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Is DE committed to taking the fun out of the game?


Radu955
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DE has been toning down the fun level in this game for a few years now, they removed the support beams on Akkad (Eris) because they didn't want people to have an easy time ranking up weapons and warframes, then they made Tonkor deal damage to the player because in DE's opinion it was too good of a weapon and players shouldn't have good weapons. Then Plains of Eidolon came out and it was fun for a few days, until you realized how much you needed to grind in order to get anything good from the vendors. About a year later Fortuna came out which is basically Plains of Eidolon but with corpus instead of grineer. Now DE is focusing on making Fortuna 10x more grindy than PoE by adding boring and unrewarding content like Vox Solaris missions. The worst part about Vox Solaris is that you have to reach the highest rank with Solaris United before you can take start grinding Vox Solaris standing. That has got to be the worst decision made by any game developer ever. Not to mention Vox Solaris missions are boring as f. With the latest update triggering an alarm will purge the data immediately, complete bs in my opinion considering in sorties that means instant fail. Then they made the Tigris annoying. They didn't buff nor did they nerf it, they plain and simple made it annoying. Before this patch you could fire 1 shot, the hold LMB, reload and you'd have 2 rounds in the chamber, now you can't reload after firing 1 shot, now you can a) fire both shots at the same time, b) fire 1 shot then hold LMB and shoot something else or c) fire and hold LMB, use a melee strike, aim with RMB to switch back to your primary and  then reload. I don't see how this improves the weapon so if you do please explain it to me.

 

Edit:  they fixed the tigris about a day after i posted this but i was too lazy to update until now

Edited by Radu955
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'Fun' is a bit too subjective of a word to really have a decent discussion about this, unfortunately.  You'll spend half your timing arguing over what 'fun' is before you can really examine what DE's goals might be.

A game boils down to 30 seconds of gameplay that is effectively put on loop, and the real trick of making videogames is fooling the players into not realizing that.
I think DE is still trying to figure out exactly what they want their 30 seconds to be, which is why the game can fail to be 'fun'.

All we can do as players is figure out precisely what isn't fun and why it isn't fun, and attempt to convey that to DE in an amiable and effective way.

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What the 30 seconds is hasn't really changed much since the start; run, jump, and slide around while killing the bad guys with shooty things and hitty things and magic things.

The issue is what they use to give you an excuse to do that.

 

Previously, you had some increasing numbers and customization you could play around with in a very open way, and sandboxy missions you could do whenever, however, whatever. Some missions you could only do at certain times, but aside from that, it was still whatever. Play it how you like and enjoy it how you like.

Then, you had some missions you could only do with a special item, with some very shiny rewards at the end, but otherwise, the same. People generally didn't really like the two-tiered grind, but the general consensus was "it's better than the super-low droprates of other games". Since there was no pressure, nobody really minded much. Since one person could provide the mission for everyone, it promoted generosity and cooperation, even if there were some scrooges that abused that.

Then, you have another set of numbers that go up from doing missions, and it was whatever. Then they had a daily limit on one of the numbers you increase to get new toys. But, since not a lot of toys were locked behind it, and there was still lots of fun toys to play with, nobody cared.

Somewhere along the way, they got the idea that the best way to stop bosses from falling over instantly and being a joke was to make them invincible most of the time. Also, more and more missions where you stand around waiting for the game to say "go" so you can go and get your shiny reward. Since it still wasn't really that long, people ignored it. It slowly got worse, but slowly, so people don't really notice and don't really care.

Then, they introduced missions you could only do once per day, with shiny new rewards behind them, and at first people were receptive, but it quickly got old because the missions were long, boring after the third time, and you had to do one per day to have any hope of getting any of the shiny rewards any time that year, with the need to get 10 of them for it to be any good.

Then, they removed most of the missions you could do only with a special item, and changed them to missions you could always do, but you would only be rewarded if you had a special item, with each player requiring their own special item. This was generally well received in spite of it's shortcomings, however, since it reduced the time investment for the rarest of the shiny rewards most of the time. It no longer promotes generosity and sharing, however, but hey, it still works mostly. Nobody really cared.

Then, they made a "super hardcore" daily set of missions that could give a super rare reward if you were super lucky, but mostly would give you the same thing you got last time 10 more times even though it supposedly had the same chance to drop as anything else. People were receptive to this, since the daily missions weren't the same thing over and over, but instead were more like the random missions you always did. There were some annoying conditions added to the missions, but mostly, nobody cared. However, there was a time limit to getting the rewards, and that pissed people off, so they stopped doing that.

