Can true difficulty exist in a game like Warframe?

[luanle21]

Nope, never will happen. Why? Difficulty is a illusion.

Illusion? Yes, any game that is "difficult" once you put enough time and effort in any game, they become easy mode.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

if you read all the "wolf is too tanky" "nerf this enemy" "scaling is too much" "mastery test too hard" posts, then yes - difficulty can and does exist in warframe - for some players.

once you've been playing a while and have a decent kit & the knowhow to use it, then not so much.

So there are parts that are truly difficult for some players.

 

[kengxiaoju]

arbitration is endofarming. 

what kind of risk do you expect when you farm endo?

you have stable endo chance and at low chance you dont get endo. and team revive you so you can fatm more！

[OneYenShort]

15 hours ago, KingBBQChicken said:

Honestly this topic is unavoidable for anyone joining the warframe community. It seems like people have been begging for difficulty for several years, but every time major content is released, people haven't found it fun/challenging. Im sorry if this post derails from a reasonable discussion to a rant, but im genuinely curious.

I'm going to stay out of your thread as I really don't have much to offer but this piece of constructive advice if you really want to get something meaningful and presentable.

You have to define what "difficulty" means first, and simple to understand mechanics and expectantcies.  Other wise you'll have people given opinions of their ideas and the conversation will go no where because people are not using the same terms with same meanings.

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

Puzzles could be considered difficult, despite how awesome your weapons are. Not that there’s a lot of puzzles, but I do enjoy the lua puzzles.

[Gerbah]

I don't post often, but this is a topic that has been creeping up constantly in conversation with my friends. The short answer, I fear, is "no". Warframe is a very solid game at the fundamental level, but is also completely awful in a lot of ways.

Difficulty is going to be mostly impossible to create in this game, for a number of reasons. The damage a player can deal can range so wildly it's impossible to tune for, a newer player can deal 500 while a veteran can deal 1,000,000. This leads to bosses locked into cycles, which are awful. Let's look at Lech Kril, a very good example of this issue (and another): It takes forever to kill him because he's just invincible until you shoot his hoses AND he does a specific attack. And you have to do this multiple times. It's awful, no one has ever had fun fighting this guy. Veterans just have to wait around until he decides he wants to die, while NEW players probably have no idea what to do and get frustrated. But this is a discussion for another day.

Point is, I doubt "difficulty" can ever be added to this game. Anything they try to add that has too many gimmicks will limit the list of Warframes that can be used against him to the ones who can ignore or deal with the tricks best. If the content is IMMUNE to Warframe abilities, like many are, then more frames become useless as they rely on their abilities. You'd be down to the frames which have the best "stats". If the content just has a ton of health, then there's only a few guns that'll be viable AND they'll need the rarest most expensive mods. 

Personally, I don't want this kind of content at all. I hate the Eidolons, there's way too much going on, they're confusing and no warframe abilities really work outside of buffs. Venus is awful, between the hundreds of Trenchers or other enemies that knock you down/back or just stagger you I spend more time wishing I could play than actually playing. The orbs are also terrible, most of the time I am just trying to figure out what is doing damage to me between being knocked around and then having to figure out what the next gimmick the orb is going to throw out, while hoping I picked a frame that can actually survive this. 

The Arbitrations get brought up a lot and from reading these forums, I think I hate this community. They added a way to revive teammates which I admit, is not good, but it's a step in the right direction. Now I've read multiple people saying that "if you die it's your fault" and "I will block anyone who dies, ever. And yell at them. I refuse to revive X frame". Really? Give people at least a chance I say. Let's face it, a lot of people going in to them are going to be new and not know what's going on. The game makes no effort to explain them or give you any heads up. If I didn't read some random article on the wiki, I wouldn't have even known you couldn't revive until I died. 

But yes, the Arbitrations are pretty bad for an 'end game' content. They take far too long and don't do anything meaningful. The times I've done them it boiled down to a couple Chromas just destroying everything while the rest of the team is irrelevant or dead, because their frames just can't deal with this content. But that highlights the problem: Those players playing Chroma? This content is way too easy. The others? Way too hard. It's damn near impossible to balance a game where players range in power from "Godzilla" to "termite".

Jumping around and using abilities is fun, shooting things is fun, etc. The gameplay of Warframe is great, which keeps me playing. The content just generally is frustrating past a certain point. I realize I'm yelling into the abyss here, none of the developers will read this I doubt and whether or not anyone else agrees with me... Sadly doesn't matter still, since the game won't change. Ah well, made me feel better

[Elon-Chan]

yes.

