A Grandmaster Reminisces about how WF used to be.

[Xylia]

Wasn't sure what to call this thread, but you know, I've been thinking about Warframe last night and today, and I decided to write up some Feedback in general. I kinda doubt that a DE would really see this, much less even respond and I'm going to get hit with trolling and people saying all kinds of stupid junk, seems like that's always what ends up happening.

But screw it I'll say it anyways.

First, I'll provide a little perspective on myself: Some of you may or not have remembered when I used to be more active on the forums, some years ago. I have 4,900+ posts and I'm a Grandmaster (not saying this to be holier than thou -- I'm saying this to point out how much I used to love this game). I paid more than $300 (I bought a couple Prime Access packs too as well as a few platinum coupons I redeemed). When I first started Warframe, my friend had dragged me into it, and this was way back when we only had two tilesets, Grineer Asteroid and Corpus Ship. This was before the Void came, before Grineer Ships, before Earth, before any of that. In fact, I think it was perhaps... what, three? four? months after the game became available on Steam.

At first, my relationship with Warframe was kind of rocky... it took me awhile of grinding with my friend before I could finally use weapons that could actually kill anything (back then it was hard, far harder than it is today), but once I finally got to where I could kill stuff, once I finally got Rhino (it took over 20 Jackal kills) and not too long after that, the Glaive was released, and I had a throwing weapon that was basically infinite ammo ranged attacks, and that's when the game started getting fun for me.

I remember as the Updates came out... Update 8... then Update 9... heck I wrote a guide for new players that was rather well-liked (not to brag), Update 10... Damage 2.0 came out and I was kinda like "eh.... not sure if gusta", I mean yeah it solved some of the problems like Acrid being entirely overpowered, but meh.

It was around 2015 that I started with the Hiatuses -- we were adding new systems, new layers of systems ontop of systems and mechanics in the game, and it just... I don't know, something just started changing. There was the annoying key grinding, it wasn't enough to put a new frame in the game, no, every new frame required not only grinding, but layers of grinding on top of each other. Terrible RNG that would reward you with nothing again and again and again, then the game started shifting more towards Endless Mission types, and after a few Host Migrations causing me to lose nice rewards, I started really getting tired of everything being locked behind these game modes.

Then people started telling me "BUT THAT'S THE ONLY WAY IT'S CHALLENGING!!!!" .......sigh.

Anyways, I just wanted to reminisce a little....

Remember when terrain and landscapes were done in a way that you could actually tell where passageways and doors are? I know the new graphics of today's tilesets look gorgeous and all but when I'm flying down a corridor at breakneck speed sometimes it's hard to tell where you can go and where you can't with so much visual data.... it's an overload, so much stuff.

EDIT: To prove a point with this? When I did the Orb Vallis unlock quests.... tears were coming out of my eyes. Not from emotion, but from the visual strain of there being SO MUCH CRAP to try to focus on at once.

Remember the days when you didn't have 50,000+ mods to try and figure out what's actually useful and what's not?

Remember the days when you didn't need spreadsheets and all kinds of loadouts for each enemy type, because of how complicated we got with the damage system?

Remember the days when you didn't have 50,000+ branching paths thrown at you simultaneously, not knowing which one of them actually leads to something viable that you should be trying to get right now?

Remember the days when you had a sliding scale of difficulty between the planets, where you went to Mercury and you could do missions there reliably, and it was fine, and then eventually, you'd get to Pluto and missions were hard, almost assuredly requiring a group, even for stuff like Exterminates?

Remember the days before we got ridiculous with exponential stat growth in enemies as they gain levels in these stupid endless missions that are the only way to do anything in Warframe anymore? Once they get above a certain level, then they go from manageable to walking bosses, each one of the 20+ mobs that swarm you at any given time?

Remember when you didn't have to remember a bunch of button presses to use melee weapons effectively, and when heavy attacks were used just by holding the button down? Seems nowadays a lot of weapons require the combos because if you use them in melee-while-holding-gun mode (pressing E while holding a gun), they are extremely slow with annoying pauses between your attacks.

I look back at a simpler Warframe that was just simple fun. Log on, pick a mission, and just do it and have fun. I miss those days, before we got so bloody complicated with the game, to the point it seems so insurmountable to figure out what I'm even supposed to do anymore. Complicated systems, the multitude of systems, sometimes they throw things at you that you only use once every so often (like the last time I tried playing, that Umbral Excal quest that required you to have your Operator form powered up even though nothing else in the game other than those fat grineer girls with the staves need said Form).

