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[Endgame] Why we had it and why we lost it


Wawus
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Thanks for coming by.

I keep seeing these rants about no real endgame, which is true, but at the same people complaining about "inaccessibility" of content at certain times. Whether it's Nightwave's challenge to Kill Profit-Taker, or first version of Sanctuary Onslaught Elite, or even great first impression of difficult, no-revives Arbitrations. We had it all. We had difficult challenges, we had quite difficult first Nightwave.

 

So what happened? People started to complain, that balance of effort vs reward isn't all that great. Or that these items are beyond player's gear or understanding of the game. Or that I want rewards NOW.

 

It is concerning, that DE did bend to begging of these, who wanted to lower the challenge. If that habit stays true, I can already see uprising group ready to blow up a Kingpin system. 

The only way to make any type of content "Endgame" is if you really give us ridiculous challenge, something that will test our years of collecting and upgrading mods, our passion to maximize or specialise. Two different types of enemies requiring equipping specific mods? Elemental damage buff rotation, so you have to bring two different weapons with different elements if you want to stay alive? Special requirements limiting gear, weapon types, maybe random nullification of one of the abilities? Make it a little harder for us. And yes, divide. Let us feel that we have earned getting past wave 5.

If I have to maximize Serration or Primed mods to be able to beat challenges (but barely) then yes, I'm all in!

 

I'm also more into locking items behind progression and skill rather than time, it just gives sense of growth and direction.

Do you agree? 

Edited by Wawus
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8 minutes ago, Wawus said:

I keep seeing these rants about no real endgame, which is true, but at the same people complaining about "inaccessibility" of content at certain times

Total Members
4,946,795
Let's assume some have multiple accounts and some quit after some hours and never got far, we end up with about 2.5 million players, from which about 1 to 1.5 million are active. Only a small fraction is on the forums and contribute to threads. Then there are also people who just complain to complain.
So no matter what DE does, there will always be a fraction who will complain. Even if everyone is happy (Wukong rework) there are people who complain (someone last week)
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So, what's the point being made here?

You think the first Nightwave was difficult? The only difficulty it had was the unnecessary addition of "with friends" to a bunch of challenges, which I guess you could consider difficulty for people who aren't social or don't play with people?

And longer survival and defense wave objectives, which simply dragged on for too long. I guess the challenge in those nightwaves was having the will to stay awake for 60 minutes in a survival before extracting. Time consumption does not equal difficulty.

Edited by Lance_Lionroar
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My point is rather clear:

1. Create a challenge that requires a player to have certain understanding and skills in place (as well as maxed mods, unique builds, conditions etc);

2. Stop degrading content's accessibility and lowering bar to please newer players.

 

Edited by Wawus
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4 minutes ago, Wawus said:

My point is rather clear:

1. Create a challenge that requires a player to have certain understanding and skills in place (as well as maxed mods, unique builds, conditions etc);

2. Stop degrading content's accessibility and lowering bar to please newer players.

 

The point, as I understood it (which is why I asked for confirmation), is that there were challenges that you consider endgame, and DE removed that because of complaints.

All the things that you've listed are not to be considered endgame at all. The majority of the feedback regarding Arbitrations was actually regarding how the rotations take way too long, not how difficult the actual missions were. DE made changes that they thought were right, but once again, time consumption is still there as it is. Arbitrations were not difficult to begin with, and the changes they applied made the mode a bit easier, but just as painful in terms of time consumption. It is not to be considered endgame now or before.

The new season of Nightwave did take into account the community feedback, however it wasn't to "cater to new players", as I already stated the first season was not difficult or challenging. If you can do 30 minutes of survival, you can do 60. It wasn't a challenge, it was a time sink. DE wanted to improve that based on the general player base's feedback, not just new players. Nightwave is not to be considered endgame. 

The suggestion you made about enemies requiring certain mods to beat them is just really backwards, and it reminds me of people claiming that if you want challenge, you should handicap yourself by removing OP mods. Where's the challenge in that? You're just restricting the customization of your loadout for the sake of it. We already have elemental combinations that work better against certain enemy types, if you use them you'll perform better than someone who doesn't. Now making it so other enemies are outright not killable without those combinations is not a very smart suggestion in my opinion.

