In praise of MR, one of DE's most underrated ideas

[(PSN)Silverback73]

49 minutes ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

I don't know what to make of this statement...who are you defending WF from and why are we bringing up reviews now? Western reviews for early entries in the franchise were mostly abysmal...why should I care about reviews now?

I wouldn't criticize WF if I didn't care...I have plenty of QoL suggestions for MH too for that matter...ex. for the love of all things holy, can you remember my last SOS settings?

The "poor taste" thing was clearly intended as a joke...

It was in response to Rune_me. I’m sorry if contextually it left you a bit in the dark.

I got the joke.  I’m easy-going. 😆

[Cloudyvisage]

MR only really has any weight from MR 1-8 or so, after that you have such a large amount of things to look at and test that you will naturally rank up if you're building things regularly. The fact the game basically asks you to try out it's different equipment is hardly a point of criticism, I found several weapons that I would have never bothered with to be lovely, and some that I thought would fit me perfectly to be quite meh. Karak and Latron, respectively.

 

You don't need to feel like you have to grind unless you've forced yourself to look at the Gram Prime and set some sort of blood vow requiring you to get that now, now, now, because most everything will come to you if you just keep playing the game, by the time I finished up the star-chart and all the low hanging fruit I was about MR 11, mind you, this was before they even had the story quests so there is obviously much more to do and you will likely be sitting closer to 13 if you've been crafting constantly.

At MR 16 you really don't need to increase your MR, you've done it, you can now access basically everything except some particularly annoying Rivens and you've been able to get there whilst not levelling up a large number of things, presumably things you didn't want to level up. I will agree about the Hydron type ranking up of weapons, I played the game without ever abusing Ceres (When that was a thing) and Hydron I only ever used a few times until I realized that I never actually got to appreciate how the weapons I wielded worked or felt.

Taking the time to figure out the weapons lets you find those gems that you love, the weird gun that works well for you but isn't necessarily all that "Meta", like the Tiberon before it's prime, I loved the heck out of that gun, felt amazing, was it viable for late game content? Not at all, couldn't crit, couldn't status, damage was okay, but I spent Forma to make that gun my baby and it hit well above it's weight class because of it, or the Kohm, kinda a meh gun, but I loved it, the Soma/Prime, a gun that has been so "Meta" it basically defined the gunplay for years, hated the thing, didn't use it.

My point is, there are so many things out there that you are far from forced to level up specific guns as soon as you get past the very earliest parts of the game, you DO need to level up something but it need not be anything you don't like, the gap between MR 16 and 26 is very large and also almost entirely pointless, yet the experience to bridge that gap is dozens of guns and Warframes, you can skip well over half the content in the game and still be able to get to a high MR.

[Methanoid]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

Please stop with the inane Warframe > MH nonsense, that's just personal taste. I brought up MH as it's one of my favorite franchises....

soooo his personal taste means nothing, but your exact same personal preference does?

[M3tallius]

On 2019-02-20 at 5:36 AM, SilentMobius said:

I think that making the primary progress metric one based on breadth of acquisition rather than depth of acquisition is, quite frankly, one of the things keeping me in this game, it's really positive and completely changes the dynamic compared to other MMOs/Looters.

Every other loot-based game makes every item that isn't at the apex of efficiency completely redundant. Rewards from old content become redundant the instant anything is perceived to be "better" in it's perceived niche. Content becomes pointless to run because the rewards are redundant, new players never see this content because players/wiki's/guides advise them not to do it.

Every player who wants to pursue the primary progress metric (and the fact that it's option is also great) will need every weapon/warframe/companion. That is a huge amount of progression-content. 

MR-locked content levels are low and easy to get to without excessive grind through undesirable weapons. For the most part a player can get the weapons they want and just stick with them if the so desire.

It is the best RPG-like primary-progress metric I've seen in the last 30+ years of gaming.

The downside is simply that all weapons count as progress and thus should never be offered in time-locked events as it locks later players out of critical progression. Also, no weapon should ever be EOL'd while allowing other players to keep them.

It would be ridiculous to say to a player in another progress-based game that they are forever locked from getting XX% of a level because they missed X event. 

I'm a founder, I literally have everything except the Lato Prime, all in my inventory, all potatoed so this doesn't affect me, but for the other players, they should be given the opportunity to get the same level of progress I have if they put in the gameplay, not be locked out because they weren't there, and yeah, that means the MR from the founders stuff as well. E.G. I would have preferred if Umbra/Skijati/XXX shadowed the MR from Excal Prime/Skana Prime/Lato Prime. While the items need to remain exclusive (I wouldn't mind if they were available again, but I respect the initial agreement and desires of other Founders) Nothing in the founders pack stated that founders would have a permanent head-start on MR.

 

 

Couldn't agree more Silent. Well written, well thought out post that was skipped over in the chain of replies.

[(PSN)Elvenbane]

1 hour ago, Methanoid said:

soooo his personal taste means nothing, but your exact same personal preference does?