So anyways, that's the perspective of a lone Tenno who used to be far more active, who misses the game as it once was, I've tried and tried to get back into Warframe, but it's just not anywhere near the same kind of fun as it was, and that's a shame, because at one point, it was one of my favorite pleasures in gaming. I played WoW, I played FFXIV, I've dumped 1200 hours into Terraria... but I just can't seem to find much enjoyment in Warframe anymore.

I want to enjoy the game, but unless you guys wanna do an Update 9 rollback or something... I'm afraid it just isn't possible, and that sucks.

EDIT: Added a minor point.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Xylia

[Walkampf]

You making things out a lot more complicated than they really are.

Sorry, but I can't take you serious at all.

[Xylia]

4 minutes ago, Walkampf said:

You making things out a lot more complicated than they really are.

Sorry, but I can't take you serious at all.

You're saying that from a perspective of someone who knows the game, who's been playing the game and who hasn't taken a hiatus, come back and holy crap loads and loads and loads of junk to do with no clear progression path, the UI is all different, you're not sure what stuff still does what, etc.

A new player doesn't have this problem, because the game is built to ease new players into this stuff, one at a time.

But a returning player doesn't get that treatment. They're dumped into the world that has changed around them.

Maybe it isn't as complicated as it SEEMS, but therein lies the problem -- it SEEMS complicated to a returning player who just feels utterly lost.

[(PSN)Elvenbane]

Interesting perspective. As a PS4 player I haven't been around quite as long as you, but if you ignore the outlier fluff, WF is still a simple game at it's heart. There's no reason you can't still log on, pick a mission and maybe have fun today. I don't see the WF you reminisce about being very interesting for very long...

[GinKenshin]

10 minutes ago, Xylia said:

You're saying that from a perspective of someone who knows the game, who's been playing the game and who hasn't taken a hiatus, come back and holy crap loads and loads and loads of junk to do with no clear progression path, the UI is all different, you're not sure what stuff still does what, etc.

A new player doesn't have this problem, because the game is built to ease new players into this stuff, one at a time.

But a returning player doesn't get that treatment. They're dumped into the world that has changed around them.

Maybe it isn't as complicated as it SEEMS, but therein lies the problem -- it SEEMS complicated to a returning player who just feels utterly lost.

I'm sorry but out of all the players the game needs to cater to, returnees are at the bottom of the list. Get used to it, that's pretty much it, you can't expect a F2P PVE game to go unchanged for years, and you can't expect it to go back either 

Edited December 26, 2018 by GinKenshin

[Xylia]

I think some people are missing the point I was trying to make...

It's not that I expect the game to go unchanged, it's more... I wish there were some kind of direction to progression, some kind of idea of what I should be working towards next, and of course the shift towards everything being endless mission types with hordes of enemies everywhere is kind of meh.

That, and the game seems.... like a jumbled glob of ideas thrown together without a whole lot of coherency between the ideas maybe is what I was getting at?

It's not one game... it feels like several minigames with little connection between them.

[Eathian]

I have to disagree with the endless missions being prominent. I barely even see C rewards as pugs tend to drop after the A or B rotation.

[Xylia]

The endless mission thing is how a lot of Void rewards seem locked behind them anymore, and how Fortuna is littered with the stupid things. Maybe not Endless, but still Defense in particular, with every bounty seeming to have a Defense segment in it somewhere.

[Eathian]

That's not any more endless than a mobile defense is

[Xylia]

Well, I'm more talking about the mission type itself, not whether or not it is endless. Probably should have specified that. Meh. Oh well. Parking it and killing hordes of enemies is.. something I only enjoy in limited amounts, and certainly not every single mission ever.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Xylia

[Thrymm]

I agree with the "endless"(used in the context of wave type missions, or stationary/semi stationary objectives).  It's the part of the game I dislike the most, the part most disengaged from actual fast paced Warframe usage, etc.  Both Defense and Interception are this way, and they are my least favorite areas of "normal" play.  I'd rather see less of these types and their mindlessness.

