Encouraging words from Rebecca on Warframe's difficulty problem (GameSpot interview)

[Kaotyke]

14 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Those are things Warframe could implement. 

Would need a few tweak... scratch that, a LOT of tweaks.

Enemies trying to destroy objectives would only work in Defence and Defection, which is already a thing.

Warframe has a much bigger problem than the Warriors franchise: the enemies there can be always challenging because player power is capped.

When down to it, the loop of Warframe is like playing DW on Normal, getting Mods and weapons to a level of power, the game turns to Very Easy.

As you raise the difficulty, enemies in Warriors charge attacks faster, they are tankier, they are faster, more L33t units spawn... Which is what Warframe does.

But in Warframe, your power scales exponentially depending on Weapons, Warframes, Mods, Focus... Instead of being a straight line like in Warriors.

Each Character has unique attacks and HP, but we can go from Banshee to Inaros. Enemies that would be a threat to Banshee in terms of "If that hits me it will hurt a lot" will just tickle the mighty Sand King.

Is any of the Warriors game a Multiplayer? I cant think of any from the top of my head.

But still:

So this means you MUST balance the enemies in every single combination of Warframes, Mods, Weapons, Focus. Because you can have the "Look at my new shoes" players who are just there for fun and "LOOK BROTHERS: THIS RIVEN CAN EVEN MELT YOUR MOM'S FAT!" players who are completly maximized.

So, while Warframe and Warriors are comparable as horde games, the circunstances are very damn different.

[Jarriaga]

4 minutes ago, Kaotyke said:

Would need a few tweak... scratch that, a LOT of tweaks.

Enemies trying to destroy objectives would only work in Defence and Defection, which is already a thing.

Warframe has a much bigger problem than the Warriors franchise: the enemies there can be always challenging because player power is capped.

When down to it, the loop of Warframe is like playing DW on Normal, getting Mods and weapons to a level of power, the game turns to Very Easy.

As you raise the difficulty, enemies in Warriors charge attacks faster, they are tankier, they are faster, more L33t units spawn... Which is what Warframe does.

But in Warframe, your power scales exponentially depending on Weapons, Warframes, Mods, Focus... Instead of being a straight line like in Warriors.

Each Character has unique attacks and HP, but we can go from Banshee to Inaros. Enemies that would be a threat to Banshee in terms of "If that hits me it will hurt a lot" will just tickle the mighty Sand King.

Is any of the Warriors game a Multiplayer? I cant think of any from the top of my head.

But still:

So this means you MUST balance the enemies in every single combination of Warframes, Mods, Weapons, Focus. Because you can have the "Look at my new shoes" players who are just there for fun and "LOOK BROTHERS: THIS RIVEN CAN EVEN MELT YOUR MOM'S FAT!" players who are completly maximized.

So, while Warframe and Warriors are comparable as horde games, the circunstances are very damn different.

They are very different, I agree, but still those are the very words of the game's creative director as the closest possible analogy regardless of how far away that still is. If you wish to argue against Steve himself then be my guest.

"Enemies trying to destroy objectives would only work in Defence and Defection, which is already a thing." ignores that most other endless mission types lack a fail condition. Excavation in particular is impossible to fail unless you die. You can let enemies destroy 100 excavators and the mission continues. Sure you don't progress, but you don't fail the mission and risk losing your rewards either.

An enemy that captures all 4 towers in Interception or prevents you from capturing them, and enemy that destroys unused life support capsules or decreases max life support levels in Survival, an enemy that deals permanent damage you can't heal until the enemy dies, those are things that could increase difficulty by increasing your chances of failing the mission.

[844448]

3 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

An enemy that captures all 4 towers in Interception or prevents you from capturing them, and enemy that destroys unused life support capsules or decreases max life support levels in Survival, an enemy that deals permanent damage you can't heal until the enemy dies, those are things that could increase difficulty by increasing your chances of failing the mission.

