, but it just makes so much fun for the Grand Archmage to be able to "bamf" directly to the mission door.

This is actually an endemic problem with Warframe's balance. There is always a meta. Unless everything in the game uses equivalent fixed values for damage, health, etc. there will always be a "best-in-slot" or "strongest option."

Trying to remove the meta is an exercise in futility.

HOWEVER, in Warframe the meta outperforms the non-meta by leaps and bounds and friggin cartwheels. In most balanced games the meta just offers a marginal increase in effectiveness over a "good, but not meta" build.

Warframe's first balancing priority should be shrinking the gap between the meta and non-meta. The meta should be there for those who care about it, but it should be unimportant enough that the average player can simply ignore it.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm kind of the same way in Warframe. Sure, I WANT effective gear and builds... But up to a point. If my build can comfortably fight enemies levels 40-60, then I'm good. Don't really feel the desire to fight 150s or stay on an endurance run for two hours or farm seventeen Eidolons per night. Not that I don't WANT to, but I can do without. I remember watching a video on Inaros builds, where the guy offered a number of options with stacked Umbral Vitality, Umbral Fiber and a bunch of other armour and health mods and... Yeah, I COULD make that build, but it would involve getting rid of Master Thief, Negation Swarm and my ability strength. "But you shouldn't put strength on Inaros! He should be doing no damage and just be used for control!" Maybe, but I use Scarabs for healing. "No, use Dessecation and Executions instead." Yeah, but I like to heal AND control AND be able to fight at the same time without relying on fiddly execution hit detection.

This sentiment illustrates the problem rather nicely. Mods are supposed to offer customization. The simple fact  that you're building "wrong" even if you have a viable build reflects how obtrusive the meta currently is.

It doesn't help that DE is continually trying to challenge an overpowered meta instead of nerfing it appropriately, which make the non-meta progressively less viable.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm arguing with Google there, obviously, not with people actually in conversation with me 🙂 But the point is that I'll typically stop optimising at "enough" and build for fun stuff with the slots I have left over. As a result, my builds typically can't absolutely break content to the point of making the game utterly dull. Consequently, my perspective on how the game's typically played and what needs to change is a bit... Unconventional, maybe? I remember a developer once said that "If you let them, players will optimise all the fun out of the game." That's part of why I'm typically wary of over-optimisation and why I tend to "just play for fun." What that typically means is picking random alerts regardless of what they offer and opening every sodding locker on the map. It's why I love Master Thief and hate the new Corpus lockers 🙂

So fair point there, is I guess what I was trying to say.

And that should be a perfectly legitimate, viable way to play throughout the balanced areas of the game.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm in general agreement here. Having bosses be more than just a minion with tons of health, damage and the occasional invulnerability phase (i.e. Captain Vor) would be nice. As long as the main body of the game is a relatively straightforward horde shooter, then I'm perfectly fine with - and indeed welcome - the occasional disruptive enemy. If anything, I kind of wish the Stalker, the Grustrag Three and the Znuka Hunter would show up a little bit more often. I haven't even SEEN a Zanuka Hunter EVER 🙂 I also wouldn't mind the occasional disruptive elite enemy, as long as they're not too common. Ancient Healers, for instance, are VERY disruptive by their sheer presence. The problem is that the game's vision of "difficulty" is spawning them in batches of 10 every minute or so. Noxes are also a nice change of pace, but spawn too many and players are forced into taking heavier weapons.

My main concern when it comes to difficulty spikes is making them so common that they stop being "spikes" and instead become the "status quo." A good example, I think, is Eidolon Fights. During the first few phases, a player can be reasonably expect to dodge the majority of the Eidolon's fire by jumping into Operator Void Mode just before they connect. Towards the end of the encounter, however, the Eidolon is firing so many different attacks at the same time that it becomes effectively impossible to dodge all of them AND still do anything more than camp out in Void Mode. The only solution, then, is a "tanky Operator" who can ignore the bulk of the attacks and just trade with the Eidolon, instead. Right there, you've lost all complexity not because complexity doesn't exist, but rather because you've forced the player's hand into circumventing it entirely.

This is actually a consequence of Warframe LACKING what I'm asking for in this case.

Ancient Healers have to be numerous to be effective because they're actually pretty weak. They're big glowy targets that still die in only a handful of shots, and don't really do anything (aside from their auras) that your average Charger or Crawler can't.