[KingBBQChicken]

8 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

Not to mention the self defeating challenge/reward loop that the game is built around. DE creates a new challenge that requires you to have the very best gear to stand a chance. You beat the challenge and get the rewards from it. These rewards make you more powerful, so the challenge is no longer challenging. And because of this, next time they add a challenge to the game, it has to be even greater than before. And so do the rewards. This is the problem with unchecked powercreep, and the "always buff, never nerf" mentality DE has adopted. No challenge can ever be permanently challenging if the players are constantly becoming more powerful.

Though, honestly, since DE's idea of a challenge seems to simply be that it takes longer, I am kind of glad that there isn't that much challenge to this game. Sure, massive bullet sponges and hour long endless missions can be hard, but they also aren't fun.

I dont want to justify this kind of thing, but you can see why the devs do this. Just recently it was announced that the Itzal was receiving a nerf not because it was too powerful but because it offered to much utility and every player that has ever touched an Itzal rushed to the forums. 

 

1 hour ago, Gerbah said:

I don't post often, but this is a topic that has been creeping up constantly in conversation with my friends. The short answer, I fear, is "no". Warframe is a very solid game at the fundamental level, but is also completely awful in a lot of ways.

Difficulty is going to be mostly impossible to create in this game, for a number of reasons. The damage a player can deal can range so wildly it's impossible to tune for, a newer player can deal 500 while a veteran can deal 1,000,000. This leads to bosses locked into cycles, which are awful. Let's look at Lech Kril, a very good example of this issue (and another): It takes forever to kill him because he's just invincible until you shoot his hoses AND he does a specific attack. And you have to do this multiple times. It's awful, no one has ever had fun fighting this guy. Veterans just have to wait around until he decides he wants to die, while NEW players probably have no idea what to do and get frustrated. But this is a discussion for another day.

Point is, I doubt "difficulty" can ever be added to this game. Anything they try to add that has too many gimmicks will limit the list of Warframes that can be used against him to the ones who can ignore or deal with the tricks best. If the content is IMMUNE to Warframe abilities, like many are, then more frames become useless as they rely on their abilities. You'd be down to the frames which have the best "stats". If the content just has a ton of health, then there's only a few guns that'll be viable AND they'll need the rarest most expensive mods. 

Personally, I don't want this kind of content at all. I hate the Eidolons, there's way too much going on, they're confusing and no warframe abilities really work outside of buffs. Venus is awful, between the hundreds of Trenchers or other enemies that knock you down/back or just stagger you I spend more time wishing I could play than actually playing. The orbs are also terrible, most of the time I am just trying to figure out what is doing damage to me between being knocked around and then having to figure out what the next gimmick the orb is going to throw out, while hoping I picked a frame that can actually survive this. 

The Arbitrations get brought up a lot and from reading these forums, I think I hate this community. They added a way to revive teammates which I admit, is not good, but it's a step in the right direction. Now I've read multiple people saying that "if you die it's your fault" and "I will block anyone who dies, ever. And yell at them. I refuse to revive X frame". Really? Give people at least a chance I say. Let's face it, a lot of people going in to them are going to be new and not know what's going on. The game makes no effort to explain them or give you any heads up. If I didn't read some random article on the wiki, I wouldn't have even known you couldn't revive until I died. 

But yes, the Arbitrations are pretty bad for an 'end game' content. They take far too long and don't do anything meaningful. The times I've done them it boiled down to a couple Chromas just destroying everything while the rest of the team is irrelevant or dead, because their frames just can't deal with this content. But that highlights the problem: Those players playing Chroma? This content is way too easy. The others? Way too hard. It's damn near impossible to balance a game where players range in power from "Godzilla" to "termite".

Jumping around and using abilities is fun, shooting things is fun, etc. The gameplay of Warframe is great, which keeps me playing. The content just generally is frustrating past a certain point. I realize I'm yelling into the abyss here, none of the developers will read this I doubt and whether or not anyone else agrees with me... Sadly doesn't matter still, since the game won't change. Ah well, made me feel better

Agreed, especially the part about the balance in power. It seems like DE wants to make X enemy strong against Y warframe. In doing so they eliminate A B and C from being viable warframes in said content. I mean I know its been said 100 times but it would be fun if the wold showed up and I could kill him with ember or something. Instead what we have is I need my chroma or I've already failed the mission.

[Aldain]

8 hours ago, luanle21 said:

Nope, never will happen. Why? Difficulty is a illusion.