I should prepare a lot of popcorn for upcoming "things are too hard" threads

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

On 2019-10-10 at 4:18 AM, Zilchy said:

On the first bit, all good, text can be misleading.

I just think that things like Rivens for example should've been handled differently. They are straight up power creep, no question about it. What they SHOULD have done, is added a riven slot to all weapons HOWEVER, remove possible rolls that increase damage ie no Crit chance, no crit dmg, multishot etc. So why am I using this still you ask? Because we could add in rolls that PERSONALIZE a weapon for the owner. For example, I might have one that has a 30% chance to make me invisible for 5 seconds on a headshot, or one that alters the firing pattern of some weapons, ie triple burst grenade launcher. Or maybe something that allows for longer bullet jumps hence a parkour angle, in short, allowing you to customise a weapon specifically to your personal taste. Instead of just adding more power creep. It started with corrupted mods, moved on to primed mods, then acolyte mods ie maiming strike, then exilus, then rivens. And now we're gonna increase it again. Nothing in the game needs to be kill 1000% over what it needs to die. By the time that enemies resist such ridiculous creep, we're all using abilities anyway, I rarely take any primary but a miter if I'm going to do a mission length of more than a few hours because my primary will be insignificant later on and I'm better off bringing something to deal with nullifiers. 

While I agree that they're open to feedback, they ignore 99% of it from what I've seen over the years. It's not just the mastering of the game, it's the lack of events compared to the past and in the one event they did bring, they policed it so heavily they turned it into a joke. Events in the old days were an excuse for the competitive element to punch on, to go at it for a week using any dirty tactic they could find to beat their opposition. But that's all changed, it's become hand holding to the extreme, like that sports day back in primary school where "everybody wins a prize". The challenging aspect of the game is completely dead and that's what disappoints me.

Not much in disagreeables here but it's not a 99% rate of DE not listening. Quite the opposite. Turning a 20 seconds to write request into gameplay reality is what's ignored by us, the players. Multiply that by hundreds of 20 second requests per month and you get a very backed up list and a player base that accuses them of not listening. Are we to expect them to dismiss the old requests then? What about the ones on Twitter, Reddit or from the Youtubers?

It becomes easy to say DE isn't doing enough. In this instant/constant gratification era of society, nothing is done fast enough or good enough. The past glory you mentioned was complained about and changed. Change the riven system and watch the pitchforks fly. Balance the game (which I'm also against until after Railjack) and watch the silent happy players become the salty vets. You are correct in that this is the trophy for all era and companies like DE has to deal with it as best they can. There is no winning this and they shouldn't try. They're on the right track with the new stuff and I just want players to think things through a bit more and, more importantly, understand that there are 6 year old players and 60 year old players and all the levels of maturity and immaturity within. Your version is a good one but not for the trophy generation.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Challenge is effectively impossible to add into Warframe without essentially gutting the very tools that people rely on to eliminate all challenge.  See, that's the thing - People "win" not by overcoming any challenge with skill, they win by shutting down the enemy AI and blowing apart dummies with no option but to eat nukes and die.  No amount of jacking up the stats will make things more challenging for that play style.

And with many of the recent enemy and boss designs DE shows they recognize that warframe powers and weapon firepower are broken, yet people will complain to the high heavens that this form of difficulty is "cheap."  The truth is that people just want to plow big numbers into big numbers and win so they can say they're any good.

At the end of the day, I think the problem is several fold:

1. Energy is effectively infinite.  The intended limitation to power spam hasn't been a limitation for a few years now.  THAT needs to change.  
2. Mod power is insane.  Weapon damage increases like crazy and powers improve by leaps and bounds when they're balanced around their default stats.  _{Meanwhile utility mods are laughably bad.  9 mod points for 30% more ammo?  Seriously?}  On top of that, mods like serration and split chamber should have always been a decision between taking one or the other, not both.  If there are "staple" mods, then yeah, they really don't need to be mods, might as well just build them into the weapon's ranks.
3. Most AoE powers don't seem to respect LoS anyway.  Fire and forget is always going to be horrible design in a game where you want players moving and dealing with crowds in a more active way.  Letting players create a no-man's land around them with the press of a button is why people can even go as far as they can in an endless with many Warframes.
4. We have to accept that we were never really meant to be dealing with level 100+ enemies if they can nearly one shot softer frames.  If the only reason you're surviving is because the enemy hasn't been given the chance to absolutely smear you across the floor with a single bullet, you've crossed over from overcoming a challenge to abusing broken mechanics.