If a Healer were more of an elite unit that took a bit more effort to bring down, their spawn rates could be lowered accordingly. This problem is even more noticeable with Parasitic Eximi; they're cheap dime-a-dozen units that are nothing but normal Infested with an "I'm special" badge, which in turn makes them suffocating because of the stacking and overlapping drain auras. There is literally no counter-play except "kill faster," which roughly translates into "mo meta mo betta."

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The same applies to a lot of Warframe, actually, with the Terra Corpus faction being probably the best example of this. It's a faction with a heavy Armour presence (at high alert levels), a heavy shield presence, heavy damage, high mobility and flight, heavy status and control effects, turrets, elite bosses... Any one of these things could be a faction-defining characteristic, such as high shields and control. Most combinations of these can result in decent difficulty spikes, such as Ambulas spawns on Pluto. All of these, however, present the kind of challenge that's really not worth approaching in a refined, structured manner. Why bother trying to tailor my defences and damage types and tactics when no matter what I do I'm not going to be well-suited against a large chunk of it? It's much simpler to just throw all of the numbers onto my build and override game balance entirely. I'm not going to bother bringing Mangetic damage, but instead bring an anti-armour weapon with just enough damage to ignore shields anyway. I'm not going to bother with specific defences, but instead just bring lots of effective health. I'm not going to bother, because it's too much of a bother, because it's constant complex challenge all of the time.

I think this could be neatly summed up as "too many priority targets," and I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment here.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

There are always going to be min/maxers who want to boost their stats to the point where they can ROFLstomp the game in their sleep. That's fair enough. The problem with the pursuit of challenge, however, is that adding too much of it pushes people into cheese, thus countering itself. Like I said above - A Nox is fun to fight. Four Noxes isn't. A Nox every 30 seconds isn't. Up to a certain point, it's a challenge that I'm going to take on and defeat. Past a certain point it becomes a nuisance that I'm going to want to optimise out of the game entirely. It's honestly the same thing with Payday 2 and Bulldozers. At one point - especially in Payday: The Heist - they were meant to be bosses. That game's answer to the L4D Tank. Then Payday 2 started spawning them in twos and in fours every 60 seconds, so you were effectively constantly fighting at least one Bulldozer. That wasn't a boss fight at that point and nobody treated it as such. We sighed and picked good Bulldozer-killing weapons - your elephant gun, your HE shotgun, your rocket launcher. Eventually due to power creep, we were able to just hose them down with standard sidearms, and they turned into just another Special.

Yep, and my point is that DE controls both the min and the max. The meta needs to be curbed in terms of power so that FAIR challenges are feasible.

CC that paralyzes the map? Fine. CC that paralyzes the map and can be spammed on loop to effectively shut down the AI and transform enemies into stationary loot bags? Suddenly we have a problem.

All things in moderation, as it were.

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Difficulty spikes are fine, but I'd rather those were reserved for special and rare boss fights or "crescendo" events. As long as the baseline difficulty that regular players not looking for a challenge face most of the time allows for a state of flow, then I don't have a problem with infrequent events which throw off that balance. But the frequency and difficulty of those needs to be considered carefully.

I would look at it like this:

Trash-mobs: no difficulty whatsoever; killing them helps players deal with health attrition and fuel their stronger powers.

Elites: difficulty speed-bumps, requiring special attention over trash mobs but not putting up a significant fight.

Bosses, etc.: Difficulty spikes, requiring substantial effort to counter and bring down.

IMO Warframe should be a fairly relaxed casual game at baseline, with players having the option to amp up enemy level and apply "Nightmare" modifiers at their discretion in Private matches in case they want extra challenge.

However, I still want the relaxed casual experience to offer polished and rewarding combat over the mind-numbing monotony we have currently.

[(XBOX)ZenithLord 42]

Warframe at its heart, is a numbers game; skill not included. This is especially evident when one looks at the modding system which gives percentage-based increases to stats which forces the developers to be overly cautious when adding new mods. A small seemingly inconsequential bump in stats can completely change mod setups. 

The design also forces gear and enemies’ damage to be adjusted on a curve instead of a solid line. The detriment here is that difficultly now is about which stat will take precedence instead of which stats can be used to create build diversity and individual player modalities. 

When this is the case, you create situations in which only one strategy will work. You see this with Warframe builds that center around one or two powers being used as opposed to the entire kit being useful. 