I'd especially like to see the influence that their broken scaling offers to the game end--this is where the actual scaling and power creep falls in, as well as actual difficulty issues.  I miss the game struggling with concepts like keeping energy in check, rather than just building around a near constant full pool.  I miss weapons actually tapering off---there was a time we actually vehemently discussed level 40 as the general NPC soft balance point, and vigorously discussed the Soma breaking that barrier too easily(compare that with today, where virtually nobody would point at a basic crit weapon like that).  At one time we where fighting fairly hard to get through enemies in that range, with mission ends imminent.  And then came the Boltor Prime, which had virtually no status or crit, but the base 50 damage blew that level 40 concept right out of the water---and we've long since obsoleted a no crit/stat base 50, that's how far removed we've become.  Back then, "endless" mission types just felt better because they weren't a slog, because the "force players out" aspect actually worked.

The systems aren't really more complicated than they used to be, though, in no small part because of this power creep.  Not because more complexity doesn't exist, mind, but simply because the game doesn't need it within the framework of actual content, so it can effectively be ignored.  A weapon built with corrosive can be equipped for Grineer and effectively left that way virtually forever.  Doesn't even necessarily have to be crit or status heavy.  No infested or Corpus within the "normal" level window will be enough of a challenge to dispute it.  At that point, we're looking at more variety in ways to kill enemies, rather than "getting it right" in order to succeed at all.  If a player does choose to optimize, however, they now hopelessly break the NPC mechanics to the point that they virtually never recover.

I'd love to get back to a time that this is not the case, but we're pretty far removed from it these days.

 

[Xylia]

@Thrymm seems to get it, lol.

I suppose spoken a bit more eloquently, but yeah.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

So, reinstate stamina?

[Xylia]

I don't really think I (or Thrymm for that matter) said anything about Stamina and the reinstatement of such.

Removing Stamina allows us to do what set this game apart from any other third person shooter, better. There's all kinds of games like Destiny, Battlefield, Borderlands, etc.

But Warframe gave us something different, and that something different was Parkour. You felt like a Ninja, running through levels and scaling up walls, and doing all of this neat crap.

And........they make you park it at a computer for 5 minutes at a time defending it from incoming hordes of enemies.

That would be kinda like, I don't know, taking a Sonic game, and have him jump in a ship for some Gradius-style action. It makes no freaking sense.

[(PSN)teacup775]

2 hours ago, Xylia said:

I wish there were some kind of direction to progression, some kind of idea of what I should be working towards next, and of course the shift towards everything being endless mission types with hordes of enemies everywhere is kind of meh.

 

Over the comments of peeps saying you’re being a snow flake, I fully agree with your sentiment. The game didn’t have any direction when it first dropped, and it doesn’t now as you clear the star chart. I picked this game up 2yrs ago after toying with it on initial drop (fun game play but an empty shell). Fortunately I had some gaming buddies that were vets, so they pasted over the narrative void.

DE can rise to the occasion with story, but their production abilities seem to struggle making them. Not one of the creative leads seems concerned with a woven whole, only churning out frame after frame and weapon.

Utterly missing is a cohesive narrative to drive, or simply lend direction thru the star chart. You can find info etc, but in wikis.

Mission types have no flavor. What is introduced on Earth is pretty much it. There is nothing unique outside of Lua or the Void and even then these areas sport the same ol mission types.

For the most part this game is about card collection. Get the right set of mods, the resources to rank them up and build forma to provide capacity, and you're “done” in large part. No more advancement (minus operator). 

[MJ12]

2 minutes ago, Xylia said:

I don't really think I (or Thrymm for that matter) said anything about Stamina and the reinstatement of such.

Removing Stamina allows us to do what set this game apart from any other third person shooter, better. There's all kinds of games like Destiny, Battlefield, Borderlands, etc.

But Warframe gave us something different, and that something different was Parkour. You felt like a Ninja, running through levels and scaling up walls, and doing all of this neat crap.

And........they make you park it at a computer for 5 minutes at a time defending it from incoming hordes of enemies.

That would be kinda like, I don't know, taking a Sonic game, and have him jump in a ship for some Gradius-style action. It makes no freaking sense.

I personally dislike the hell out of how affinity range + spawn mechanics + the favoring of defense mission types just makes it optimal to hide in a single room and wait for people to come to you, rather than going hunting. The open world missions feel a little better regarding variety, but the distance between objectives and the punishing affinity range mechanic make me sad, especially because they already don't reward that much affinity in the first place.

I think Survival-like mission modes but with free map roaming would be fantastic. If you want to have endless missions, that's okay, give us various different objectives that require moving around, don't penalize the players simply because they split up or left a guy behind, let us enjoy the movement system more, and I think the mission structure would feel a lot better.