Then, they made a bunch more numbers that go up from doing missions, and introduced them with a new area with a bunch of new novel things to do, but the numbers only go up by a significant amount when you do a particular set of missions in the new area, and had two limits, both for a shorter (3 hour?) period and a daily period, as well as requiring the player to do a bunch of the new novel things for a very significant amount of time whether they want to or not, with many of these being very heavily influenced by RNG. People were receptive to this, but frustrated at some of the time gating and novel activity timesink. In the end, however, it was generally considered to be a net positive, and some of the gating was reduced or removed eventually.

Then, they made a new badguy to hit, that took a lot of hits to make a dent, required a brand new progression tree to hit with, and spent a lot of time just completely immune to damage, while also dropping a lot of completely random damage on the player. People were receptive initially, but had some complaints about the randomness and timesink. But, in the end, it still didn't take that long, and had some shiny rewards.

Then, they admitted that the missions you could only do once per day kinda sucked and no one should have to put up with them for the shiny rewards they provided. yay!

Then, they made two new badguys to hit, that were reskins of the last badguy they made for you to hit, but with even more timewasting, even more random, and even more health to chew through. People began to be less receptive to this, and many voiced complaints about the sheer timesink, random BS, and general frustration. However, the rewards were very shiny, and it was still better than most other games out. Besides, it was better than raids, right?

Then, they made a new place with more numbers that go up from doing missions in the new place, and gave it a generally quicker pace with less restrictions and gating. People were generally very receptive to this. It also came with some harder random trash enemies, some of which were just kinda invincible for long periods of time while still being able to shoot you lots. People were generally less receptive to that.

Then, they made a new badguy to hit, and it sucked, and everyone hated it. I still never did it because it looks terrible and I don't waste my valuable time doing terrible unfun things.

Then, they made new number that went up from doing missions, but this time it went up from doing random things in the mission that were largely unrelated to the mission, and often were very basic and mundane unoriginal uninteresting things to do, with a big pile of super shiny rewards that require doing a lot of these missions, each of which has a very quick expiry date, either daily or weekly, and if missed, can't be done, nor can it's numbers be added to your bigger number to get all the shiny rewards. On top of that, the rewards also had an expiry date, just like people hated with sorties in the first place. On top of that, it replaced the random missions you could only do at certain times completely. On top of that, one of the rewards you get, the reward sold as the main reward that you spend to get the shiny rewards you could get from the random missions, also expires. For some reason. On top of that, some of these random unrelated and often unoriginal mundane tasks were very time consuming, and many more were only available to players who had a large amount of time already invested in the game. Unsurprisingly, people were less receptive to this change, that embodied the worst parts of sorties, the worst parts of other daily-cap grinds, and even took it all a step further with so many expiry dates, so many shiny rewards that you won't get unless you play every day. and then some people pretended to act surprised that people didn't like this change, either to troll the people who want Warframe to be the best it can be, or because their paycheck depends on selling people on the idea of all the worst parts of warframe coming together into one thing set to take over the entire game is somehow a good thing.

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-Solo spawn numbers in endless missions are still annoyingly low. Survival and excavation is most noticeable.

-Power cell carriers in excavation straight up don't even spawn if the game is going 'too fast'. Again, even worse for solo play.

-Stealth is still just awful.

-Peacemaker can benefit from velocity but it can't trigger it anymore. Unnecessarily adding extra steps just to convolute the whole ordeal

-Archgun deployer cooldown when you still have plenty ammo left is just so dumb I can't even describe it. Once again seems like an attempt to artificially prolong orb heists if no terra mankers don't spawn (which ive seen enough times in my solos).

-Archgun deployer animation locking you in place so you can die

-Simulacrum spawn bug fixed

there's a lot more but these are the most prevalent on my mind right now and I'm not about to write a goddamn essay.

in any case I think you're right, OP. And because of all this and more it's no surprise that I'm not playing this game as often as I used to.

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Does it matter though at this point? Until some developer shows up who actually understands fun and says no to nerfs and makes guns that have heat vision and allow you to jump like low gravity is applied while ranging from all sorts of fun benefits where they have purpose due to this fictional developer just throwing the kitchen sink at PVE players in the form of fun monsters, robots, and loot you want to use..We're sorta stuck with this industry wide mentality of curbing anything enjoyable...which in this game is soooo a waste of time..