Illusion? Yes, any game that is "difficult" once you put enough time and effort in any game, they become easy mode.

Also known as "The Dark Souls Parable"

[Teljaxx]

3 hours ago, KingBBQChicken said:

I dont want to justify this kind of thing, but you can see why the devs do this. Just recently it was announced that the Itzal was receiving a nerf not because it was too powerful but because it offered to much utility and every player that has ever touched an Itzal rushed to the forums.

Indeed. DE has started doing this because its what the community is asking for. But the community is also asking for more challenge. They can't do both. If DE wants to satisfy one group, they are going to have to go against the wishes of the other. They either have to be willing to nerf things when necessary to maintain proper balance, or they have to accept that this game will never be truly challenging. Either way, a lot of players are going to be upset.

I would much rather see them be willing to nerf when necessary, because that will lead to proper balance. And proper balance will be much better for this game in the long run than constantly trying and failing to add more challenge.

[_fayth]

Difficulty is mostly born form a lack of information on how to do so something...

tedium is when devs add 'fake difficulty due to bloated numbers' but do not scale the values of HP vs DPS correctly

 

the 'challenge' people are after is nearly imposable for games with 'RPG elements'

[HugintheCrow]

Of course it can. All it takes is effort instead of copy pasting mechanics and wasting dev time and resources on visual stuff over and over again*.

Enemies with actual ai differences** and mobility rivaling the players', with actually escalating gimmicks per level instead of "I oneshot you harder".

Maps and giant bosses that engage your parkour skills at all times. Nier Automata has proven that you can have bullet hell in 3rd person action games. Warframe has one of the best movement systems in the history of videogames. It is completely irrelevant to the gameplay. ???????

 

*nobody cares about "muh light engine" steve, make gameplay, not screenshot material. 

**when your snipers and cqc shotgunners share ai with a normal mid-range rifleman, you know you're lazy.

[Avanami]

The funny thing when i began playing this game back in a day i had the most fun playing it. I did all star map solo and it was realy hard for me back in days cos i was newby on my excal with no mods and op weapones. I did use movement system back in days a lot, was jumping, dodging and so on. And now when i'm MR 27 and got almost everything in the game i dont feel it challenging anymore, even when i do 1h+ arbs. And i can explain why is that. There are so many ways to cheese the challenge, that makes it  meaningless. 

You can have some challenge in the game but you would have to manualy downgrade your power for it.

[(PSN)Ch1b1N1njaGam1ng]

Whatever the answer is, I know that I don't want everything to have difficulty. I play Warframe to relax, If I wanna be butt #*!%ed by "difficulty" I'll play a From Software title.

[Zimzala]

IMO, some people just need to realize that once you have mastered a game, and become a good gamer in general and know _how_ to master games, the challenge evaporates.

You either need to enjoy playing the game for it's other aspects, collecting, friends, personal goals, or you need to find another game.

Nothing wrong with wanting more of a fun game, but at some point, as an individual, one needs to realize that a game is no longer really worth playing because it no longer provides enjoyment, or that a break is in order to clear out the cache.

Add in money and some people 'feel like' they 'lost something' if they stop playing a game they spent money on...it's entertainment. Entertaiment costs money and that money is typically never an investment. You enjoy the price-per-hour or not for that entertainment. IME, the people who want more have long since gotten 'their moneys worth'.

Like another poster above comments, I know I am yelling into a hurricane, but sometimes I have thoughts.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Can it be added? (Good post above about defining what you mean by difficulty - just a higher possibility to lose, perhaps? Dying more often?) Quick answer: Yes... but... (prepare for a wall of text examination of the topic)

Do people want true difficulty? Some do. Some don't. It's also not as simple as a casual vs hardcore issue; Some 'casuals' want difficulty when they do get to play, some hardcore want easy farming during their extensively mindnumbingly-long grinds, playing day in and day out. How do they add difficulty for one group and not the other, or to both, without sparking outrage? How do you get casuals and hardcore players to play nice? (you don't want to lose either group)

This isn't a question of the same people asking for contradictory things... it's different parts of the community wanting different things from the same game. I think Warframe is a big enough game to have both, just not all modes will cater to all players (and this should be OK, and not bar anyone from any rewards, just giving them different ways to go about obtaining the same things)

Difficult for one person is easy for another. Aiming at tiny targets is tough for some people, easy for others. Parkour is easy for some who can't aim well, while at the same time, harder for some of those who can aim no problem. Situational awareness is easier for some people, harder for others (knowing where enemies are, and what environmental dangers are). Difficult for one FRAME is easy for another, sometimes due to health/armor or abilities, while some frames are built just to dish out damage and have no survivability abilities (glass cannons vs tanks vs protectors/support).