And I mean... I don't know how to add "challenge" to Warframe without pissing people off.  The best I can manage is to reintroduce conclave points to mods and reward players for taking lower conclave builds.  Encourage people to nerf themselves.  I mean, of course the alternative is sliders, but only sort of.  Doesn't matter if the enemy is level 10 or 1000 unless they're immune to CC, and defensive powers will let a Warframe go far before those fail.  Ultimately, abilities and fire power need curtailed, not necessarily the enemy's stats need to be higher.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Loza03]

47 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Energy is effectively infinite.  The intended limitation to power spam hasn't been a limitation for a few years now.  THAT needs to change.  

Agreed. Fortunately DE seems aware of this one, although their approach seems very gradual. Of late, most Warframes have either lacked the ability to lock down everything with mapwide CC or nukes, and Wisp has extremely short invisibility time (preventing her from just swanning around invincible invisible for the whole mission). Alternatively, they've had alternate resources to serve as the limiter in Energy's stead. I like this approach because the loose energy economy really works for weaker abilities that behave like, well, abilities instead of win buttons. It's just when attatched to moves that turn off gameplay it becomes a problem. Such powers aren't themselves the problem, it's availability. The BFG and the Pistol do not share the same ammo economy in DOOM.

It's agonisingly slow, but some progress is better than none. I am worried about Vauban 3.0 though, he doesn't seem to have any CC limiters built in. Hopefully his animation-locking can mitigate that, forcing him to stay away from the front lines and giving him an issue if he is in them. Y'know, like a tactician.

47 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Mod power is insane.  Weapon damage increases like crazy and powers improve by leaps and bounds when they're balanced around their default stats.  _{Meanwhile utility mods are laughably bad.  9 mod points for 30% more ammo?  Seriously?}  On top of that, mods like serration and split chamber should have always been a decision between taking one or the other, not both.  If there are "staple" mods, then yeah, they really don't need to be mods, might as well just build them into the weapon's ranks.

True, but don't forget that it evolved to this point alongside enemy levels.
A full damage rework might be in order. Steve has hinted at it being trialed in Railjack, although I'm not sure if that's gone anywhere.

 

[DOOMPATRIOT]

They won't, come on, next year will be the same as this one, if not even worse.

This all started when they removed Void Keys, just acknowledge that this game is a casual/easy game, nothing bad in that.

I wish they could make any endgame, but it is just a joke to DE, so that's that.

Also wow they say what has been said in the last 2 years, but it is only a problem now...

[taiiat]

13 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Doing it from the start doesn't make it better.

the entire point of whoever said it was that suggesting that Destiny was the source of it, and inspired other people to do the same thing, or whatnot.
but that isn't the case. whether i think that having the universe be so hidden away is a particularly great idea or not (i don't, and yes i'm a fair person and any complaints i make apply to everybody equally), that is what's accurate.
(oh, that was you - so yeah, Destiny didn't inspire that into Warframe if Warframe had already created so much hidden lore like that already - and hundreds of games over the years having done similar things too anyways)

 

_{and is there really an on topic subject here anyways?}

[GPrime96]

3 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Challenge is effectively impossible to add into Warframe without essentially gutting the very tools that people rely on to eliminate all challenge.

Can't be anymore true. It's either difficulty or Cheese with the current Loadouts we have.

