A Suggestion for Endgame and Endgame Rewards

[(XBOX)dude1286]

Warframe needs some real end game modes, with real end game rewards. Arbitrations and ESO don't have the rewards for players who want to push themselves further, Endo and Relics are useless to these players and cosmetics will always be a one and done type of reward. One game that has a great model that can be looked at is Diablo III's Nephalem Rifts. Rifts in Diablo III give randomized stat rewards as you go further and further into them, scaling in difficulty and the stat rewards that are given so that you can go into the Rift starting at a higher level, or go further into the Rift to get better and better loot. Warframe does have a random stat item in the game, Rivens, that could be repurposed due to their poor implementation a few years back that haven't been changed at all other than the weapons that they can be put on. This idea would add a game mode similar to the Rifts and repurpose the Rivens to allow for a true end game reward.

 

The game mode can be two types of game modes: Endless and Single Mission focused. The endless will be similar to what we are used to, but the stat rerolls will be given out every 100 kills with a weapon that has a Riven. This would mean that if you wanted to improve a Braton Riven, you would need to slap the Riven on the Braton and get kills with the Braton to get rerolls. You only get one stat per 100 kills, but once back at the Orbiter, you can choose the individual stats to place on the Riven. This would mean that as you get better and better stats for the Riven you can go further and further into the Rift to get better stats. There can also be a boss at every interval of the normal rotation that gets dropped in, such as Corrupted Vor or the Hyena pack. These enemies will also scale with the level that other enemies are at, but killing the boss will reward all weapons with a Riven a stat roll. The kills providing the rolls mean that DPS frames will be counter-intuitive to the mode, while CC and support frames are more desired. It also incentivizes the player to use the weapon they are improving.

 

The Single Mission focused version of the game mode will act similar to how ESO handles instances, where each section is a warp transition. Each instance can be a quick mission type, such as Extermination Capture, Spy or Assassinate. These missions reward on 100 kills as well, but will also reward a stat reroll every 2 or 3 instances. Each instance will be random and will increase the enemy level.

 

The starting level of these missions will be adjustable, with the players having access to 5 * lowest MR of the party. The enemy scaling should be harsher the higher the starting level, but the stat rerolls should scale at the same rate.

 

With this game mode explained and when the stat rerolls are rewarded, the changes to the Rivens will need to be talked about. With the new system, the player chooses which of the new and current stat rolls are placed on the Riven once the player returns to their Orbiter. But, we should also change how the rolls are shown to players. When the player sees the rolls, they no longer see the exact percentage the Riven will give when placed on the weapon, but will display a straight number, which could be a number with 2 decimals. This number will be how much the stat is multiplied against a maxed base mod of that stat, such as Serration's 165% being used for Primary Weapon's base damage. If the player gets a roll of say 2.00, then the Riven will give 330%, not taking account the weapon's Riven disposition, but we'll get back to that. This will make it easier for the player to understand the numbers behind the Riven, and also hopefully help with the database issues DE claims is the reason why we have a low hard cap of 90 Rivens. We have more than 3 times that in available weapons to get Rivens. DE can also provide us with the weapon's disposition as a hard number, and there shouldn't be a high number cap like there is now for the weapons that really need it, looking at you Kraken and Seer. DE can also use this game mode as the new way to balance Riven dispositions, as Rivens will mainly be used to improve the runs into said game mode.

 

Using the above way of how Rivens will work, we can look at what can be shown with the new Rivens. Lets say that the Boltor has a disposition of 1.5 and has a 1.75 multiplier on Base damage. This would mean that the Base Damage will now be 433.125% when applied. This would seem a little over powered at first, but there should be another change to the Rivens as well. If there is a Base Damage on the Riven, the player can no longer put any Serration on that weapon. This means more mods will be up for being put into builds. It would be up to DE on how they want to balance these numbers and how they are rewarded based on the scaling difficulty in the new game mode. For the current “endgame bosses”, ie Eidolons and Orbs, they could add that Sentients either nullify a Riven's effect or make them only work as well as the mod they are based on to not make the Rivens OP for the fights and so they no longer have to balance the fight around the variability of said Rivens.