Sometimes, easy for someone with some mods is impossible for someone without similar mods. (I remember very early on, not having good mods back on Naama, Europa and just tickling that flying boss while it bombarded me with a carpetbomb of death every time, while it was still the required boss for the Junction task... and then I go in a public group, and they wipe it out in one shot... like, what? Same thing happened with Tyl Regor, barely scratching him for 30min and abort (no fear of death, but no hope of killing him), then went in with a team, and he's dead before I land a blow.)

This requires balancing the game as a whole, and each individual encounter for specific power levels players would be expected to have when facing them. (Difficulty and balance is all relative to the objective of the content in question.) And THEN, they have to balance drops so people HAVE the expected power at the point in the game they're balanced for.

 

Beyond that: Why should it be added? Because someone wants bragging rights? They want to feel challenged? What do they get out of this challenging content? Do they get new mods, better weapons, new frames that are stronger than what everyone else has available? Why? Does that now make the current challenge easier and less difficult? Do these people who want difficulty now want something MORE difficult? When does this powercreep ladder end? (this is a Problem with games that require you to complete some difficult content to get access to gear to fight even more difficult content...) What does this do to the balance of the rest of the game? It becomes trivialized even easier.

IF people don't get these power-up rewards for challenging, difficult content (because, we'll assume from the game's current development and rewards from Arbitration and other new bosses, that DE doesn't want to build a powercreep ladder based on increasingly difficult encounters), what DO they get? Ephemeras, cosmetics? I guess... will that satisfy these people? Unlikely, given the reaction to Nightwave Acts (oh, right, they're not Challenges, they're ACTS) and how they treat people who comment negatively about the "Elite Weekly" acts and such, and the lackluster-to-them rewards in the prestige ranks.

At what point is "challenging content" "worth it" for all the required balancing? What is the goal? What do players expect from it, besides the experience of having been challenged and having bragging rights for defeating said content?

I think people want to use the full range of their powers, and still not be guaranteed victory. (not being "arbitrarily" limited to reduce their power to add challenge.) This is where Sanctuary Onslaught falls short with penalties for spamming abilities. This is where Arbitrations fall short with the drones negating powers.

 

It is worth pointing out that on a recent dev stream, that they DO want to balance the game somewhat, and that those balance changes were delayed by Melee 3.0 and the release of competition (they didn't want people to see a year of nerfs while Anthem was being released at the same time.) So balance changes are coming.

 

Assuming DE wants Warframe to be a game with difficulty (they've said some things and implemented contrary to what they said, recently, to make this an assumption despite what they've said):

Really balancing this game is going to have to happen to really have a lasting impact on its difficulty (to keep both groups happy and not just be a fake difficulty that relies on gimmicks that just make failure more common, like the efficiency meter, ability restrictions, and one-hit kill scaling power levels.) Wiping out hordes effortlessly should/would still be possible to keep the power fantasy (along with the cinematic 'heroic moments' in the new boss battles) and farming efficiency, but there would have to be, in certain content, enemies that survive long enough to engage players and make them employ tactics to defeat (as simple as dodging/defending against damage (or CC'ing them) while dealing enough damage to kill them.) This was likely the original role of the Eximus and special heavy units (Bursa, Scrambus, Bombard, Napalm, Heavy Gunner, Manics, Ancients - Bursas were the bane of my existence for the longest time, until I got a frame capable of CC'ing them so I could get behind them when playing solo, and melee on top of that...).

They've thrown the idea around of a "difficulty" selector for mission nodes (apparently, this was part of the original design, that was since removed), and they currently have "infinite scaling" for enemies in endless missions. The infinite scaling thing is just silly to me. It's like, they wanted to create a soft-cap on how far players could go, but players still manage to keep going by (ab)using certain mechanics present in the game that let players kill even infinitely scaled enemies. I don't see the fun in this, nor the skill, and only difficulty for difficulty's sake. If all the enemies are capable of one-shotting you, I wouldn't find that fun... maybe difficult, but certainly not fun - it's like the opposite of power fantasy... more like run around like a chicken with its head cut off. (that's the realm of spaceship-shooters) In other words, it stops feeling like Warframe at that point, IMO.