Edited October 12, 2019 by GPrime96

[Ephemiel]

On 2019-10-10 at 7:32 PM, Emolition said:

I tried Destiny 2 few days ago they ruined that game for me. The new player starts put you at lvl 50 with 750 power and far into the story. No option to opt out of it and start from lvl 1 so I got a few hours out of the game before i got bored as I can't level the character. To me it feels like they saying 90% of our content sucks so we just gonna put you at the end raids enjoy. But I hate raids and pvp so thx for that. Until they add an option to start at lvl 1 and get the story from the start I just don't think i will return to that game any time soon.

Great reason when you're allowed to do the previous story with zero problems and they only did this so people could go straight for the content they specifically want.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

On 2019-10-07 at 6:51 PM, Jarriaga said:

I have tried it. And it does work, until you realize this is not adding to your growth and progress. At that point you might as well play with one hand tied to your back.

For the record, I'd be perfectly fine with DE adding a cap to the number of Forma you can add and I'd like it if they'd remove Arcane Energize, Streamline, Fleeting Expertise, Zenurik's dash, and squad energy restores so each ability cast matters and the game becomes more tactical. Sure there's still Trinity and Nekros, but not everyone is going to limit themselves to not play the game if those frames are not available, and Rage/Hunter Adrenaline are fine because you need to take damage, so they are not free energy just because with no downside.

But that's a highly unpopular opinion.

You're right. That's an extremely unpopular opinion. You dont want to play with one hand tied behind your back but youd be fine with them breaking everyone's arm across the board. Some people LIKE being overpowered.

[zruncho]

On 2019-10-12 at 12:46 AM, Lost_Cartographer said:

And I mean... I don't know how to add "challenge" to Warframe without pissing people off.

They will have to piss some people off. Some radical changes are needed, they can't keep reskining the same boring game modes. DE have been stagnating for far too long. Now they have serious competition - Destiny 2 went free and is huge, Borderlands 3, Division 2. Players who are fed up have somewhere else to jump to.

They can't keep half-assing everything with competition of this caliber. Melee system is not complete after all these months, archwing is horrible, third orb is still not done, we have skateboards that are pointless because arcwing is a thing, PvP is dead, their approach to open worlds is a failure (it's just a start chart mission but you have to fly 10 seconds to the mission), a huge amount of weapon classes are not viable because everything is horde mode, we can't have jumping puzzles because we can just fly with the operator through them, almost all boss encounters are terrible. 

White knights will try to convince people that everything is fine and the game is in a perfect state, but the player numbers tell a different story. I feel that everything hinges on the upcoming Railjack update. If it is more of the same with some new boring grinds to pad things out, there will be a mass exodus. After all this wait I can't really blame people. 

DE had no real competition for years. Instead of pulling further away from the flock, they let themselves stagnate. After trying Destiny 2 I see that Warframe is now actually behind the curve by a significant margin. I wish DE good luck in the upcoming game of catch up they put themselves in. I still love Warframe and want it to succeed. I just hate playing it.

[Jarriaga]

4 hours ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

You're right. That's an extremely unpopular opinion. You dont want to play with one hand tied behind your back but youd be fine with them breaking everyone's arm across the board. Some people LIKE being overpowered.

Nerfing energy would not not affect how much damage you can deal when using abilities. The difference is that you would not be able to continuously spam abilities left and right as if you had an infinite energy cheat code.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

3 hours ago, zruncho said:

DE had no real competition for years. Instead of pulling further away from the flock, they let themselves stagnate. After trying Destiny 2 I see that Warframe is now actually behind the curve by a significant margin. I wish DE good luck in the upcoming game of catch up they put themselves in. I still love Warframe and want it to succeed. I just hate playing it.

That comparison falls flat to me. I played D1&2, 2 lost me to Warframe. Every new update to D2 makes me like Warframe more. The slow, plodding pace, the ammo to use melee weapons, the slow drip of energy to use the powers that make each class each class, enemies are bullet sponges, even if you headshot them... it's so boring.