I have no idea why something like the tonkor has to be nerfed in a game that has Saryn and Volt just nuking a Onslaught Map over and over again..Who cares if you don't take damage you're still walking out with 200 less kills than they guy using the Saryn...Pete's sake these forums are just running in a hamster wheel over and over again on nerf this and nerf that because my ego is fragile...The only thing I would say is DE should consider some sort of rating on the lower planets so you have to mod down to participate in order to protect the new player experience...but after Saturn..the brakes are off...or each planet gets something akin to Lua that is a haven for vets to farm while sparing the new players so they can at least get kills while amassing mods to become vets themselves...

Edited by (PS4)FriendSharkey
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3 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

No, that can't be it, because if it was, you would have just stopped doing it. 

Maybe it's that you enjoy complaining about trivial stuff more than you realise? 

"Largely unrewarding"
"no surprise I'm not playing this game as often as I used to"

Meanwhile I don't see anyone trying to disprove what I've said.

Have you considered that maybe it's these 'trivial' things that are what's killing most of my enjoyment for the game?

Orb hunts could be great fun but archgun deployer cooldown and the awful 5 second long animation in which I can't do anything makes me absolutely despise them.

Excavation could be great fun while also being very rewarding if the game didn't purposefully stop power cell carriers from spawning if you're going 'too fast' which literally stops you from progressing and getting loot.

Stealth. Stealth. my god. The hivemind AI and enemies being able to see you and become alerted (from aware state) from literally over 50m away. Just urgh.

Either arcanes should affect peacemakers or they shouldn't. Why did DE feel the need to add this convoluted extra step?

The simulacrum spawn limit bug made no sense to fix. If anything it should have become the standard. What happens in the simulacrum stays there. Players that 'abuse' the bug gain no upperhand over those that don't. It's the perfect example of a fun factor in the game that DE killed and for why?

 

but sure tell me more about how i love to complain about trivial details. zing you really got me dude nice one.

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11 minutes ago, Bipp said:

Meanwhile I don't see anyone trying to disprove what I've said.

Nobody can disprove something subjective, mate. If you don't find the game rewarding, that's something internal to you. Your claim that you find it unrewarding doesn't mean that anyone else is going to agree with you. But hey feel free to try and convince others that your opinion is the only one worth having. 

 

Now regarding the rest of your story, it looks like you missed something important. Let me quote so you can't claim otherwise later:

15 minutes ago, Bipp said:

but sure tell me more about how i love to complain about trivial details. zing you really got me dude nice one.

I said "trivial stuff". Now pay attention to the following definitions and let's see if you can figure out where you went off the rails:

 

game1
/ɡeɪm/
 
noun
  1. 1.
    an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.

 

 

 

trivial
/ˈtrɪvɪəl/
adjective
  1. 1.
    of little value or importance.
     
     
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16 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Nobody can disprove something subjective, mate. If you don't find the game rewarding, that's something internal to you. Your claim that you find it unrewarding doesn't mean that anyone else is going to agree with you. But hey feel free to try and convince others that your opinion is the only one worth having. 

 

Now regarding the rest of your story, it looks like you missed something important. Let me quote so you can't claim otherwise later:

I said "trivial stuff". Now pay attention to the following definitions and let's see if you can figure out where you went off the rails:

 

game1
/ɡeɪm/
 
noun
  1. 1.
    an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.
trivial
/ˈtrɪvɪəl/
adjective
  1. 1.
    of little value or importance.
     
     

 

What exactly is your point in all this? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to get at here.

Is something in my first post here false? what does this have to do with it

are you nitpicking because I said details where you said stuff?

Why are you talking to me about trivial anything when not once did I talk about anything explicitly trivial? Trivial would be something like corpus crates appearing in grineer asteroid base tileset.

???

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28 minutes ago, Bipp said:

 

What exactly is your point in all this? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to get at here.

Is something in my first post here false? what does this have to do with it

are you nitpicking because I said details where you said stuff?

Why are you talking to me about trivial anything when not once did I talk about anything explicitly trivial? Trivial would be something like corpus crates appearing in grineer asteroid base tileset.

???

Oh, it's probably just that we don't all agree with your opinion that the game is unrewarding. You're not actually being told not to say that or pick at all the nits you want to, but it's also the case for us to disagree, and point out that you are picking at nits, as long as we're all being civil. 

 

Did you think that we had to disagree with you or try to disprove what you said about there being issues with highly specific parts of the game? We don't need to do any of that in order to be of the opinion that the game as a whole is rewarding enough for us to continue playing. Because that's not how this works at all. 

 

And let's be honest, you were nitpicking. And that does seem to be tied to something larger. And if you are not enjoying the game at all, then you would have moved on. Because at the end of the day, games are trivial. 

