[Rant] I really hate the position Operators are in now.

[SnivicDelta]

So I should start with saying that I love the operators in concept, little void powered kids of destruction. But I hate that they're still pretty terrible compared to Warframes nearly 3 years after they became fully playable. Now I will admit that they've been made better over time I'm not arguing that but they are definitely worse off in comparison.

First of all to make them even tolerable to play you have to get your waybounds unbound to make them decently sub-par which takes freaking forever. There is no excuse for focus farming to take as long as it does anymore when all your efforts leads to a little brat who will tank a few more hits and move a bit faster.

Secondly, their amps are pathetic for basically everything but Eidolons and resetting sentient resistance. The reason being is that Void damage is quite literally the worst element in the game having three negatives to certain health types and zero positives. Of course some people will tell me (correctly) that Arcane's do exist that can change your void damage out for things like Viral or Heat. Yes I agree that this too is a good step forward but I hate it when I have one of those equipped and forget to switch it out before an Eidolon hunt only to realize I can't do S#&$ in this hunt because I'm doing Viral damage.

Speaking of Arcane's, why does DE use them as the operators form of modding but still only give you the standard arcane cap of your Warframe? I strikes me as odd seeing all these Arcane's that can fix a fair few of my issues pretty quickly being restricted to 3 total (2 operator, 1 Amp) and also getting them requires quite a bit of patience because they're all locked behind rep so there is only so much you can do for a day towards getting them which is almost the exact opposite of Warframe arcane's which you can farm by killing Eidolons for 50 minutes out of every 2 and a half hours.

So obviously by this point you can see I have some issues with the operators but I'm also not the type of guy to S#&$ on game mechanics without offering solutions (It's called constructive criticism for a reason)

First they just need to drop the daily cap on focus. I know what you might say "Well if the cap is removed what point would there be in doing Eidolons?" or "Well I put in the effort so you should just suck it up and deal with it." On the topic of the first point, aren't you already doing Eidolon hunts for standing, Arcanes, and Shards for unlocking waybounds anyways? It's not like they would become useless. On to the second point, I'm not asking for them to hand me focus I'll still do the work for it I just don't want a hard cap for the day. I want to binge my focus and have it in a few days of hard work.

On the point of Arcanes, Look I appreciate what they tried to do with those but honestly operators just need a standard mod system like your Warframe, Guns, CatDogs and so on. Now I've actually discussed this solution before with a decent amount of people and the one thing they usually had in common was that these mods would just confuse new players. To which I say "Make them drops from sentient type enemies." That way it would be nearly impossible to get them before you are ready for them. Plus as an added bonus it would give us more reasons to go to Lua and do Eidolon hunts which might help mitigate the content drought a bit.

And finally my problem with amps. First of all they need to make it so Void damage ignores armor, or it needs some positives against certain health types. Also the status effect is hot garbage and needs to be replaced with something better. The rest of my issues with the amps would be easily fixed with mods so need to repeat myself.

Trust me when I say I don't S#&$ on game mechanics lightly, I do it because I think there is a genuine problem and I just want to see this game get better.

TL:DR Operators are crap, please DE make them better.

[HugintheCrow]

Just now, SnivicDelta said:

TL:DR Operators are crap, please DE make them better.

It sure is TL, and so, I in fact DR.

Operators are actually pretty powerful if you max out the waybounds and stuff. It's just who the actual hell would want to farm focus?

[(XBOX)Phantom Clip]

Not sure the forum is for ranting but I think you mean YOUR operator is crap.

I often run void missions with mine and out perform everyone. Focus is very easy to farm if you know how.  300k in under 30min. Some peope are faster

[SnivicDelta]

6 minutes ago, HugintheCrow said:

It sure is TL, and so, I in fact DR.

Operators are actually pretty powerful if you max out the waybounds and stuff. It's just who the actual hell would want to farm focus?

The TL:DR gives you a general idea of what the post is about but very little to no context as to why. You honestly are doing yourself a disservice but not at least reading the full post.

[elmetnuter]

I understand your frustration but Operators are meant to complement the warframes. We would not need warframes if they were more powerful than now.

I do agree that of having a better interface/modding system will be beneficial.