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I remember events and challenges that would require us to have a conclave?(I cant remember what it was called) rating below a certain number to unlock the next challenge which was harder yet.  You would have to go into arsenal and choose warframes and weapons and then remove or use certain mods that would keep the point total below a max number.  I really enjoyed that because it required the player to really think about what was important in a build and weapons.  Now with loot boxes/rivens the dispo could affect that number as well.

DE has done some good stuff over the years but they still dont have a proper reward system for staying in longer missions or requiring some thought to the loadouts.

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37 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:
Total Members
4,946,795
Let's assume some have multiple accounts and some quit after some hours and never got far, we end up with about 2.5 million players, from which about 1 to 1.5 million are active. Only a small fraction is on the forums and contribute to threads. Then there are also people who just complain to complain.
So no matter what DE does, there will always be a fraction who will complain. Even if everyone is happy (Wukong rework) there are people who complain (someone last week)

63,820 is the active players from the steam statistics. i imagine, including all the consoles and the people who launch the game through the client, the game doesn't go past 250k active players.


if we use steam achievements, The Great Eidolon Hunt has a completion rate of 5.2% of the playerbase. so a lot of the players who play this game are no longer active, and if you look at It Keeps Getting Better, (play for ten hours) less then 1/4 of the playerbase has gotten that far...

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All of those things were overhauled, because DE continually caters to casual players. Casual players are most likely to drop a few bucks on the game, compared to the 900+ hour vet who has everything; this game is piss-easy, most of the "difficulty" is created through things like ability immunity, invulnerability phases, excessive amounts of adds, and gear restrictions. One could also argue that lag and bugs contribute to the difficulty level, which would be entirely valid, considering the fact that sudden spikes of lag can absolutely murder any player.

And that may be why some people dislike Nightwave; Nightwave is the antithesis to casual gameplay that this game has largely encouraged.

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29 minutes ago, Wawus said:

My point is rather clear:

1. Create a challenge that requires a player to have certain understanding and skills in place (as well as maxed mods, unique builds, conditions etc);

2. Stop degrading content's accessibility and lowering bar to please newer players.

1) - Maxed mods are never required in any sort of build. You can look at something like Umbral Intensify, and go "Ooh, +66% PS with full kit? I should max that out", sure, but then there's other mods like Adaptation, or Lightning Dash, which work fine even if they're unranked. Mods are not based on a system that forces players to dump hundreds, or even thousands, of hours to get a single mod max ranked. It's a system that allows players to customize their frames to their own play style. Maxed mods? Not needed. Next. 
2) - "A challenge that requires players to have certain understanding and skills in place"? That's just (E)SO. And even then, you can run Saryn and focus grind like there's no tomorrow. No matter how much time you put into this game, this point here is rather trivial in the long run. It's easier for veterans, and saturates the experience even further. 
3) - Content accessibility is not based on new players. The game might be shifting its model to focus on them more, sure, but that doesn't mean things like Eidolons/Tridolons, Mot, Profit Taker/Exploiter and Kuva Survival are going to change to focus on newer players. The only way a new player would be able to access and perform things like that were if they progressed through the game faster than someone who likes taking their time. But generally, there is still that skill wall that blocks new players from doing it solo on their first try. It's not a "MK1-Braton one-shots Hydrolyst" situation. Ever. New players won't be able to finish these kinds of things by themselves, because it's simply too hard for them. And they won't be running 2-hour endurance runs on Mot anytime soon, for the same reason. 

Even though endgame game play is getting harder to enjoy, there's little to no reason to expect DE won't push something worthwhile out of their rear ends. Pablo did it 2 times in less than 4 months, the rest of the team should be able to think of something. 

 

Spoiler

And there's always fashion frame as an alternative.

 

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Well, the main issue with what you have considered End Game here...