Warframe is fast paced, lets you actually use your powers to feel powerful, and is... fun to play (at least prior to the melee changes, for me at least.) Destiny can't compare one iota to the things that make Warframe a fun game.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of things I complain about in Warframe (melee being broken for almost a whole year, and no positive expectations of anything getting "fixed", as they bull-headedly produce their new and painful vision of melee forced to be mixed with guns, Nightwave, etc) But Destiny, CoD, the Division, Borderlands... are not competition in my book - they're a totally different genre of shooter. I certainly hope, and will fight on the forums, to make sure Warframe doesn't copy anything from those boring "pieces of trash" (game-play-wise - to me).

 

[bibmobello]

On 2019-10-11 at 11:46 PM, Lost_Cartographer said:

Challenge is effectively impossible to add into Warframe without essentially gutting the very tools that people rely on to eliminate all challenge.  See, that's the thing - People "win" not by overcoming any challenge with skill, they win by shutting down the enemy AI and blowing apart dummies with no option but to eat nukes and die.  No amount of jacking up the stats will make things more challenging for that play style.

And with many of the recent enemy and boss designs DE shows they recognize that warframe powers and weapon firepower are broken, yet people will complain to the high heavens that this form of difficulty is "cheap."  The truth is that people just want to plow big numbers into big numbers and win so they can say they're any good.

At the end of the day, I think the problem is several fold:

1. Energy is effectively infinite.  The intended limitation to power spam hasn't been a limitation for a few years now.  THAT needs to change.  
2. Mod power is insane.  Weapon damage increases like crazy and powers improve by leaps and bounds when they're balanced around their default stats.  _{Meanwhile utility mods are laughably bad.  9 mod points for 30% more ammo?  Seriously?}  On top of that, mods like serration and split chamber should have always been a decision between taking one or the other, not both.  If there are "staple" mods, then yeah, they really don't need to be mods, might as well just build them into the weapon's ranks.
3. Most AoE powers don't seem to respect LoS anyway.  Fire and forget is always going to be horrible design in a game where you want players moving and dealing with crowds in a more active way.  Letting players create a no-man's land around them with the press of a button is why people can even go as far as they can in an endless with many Warframes.
4. We have to accept that we were never really meant to be dealing with level 100+ enemies if they can nearly one shot softer frames.  If the only reason you're surviving is because the enemy hasn't been given the chance to absolutely smear you across the floor with a single bullet, you've crossed over from overcoming a challenge to abusing broken mechanics.

And I mean... I don't know how to add "challenge" to Warframe without pissing people off.  The best I can manage is to reintroduce conclave points to mods and reward players for taking lower conclave builds.  Encourage people to nerf themselves.  I mean, of course the alternative is sliders, but only sort of.  Doesn't matter if the enemy is level 10 or 1000 unless they're immune to CC, and defensive powers will let a Warframe go far before those fail.  Ultimately, abilities and fire power need curtailed, not necessarily the enemy's stats need to be higher.

1) Energy is not infinite, parasitic enemies on higher level are a BIG problem to energy relying frames. The only problem is the infinite energy pizzas you can carry(if you don't get an hit while using them).

2) Mod power is insane for the current "normal" game level when you try to go further on endless missions you will reach the limit. The problem is noone plays more than 20 minutes...

3) AoE powers like nova drastically makes the game trivial on every level. They added the arbitrations to mitigate this.Corpus negate the powers as well, this is why people don't like to play against corpus...

4) Don't we have to face enemies harder than level 100? If the one shoot thing is a problem just use adaptation + quick thinking and most frames will resist over level 150. The problem is why should people waste slots for these mods  when they can bring  frames with +300% strength because some idiot will have to revive them?

 

And be seriously the game on high levels is hard even for experienced players but the biggest difficulty in this game is when you find troll players during pubs ruining your game.