I would also go so far in saying that the consequences of a system that relies solely on statistical differentiation effectively alienates players as it doesn’t provide a sense of any accomplishment besides “I stuck through the grind”. 

Warframe developers really need to look at Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode as that “game within a game” allowed for far better enemy encounters and player rewards even if it was incredibly repetitive. It also rewarded player skill as your gear mattered, but what mattered even more was how it was used. 

In short, Warframe has hit the ceiling insofar as effective rewards and numerical values will take it. If DE continues the systematic approach to gaming in regards to numbers over skill the game will only have one direction to go, down. 

[DiabolusUrsus]

14 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

It goes beyond that. Ability attack (and quest) animations are recycled, old and tawdry (yes Chimera Ballas, I am taking to YOU). There is simply nothing elegant in the way ability readiness is telegraphed on the frame itself. Nidus is the only frame that memorably communicates stack levels in his frame, but even it is crude.

I think a large part of this is that ability readiness is the norm. It's rare to have casting restricted by energy, which is a huge problem. That's probably why DE hasn't invested much in tracking it visually.

14 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

Combat is unengaging because AI and mission state is a creaking critcal mass judging the by the number of bugs that explode on every quest or update. DE will lavish attention on SSX tricky and arcade game knock offs, but pass on in game, core game, mechanics.

Bugs are a separate issue from game balance. The number of bugs actually affecting fights is fairly low. Better AI is also meaningless without balance.

Lemme put it this way: Warframe AI is suddenly the most advanced in the industry. It learns from and can even predict player behavior, and knows how to counter their every move.

Doesn't matter, and if the AI is really that smart it just curls up and waits to die because players can press a handful of buttons to hog-tie it in place.

It doesn't matter what an enemy can do if it never has the opportunity to actually DO it.

I agree that there's too much focus on novelties and hype over substance, though.

14 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

Frame fighter prolly has combat mechanics. The main game? Nope. Why did creative leads not direct energies into the main game?

Because it's hard to do, and people are prone to procrastinate. 😕 At least, that's my take on it.

 

14 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

Why are facial animations and something as simple and essential to NPC engagement like head and eye tracking, attention shifts, missing? When DE does it we get Rude Zude’s creepy, and inept, dissonances.

Hey, I actually like Rude Zuud!

That said, I know what you mean. I think Ballas getting shanked in The Sacrifice and his utterly unconvincing facial contortion (combined with the cringeworthy cliche of the moment) serve as a great example of your complaint.

14 hours ago, (PS4)teacup775 said:

I literally have not experienced a game where the basic UI is so inept, clunky, buggy and unconcerned with player workflow. Trading with another player is a repetition of repeatedly typing in the same search terms to post bp set for warframe or weapon parts. Why? No commercial website today would survive 5 minutes with appalling crap like that.

Anthem may come. BL3 may come. Chances are they may see Warframe and raise the bar by 3x. A bl1 or bl2 runner outclasses k drive by a mile because hit and fun is straight out of the box.

DE has focused on shiny, Vallis is remarkable at being big and mostly empty, but Destiny was an even shinier and ultimately soulless game. Games galore may sport the cheesiest graphics but the most engaging play.

why is it I keep the minimap expanded (because situational awareness is king) and just blindly press melee or fire on most content? Or most importantly simply run past it? Sabo, rescue, mobile defense, defection and spy don’t need dead bodies.

cap needs one kill. Interception is most effective by locking down spawned mobs suppressing further spawns until the end of a round.

that leaves exterm, defense, assault, salvage, fissures and survival.

then in valis enemies simply spawn on top of players then poop cc. It’s s joke because void dash but still.

so yeh some work might be nice

I agree that Warframe needs to bring its gameplay up to snuff, though Borderlands has never had QUITE the same draw for me and Anthem is still being published by EA, so we'll see how that goes.

[MJ12]

57 minutes ago, (XB1)ZenithLord 42 said:

Warframe at its heart, is a numbers game; skill not included. This is especially evident when one looks at the modding system which gives percentage-based increases to stats which forces the developers to be overly cautious when adding new mods. A small seemingly inconsequential bump in stats can completely change mod setups. 

The design also forces gear and enemies’ damage to be adjusted on a curve instead of a solid line. The detriment here is that difficultly now is about which stat will take precedence instead of which stats can be used to create build diversity and individual player modalities. 

When this is the case, you create situations in which only one strategy will work. You see this with Warframe builds that center around one or two powers being used as opposed to the entire kit being useful. 