[SnivicDelta]

2 minutes ago, elmetnuter said:

I understand your frustration but Operators are meant to complement the warframes. We would not need warframes if they were more powerful than now.

I do agree that of having a better interface/modding system will be beneficial.

Yeah I agree to a certain extent. I don't want them to be better than warframes either, I want them to be comparable without being laughed out of the room because I want to use my operator.

[elmetnuter]

2 minutes ago, SnivicDelta said:

Yeah I agree to a certain extent. I don't want them to be better than warframes either, I want them to be comparable without being laughed out of the room because I want to use my operator.

I feel that their running animation and combat "pose" is doing a lot in having feeling them being clunky, from a design stand point. The downside of focus is that you can't really mix and match the benefits you desire to make your own play style - something that mods on warframes can do: Health and Power str - Duration and Power Str, etc.

They would need, in the next future, a re design from the ground up.

[Zekkii]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)Phantom Clip said:

Not sure the forum is for ranting but I think you mean YOUR operator is crap.

I often run void missions with mine and out perform everyone. Focus is very easy to farm if you know how.  300k in under 30min. Some peope are faster

300k is nothing.  It costs 10m to unbind the waybounds, a few more million to get to that point, and another 10m or so per tree if you actually intend to max them.  On top of that, you're citing numbers using a relatively fast farm, with a 2x booster.  Even with all nodes unlocked, a powerful amp, and top tier Arcanes, you still won't hold a candle to Warframes that you could forma in a day.

[peterc3]

28 minutes ago, Zekkii said:

you still won't hold a candle to Warframes that you could forma in a day.

They are not and never will hold a candle to Warframes in the game Warframe. Expecting this isn't reasonable.

[Oreades]

I think the issue with operators is the same type of issue they had/have with Archwing. 

DE is in a position where they need content and progression, the problem is that any vertical progression they add to the game only erodes the base content. And what is gear progression without the level progression to back it up? Power creep, yes power creep is just unchecked progress. 

So they attempted to implement things like Archwing and Operators that allowed them to kinda skirt vertical progress in the form of more horizontal progress. The problem being that those modes proved to be fairly unpopular because in creating branching paths for horizontal progress they are essentially asking people to abandon the core progression of the game and start over. 

As such the modes where left to linger while they worked on more widely palatable content,

[Uhkretor]

1 hour ago, SnivicDelta said:

Spoiler

 

So I should start with saying that I love the operators in concept, little void powered kids of destruction. But I hate that they're still pretty terrible compared to Warframes nearly 3 years after they became fully playable. Now I will admit that they've been made better over time I'm not arguing that but they are definitely worse off in comparison.

First of all to make them even tolerable to play you have to get your waybounds unbound to make them decently sub-par which takes freaking forever. There is no excuse for focus farming to take as long as it does anymore when all your efforts leads to a little brat who will tank a few more hits and move a bit faster.

Secondly, their amps are pathetic for basically everything but Eidolons and resetting sentient resistance. The reason being is that Void damage is quite literally the worst element in the game having three negatives to certain health types and zero positives. Of course some people will tell me (correctly) that Arcane's do exist that can change your void damage out for things like Viral or Heat. Yes I agree that this too is a good step forward but I hate it when I have one of those equipped and forget to switch it out before an Eidolon hunt only to realize I can't do S#&$ in this hunt because I'm doing Viral damage.

Speaking of Arcane's, why does DE use them as the operators form of modding but still only give you the standard arcane cap of your Warframe? I strikes me as odd seeing all these Arcane's that can fix a fair few of my issues pretty quickly being restricted to 3 total (2 operator, 1 Amp) and also getting them requires quite a bit of patience because they're all locked behind rep so there is only so much you can do for a day towards getting them which is almost the exact opposite of Warframe arcane's which you can farm by killing Eidolons for 50 minutes out of every 2 and a half hours.

So obviously by this point you can see I have some issues with the operators but I'm also not the type of guy to S#&$ on game mechanics without offering solutions (It's called constructive criticism for a reason)

First they just need to drop the daily cap on focus. I know what you might say "Well if the cap is removed what point would there be in doing Eidolons?" or "Well I put in the effort so you should just suck it up and deal with it." On the topic of the first point, aren't you already doing Eidolon hunts for standing, Arcanes, and Shards for unlocking waybounds anyways? It's not like they would become useless. On to the second point, I'm not asking for them to hand me focus I'll still do the work for it I just don't want a hard cap for the day. I want to binge my focus and have it in a few days of hard work.