For example: i start an arbitration game alone. Ok maybe some player will join.. yes ..

a) I find people dying after 10 seconds dying arbitration praying every second to be revived,

b) People activating conduits everywhere without killing the demolyst and dying.

c) People with absurd frames and ridiculous gear. or  spamming the abilities against you, see speed nova or ice globes everywhere...

d)Oh ok i can use the recruiting chat... Yes and i had 3 people dying most of the time after 10 seconds(seriously"), let me quitting.

 

Considering warframe is a game that requires more cooperation than destiny, i ended to the conclusion that to play warframe, you have 4 options:

1) You play solo and reaching your limit(and have limited fun too).

2) Playing with meta squads only(if you are able to find someone excluding eidolons, wasting hours to find someone).

3) You don't play the game at all  but farming and levelling stuff only(this the reason why you find some ML27 with no idea how to play some missions...).

4)You play another game.

 

 

So considering my previous post about this gets replies only by toxic and trolls, i can clearly say that you can play warframe to farm stuff only and to farm stuff only the difficulty is less than zero, with zero strategy and zero cooperation. They can just give the option to click the mouse button at the right time to earn stuff, it's the same.

Edited October 14, 2019 by bibmobello

[zruncho]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of things I complain about in Warframe (melee being broken for almost a whole year, and no positive expectations of anything getting "fixed", as they bull-headedly produce their new and painful vision of melee forced to be mixed with guns, Nightwave, etc) But Destiny, CoD, the Division, Borderlands... are not competition in my book - they're a totally different genre of shooter. I certainly hope, and will fight on the forums, to make sure Warframe doesn't copy anything from those boring "pieces of trash" (game-play-wise - to me).

 

They might not be competition in your book but I am playing Destiny 2 instead of Warframe and enjoying it more. I'm sure there are many more players like me. Therefore they are competitors even if you personally might not enjoy those games since some players are bleeding out. I also said that the player numbers speak for themselves. Warframe hasn't had such a low player count in a long time. I don't think this is a coincidence.  

We have a long content draught + new decent alternatives to Warframe + high player frustration (even on the forums it's very divisive). What do you think will happen if Railjack is subpar? Do the math and stop white knighting. Things are not peachy. 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

26 minutes ago, zruncho said:

3 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of things I complain about in Warframe (melee being broken for almost a whole year, and no positive expectations of anything getting "fixed", as they bull-headedly produce their new and painful vision of melee forced to be mixed with guns, Nightwave, etc) But Destiny, CoD, the Division, Borderlands... are not competition in my book - they're a totally different genre of shooter. I certainly hope, and will fight on the forums, to make sure Warframe doesn't copy anything from those boring "pieces of trash" (game-play-wise - to me).

 

They might not be competition in your book but I am playing Destiny 2 instead of Warframe and enjoying it more. I'm sure there are many more players like me. Therefore they are competitors even if you personally might not enjoy those games since some players are bleeding out. I also said that the player numbers speak for themselves. Warframe hasn't had such a low player count in a long time. I don't think this is a coincidence.  

We have a long content draught + new decent alternatives to Warframe + high player frustration (even on the forums it's very divisive). What do you think will happen if Railjack is subpar? Do the math and stop white knighting. Things are not peachy. 

Bolded the main point of what I was trying to say. Generally, when people compare Warframe to other popular franchises, they want to incorporate features of those franchises into Warframe, to make them more similar... and that is my contention. If that wasn't your intent, fine.

As someone who has only been playing 2 years, I still have plenty to do, so the claims of "Content Drought" are not a shared sentiment with me. With the New War and Empyrean coming up, and the Duviri Paradox (and plans for a new or re-worked skill tree of some sort briefly mentioned), there's plenty to look forward to, while I do all the other stuff, try new frames, new weapons, new builds... and farm new primes and... to me, the current situation is not bleak at all.