 

If the above still doesn't help DE with the Riven capacity, if it is more of a problem with bandwidth than server space, I have a solution for that as well. Make it so the player will download a file that holds their Riven information when they log in and that will be used in the UI so that it won't be downloading the data constantly. It will only redownload if the player gets a new Riven, unlocks a Riven, gets rid of some Rivens or changes the stats on the Rivens. This would hopefully reduce the bandwidth if that is the issue with the Riven capacity.

 

The last thing that should be mentioned about the Rivens is that when applying the Riven with the new stat rolls, if the MR on it is lower than the starting level that was enabled due to a higher MR, it will increase the MR requirement on the Riven to that MR for that mission.

 

The only thing left to talk about with this change would be how Kuva is affected by this change. It can be used as a key to get into the mission, such as 100 Kuva times the starting MR level, so MR 27 trying to get the most out of their Rivens will have to pay up 2700 Kuva to even start the mission. We could also use Kuva at the start of each rotation to improve chances of specific stat types or increase the roll numbers with a set amount of Kuva each rotation, like 500 for increased chance of the stat type that is already on the Riven to try to improve the number itself, or 1000 for increased numbers. This could be changed however DE wishes it if they do implement this game mode.

 

Hopefully DE could take some cues from this idea as it could provide an end game for players who don't have anything left to do in the game but still enjoy the game play without having to implement entirely new game modes that continue to fall flat for the player base that they are intended for. It may upset the Riven Mafia a little but, but quite a few players that have been around for a while would appreciate something like this.

[peterc3]

40 minutes ago, (XB1)dude1286 said:

Warframe needs some real end game modes, with real end game rewards.

This is stated quite regularly but there is never a justification beyond cuz.

41 minutes ago, (XB1)dude1286 said:

you can choose the individual stats to place on the Riven

Hardest of passes.

42 minutes ago, (XB1)dude1286 said:

This means more mods will be up for being put into builds.

This is a flat out invention based on nothing. What mods do you think will go there? Max ammo pool size?

[Talonflight]

17 hours ago, peterc3 said:

This is stated quite regularly but there is never a justification beyond cuz.

I"m sorry, what? There's always a justification. People just seem to ignore it.

Warframe is a game about gathering loot and better gear. Problem is, the gear that we gather once we finish the Starchart is strong enough that literally nothing in the game is still engaging and challenging. The gear and tools that we are given as players as rewards for our time and effort actually make the game unfun to play. Which is exacerbated by continuing to release gear for us to grind for which just gets better and better, yet the enemies that we face do not get better and better to compensate. Once a player has a good build that they've put time and effort into gathering and grinding... suddenly they are left with nothing to use that gear that they've gathered on.

Many people say "Oh, simply remove your mods,  or play an unoptimized build!"

Why on earth would we do that? We've dumped so many hours of time into this game to get those mods, to grind up those weapons, to gather those warframes. The game continues to throw weapons and mods at us to make us stronger and stronger.... Choosing instead to just "Not use them" invalidates all of the effort we put into gathering that gear and mods. It invalidates the time we put into it. We gathered this gear for a reason; to use it. Not to be told "Oh if you want to have fun, just don't use it." THat sort of logic should be saved for "Joke items" such as the Devil Horns in Dead Space 3, or other such nonesense. But presenting mods and gear to us as normal, and then telling us not to use them? 

People want something that can challenge them when they are at their best, something that they can fight on equal footing, with their best gear going against the enemy's best troops. Not simply fighting a reskin of the same grineer trooper but with more health again, and certainly  not by purposefully holding back against the enemy to make it more "interesting".

[(XBOX)dude1286]

17 hours ago, peterc3 said:

This is stated quite regularly but there is never a justification beyond cuz.