 

 

Now, let's make it even simpler:

1) Are video games trivial?

If you answer yes, then you can recognise that you are in fact complaining quite a bit, about something trivial. At which point you may want to consider not bothering. 

If you answer no, then you probably have way more significant things going on that you are going to need to work on, and your time may be better spent asking why you feel that way about a video game, than trying to nitpick on the issues in Warframe. 

 

You see?

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7 hours ago, Radu955 said:

With the latest update triggering an alarm will purge the data immediately, complete bs in my opinion considering in sorties that means instant fail

Eh? Are we talking about spy sorties? Has there been a change where tripping an alarm will automatically purge the data immediately? I have not heard about this change and while there were spy sorties just these past days, I tend to play spy sortie solo with my huntress and we haven't tripped an alarm in forever so I wouldn't have noticed this change. Is this actually a thing now?

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19 minutes ago, BlindStalker said:

Eh? Are we talking about spy sorties? Has there been a change where tripping an alarm will automatically purge the data immediately? I have not heard about this change and while there were spy sorties just these past days, I tend to play spy sortie solo with my huntress and we haven't tripped an alarm in forever so I wouldn't have noticed this change. Is this actually a thing now?

Most likely talking about OV spy section. iirc one of the Orb Heist missions has a spy section in it.

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7 hours ago, blazinvire said:

'Fun' is a bit too subjective of a word to really have a decent discussion about this, unfortunately.  You'll spend half your timing arguing over what 'fun' is before you can really examine what DE's goals might be.

While that's true, the OP has a point. DE's recent progression systems have had the effect of bottlenecking players to a very small subsection of content due to how all new rewards can be earned solely from just the newest portion of the newest bit of content. As a result, we end up grinding the same small handful of missions and straight-up ignoring what's otherwise a MASSIVE game full of variety of diversity. A dozen planets with multiple versions of multiple factions, across many different tilesets and mission types... Yet all new content has us fight the same one boss from the same one faction on the same one planet. DE have given us a smorgasbord of delicious content but slap a ruler across our knuckles every time we reach for anything besides the white bread.

Now compare this against items which drop from generic mission rewards or Void Relics. You have a wealth of content to engage with in order to earn those items, rather than grinding a single point.

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With all the petty nerfs they've been doing recently, it sure seems like it. Arcanes not proc'ing on exalted weapons was a bug, DE decides to leave it in for "balance", because "using Arcane Velocity with Mesa was turning her peacemakers up to 11". Here I was thinking that that was the whole point of arcanes and slogging through those awful Eidolon runs. Like being able to bullet jump ONCE with Ivara while she's got her 3 up if you can pull off a demanding key input? Too bad, that's gone. Even k-drives, which are justifiably loathed, got nerfed into being even more un-fun by ramping up the crash trigger to the point where touching a small rock will send you flying. The multi layered grind of Fortuna, the Profit Taker, and now Nightwave offering nothing to vets while punishing people who are new or have a life. Moving towards a live-service model to run up numbers in areas players don't like, while the list of old bugs and complaints continues to grow. Constantly placing new content behind time gates despite the amount of opposition to them here and on reddit. It's like a slow march towards the chinese mmo style of game design, and it needs to stop. This isn't a game I can honestly recommend to new players anymore. Then there's the brushing off of such comments as "hate". If we didn't care about the game, we wouldn't take the time to bring these things up in the first place.

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10 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

What the 30 seconds is hasn't really changed much since the start; run, jump, and slide around while killing the bad guys with shooty things and hitty things and magic things.

It is changing a bit now with Melee 2.9. I'm really glad that DE has finally figured out what id Soft had known twenty five years ago, namely that switching weapons instantly is more fun than having a delay. Now if only they'd realize the other thing that the gaming industry seems to have forgotten, namely that having to reload magazines is also a pointless break in the fun...

Edited by SordidDreams
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reloads create a much needed break in the endless shooting that isn't wholesale reliant on running yourself completely out of ammo.

weapons that don't reload? that's fine. variety is the spice of life. bows and vectis and other one-bullet mag weapons are basically this anyway.

no reloading ever? would completely destroy the game's ammo eco and time management.

 

Nothing is ever that black and white. having a delay between switching weapons also has it's place, but warframe has made it increasingly clear in recent months that it isn't this game.