Please show me where I bashed WF as a whole or stated that MH is a better game than WF. Oh, right, I never did because I like and play both games and was only talking about MR and what I think of it as a means for progression.

[jfhsanseiIII]

On 2019-02-20 at 4:52 AM, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

The real brilliance of MR is that it conditions folks to grind for/buy complete junk like the 3 identical k-drives to get the MR out of them.

The starting capacity change is one of the best things DE has ever done, but that's only because we're stuck with this tedious level, forma, repeat grind.

* Honorable mention goes to gilding as a further incentive to buy a prefab Moa, Kitgun, or Zaw to skip a leveling pass while completely defeating any possible "fun" of a modular system.

In Monster Hunter World I can build whatever I have the materials for, slot the skills I want from my available decorations, and immediately enjoy using it to full effect...there's a reason I played MHW 4 times more than WF last year.

So basically I reject your premise...MR might be good for DE in order to keep people playing in the absence of meaningful/engaging new content...but it's not good for players as the only way to increase your MR contributes to folks spending a lot of their "play" time psuedo-leeching at the Draco du jour because of the nonsense way affinity works.

The big difference between those is you pay for MHW and you don’t HAVE to pay for anything in Warframe.  I acknowledge that many players do drop some cash for convenience or expediency, but it’s not necessary.   

[rune_me]

3 minutes ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

The big difference between those is you pay for MHW and you don’t HAVE to pay for anything in Warframe.  I acknowledge that many players do drop some cash for convenience or expediency, but it’s not necessary.   

To be fair, someone has to drop cash and pay for it. DE don't work for free. So if you are playing Warframe for free, it just means someone else paid for your ticket.

[jfhsanseiIII]

14 minutes ago, rune_me said:

To be fair, someone has to drop cash and pay for it. DE don't work for free. So if you are playing Warframe for free, it just means someone else paid for your ticket.

That doesn’t negate it being a choice.  In the case of MHW you have zero choice.  You either pay or you don’t play.  

[rune_me]

Just now, jfhsanseiIII said:

That doesn’t negate it being a choice.  In the case of MHW you have zero choice.  You either pay or you don’t play.  

But if everyone chose not to pay, there would be no game to play. So not paying is kind of selfish.

I actually far prefer the Monster Hunter World model. This may just be me getting old, but that was how games used to be when you bought them on DVD's and there were no always online requirements. Everyone paid the same and once the game was bought, that was it. You got exactly what you paid for. No micro transactions or season passes or other silly stuff.

While Warframe's model is far better and fairer than the likes of EA and Ubisoft, the F2P approach does mean that some people ends up paying so that the rest can play for free, whether it's willingly or not. 

[(PSN)Silverback73]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

Please show me where I bashed WF as a whole or stated that MH is a better game than WF. Oh, right, I never did because I like and play both games and was only talking about MR and what I think of it as a means for progression.

I’ll back you on this.  I didn’t feel personally slighted.  Understand, Methanoid, that coming straight at you with an honest response is respect.  You can’t have an authentic conversation without it.

You back what you believe.  It doesn’t inherently diminish others if they differ.

Edited February 22, 2019 by (PS4)Silverback73

[jfhsanseiIII]

2 minutes ago, rune_me said:

But if everyone chose not to pay, there would be no game to play. So not paying is kind of selfish.

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

You can label it whatever you like. It’s still a choice.   

[(PSN)Silverback73]

10 hours ago, rune_me said:

I don't really judge a game by the amount of content. A game could have all the content in the world, but if it was a terrible game, it wouldn't really matter. I judge a game purely by how much fun I have playing it. Yes MHW certainly ran out of content long before Warframe did, but while I was playing it, I had a ton of fun. Don't get me wrong, Warframe is a great game. I just liked MHW better. 

Fair enough, and I respect your preference.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

On 2019-02-19 at 4:53 PM, (XB1)xJdKxZomBiE said:

Honestly, the MR system is trash.  Utter trash.

 

It is a system that does not reward you for enjoying the game, but rather for slogging through ranking up item after item, frame after frame, instead of rewarding you for actually playing the star chart with a favorite frame and set of weapons.

 

Go and beat Alad V in a maxed frame and gear?  Big whoop.  no XP to you, do not pass go, go suck a fat D.  Sit in Draco for 30 minutes and level up your new stuff?  Showered with XP....literall swimming in it.  To me that is a poor design choice, to get nothing experience wise out of your maxed stuff versus unleveled equipment.

 

(Honestly, and this is a fringe argument to have here, but Im not a fan of the mod thing really, as unless you have a few forma's and and a very specific set of mods, you are nothing.  Nobody seems to be able to live without Redirection, Prime flow, Prime Continuity, Rage, Streamline, Overextended, etc etc.  Or Lethal torrent, Hornet strike, dual status mods....or Shred/Vile acceleration, basically ANY multishot mod is needed to status stuff.  We cannot live without these mods, and if they disappeared overnight there would be a riot because suddenly every-bodies power is cut by half or more.  No longer can you solo 30+ minutes in a survival or defense, it would have to go back to how it used to be, where you wanted a good defense frame to guard the objective, or you needed great CC frames to stop the onslaught on survival ad your DPS frames to do the killing so you didn't get overwhelmed.  Literally without the same set of mods, that every single person uses, you are garbo.  Weak.  Powerless in ways that you aren't used to.  No longer can you nuke the tile.  No longer can you CC everything within 50m.  Your gun no longer fires through 4 guys in a row, with 120% multishot and does Blast and Corrosive, now it just shoots regular old bullets or bolts or energy beams.)