I don't know how the difficulty selector will work out yet. It all depends on the scaling they employ (and current scaling is not good). This will likely partially satisfy people who want to start endless nodes at a higher enemy level, "for the challenge" (but also expecting better rewards that they likely won't get...)

 

One way to add survivability to enemies in an encounter is to give the enemy "stages", that could work like the Infested Boilers that spawn pods that become new enemies (the splitting on-death mechanic seen in several RPGs and goes back as far as the Hydra who would regrow two heads for each cut off). Bosses often employ this tactic, even changing arenas between stages.

Giving enemies ablative armor would be another way to add something interesting (similar to Nullifier bubbles and Ice Eximus units - an extra layer of defense to cut through before you can kill the enemy, that could use the "shield gating" mechanic now given to Hildryn, and likely will be given to all warframes. This way, dealing 9billion damage to a 300hp shield will simply destroy the shield, without passing the rest of that damage on to the protected unit, while the unit continues attacking you until you get a 2nd unprotected shot in on them. This could be location-dependent, so you create weakpoints on the enemy. Perks of scanning to create weakpoints could speed up this process or add to the bonus of hitting a weakspot. While this is "similar" to invincibility phases, players do have a direct bearing on how long that period lasts, and they still see their damage numbers doing something - that usually makes people happy - unless you go wolf-of-saturn-six-crazy with their armor and health - those numbers just make people frustrated or mad.

Their survivabilty is just part of the equation. There's also their attacks. One-shots (or near-one-shots, or one volley of attacks, maybe best described as "one attack moment" even resulting from the actions of multiple enemies at the same time, that deals damage faster than a normal player can react to) do not add "difficulty", just death.

Area of Effect attacks can be devastating for enemies to use because they don't rely on targeting players directly (especially because they can hit invisible players and pets and sentinels and multiple players at the same time, or outright kill them all with bad balancing.) Some sort of "telegraphing" of these sorts of attacks should be apparent, like laser-sights marking the target areas for a bombardment so people can move out of the way in plenty of time. Making the ground lava is not a fun idea to me, though - especially shrinking arenas with less and less viable terrain. (the mastery test with disappearing floors was absolutely horrid, and I just went to Titania... but I'm not going to take Titania through the whole game, even if that sort of "challenge" was added to more areas of the game... it would just become more and more annoying of a feature.)

 

In general, I find enemies that can "CC" you to be extremely frustrating and not at all fun to fight. Primed Sure Footed has become a staple of my go-to build, despite it not really providing anything more than an annoyance decreaser (and even with that, the mandatory stun period is infuriating for what it does compared to quicker rebound time mods.) It doesn't feel more challenging to fight these enemies, just more annoying when they slam the ground or send you flying back with a wall of fire (killing your sentinel that can't block - a whole other can of worms is that conversation)... and block wasn't even a possibility when using Quick-melee in the old melee system, and now is FORCED by the new combat system, making precision movement no longer a "thing"  when you're forced into block gliding when you're jumping with melee equipped and glide right past the platform you were aiming for... yeah... fun... anyway...

 

In this game, most of the danger in the early parts comes from being overrun (it is a HORDE shooter, after all) by too many enemies - allowing many small hits to take their toll before a player can reach a safe spot to regenerate shields, while slash and toxin statuses deal damage directly to their low health, without the options available later to restore your own health.

In addition, the difficulty often comes from the interplay of various units at the same time while you are being overrun by many units at the same time.
* With grineer, it's mostly getting shot at from multiple directions while grenades stick to you and blow you up, and their heavy units can be quite tanky and dish out big or rapid damage - they like slash damage too. The scorpion grappler unit also brings an infested feeling to the Grineer. They're like a faction of tanky archers. Ranged damage faction.
* The Corpus like to overwhelm with deadly rapidfire moas (really, they're insanely accurate and damaging compared to the pet moas), along with continuous beams from crewmen and ospreys pelting with their own rapid shots. They like to nullify player powers in various ways. AoE Denial/shutdown abilities faction.
* The infested use combinations of knockdowns, grapples, and area effect toxin clouds and fiery gook, you take a lot of health damage that is difficult to restore, leading to deaths mainly in later waves of survival, when multiple ancients are interacting to buff large groups. (While nearly harmless in small engagements, in larger groups, they become a real challenge in the early game.) Overrun with Toxin faction.