Arbitrations: the main thing about the revives is the issue with how most of the enemies could insta kill you if you worn't careful, and instead of falling over, you just vanished into the eather even with a bunch of other players, and if you where the host, and decided it wasn't worth staying? well better f%@% hope that host migration is stable otherwise the ones that are left just lost everything...So the issue wasn't really with the difficulty (though some did cry that it was but not really), the issue is the fact that difficulty translated to lose of reward do to there systems, which brought into question a core connection issue with there host system, so dump that to make sure its not brought into question again...

Elite onslaught I dont remember ever getting dropped, but if it did, i mean without a correct build your not going to get to wave 8 very effectively, and forget about getting past that for anything more than 2 more rotations, so i think its difficulty is pretty good actually, just locks you to have to play as a rank 30 frame so most dont end up doing it (rewards aren't to much better than doing something else lower rank faster as well, which is the main issue)

Nightwave: Isn't end game, at least, isn't supposed to be. If it is, then it shouldn't have replaced the Alert system, as that was meant for ALL tenno. The Nightwaves was meant to give you just little challenges to do to get old players back in for some weekly content, and new players some high level rewards for doing what they'd already want to do. But if that's locked behind HEAVIly difficult challenges, then you lock what is a MAJORITy of there player base out of SEASONAL content, and that is where the issue lies. If the Nightwaves just gave credits to get whatever you wanted on a weekly rotation, dont think assss many would care about having some incredibly difficult challenges to boost the higher rank players along a bit faster. But the fact its a timed event for seasonal rewards, thats what gets everyone up in arms about its difficulty 'right now!', because if you aren't at the right power level to get through all the night wave challenges at this moment, suddenly your on a time crunch to boost yourself high enough to be able to do the content before the end of the season, otherwise, you just miss out on that event, and as of currently, we have no idea if that content (like that sicccckk operator suit) is ever going to come back any time soon. So that's why they bumped down its difficulty, and why they might still, because they put it on a seasonal rotation instead of just 'something you can do if you want to,' in order to make it more needed and spur people to get into it more, but that in turn backfired and made it so anything that couldn't be done quickly was attacked for 'what if I cant do it in a week? am i just locked out of this content? that blows!' and it does, cause the content they've came up with like Umbral forma and the cosmetics are pretty awesome! So locking people out of it for a indeterminate amount of time just cause there in the mid game really sucks. 

If they want to go for end game, they need to make it so that you can go and do it whenever, like Elite Onslaught, but, still make it so the stuff you get from it can ONLY be found there. Will people still get pissy they cant get the new shiny right now? yes, but will they be quite as soon as they get to the power level that they can do and get the new shiny? also yes. You just need to not make the content timed...thats what killed nightwave difficulty...(just realized i pretty much describe Arbitrations here, which makes me understand why they figured it was a good idea to include them in the game. and to be honest they where pretty good, tell you got the like 3 things out of it that where worth going for and left to do easier content faster. So like...Arbitrations...But with clearly better rewards than anything else you could be doing.)

(though i do agree having like a 'Elite' Nightwave with hard challenges like 'complete 3 Hydrolists in one night' or something with great rewards locked behind them would be really cool, just, to put a bit of a positive spin at the end of this...roast...post...)

Edited by WellIHopeThisOneWorks
Done goofed for a second
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Just now, (XB1)TJC569 said:

My two (likely unwanted) cents. 

 

Riven mods make it near near impossible to have a true raid like endgame. 

I'll take it a step further. Corrupted mods and Zenurik made it impossible for any sensible endgame that isn't just filled with extremely inflated numbers. Riven mods only made a bad problem worse.

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3 minutes ago, (XB1)TJC569 said:

My two (likely unwanted) cents. 

 

Riven mods make it near near impossible to have a true raid like endgame. 

Though not entirely Rivens fault, yes, they are a HUGe factor i do believe. I think Rivens should have been implemented to bring up lower tier weapons, or heck, they shown they know the stats of the top used weapons in the game, just remove Rivens and buff all the weapons that are literally never used up to usable standards...(though now they implemented rivens, and so many have spent so so much plat on them, removing them would definitely break the community. so i get why they never will, but still...sucks..and i agree with you)

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2 minutes ago, RX-3DR said:

I'll take it a step further. Corrupted mods and Zenurik made it impossible for any sensible endgame that isn't just filled with extremely inflated numbers. Riven mods only made a bad problem worse.