On the point of Arcanes, Look I appreciate what they tried to do with those but honestly operators just need a standard mod system like your Warframe, Guns, CatDogs and so on. Now I've actually discussed this solution before with a decent amount of people and the one thing they usually had in common was that these mods would just confuse new players. To which I say "Make them drops from sentient type enemies." That way it would be nearly impossible to get them before you are ready for them. Plus as an added bonus it would give us more reasons to go to Lua and do Eidolon hunts which might help mitigate the content drought a bit.

And finally my problem with amps. First of all they need to make it so Void damage ignores armor, or it needs some positives against certain health types. Also the status effect is hot garbage and needs to be replaced with something better. The rest of my issues with the amps would be easily fixed with mods so need to repeat myself.

Trust me when I say I don't S#&$ on game mechanics lightly, I do it because I think there is a genuine problem and I just want to see this game get better.

TL:DR Operators are crap, please DE make them better.

 

 

[Zekkii]

12 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

They are not and never will hold a candle to Warframes in the game Warframe. Expecting this isn't reasonable.

You're missing the point; there's no reason for operators to be so needlessly time consuming and pointless.  The only content which they are even remotely useful in is Eidolons, and only because we're disallowed from using normal weaponry.  I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of people who have a single unbound node is in the single digits.

[Avienas]

46 minutes ago, elmetnuter said:

I understand your frustration but Operators are meant to complement the warframes. We would not need warframes if they were more powerful than now.

I do agree that of having a better interface/modding system will be beneficial.

To be honest, there is a difference between a complement to warframes and basically a extended crutch you grind for. Plus alot of the focus school with skills that actually have an impact DO make warframes more powerful. Zenurik letting people stop running high-efficiency builds as much, madurai letting you DBZ episode charge to one-shot possibility to circumvent alot of stuff on sortie tier bosses (especially if you do not have other cheesie high powered one shot setups like Ivara & empowered quiver) and the rest i rather not prattle on.

A ACTUAL complimentary thing in a game would be the Palico in Monster Hunter, they can be setup for specific situations to assist in the fight which lead to actually useful things, just how i believe companions should of been like, but instead are just your pet miniture doggo in RL that is so cute being present, that it just motivates you to do better, despite it could easily get torn to pieces if a bigger dog sees it and attacks your doggo. Sure you can give them certain `precepts` but most would be rather useless against stuff that would matter or you likely killed the thing said pet is attacking, before a second has past since the pet started shooting it and you melted it in one shot with your kitgun or something.

Operators barely have much in the cc department too, with the only noticeable one i can think of is the temporal void blast you get in zenurik (yes, ZENURIK AGAIN) which can let you slow down enemies like the tusks and other crap that you can not really use the usual cc measures to handle, not many other focus skills i believe serve a purpose, unless you like stuff like Naramon & Unairu for finisher opening enemies (which is not that useful in a mob killing session) and the latter being a easy way to strip armor off some stuff (which if your already running corrosive guns, corrosive projection, etc kind of kills its purpose). 

Add in the fact it can take millions of focus just to get some of these skills to decent levels, well its only because people grinded that to absurd level which was extremely worst at the 150k or something cap early on and its kind of sad if the only reason to do eidolons is basically devolved to farming focus past the `daily cap`, with arcanes mostly not even at junk value or many would barely pay much for for the extremely low drop rate ones.

[(XBOX)Phantom Clip]

1 hour ago, Zekkii said:

300k is nothing.  It costs 10m to unbind the waybounds, a few more million to get to that point, and another 10m or so per tree if you actually intend to max them.  On top of that, you're citing numbers using a relatively fast farm, with a 2x booster.  Even with all nodes unlocked, a powerful amp, and top tier Arcanes, you still won't hold a candle to Warframes that you could forma in a day.

Who farms anything without boosters? Plus the max you can get per day is like 340k or something. I'm using basic lenses.