[Xylia]

Kinda wish they would re-work Defense itself, to be honest.

They were SO close with Interception, but missed the mark just slightly, with enemies instantly capturing points if they stand in front of a console for 5 seconds (but yet you have to clear out all enemies and wait for the control to shift).

I think if they would do something similar to Interception, only make it so you need to keep enemies away from 2-3 different spots, that would reinstate the need to constantly be on the move. You couldn't hide in a hole and throw your abilities unless you had a group.

Survival isn't too bad as an endless mode, but then again, I don't like the "sudden fail" nature of it, and RNG of the drops that makes-or-breaks a run. Did a survival not that long ago where I'd kill 20 enemies in a row and not get a single air drop and then the next 5 I kill drop one in a row. And if you get to 0% oxygen then somehow all the air in the world means nothing, your mission is just done right there and then.

I guess that's also what I don't like about Defense -- the targets (at least on Fortuna) are way too squishy and it's an instant fail if they shoot it enough times (which is GOING to happen, because it's an open world and they rain guys literally from the sky).

I hate instant fail conditions (other than death). They feel so cheap.

[toxicitzi]

2 hours ago, Xylia said:

Kinda wish they would re-work Defense itself, to be honest.

They were SO close with Interception, but missed the mark just slightly, with enemies instantly capturing points if they stand in front of a console for 5 seconds (but yet you have to clear out all enemies and wait for the control to shift).

I think if they would do something similar to Interception, only make it so you need to keep enemies away from 2-3 different spots, that would reinstate the need to constantly be on the move. You couldn't hide in a hole and throw your abilities unless you had a group.

Survival isn't too bad as an endless mode, but then again, I don't like the "sudden fail" nature of it, and RNG of the drops that makes-or-breaks a run. Did a survival not that long ago where I'd kill 20 enemies in a row and not get a single air drop and then the next 5 I kill drop one in a row. And if you get to 0% oxygen then somehow all the air in the world means nothing, your mission is just done right there and then.

I guess that's also what I don't like about Defense -- the targets (at least on Fortuna) are way too squishy and it's an instant fail if they shoot it enough times (which is GOING to happen, because it's an open world and they rain guys literally from the sky).

I hate instant fail conditions (other than death). They feel so cheap.

the only thing that they got right so far is one thing.

Salvage.

It's probably gonna be rocky the first few missions, as all things are with DE, but once you get what it is all about, it's like a combination of all the great things about defense, survival and interception. The one thing about it I don't like, are those tiny panels, they're both the same exact simple model for Data Mass objectives and do completely different things, one expels a shock that kills a certain number of Infested, at least I think that's what it does, the other one requires a Serum to restore the Armor plate, the thing that keeps your Oxygen basically and keeps from your health dropping, similar to Survival missions..

The only reason I know this is from trial and error, as with most missions in the game you have this issue of requiring a full walkthrough/tutorial to explain to a player what to do, which is really telling of bad level and game design. Even now, almost 700 hours in I still need tutorials for Spy missions, so I know the shortcuts for places like Kuva Fortress, or to know how to press 1 panel at the start, to disable a foot laser grid at the end of a Corpus Spy vault, or how to just plain and simply avoid every single bullS#&$ moment in Grineer Spy vaults, without wanting to rip my own hair out sometimes because of those damn flying Sensors.

 

In fact on the topic, if DE would just make it a mission to remove the Necessity to Crapshoot everything out of every single thing in the game before figuring out, what the #*!% is even happening here, if they would apply that to all of the things in the game? they would make it much better. The ship? that's where they should start, everything else is small potatoes compared to getting the Ship feeling right.

If someone who plays games and has never touched Warframe, doesn't get what something is even after going inside it? That's a clue of a big problem and there's plenty of things to write there that qualify, like, Relic System Refinement, Mastery Rank Rewards, the Menu Inventory and Yes, that is quite literally the only place you can access it from, really. The Menu. and into Equipment, then Inventory, which is where you sell S#&$ you don't need to hold on to, especially after making weapons/frames Mastered.