For an old vet that has everything, or someone who plays 24/7, this game is certain to get "old" and repetitive. My solution: I take things slow, and I play other games... amazing as that may sound. I mostly solo, but I play with a friend occasionally. I recently played through Borderlands:thepresequel, and just started Borderlands2, because I got them for free as part of Playstation Plus (would never have bought them.)... so those are breaking things up.

So, quite sincerely, and with no white-knighting intended (and really, if you read my post history, there's an abundance of well-meaning constructive criticism of several elements of Warframe ... far from thinking everything is peachy)

I just don't want Warframe to become anything like their supposed competition, that people bring up, generally to say that their competition is better in some way that Waframe needs to copy, or fall behind - whereas I think Warframe needs to keep itself separate from those "competitors" at all cost, to keep its unique feeling and fun that made me choose Warfame INSTEAD of those competitors in the first place.

[bibmobello]

1 minute ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

I just don't want Warframe to become anything like their supposed competition, that people bring up, generally to say that their competition is better in some way that Waframe needs to copy, or fall behind - whereas I think Warframe needs to keep itself separate from those "competitors" at all cost, to keep its unique feeling and fun that made me choose Warfame INSTEAD of those competitors in the first place.

Seriously Destiny 2 is just boring, it has(slightly) better graphics, a lot of (useless and wasted of GB) videos but the game is too old school and boring.

Anthem is dead before starting.

Warframe is still better but there are some points that make it pretty frustrating, more than its competitors. At the you will ask yourself why you continue to play it... Because it's better to create addiction and it's not a good thing.

[SneakyErvin]

12 hours ago, Ephemiel said:

Great reason when you're allowed to do the previous story with zero problems and they only did this so people could go straight for the content they specifically want.

A story that had all the rewards removed just so people would rather buy into the expansions to unlock more and better exotic rewards. Not to mention they call their game F2P when in reality it is nothing but a demo+ version of the game, that really means very little since it is a looter shooter arpg where rewards and being able to invest chunks of time are the key parts. A "free" version that brings you barely 100h before you are bored out of your mind since you figured out that no matter how much you grind equipment, you arent really getting much stronger due to how light levels are nothing but power levels with a new name, and most things scale based on it.

Bungie pretty much took the word "F2P" and completely failed to understand the cornerstones of what makes them a success on the western market and what makes them bring in revenue to their companies.

Edited October 14, 2019 by SneakyErvin

[Loza03]

35 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

1) Energy is not infinite, parasitic enemies on higher level are a BIG problem to energy relying frames. The only problem is the infinite energy pizzas you can carry(if you don't get an hit while using them).

And Rage.

And Zenurik.

And, in co-operative, which this game IS built around, infinite energy frames like Trinity or Harrow. Plus, DE have said and demonstrated numerous times that higher level (100+) and endurance runs aren't what they design around.

38 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

2) Mod power is insane for the current "normal" game level when you try to go further on endless missions you will reach the limit. The problem is noone plays more than 20 minutes...

Again, see above, endurance isn't what the game's built for. This is basically working on the logic of 'this is broken, but if we break it this way it kind of works, so everything's fine.'

Most of the game is designed around the 30-100 level range. Most of the playerbase enjoys that and most play that. Most of the effort should be on improving that, not improving the minority point where things are already less broken.

39 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

3) AoE powers like nova drastically makes the game trivial on every level. They added the arbitrations to mitigate this.Corpus negate the powers as well, this is why people don't like to play against corpus...

I actually like Nullifiers in concept, but spamming them to the point of functionally removing AoE abilities isn't going to work either. If DE just works off the idea of an arms race between their ability to nullify cheese tactics without addressing the source and the players ability to use and generate them, it's going to end badly, with the meta becoming more all-consuming, not less. Consider the Wolf. That was an enemy clearly designed for min-maxers. Anybody who liked metagaming a lot had a great time. People who didn't think that carrying some combination of a high-crit radiation setup, damage buff or armour strip to every match was much fun, didn't appreciate the Wolf. Designing only for min-maxers hurts the self-expression that myriads of playstyles allow for.