You don't need to unbind nodes. Operators compliment your EVERY warframe. Energy, health and invisibility on demand are already reason enough. Not to mention the focus schools buff your every frame as well. With Naramon, you can keep melee combo hits going into the thousands very easily. 

 

53 minutes ago, Zekkii said:

You're missing the point; there's no reason for operators to be so needlessly time consuming and pointless.  The only content which they are even remotely useful in is Eidolons, and only because we're disallowed from using normal weaponry.  I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of people who have a single unbound node is in the single digits.

This response shows you really don't do much in Warframe. It's like you sitting at extraction before the green light. Anyone doing endurance arbs or other endless missions know the advantage of a built operator. You've never held down 2 extractors??? 1 extractor with your frame and another with your operator??? It's very nice plus adds a challenge to the game.

[000l000]

Il y a 4 heures, Zekkii a dit :

300k is nothing.  It costs 10m to unbind the waybounds, a few more million to get to that point, and another 10m or so per tree if you actually intend to max them.  On top of that, you're citing numbers using a relatively fast farm, with a 2x booster.  Even with all nodes unlocked, a powerful amp, and top tier Arcanes, you still won't hold a candle to Warframes that you could forma in a day.

Madurai and Zenurik waybounds alone cost around 8m and you only need a few Vazarin nodes to make it viable enough to survive. 10m is what you need to basically make your operator perfectly viable alone and boosters don't give more focus, they just speed up the whole process. It's merely a month worth of ESO and i don't even talk about Eidolons, killing some gives even more focus to spend.

Arcanes are now the most easiest thing to get on Earth, we don't even need to craft them anymore. Amps are also easy to craft, sure you'll need standing but that's how this game works - you don't get anything for free. An operator can achieve any kind of mission alone once properly built so why complaining ?

[FireSegment]

9 hours ago, SnivicDelta said:

To which I say "Make them drops from sentient type enemies." That way it would be nearly impossible to get them before you are ready for them.

and yet ... new player will get those anyway cuz of post-TWW player join their session in PoE and kill all the vomvalyst.

i'm generally don't like mods with operator as a whole just because it don't feel right thematically and lore-wise, and even mechanic wise (focus school/nodes is their "mod" in a sense).

I can only agree with you that the grind wall for operator is too steep, and if a player decide to skip PoE/Fortuna, they would have crap operator regardless even if they want to spent plat on it, aside from trading arcane. However, i believe DE successfully crafted a few niche that only operator can do (only arcane and focus school though, can't say the same for Amp ...). I mean ... i would hesitate joining a 1hr+ disruption arbitration if the more than one teammates don't know what Arcane Lockdown does.

Sure operator is not in the best place, but it's far from the worst. Try to grab someone who still remember how they was pre-PoE or pre-TWW and you might have a horror story.

edit:

9 hours ago, SnivicDelta said:

First they just need to drop the daily cap on focus. I know what you might say "Well if the cap is removed what point would there be in doing Eidolons?" or "Well I put in the effort so you should just suck it up and deal with it." On the topic of the first point, aren't you already doing Eidolon hunts for standing, Arcanes, and Shards for unlocking waybounds anyways? It's not like they would become useless. On to the second point, I'm not asking for them to hand me focus I'll still do the work for it I just don't want a hard cap for the day. I want to binge my focus and have it in a few days of hard work.

dude ... they added a cap because you shouldn't be doing that, or feel the need of doing that, it predate PoE and is really necessary and the tridolon is suppose to let you cheated on not having to do that. Where the cap land is arguable but a cap is a must for a grind game like this.

 

Edited September 28, 2019 by FireSegment

[Velothed]

I really like their development, they have gotten stronger and stronger and I hope this trend continues with the main story. They have more and more uses for regular missions, while not really being able to compare to frames.

I actually hope they become as strong as warframes at some point, but that should be the end point, kinda like the conclusion to the main story, some day far in the future.

[Avienas]

3 hours ago, Vethalon said:

I really like their development, they have gotten stronger and stronger and I hope this trend continues with the main story. They have more and more uses for regular missions, while not really being able to compare to frames.

I actually hope they become as strong as warframes at some point, but that should be the end point, kinda like the conclusion to the main story, some day far in the future.