Here's a start. Generally shared resources of the player. We know how much Creds, Plat we have, probably ducats, we don't know how much Refinement we have. These aren't tangible resources, we should have these in very easily observable places, like the place where you can see your Credits, why have that be taken up by just the Credits alone? Credits have to also be one of the most redundant things to keep constantly in the know how all the time, you should be able to know how much of anything you have and I don't mean, Alloy, or Circuits, that S#&$ is Crafting materials, that is fine staying in either a Crafting menu, or the Foundry, which is basically that, except that's more like the Forge in any other MMO. This is acceptable to stay out of general resources, because they're not general resources, those are Credits, Platinum, Refinement and Ducats. Why Ducats and Refinement? Because DE decided they should exist, that's why, therefore, it's on them for all of us to know those things, without going into the respective Forges for crafting/refining relics.

 

oh and then there's the whole concept of Mastering Items?? I was having a near aneurysm trying to explain to a friend, the difference between that, the rank the item itself detains for itself, as a weapon/warframe and the Mastered emblem, which is the exp that goes into your Profile's Mastery Rank, which, someone can correct me on this, but this only applies from Completing the mastery rank of any single item, ONCE, right?... All of the time, he was wondering if it affected either the Warframe, or if the Warframe was the Player character, or just in general, trying to figure out what the #*!% I was saying, because he had a Warframe in front of him that he understood and he thought when I said Mastery Rank I meant that, since every single other thing also goes on Ranks and maxing them out.

from his prior experience in games like Lineage 2, he probably thought it was some kind of evolution for the Warframe into something more concrete, like from a plain simple Fighter/Warrior, to a Warlord, Dark Knight, or some stuff like that which goes on in other MMOs. It is a title deceptively called something much Grander than what it actually is, you know and that is something people should be keenly aware of in this MMO scene? all mastery rank is, is just raising daily caps, mod slots for unranked weapons and refinement. As well as being able to use weapons who require said ranks, up to a certain point though that is.

 

You know what's #*!%ed up about Mastery Rank? The same thing as the Communications submenu, It's an Intangible Concept, in a game that has all other things as tangible, like warframes, weapons, sentinels, companions, even things like foundry, mods, relic system, incubator, arsenal, navigation, syndicate, codex, Even the Navigation menu has a little pod to sit on! even when you meet the Operator, there is nothing about Mastery Ranking suggesting of anything and it's probably the only single thing that exists in a pocket dimension in the entire game, or the Market, or communication things are there to better help you understand, how do you communicate with your guild from your ship, to explain why this thing only exists IN YOUR SHIP?! This is just #*!%ing inconsistent at this point and there's no reason for it, but the game has this extremely hard limitation set on itself and the entire Menu system is just a huge crutch for the lack of these things existing anywhere, because if everything was tangible? I don't think anyone would be confused. People would have a slight time to take it all in, but they'll get it eventually.

maybe this sounds to a lot of you like a whole bunch of nothing, because You Know this now, but from any new player's perspective, this would take a lot of time to even realize, let alone figure out on their own, I know from my own experience I never ranked up any mastery until I Think at least, that I got to Saturn, mostly through public missions on my Volt, because public missions were getting me places and it generally works, because teamwork is better for having 4 different players for all enemies in the mission to focus on, than it would be to have literally everything focus on you alone. This, Should be obvious to any player, as it was to my friend playing through the game.

 

Another added bonus? an option, to remove, Those, Transitions.. having animation transitions between menus, it's unacceptable. While it may look slick, it Wastes So Much Time and it is a horrendous drag on the entire user experience, not to mention, Loadouts, something you Have to do between missions? is slowed down to unreal proportions, I would actually want to just be able to Macro Loadouts the way other MMOs could allow several different sets swapped at the press of a combination keybinding, or just 1 or 2 keybindings for left/right selection, but with the way the system is right now, that's just impossible.
Another thing about this in particular, add more loadouts, in fact, add customizable loadouts and being able to Name them. Corrupted, Infested, Ancients, Corpus, Sentients. Maybe there's other things too, for particular missions types, like adding Silencing to weapons in Stealth/Spy/Rescue?

 

 

 

In short, there's a lot of stuff that DE can touch and we can talk about it not just all day, not even just all week, rather all month, but the question is, are they going to? They say a lot of stuff, but all that to me still sounds like putting up appearances to newcomers who don't know all these things and haven't had a chance to have all these things sink in on them, because that's the difference between someone who's played a game for many hours and someone who is new to it, as well as why some / many people just give up in frustration of these commonly known issues.

These are all just welcomed and long waited for quality of life changes that this game needs, because it's not good to have a hogdepodge of things lying around, or, to not have a tangible Inventory in your ship, despite that being where you access it, as well as the rest being tangible for whatever reason. Same goes for the Communications sub menu.