I would also go so far in saying that the consequences of a system that relies solely on statistical differentiation effectively alienates players as it doesn’t provide a sense of any accomplishment besides “I stuck through the grind”. 

Warframe developers really need to look at Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode as that “game within a game” allowed for far better enemy encounters and player rewards even if it was incredibly repetitive. It also rewarded player skill as your gear mattered, but what mattered even more was how it was used. 

In short, Warframe has hit the ceiling insofar as effective rewards and numerical values will take it. If DE continues the systematic approach to gaming in regards to numbers over skill the game will only have one direction to go, down. 

ME3 rewarded player skill largely by having progression tied to the hardest difficulty modes where the majority of weapons and many character classes were not viable. Additionally, it was full of a ton of utter BS-sync kill enemies galore in higher difficulty modes, bullet sponge enemies who took hundreds of bullets to kill, and damage levels so high that if you weren't playing one of the survival-dedicated characters you basically survived higher difficulty content entirely by virtue of exploiting shield/health gating mechanics. Playing ME3MP was basically a game of cheesing the spawn mechanics with the few characters who could counter the endless BS.

Comparing it to the higher difficulty missions in Warframe is pretty apt because you see the exact same things-few viable builds and weapons, tons of utter BS, bypassing annoying mechanics via exploits because if you need to grind a lot, high difficulty rapidly becomes unfun and aggravating. Fights and setpieces which are interesting when done a few times, at one's own pace, become frustrating barriers that burn players out. There's a reason most MMOs quarantine off high-difficulty content like raids, making them run on a weekly reset.

BTW: Most ME3 character builds also centered around one or two powers being used, because very few characters had their entire kit be useful.

The argument about 'numbers game, skill not included' is kind of unwarranted here. Any game with RPG elements that is accessible is going to be a 'numbers game, skill not included' because said game will allow you to overcome challenges by either grinding upwards (numbers) or learning the mechanics (skill), outside of certain endgame instances (and because vertical progression is expected, you're going to basically depreciate old endgame content as the game goes along, by allowing people to flex on older, weaker things with their huge stats). Furthermore, execution skill isn't the only skill in the game. Strategic thought isn't something that only exists in turn based games, and character building is skill in and of itself. Now, there are pretty major issues with how Warframe implements character building, don't get me wrong, but acting like that's not skill is kind of silly.

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

This is actually an endemic problem with Warframe's balance. There is always a meta. Unless everything in the game uses equivalent fixed values for damage, health, etc. there will always be a "best-in-slot" or "strongest option." Trying to remove the meta is an exercise in futility. HOWEVER, in Warframe the meta outperforms the non-meta by leaps and bounds and friggin cartwheels. In most balanced games the meta just offers a marginal increase in effectiveness over a "good, but not meta" build. Warframe's first balancing priority should be shrinking the gap between the meta and non-meta. The meta should be there for those who care about it, but it should be unimportant enough that the average player can simply ignore it.

I ended up with a lot of cross-topic thoughts between this and the modding thread so I might repeat myself a little. Sorry about that 🙂

I'm in general agreement, though. You're never going to beat the meta, you're never going to stop people from just copying builds off of YouTube, and you're probably never going to stop people from trash-talking each other over who builds for what. As long as your game balance reduces the player performance band enough that top-tier builds aren't VASTLY over-performing mid-tier builds, people will defy the meta. I'm of the opinion that, if given a real choice, most people will pick whatever looks cool or awesome or pretty to them, even if it's not the most optimal choice out there. As long as the game doesn't make me feel like a complete donkey for doing it, I'll pick weaker weapons and less potent builds. I'll pick a machinegun because it sounds cool, I'll pick a Warframe because I like the concept of it, I'll pick a mod because it makes it easier for me to hit stuff even if my DPS would be better with damage.

The problem for Warframe, I think, is DE painted themselves into a corner with their damage-stacking system. Even weapons with relatively low damage numbers balloon VERY quickly when you stack base damage buffs onto elemental damage buffs onto critical hits onto headshots onto enhanced critical hits onto Slash procs. Throw Rivens into the mix and the numbers get silly. Of course enemy balance is going to be all over the place if the game has to work for both simple Gorgon and a crit/slash/riven/headshot/ehnanced crit Vectis Prime. Like the player performance band, the weapon DPS band causes all sorts of problems of its own, and is - I feel - in large part responsible for the stupid amount of armour Grenier and high-level Corpus mechs have. Which then turns right around and forces players into an anti-armour arms race of Corrosive Projection and Corrosive damage and super-high-damage guns.