Believe i already stated it but i would definitely like operators to feel like they have the usefulness a palico from monster hunter provides. Meaning you can use them for VERY decisive actions that can make an impression. Such as being able to stall or stun a humanoid type boss for like, 6 seconds, to make it easier to shoot them in the head just to give a slightly overpowered example, though obviously maybe have a special resistance where if you repeatedly use it on them, the timer takes much longer till you wait a while for the resistance to go down, but it takes much longer to go down if you spammed it a whole lot.

150 energy regen from zenurik is kind of patchwork bonus, with vazarin heal dash i feel acts more as a patch work heal to heal allies/defense targets (despite it having a few mechanic issues). With likely the closest i feel to this kind of thing on the operator ability pool that does not rely on ARCANES, is the zenurik void blast temporal slow. It does not act as a permanent debuff on the enemies (like unairu`s void dash can strip armor/damage if you actually decide to main use that school.) but it can slow them so much you can bully things like noxes or bursas and spam daikyu arrows straight in thar weak point with not so much trouble.

[Leqesai]

Given what has been hinted about the new war I believe operators are planned to be expanded upon a bit more. But u doubt they will ever be as powerful as a warframe; that's why operators use warframes as weapons.

[Zero-Tres]

About the focus farm, I think using lenses is just awful in every way. Not worth my time at all.

Farming focus from Eidolons is pretty fine.

About Operators I think they are pretty good for the defensive aspect of it, which is pretty good. However I do have some problems with the focus trees and abilities. Like Each school being good for only a couple skills.

For Amps I agree with you. Amps are pretty bad outside of Eidolons, and even for Eidolons you need to have a Virtuous Arcane, and Void Strike or UW for a couple of amps to do good damage, because most Amps except a couple of them are trash.

Also I think we NEED Arsenal to be more Operator friendly.

[(PSN)thegarada]

Well.. the game is called warframe. Operators will never hold a candle to frames in terms of raw power. And they should not anyway. Operators do augment frames, and that is about it.

I think that operators should deal more damage to sentient shields. Beside that, I think they are okay where they are.

[(PSN)caffinated_flame]

I personally dont mind the amount of damage they do the game is called warframe afterall, my only issue is most of the abilities in the void tree are pretty boring

[Steel_Rook]

On 2019-09-28 at 2:50 AM, elmetnuter said:

I understand your frustration but Operators are meant to complement the warframes. We would not need warframes if they were more powerful than now. I do agree that of having a better interface/modding system will be beneficial.

The problem is that they don't, outside of a few superficial convenience features. This came from an older discussion, but I kind of wish our Warframe would straight-up vanish when we spawn our Operators in order to enable a bit more independence and make using Operators in parkour a little easier without dropping your Warframe down into pits. I'm also of the opinion that Warframe could really stand to introduce a few more puzzles which capitalise on the Operator's ability to be in a different place from your Warframe, pushing buttons and holding plates and so on. Sure, Warframe is not a puzzle game, but having some optional puzzle elements where Operators help wouldn't be bad.

Operators are a bit like Archwings. On their own, they're mostly fine even if their progression is mind-numbingly boring. In practice, however, their design puts them in competition with Warframes that they're never going to be able to win. The only way Archwings were made even remotely meaningful is by giving them a unique role as transportation in Free Roam maps. Now if only DE would get their heads out of their asses and get rid of the Archwing-disabling AA missiles so we could also fight in our Archwings without taking lethal damage constantly, they'd also be decent as mobile gun platforms, as well. Operators have no such unique gameplay niche of their own. The majority of their abilities are just the sort of stuff all Warframes do already, with the exception of invisibility (which only SOME Warframes can do). If we want Operators to be worth using for anything more than the novelty of them, they need their own gameplay. Maybe the Duviri Paradox will offer that? Even if it does (which I doubt), that's still just the one zone.

And yeah, can we please do something about the Focus grind? Yes, I know that I can gain stupid amounts of Focus if I were willing to go to lunch while a random Sayrin plays Sanctuary Onslaught for me, but I feel my soul draining out of my body for every minute I spend in Sanctuary Onslaught. There's a massive game bursting at the seams with stuff to do, yet the only practical way to progress is to do the game's dullest, least compelling activities on a loop until I can't stand logging in any more.