Well, without Zenurik it would just go back to the days of the health rage builds (been there, lived through that), and Corrupted mods have been around for a while, and i dont think are a core issue. Its them PLUS all the other stuff that tends to cause problems. Its not the balanced additive detriment corrupted mod thats the problem, its that, PLUS that primed mod that completely counter acts its negative and then some (where before it would take two mods at least or you couldn't even counter act its negative fully and had to live with it), then tack on to that Rivens as well that boost it even further beyond! and nowwww you have a problem...

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1 minute ago, (XB1)TJC569 said:

The sad part is I like the idea of riven mods as they have gotten me to use weapons I might not otherwise have gotten other than for MR farming. 

 

I guess if if there was an endgame again you could ban riven and corrupt mods from them.

Karak Wraith...i never would have found your beauty had it not been for your +225% damage +135% crit chance Riven...*sighs* why must it be this wayyy

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Bah, here I was expecting someone to rant about Raids again.

You know what your post tells me though? That the people actually wanting challenging content are very few and very vocal. DE knows that, DE has the data, and DE considers them disposable. That's why the "challenges" (I mean, come on, if Nightwave and Arbies were challenging, then I don't even know what to say. Boring =/= Challenging) became easier, cause apparently that's what the community wants. So, guess everyone who wants challenges just got the wrong game, and I'm glad DE backs me up on this one.

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1 hour ago, Wawus said:

I'm also more into locking items behind progression and skill rather than time

i definitely agree here if nowhere else, time gating rewards, whether its mods, umbral forma or cosmetics, is stupid, especially for things as long as nightwave, i didnt mind when the tactical alerts/events had things you might not get again cause at least you werent forced to log on every week for about... 2 months, is that how much the last nightwave ran? around that time, or however long it ran for, and constantly have to do these boring or annoying challenges where the only real challenge is managing to not get burned out before it ends

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1 hour ago, GnarlsDarkley said:
Total Members
4,946,795
Let's assume some have multiple accounts and some quit after some hours and never got far, we end up with about 2.5 million players, from which about 1 to 1.5 million are active. Only a small fraction is on the forums and contribute to threads. Then there are also people who just complain to complain.
So no matter what DE does, there will always be a fraction who will complain. Even if everyone is happy (Wukong rework) there are people who complain (someone last week)

source of the number 4,946,795?

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23 minutes ago, WellIHopeThisOneWorks said:

Well, without Zenurik it would just go back to the days of the health rage builds (been there, lived through that), and Corrupted mods have been around for a while, and i dont think are a core issue. Its them PLUS all the other stuff that tends to cause problems. Its not the balanced additive detriment corrupted mod thats the problem, its that, PLUS that primed mod that completely counter acts its negative and then some (where before it would take two mods at least or you couldn't even counter act its negative fully and had to live with it), then tack on to that Rivens as well that boost it even further beyond! and nowwww you have a problem...

One of the bigger causes for Eidolons and Profit-Taker falling apart as boss fights is allowing damage multipliers to go beyond 2x damage. The primary cause for why CC became pointless against crowds is because people now have access to high damage and range abilities with no need to risk exposure to enemy fire. Corrupted mods expanded the variability and pushed the ceiling too high up. Zenurik gave it a significant boost in reliability. Without Corrupted mods, Zenurik would allow you to nuke a room as opposed to multiple rooms every 14 seconds on its own but it would struggle to sweep enemies past 40. Corrupted mods without Zenurik would just revert them back to the stage where people were crutching on another player for Energy but they would still be able to sweep entire maps.

The problem all specifically links to Corrupted mods as they are currently as the primary common factor with it all. As long as you can stack Blind Rage, Stretch, Overextend, Fleeting Expertise, Intensify and Transient Fortitude like you can currently, you will get this problem no matter what. 