From my perspective, the game is suffering from a severe case of multipliers bloat, allowing simple stat optimisation to override any amount of actual real-time player input. Bring enough multipliers to one-shot everything before it can one-shot you and don't bother with tactics, strategy or even the proper kit. Unfortunately, I don't know that this is fixable at this point. The way multipliers stack, ANY change is going to cascade into massive effects and probably break a lot of people's guns all but completely.

 

5 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I think this could be neatly summed up as "too many priority targets," and I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment here.

That is an EXCELLENT way of putting it! I love it 🙂 That's precisely the issue, yes. When the game throws too many priority targets at the player, they stop being priority targets altogether and become just... Targets. What skill and tactics the player might have been inclined to use against a single priority target or even a few of them stop mattering in this case. Either the player is overwhelmed and dies, or the player finds some way to entirely sidestep the intended difficulty, neither of which make for a particularly engaging experience. A proper boss or even mini-boss needs to be complex enough to require special attention, but also rare enough that the general flow of the battle isn't broken. Throwing a mini-boss rush at the player is a always a mistake simply because it dilutes the player's willingness to fight them "properly."

Players are always going to want to break the game and trivialise difficulty, there's no getting around that. This can, however, be mitigated with proper pacing. You're always riding the razor's edge between annoying the player enough to feel challenged, but not annoying the player so much that they quit, cheat or cheese. To my eyes, that means restricting difficulty spikes to bosses and the occasional elite enemy. Put it this way - I will call out a Nox on voice chat. I'm not going to bother calling out a Bombard, even though the latter is arguably more dangerous. Bombards spawn constantly, Noxes are rare. Bombards annoy me with their cheap one-hit kills and heavy armour. Noxes I'm happy to fight with because they're a nice change of pace.

I'm in agreement with you that more thoughtful challenge can exist, but it has to be done VERY carefully so as not to outstay its welcome.

[(PSN)CommanderRadec81]

On 2018-12-20 at 8:43 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

I'm just gonna take the time to point out/re-emphasize a few things...

1. Even if challenging combat is rare in the looter genre, and possibly even nonexistent in looter-shooters specifically... Why is that a problem? There's always a game that does something first; it's not like the only option is to copy other games.
2. It is possible to add challenging enemies without eliminating or impairing the horde aspect. All we need are an effective tiering (trash mobs/elites) system and better DPS balance. Players should absolutely be able to tear through trash mobs with reckless abandon, but nuking bosses without health-gating and invulnerability phases is a problem.
3. Drawing inspiration from and taking notes on things other games do well is NOT the same thing as changing genre or transforming into those other games. Dark Souls does fair, balanced, and skill-based combat very well. Warframe could learn a lot from it when it comes to implementing telegraphs and manufacturing opportunities for melee counter-attack. That does NOT mean Warframe should copy its restrictive movement and limited healing options.

OP's underlying complaint is that Warframe's combat is actually rather unimaginative and unengaging. This has nothing to do with not enjoying looters and everything to do with not enjoying the combat. If we're gonna be sticklers about a strictly arbitrary definition of what a "looter" is, Warframe doesn't even fit the bill that well.

Most enemies don't drop meaningful loot, and there is no real random variation in the quality of what they drop. Warframe is rather far removed from games like Diablo or Borderlands or Path of Exile in that respect, which to my understanding is a cornerstone of the looter genre.

This lack of loot-specific entertainment (i.e., the excitement of finding better stuff) means Warframe conversely depends more heavily on combat to be engaging and entertaining. And currently, that combat is very flat.

https://giphy.com/gifs/clap-cheer-cheering-Rgn6cUfaN5zW

[MysticDragonMage]

On 2018-12-19 at 10:10 AM, Steel_Rook said:

I think an important point to remember here is that Warframe is a horde shooter first and foremost, the same way Payday 2 or L4D or Space Marine Exterminatus is. It's not a cover shooter, it's not a tactical shooter, it's not Dark Souls. The combat system is always going to be arcadey and simplistic, success is always going to depend to a larger extent on what tools you brought into the fight with you than how you actually use them. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. Not all games have to be heavily reliant on cover or stamina meters or duels with individual enemies - some work best when you grab the biggest gun you have and shoot the biggest clump of bad guys you can find with it. I don't even feel the game needs to particularly rely on the movement system in actual combat as I'm not a fan of bunny-hopping. The game CAN work the way it's designed right now, as long as it offers enough variety and is well-balanced.