Overall, those are the current types of challenges we face. As players get much stronger, they can wipe out those hordes before they have to deal with the horde interactions, making them quite easy to obliterate in many cases. When Scaling gets applied to these factions, noticable balance issues appear. The Grineer's tanky-ness becomes more insane than any other faction's defense, while their ability to deal high damage from a distance makes them a significant threat with many one-shot situations, depending on frames, and abilities in use, obviously. While the Corpus and Infested scale up as well, with their own dangerous mix (powerful shotgun blasts from nullifiers, etc, and massive toxic blasts from toxic ancients), most people gear up to take down the Grineer and the rest is manageable to a greater degree.

 

IMO, the balance up to normal star chart levels is in a good place, overall... with the addition of the availability of certain mods being more deterministic to guide people to getting geared up along the way. (perhaps as Junction rewards)

After that point, instead of just worrying about clearing nodes and running through story missions, people start going into endless missions where enemy scaling starts magnifying certain imbalanced stats. I'd say the problems begin in the last leg of the Void with enemies getting a mega-boost in damage capability, and mobile defense objectives crumbling in seconds, enemies wiping out even tanky frames with a minor lapse in focus (obviously depending on mods, etc - but, I mean, upon first encountering these areas, without extensively farming for Dragon Key mods, Lua challenge mods, Gold void mods, etc...). Balancing mods and scaling in these, and especially "endless" missions becomes more important. (A MASSIVE change to almost all values in the game... a daunting task, but they dug this hole with stacking percentage modifiers and multiplicative bonuses)

This starts with all the % increase mods... they need to be fixed values except in certain unstackable cases.
Minimums and Maximums should be placed (or significant diminishing returns to effectively place those limits, without feeling "bad" for investing in them)

With these fixed values, we can create an "available power level" achievable "chart" by the current batch of stats in any possible build - a relatively simple spreadsheet type deal...(before taking warframe powers into consideration - another wave of balance changes that will be much easier with this baseline balancing done)... a baseline that can be balanced against. After this, the relative power of weapons can be balanced, and we'll see which ones have the potential to be "viable" against content at various levels, given they have the max'd mods (or whatever level of power is desired for that point in the game).

As part of these fixed value changes, I'd bake damage mods (the pure increases in damage) into a weapon's rank.

Now, we know what values the enemies need to be balanced against - a known value. Armor, health and shields can be adjusted to achieve the "time to kill" desired for the purpose of the enemy.

New weapons and mods can be plugged into that spreadsheet deal, to provide their maximum values, to see if they fall within acceptable balance limits. You should be able to tell if something is "overpowered" or not, through this, with a little playtesting to see how they handle... the feel and usability in practice. (magazine sizes compared to reload speeds, and fire rates and accuracy and damage falloff ranges... what feels right after this may require increases or decreases in values, despite what the numbers say.)

 

 

You know this could be a much more detailed post, but overall, i hope the feasability of balance and challenge can be seen. It's a huge project, and they've expressed their desire to move in this direction (how far we'll have to wait and see.)

 

[Ham_Grenabe]

I've never thought warframe was supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be stylish and fast and killy, and the challenging part is the system mastery element of modding, grinding to accumulate the Good Stuff, and so forth. 

Now, it's certainly possible to make the game difficult, but if you do...then I don't think it would be Warframe. It would lose a lot of its charm. 

I think there are a ton of things that could stand to change in Warframe - balancing, damage system changes, scaling changes, all of the usual stuff - but turning it from a fast horde shooter with supreme power fantasy built in into a game that was difficult/tactical/whatever would really remove its personality. 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Ham_Grenabe

[Anduvriel]

Someone mentioned Path of exile as a game with difficulty, but it isnt, in any way, time scales stuff there, you need crazy amounts of grind and trade to get on a level where you still one shot endgame. They failed as well in it and they nerf things all the time. And talk about convoluted not newplayer friendly mechanics. What they acomplished thou is that only a small fraction of community bothers with that endgame, less than 10%. To put it in warframe perspective in Path you need to pay 200p to have a chance to kill a boss that has 20% to drop something you can sell for 1500p. Thats the "challenge" there. I dont want it here to be honest. 99,99% of stuff there is pure worthless shyt that you dissolve instantly to get more useless shyt or dont even pick up. 

Grinding games by just plain idea cannot be really hard as you basically need to stomp that 1mln enemies to get your loot, that is basically the deal. You cant have meaningful mobs or the game would be something far off from a casual looter. And wf is a casual looter. Killing anything for a 150th time will be boring and repetetive and easy. 