Edited by RX-3DR
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Problem with any challenge is that we'll cheese it with our abilities, and when they lock down our cheese, the community screams bloody murder how "cheap" that form of difficulty is.  And they have to lock down our abilities because energy is just so readily available we can spam our powers ad nauseum, which tend to wipe entire rooms, essentially shut down enemy AI, or render us near immortal.  Turn off our means of artificially mitigating level 60+ enemy damage via powers and the majority of frames will get absolutely shredded.

Further complicating matters of balance and challenge are that some people legitimately think abilities should scale indefinitely, not realizing that kind of defeats the point of endlessly scaling enemies.

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15 minutes ago, RX-3DR said:

One of the bigger causes for Eidolons and Profit-Taker falling apart as boss fights is allowing damage multipliers to go beyond 2x damage. The primary cause for why CC became pointless against crowds is because people now have access to high damage and range abilities with no need to risk exposure to enemy fire. Corrupted mods expanded the variability and pushed the ceiling too high up. Zenurik gave it a significant boost in reliability. Without Corrupted mods, Zenurik would allow you to nuke a room as opposed to multiple rooms every 14 seconds on its own but it would struggle to sweep enemies past 40. Corrupted mods without Zenurik would just revert them back to the stage where people were crutching on another player for Energy but they would still be able to sweep entire maps.

The problem all specifically links to Corrupted mods as they are currently as the primary common factor with it all. As long as you can stack Blind Rage, Stretch, Overextend, Fleeting Expertise, Intensify and Transient Fortitude like you can currently, you will get this problem no matter what. 

Umm...no? From my experience way back when, after I got corrupted mods, i got a huge boost in power yes, but it was mitigated. If I wanted huge power strength, id need to work in Rage and Vitality to support the energy cost, if i wanted duration, range would need to get reduced. The best builds in the game resulted from frames that could take any of the detriments without a problem, and yet, that was all just fine. Because they would specialize, you had pure range or pure duration loki, you had globe or damage frost, one button press saryn (yes, im going way back). When they introduced Transient, that started the ball rolling, ill admit, sense its detriment could easily be negated by one continuity,  so suddenly you had much more easy access power strength while still being able to run efficiency. but even then that was fine. But then, new mods came out, new ways to offset corrupted mods detriments. Now, all the sudden prime Continuity is in the mix, and you can actually have POSITIVE duration while still running Transient, without changing your set up. The channeling energy calculation was changed, and suddenly   that positive duration made that channeling ability cost a bit less even without efficiency. Augur mods could be factored in to offset these changes too, and now all the sudden you can run a few corrupted mods while offsetting there detriments with no issues at all! 

the main thing is just from the power creep inherent in all games, making it so that the Corrupted mods are suddenly not a choice, but a requirement. Now instead of having to run a corrupted mod to offset another's downside, you can just a purely beneficial mod in its place, just completely negating the mechanic that kept the Corrupted mods balanced in the first place. 

And to be honest, i like the Zenurik meta, the old way of having to wait for the enemy to punch you before you could have fun was really annoying...(and everyone spammed needing EV trin in every single mission type...Xd)

Corrupted mods being 'overpowered' are just a product of every other mod scaling past there detriments, thereby making everything just that much stronger. I dont think killing them will really help matters all to much, just free up a mod slot to run something else....(umbral everything here we commmme!)

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vor 18 Minuten schrieb Lost_Cartographer:

Further complicating matters of balance and challenge are that some people legitimately think abilities should scale indefinitely, not realizing that kind of defeats the point of endlessly scaling enemies.

On top of them often enough stating they not want people to stay endless in missions, why scaling is that broken after a certain enemy level. They not want us to just stop the mission forceful but still some freedom, yet force us out a mission if it gets to difficult simply, why they not increase rewards after 20 minutes as example normaly, arbitoriation is a big example of course but the exclution and not the norm. They not want you to stay 3 hours survival or so, yet Nightwave is a problem on its own sadly but i am glad for most things they do, its a casual  game i can play whenever i want, no sub or forced new content that makes me lag behind thigns because others advanced ot far like Raids and gear in other MMO's.

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