 

The MR system does not reward you for playing the game to have fun.  It only rewards you to grind over and over and over to get a new rank on a meaningless system to unlock other gear behind a number wall to further grind on.  Hell, you supposedly lose affinity when you die, but where did that affinity come from?  There is no live rank system where it is calculated off how proficient you were in the mission, and subsequently across all your missions, where if you kept dying you might see that rank go down and fluctuate a bit.  Death is meaningless.  Death used to have a physical cost in the form of 4 revives.  Any more and they cost plat.  Granted that was a horrible idea as well, but it made you less apt to run off and be a hero during missions back before we had these god tier mods.  Nowadays everyone is a walking battle tank full to the brim with overpowered weapons and equipment so strong and abilities so utterly deadly that the only way to balance it was nullifiers and grossly over applied scaling.  There is no tact when playing.  No special tricks to make the mission easier, its literally spawn in, energy pad or operator bubble, gain energy, spam abilities and melee swing for dear life and there isn't a single enemy in the entire game that won\t crumble before you for playing so recklessly. When I started I used to creep my way around missions and find places to choke enemy groups up in, and my friends all used equipment that complimented out play style, where someone crown controlled, someone had high damage but low efficiency, and others were using strong weapons with Volts shield up to shoot through to stop you from getting beat up by heavy gunners and bombards.  Add to all of this the Mastery Rank system which doesn't even teach you new methods to use in the game, it doesn't reward you for trying a different approach and succeeding, it just asks you to grind your ass off, and then grind your ass off some more.

Honestly, I conceptually feel you.  But in a different way.

The deep and richly varied combat systems in the game need to have a universal system of equity.  It’s THE BEST part of the game...reward us for using it and using it in all it’s facets.

In your case, the combat style you enjoy is penalized by How progression rewards affinity.  I feel that with Kavats...their powers are “Warframe-risqué” ridiculous to the point of penalizing the use of Kubrows.  I feel like mods like Charm stacked with Tek should be universal.

In my case, though, I’ve nearly reached a limit where design choices have forcibly divorced me from earning resources through combat with things like robo-Fishing in 5-minute time-gated temperature Windows while enemies take pot-shots just to acquire a fish part to build a Sentient-Corpus Rifle?

I was ok with PoE, but Fortuna is too much.

So yeah, I’d love to see DE do a better job of rewarding Combat playstyle and making sure that combat ALWAYS gives some form of equity towards the next weapon or frame.

Your viewpoint is presented well, if a bit...colorful. 

Btw what Tenno school is the big fat “D”   Polarity from? 😆

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by (PS4)Silverback73

[(PSN)Elvenbane]

43 minutes ago, jfhsanseiIII said:

The big difference between those is you pay for MHW and you don’t HAVE to pay for anything in Warframe.  I acknowledge that many players do drop some cash for convenience or expediency, but it’s not necessary.   

I don't give WF a pass on anything for being f2p, it's either fun or it isn't. I don't have a problem paying for my hobby, the devs deserve it if I'm enjoying the fruits of their labor. I'm glad you acknowledged (as a founder) that some people spend actual money, lol.

[jfhsanseiIII]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

I don't give WF a pass on anything for being f2p, it's either fun or it isn't. I don't have a problem paying for my hobby, the devs deserve it if I'm enjoying the fruits of their labor. I'm glad you acknowledged (as a founder) that some people spend actual money, lol.

Yup. You got me.  I was hoping you’d not notice I an a founder.  I was trying really hard to cover that detail up.  After that, I’m not entirely certain why you decided to respond to me.  It’s like you spent all of that time writing, but accomplished nothing.   

[Methanoid]

22 hours ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

Please show me where I bashed WF as a whole or stated that MH is a better game than WF. Oh, right, I never did because I like and play both games and was only talking about MR and what I think of it as a means for progression.

pretty sure that wasnt my point, my point was he gave an opinion which you disregarded as his personal opinion therefore worthless but then immediatly backed that up with.... your own personal opinion as if yours had greater meaning than his, the actual content of his post is irrelevant to the matter.

[(PSN)Elvenbane]

3 minutes ago, Methanoid said:

pretty sure that wasnt my point, my point was he gave an opinion which you disregarded as his personal opinion therefore worthless but then immediatly backed that up with.... your own personal opinion as if yours had greater meaning than his, the actual content of his post is irrelevant to the matter.

You're really reaching here. I didn't disregard his opinion, I just stated that I didn't want this to become a debate over which game was better. But whatever...