What they can do and should do is gating some of the content as pure endgame teamplay:

1. mr 20+ locked, or by a solo some kind of test you have to take to unlock it to show you have the skill and game knowledge to do it. 

2. arcanes are a good example of rewards here, in no way obligatory giving nice buffs and a good chase stuff.

3. It should use eso tactics to put abilities on timers or other way to dissallow ability spam, like no warframe ability mods for frames can be used. 

4. The thing should be big as an orb and basically require a team of 8 players to be there. I loved raids. They were easy if you knew what to do, but never easy with people that didnt and even than they were challenging at points. It was a good base of what endgame in wf could look like. 

5. Mobs invulnerable or set spawn to ridicolous lvls really quick (no exp) , so you need cc for them or you die, that would enable all sorts of out of meta frames and ofc the meta would be there, but broader. In raids you had at least dozen of viable frames and few more that a skilled player could use. In no way every frame will be viable, its plain impossible or it will be to easy. 

6. Boss similar to exploiter mechanics but with more in depth mechanics like, yeah throw thermia but also someone else needs to throw a bottle of sticky glue first so it stays on the armour and you also need to shoot it and someone else needs to keep some of his parts broken by shooting at them. And others need to take care of the mobs others need to keep the boss occupied shooting at them. Just mash many things together.

What is fun and challenging imo in mmos is the coop part. Doing many things together, requiring all to do their part on a timer. If you switch off ability spam make it so you need to jump really well to get somewhere fast, and aim good you don't have to make something a sponge. Take what works in all those bosses and mash it together. Eidolons have really well designed weak spots that dont require ridicolous damage, exploiter has fun throwing and aiming mechanics with fun phase mechanics. They are not difficult, but if they are all set on tight cooldowns that presses the team to coordinate thats where wf difficulty can shine imo. It should have two or even 3 tiers thou, like normal, nightmare, arbitration nightmare so everyone can get to the fight and earn something but not all of players will be able to do the last tier. What i think should be 95%, 45%, 10% ratio of players that can do that.

And you have an endgame that is hard. Will it be fun.. Depends on the team to be honest. Will the community like it? Hell no, too grindy, too hard, bad matchmaking, unplayable, whatever. Is it needed - desperately. There needs to be some chase for elitist always, right now wf doesnt really have that thus fashion frame and twitch shows what..? And btw put it on nightwaves, 5 runs per week allowed and you have something special you earn for completing a set through the nightwave series that is untradeable, has 3 tiers, and is never coming back. You just created endgame from everything that is/was in the game. 

As someone said difficulty is an illusion, if you make something occupying 8 players that will have to coordinate to be successful it will be hard enough. Doesnt need to be 1000lvl. 

[ThumpumGood]

I miss the days of endless missions so that your clan could sit atop the leader boards. Lv 300+ enemies wrecking your face at a time when you got 3 deaths PER DAY not 6 per mission.

To answer the topic question... Yes. Yes it can. And the reason that you dont see it in short missions is that the game is 6 years old and needs new players so the main parts of the game have to be easy enough to keep them. With the fact that this game has the possibility for endless missions, your whole rant is invalid. The whole reason Im still playing after 4 years is that this game adapts to the level of difficulty that Im in the mood for.

The ONLY addition to enhance the difficulty that I would like to see is a selector to pick enemy starting level. Normal being the plain mission, medium starting at lv 100, hard starting at 150 and insane starting at 200. And no extra rewards for that. Maybe an achievement or a leaderboard announcement, but no extra item reward. This game is what you make it. If you arent being challenged, then you arent trying to be challenged.

[Anduvriel]

7 minutes ago, ThumpumGood said:

This game is what you make it. If you arent being challenged, then you arent trying to be challenged.

When you play with friends spiting as far as you can is fun. When you challenge yourself everything can be made challenging even sitting on a chair. 

100 minutes in survival is enough for me to lose it, my brain shuts down and i fall asleep, i double checked. I could go there for days regarding ability, but i just cant stand something as repetetive for so long. Especially if there is no chase behind it and is it actually difficult? 

With scaling starting earlier it might be a thing, but to be honest.. Scaling is bad in wf and still i wont be sitting there 100+ minutes. Fix for scaling is super difficult, requires tons of work as someone already tried to cover it here..

And the worst part is de would probably actually lose a shyt load of players if half of the items they grinded for 1000 hours gets toned down even not that much (case of ember). There is outrage on each disposition nerf, each frame/weapon nerf is a huge backlash even if totally justified. 