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20 minutes ago, NezuHimeSama said:

reloads create a much needed break in the endless shooting that isn't wholesale reliant on running yourself completely out of ammo.

weapons that don't reload? that's fine. variety is the spice of life. bows and vectis and other one-bullet mag weapons are basically this anyway.

no reloading ever? would completely destroy the game's ammo eco and time management.

You say that, and yet games like Doom and Quake, which were equally if not more action-packed, managed to be incredibly fun without. Reloads have a place in PvP, where you can count how many rounds your opponent has fired and strategize accordingly, and games with pretentions of realism, but WF is neither of those. Against hordes of AIs with bottomless magazines, reloading really is nothing more than a pointless break in the fun.

Edited by SordidDreams
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8 minutes ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Because those games were built around not having to reload?

It's like you didn't read anything and just started trying to sell people on never reloading. There are guns in this game that don't reload. Use those.

You said that already, you still haven't explained how having to reload makes the game more fun. Ammo econ? What ammo econ? Time management? You mean when you're about to run out, so you duck around a corner to reload while the braindead AI stands there and takes advantage of your momentary defenselessness in precisely no way whatsoever? I'd much rather keep shooting, thanks. We're in the same place with respect to reloading now that we used to be with respect to picking things up before Vacuum was made universal to all sentinels. If you don't want to deal with the pointless annoyance, you're locked into a very specific loadout. Are you going to argue it was better that way?

Edited by SordidDreams
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tonkor got nerffed because a lot of people  hated people bringing cheese into there missions.

its no diffrent then now with the tons of nerf saryn threads you wil see in warframe feedback.

i swear every time without fail.

people ask for more challenge. then throw a fit when DE takes there cheese away.

do you want a challenge or do you want cheese? PICK ONE

 

 

Edited by hazerddex
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6 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

tonkor got nerffed because a lot of people  hated people bringing cheese into there missions.

its no diffrent then now with the tons of nerf saryn threads you wil see in warframe feedback.

i swear every time without fail.

people ask for more challenge. then throw a fit when DE takes there cheese away.

do you want a challenge or do you want cheese? PICK ONE

 

 

Well, according to my experience, they nerf something and then buff something else.

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5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

While that's true, the OP has a point. DE's recent progression systems have had the effect of bottlenecking players to a very small subsection of content due to how all new rewards can be earned solely from just the newest portion of the newest bit of content. As a result, we end up grinding the same small handful of missions and straight-up ignoring what's otherwise a MASSIVE game full of variety of diversity. A dozen planets with multiple versions of multiple factions, across many different tilesets and mission types... Yet all new content has us fight the same one boss from the same one faction on the same one planet. DE have given us a smorgasbord of delicious content but slap a ruler across our knuckles every time we reach for anything besides the white bread.

Now compare this against items which drop from generic mission rewards or Void Relics. You have a wealth of content to engage with in order to earn those items, rather than grinding a single point.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're referring to some kind of permutational gameplay?  Change one thing and it can essentially put a new coat of paint on the entire game?

That's probably the ideal state for a game like Warframe that lives on updates, but I'm not 100% sure how you'd go about this without it feeling a tad lacking in... I'm not sure what word I'm looking for, but like, some kind of relevance to the activity you're doing.  Gravitas?  Purpose?  I unno.
Like if you could farm Orokin Cells on every planet, it kind of means you'd just pick the most convenient location, rather than go out and find it somewhere, not really inspired to leave your nest, so-to-speak.
I suppose if all locations were equally interesting, you could have a randomizer that throws you to random locations, but I think people eventually get bored and look for the optimal route.

I'm wondering if all these problems boil down to the fact that the grinding isn't all that fun in the end, so it's harder to let ourselves get fooled by the 30 seconds of gameplay.
Like if we feel like we're wasting our time, or everything feels exactly the same so your brain switches off, lacking that certain kind of satisfaction or interaction.

I guess we're less likely to feel like we're wasting time if we have multiple projects on the go, since at least one would be making progress, but when you get later on in the game and you've devoured all the content, you really only have one thing to work on when DE releases a new update.
And I'll be honest, I think the only way I managed to make it through grinding all the Thermia fractures was due to PUGing it; I could solo it just fine, but I got so bored so fast, so it kind of turned into a chatroom where the game itself took a backseat.

I think there's something here, I just can't seem to get my brain to figure it out.

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Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose. Personally, I'd rather not hold one button down while pointing my mouse in one direction until my numbers reduce the other guy's numbers enough that he falls over and gives me numbers.

magazine capacity, fire rate, reload speed, and ammo maximum all work together to increase weapon diversity. Vacuum, on the other hand, didn't really do that thing. It's a single mod.

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