The problem is that the game's current balance point is very one-sided. I guess in an attempt to create "challenge," DE have ended up reducing difficulty down to a gear check. Do you have enough resistance and enough damage? Cool, then you win regardless of what you're fighting. Corpus, Grenier, Sentients, Terra, bosses - doesn't matter. Oh, sure, Eidolons require Amps and Orbs require Arch Guns as a gimmick, but you're still looking at damage in vs. damage out no matter the context. Like I said, that could work as long as different enemies, different factions, different encounters, etc. required a different approach or at least benefited from different gear. But they don't. On the one hand, players are given enough straight-up damage to ignore Grenier armour and Corpus shields, enough survivability to tank damage from all sources. DE seem to have realised this and just given up on creating unique faction as a result.

Orb Vallis in general is one giant example of how not to do difficulty. In theory, the Terra CORPUS faction is a Corpus faction, but they don't really work like one. In my experience, the strengths of the corpus are their shields and their heavy reliance on control. Knockback, slows, stuns, Nullifier bubbles and so on. Their units are generally not intended to be "tough" or even particularly mobile, but rather rely on debilitating the player and hiding behind technological shields and barriers. So here come the Terra Corpus with a wide variety of armoured boss units, high-health tanky units, high-mobility rushers, long-range artillery, etc... And they don't play like Corpus any more. They play like Grenier. In fact, they play like Grenier AND Corpus AND Infested, almost like another Orokin faction. They do all of the things all of the time, and thus have no identity of their own, no unique set of gear that's good against them, no unique approach to fighting them that isn't just how you approach the Tusk Grenier.

A horde shooter can work just fine with simple mechanics as long as it offers enough variety, but that requires building player gear and enemy factions with an eye towards diversity. There shouldn't be factions that do everything, there shouldn't be guns that do everything. If anything, I'd have liked to see more of a diversity between the factions, where the Grenier for instance would send relatively few, very tough enemies while Infested would predominantly consist on a massive number of weak enemies. That way, enemy number and the potency of AoE would vary with faction, instead of every faction swarming players with large groups of enemies.

Point being, I'm of the opinion that the combat system is fine as it is, but variety in encounters is where it suffers.

this.

i really dont understand what people see in warframe that makes them think it can become the next Dark Souls competitor simply by being tougher and apparently with stalker invasion modes judging by so many requests. guess people just really want Bandai Namco Entertainment to make a sci-fi "Space Souls" or something.

anyway, i agree entirely. warframe should never be compared to such games because its always been developing to become the hoard shooting power fantasy we have today. if you have played warframe during its earliest stages, you would understand this. lets just say there used to be no bullet jumps and before that there was a stamina system and before that there an ability cool-down system. back then, warframe could have been compared to something like dark souls and it very well could have been developed in that sort of direction.

other than that, i do wish the grineer where more of a tactical faction that throws in a few grunts as cannon-fodder, that the corpus relied more on technology, and the infested could actually infest something in front of us every once in a while (like our invasion allies).

Edited December 22, 2018 by MysticDragonMage

[Steel_Rook]

8 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

other than that, i do wish the grineer where more of a tactical faction that throws in a few grunts as cannon-fodder, that the corpus relied more on technology, and the infested could actually infest something in front of us every once in a while (like our invasion allies).

Personally, I feel the Corpus should be the "tactical" faction and the "annoying" faction. Nullifier bubbles, impenetrable barriers, slows and stuns, wallers, teleporters, etc. They would also be the proper military faction who'd show up to the fight, drop reinforced cover or shields to hide behind and lay down long-range suppressing fire while their Proxies advance behind a Nullifier bubble. I'm obviously speaking in the abstract as that exact scenario is never going to work in actual practice, but that's what I'd imagine a faction of smart, technologically-advanced and meticulous soldiers to do in combat.

The Grenier, on the other hand, have no business being tactical, in my opinion. We have plenty of examples for why their heads are as thick as their armour. I imagine them as a "no finesse" faction who make up for their stupidity with overwhelming firepower and heavy armour. Basically, a faction predominantly made up of bosses like Heavy Gunners, Bombards and Noxes, these slow-walking, unstoppable turtles constantly raining conflagration on you that you. I'm fine with them also having a bunch of trash soldiers - the various failed clones who don't do much more than get in the way, keep you from regaining shields and grab Comms towers when you aren't looking.