This game atracts a lot of players that want to be opie, hell even i love mesa and saryn. Look at how the game does in sales and number of players, if people really wanted a total nerf it would be there already. Thats the truth, but maybe not a sad one. Maybe that is what warframe is and should be. 

That is why i think the only way to get difficult stuff is through coop teamplay means. Something not really intrusive for the casuals so they dont have high urge to do it, but still can get some of it (somewhere like raids before), something that elitist and hardcore will apreciate and what streamers can show on twitch cause that is actually really important for the devs and atracts players. Something that should be easy to develop as you dont have to overhaul everything for it and easy to keep fresh by just adding new ones. 

[ThumpumGood]

Just now, Anduvriel said:

When you play with friends spiting as far as you can is fun. When you challenge yourself everything can be made challenging even sitting on a chair. 

100 minutes in survival is enough for me to lose it, my brain shuts down and i fall asleep, i double checked. I could go there for days regarding ability, but i just cant stand something as repetetive for so long. Especially if there is no chase behind it and is it actually difficult? 

With scaling starting earlier it might be a thing, but to be honest.. Scaling is bad in wf and still i wont be sitting there 100+ minutes. Fix for scaling is super difficult, requires tons of work as someone already tried to cover it here..

And the worst part is de would probably actually lose a shyt load of players if half of the items they grinded for 1000 hours gets toned down even not that much (case of ember). There is outrage on each disposition nerf, each frame/weapon nerf is a huge backlash even if totally justified. 

This game atracts a lot of players that want to be opie, hell even i love mesa and saryn. Look at how the game does in sales and number of players, if people really wanted a total nerf it would be there already. Thats the truth, but maybe not a sad one. Maybe that is what warframe is and should be. 

That is why i think the only way to get difficult stuff is through coop teamplay means. Something not really intrusive for the casuals so they dont have high urge to do it, but still can get some of it (somewhere like raids before), something that elitist and hardcore will apreciate and what streamers can show on twitch cause that is actually really important for the devs and atracts players. Something that should be easy to develop as you dont have to overhaul everything for it and easy to keep fresh by just adding new ones. 

I keep asking for a starting NPC level selector. Normal=mission untouched. Medium- NPC start at 100. Hard= NPC start 150 and insane=200. I agree that time is a factor in getting it to that level now, but isnt part of the challenge being able to slog thru all of that and come out the other side with the end challenge?

[Anduvriel]

31 minutes ago, ThumpumGood said:

I keep asking for a starting NPC level selector. Normal=mission untouched. Medium- NPC start at 100. Hard= NPC start 150 and insane=200. I agree that time is a factor in getting it to that level now, but isnt part of the challenge being able to slog thru all of that and come out the other side with the end challenge?

It is a challenge and if you like it i am happy for you. Your idea, i am all for it. Doesn't block anyone, provides challenge. Superb. 

For me thou playing for so long utilising same abilities and usually same melee combos without any scenery change nor any other change but numbers floating and mob levels gets boring kinda fast. As said till 100 minutes its kinda fun doing it from time to time, later it just gradually stops being fun starts to become work.. and if there is no chase or something to change the pace i kinda dont feel the fun part, only the work-grind part is there and this kinda stops me there as there are no rewards for doing so as well.

I prefer shorter missions, if a heavy survival would last 10 minutes but really difficult i would prolly run those. The problem is the scaling would basically force me for certain combos of gear/playstyle which i might not like as well, but it would be far more likely to apeal to me. 

[ThumpumGood]

4 minutes ago, Anduvriel said:

It is a challenge and if you like it i am happy for you. Your idea, i am all for it. Doesn't block anyone, provides challenge. Superb.

LOL- no, I dont like it. I got thrown to the wolves and remember being MR9 and having my friends doing an endless survival that had me clinging to the wall above the exit going, "Can we go now? I got one revive left and then I cant play this frame til reset tomorrow." And since, with arcanes, we have 6 revives per mission instead of 3 per day, the idea of having NPC start levels might be the next step.

It would take some work to set up the pug pairing so that some one who just wants to complete the mission isnt paired with some one at the insane level so I dont expect that it will happen overnight.

[Gabbynaru]

Can it? Yes.

Should it? No. Warframe is a power fantasy, and it should remain that way.

[Jarriaga]

Difficulty can be created in a new game mode in which heavy mod restrictions are applied, and your loadout does not include mods that alter WF ability stats and some broken mods like Maiming Strike and Rivens, forcing you to focus around survivability viceability and base weapon damage since your WF abilities will deal little damage and not last long.