Games that are meant to have longevity need some kind of end game to keep player attention. There are people who have done everything in the game to death and have all the rewards that matter, cosmetics don't count, that they just come back every update. These people start pushing themselves away from the game every time this happens to the point that they don't come back for years. This is not how you sustain a veteran player base. If you give these players something to work towards in the game that isn't just a <2% drop rate (ephemeras) and it can be used to improve their builds, you can get people to endlessly enjoy the game. Diablo II came out in 2000, and people still play the game to get better gear to improve their builds to play at higher difficulties. Warframe can take this design principle and entice old players to come back, and give new players a goal to strive for.

17 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Hardest of passes.

Yes, because the current way Rivens work is amazing. DE has full control over the RNG of specific stats, so they could still limit how often Base Damage is given. They also have control over the max numbers as well. What is so bad about giving players control over which of the RNG stats they get to keep.

17 hours ago, peterc3 said:

This is a flat out invention based on nothing. What mods do you think will go there? Max ammo pool size?

Ammo pool, ammo clip size, punch through, fire rate, shell spread, it depends on the weapon. There are many mods that could be used that are not due to everything only being about pouring on the damage numbers. Status shotguns could actually use increased spread, while crit shotguns would prefer less spread as an example.

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, Talonflight said:

Many people say "Oh, simply remove your mods,  or play an unoptimized build!"

But if DE makes something where you effectively have half the damage output and/or half the survival stats, that would be fine?

1 hour ago, (XB1)dude1286 said:

Yes, because the current way Rivens work is amazing. DE has full control over the RNG of specific stats, so they could still limit how often Base Damage is given. They also have control over the max numbers as well. What is so bad about giving players control over which of the RNG stats they get to keep.

The only reasons Rivens are allowed to exist are 1) they are totally random and 2) precisely 0.0000% of content in the game is made with Rivens taken into account.

Removing the RNG element invalidates the very basis of the system and would sooner result in Rivens not only being removed from the game, but DE pretending Rivens never existed.

1 hour ago, (XB1)dude1286 said:

Ammo pool, ammo clip size, punch through, fire rate, shell spread, it depends on the weapon. There are many mods that could be used that are not due to everything only being about pouring on the damage numbers. Status shotguns could actually use increased spread, while crit shotguns would prefer less spread as an example.

I'll be blunt. You are naive.

[(PSN)BenHeisennberg]

20 hours ago, peterc3 said:

This is stated quite regularly but there is never a justification beyond cuz.

Veteran retention.

[Talonflight]

15 hours ago, peterc3 said:

But if DE makes something where you effectively have half the damage output and/or half the survival stats, that would be fine?

The fact that you have chosen instead to respond to a single sentence of mine rather than address the actual full point I was making in my post shows that you literally have nothing to stand on in this argument. Game. Set. Match.

The point of my entire post is that the enemies are exactly the same as the ones we've been fighting since we were halfway through the starchart. The enemies have not gotten stronger. The enemies do not keep up with us. Nowhere in my statement have I posted that I want DE to nerf us so we have half of the output. I want something that can STAND UP to our FULL output, and dish back just as much against us. 

And difficulty is NOT simply constrained to having "less survival stats" or "half damage" as you seem to be posing here. 

More mobile enemies. Enemies with unique mechanics. AI upgrades. Squadron formations. Boss buffs. More punishing yet fair enemy abilities. Enemies that don't instantly disintegrate like a wet napkin if you breathe on them.

The ideas for more difficult enemies have been debated long and hard in these forums for a long time, and the fact that these suggestions are shouted down constantly is in truth one of the most disheartening truths about the Warframe community; that it seems like a huge chunk of you are afraid of a little difficulty. There are plenty of forum posts that get posted regularly about ideas for more challenging enemies and gamemodes.

As warframe stands now, you can literally whack off with one hand while you play and just mash the keyboard with the other... and win. Some of us want more than that. Some of us would like to see the game grow and continue developing, instead of simply rehashing the same content and releasing a new gun every so often.
 

[Xaxma]

DE has about as much understanding of end game as Gabe Newell understands the number 3.

[ChaoticEdge]

...really suggestion for end game?  Why many ppl already suggestion of end game already, you know what here is my suggestion for your end game "GO PLAY LUNARO" 

Spoiler