For the Infested, I'd do the opposite. Massive swarms of about medium-difficulty enemies - your Chargers, your Runners and Crawlers, your Mutalist Ospreys, with the occasional Mutalist Moa or Boiler thrown in the mix. I'd make the Ancients even bigger and harder to kill, but also a lot rarer. You want the presence of an Ancient Healer to completely turn the tide of battle and force players to look for that one priority target, rather than just resolving to shoot at everything even harder and roll with it. I'd also make the Ancients a lot easier to tell apart. They blend into each other and into the horde a bit too much. Especially Healers and Toxic.

Basically, I'd like to see each faction have a unique approach to fighting the player and require unique tactics to fighting them. Actually, Helldivers is a pretty good example of this, with factions that map to Warframe pretty well. The Cyborgs are your Grenier. They have tanks, lots of slow-moving, heavily-armed, heavily-armoured units and lots of explosives. You absolutely NEED anti-vehicle weapons against them. The Bugs are your Infested, with no ranged attacks, an over-reliance on swarming you with numbers from all sides and with the occasional "armoured tank bug" thrown into the mix. The Illuminate your kind of your Corpus - weak units hiding behind shields, deploying uncrossable walls to pen players in, featuring a lot of off-screen snipers that players have to dodge and a lot of slow/confuse abilities, but featuring no real armoured units. Not only do you benefit from bringing different gear against different factions, the feeling of fighting them is vastly different, as well.

[(PSN)Herrwann69]

Le 20/12/2018 à 18:56, Tellakey a dit :

Possibly, but I think I find MH:W's grind satisfactory because it always keeps things interesting, the challenge is always there and it's authentic

No. At least not more than Warframe. 

I'm a huge MH fan and player, used to play it since MH portable, played almost all MH from there (except MH4G because 4 was terrible and XX because it was to much for me to play another MH based on this skeleton) and for me farming in MH was just using the same routine over and over. No more challenge, no more thinking, just repeat the same patterns again and again like in Warframe.

It was to a point I almost quit the serie as every new game just feels like another c/p of the one before and new monsters were only there for the new armour and weapons set but nothing like a new challenge or fun fight.

I got a good time playing World but I quit after some hours in the endgame as it was the same grind all over again and my brain went off playing it like before.

But it's normal, I have far more than 1000h playing MH series so the burn out is perfectly fine. Same for players with 4 digits playing time on Warframe.

Edited December 23, 2018 by (PS4)Herrwann69

[(PSN)teacup775]

On 2018-12-21 at 3:06 PM, Steel_Rook said:

From my perspective, the game is suffering from a severe case of multipliers bloat, allowing simple stat optimisation to override any amount of actual real-time player input. Bring enough multipliers to one-shot everything before it can one-shot you and don't bother with tactics, strategy or even the proper kit. Unfortunately, I don't know that this is fixable at this point. The way multipliers stack, ANY change is going to cascade into massive effects and probably break a lot of people's guns all but completely.

The way out of it, would imagine is two fold.

1) enjoyable missions. missions with personality, node to node and thematically, by location and faction. hordes primarily corrupted and infested and more flavorful combat in corpus and grineer. some missions that don’t rely on breaking boxes to walk out with loot.

2) “elites” either in packs or mini bosses that require mechanincs, tactics to deal with, where overkill damage is less useful then kit and its use for the task at hand.

3) (optional) locations that are smaller than open world but maybe only semi randomized, where players could hang out and new stuff would happen. call it orokin towers plus.

4) let people extract when they feel like it and add an invite only option where host can recruit while in mission to top out squad.

Then add mods to enhance tackling 2.

One streamer made a point about damage. A fully ranked serration on a corinth will one shot the star chart’s highest level enemy. Weapons are over geared. Warframes are over geared. Reworking the damage system is probably asa matter of practicality, impossible. The above provides an incremental means to side step that issue and broaden the game.

Edited December 23, 2018 by (PS4)teacup775

[(PSN)teacup775]

On 2018-12-21 at 10:02 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Hey, I actually like Rude Zuud! 

Her lines and voice acting are great, as are all of them. The head in a breadbox puppeted by a mechanical head is not. 

[Tellakey]

Bumping to prolong the thread's lifespan.