The issue isn't difficulty, it's the fact that we have tons of opportunities to never interact with enemies or to make those interactions irrelevant. Lazy Tank Inaros is just as harmful as Saryn, even if the effects aren't as tangibly felt on the rest of the population.

55 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

4) Don't we have to face enemies harder than level 100? If the one shoot thing is a problem just use adaptation + quick thinking and most frames will resist over level 150. The problem is why should people waste slots for these mods  when they can bring  frames with +300% strength because some idiot will have to revive them?

This proves my point.

Just pushing the power creep of enemies to match the ludicrous power creep of players will do little for absolute min-maxers who will use strats like infinite invisibility (therefore never at risk of dying because nothing shoots them) and further forces people who were quite happy not to min-max (and may already be getting a satisfactory play experience and level of difficulty!) to go further and further into the meta.

Every game has a meta. Right now, that meta is very, very easy to get into (A large number of frames fringe on it, as well as several weapons) and ludicrously above the baseline experience, leading to an unsatisfactory experience for people stumbling into it. We need to bring the effectiveness of the meta down to the intended experience, not bring the intended experience into the meta.

 

That's also not counting other balance issues like the weird reversal of First-order-optimal strategy design, where instead of offering the low-effort, mid-reward strategies at the start of the curve to ease players in and phasing out those strategies by offering higher skill but importantly, higher reward options down the line, Warframe tends to offer lower reward for higher skill. Consider weapons. Bows require a pretty decent amount of skill - most only target one enemy (the Lenz has self-damage in its place), and they all have both travel time AND projectile drop, making aiming more difficult. Assault Rifles also only really target one enemy at a time, and have a fairly low TTK and effective range (being so-so at both long and short ranges, excelling mid-range) compared to precision weapons, and also aren't as good at killing multiple targets, but are better at killing hordes than precision weapons and (ideally) should better at single-targets than AoE weapons. These are some of the first weapons a player is introduced to.

However, the premier AoE weapon, the Ignis Wraith, IS good at single targets with plenty serviceable crit, status and raw; works just as well at close range as mid-range, deals wonderfully at AoE, has marvellous ammo efficiency and requires basically no skill to use as it has no self-damage, no travel time and functionally 100% accuracy so long as you aim in the general direction of a target due to the sheer size of its effect. You will get better performance out of an Ignis Wraith than most weapons in most scenarios with less effort. Also bear in mind that most shotguns in Warframe aren't too fond of firing more than 10 or 20 metres, and from my calculations the average range of a beam weapon is about 27 metres. The Ignis Wraith, including the Blast Radius, has a range of about 30 metres. Whilst certainly not the last weapon you can get, you get this at MR 9, which means you've probably gone through a not insubstantial amount of the game by this point. The first weapons are not only weaker (reasonable, good design for a looter), but also take more skill and effort than the ones obtained later.

In other words, the game rewards you more for playing it less.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

5 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Nerfing energy would not not affect how much damage you can deal when using abilities. The difference is that you would not be able to continuously spam abilities left and right as if you had an infinite energy cheat code.

My point stands. You listed several things that can increase your supply of energy.

 

If YOU think energy should be more scarce YOU are more than welcome to not use certain mods/arcane energize to make it more scarce. The game gives you that option.

 

If you want to ask DE to break both of our arms so you dont feel like you arent making progress (which makes no sense) dont be surprised when people disagree with you.

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

while I am glad reb has acknowledge the issue the overall problem as I see it is a divide between the player base on challenge VS grind

you want a fun challenge to stir your players and keep them in the game. were it forces them to use all tactics and available means to win and is fun (for some) because it pushes the player to their limit.( usually for myself this is about when players want to leave as "its getting hard", i dont even have to use exalted blade until i reach this and help keep my squad alive so i feel very limited on say excalibur in doing stuff till i reach that point )

then you also have those who simply want to grind and get resources quickly and effectually aka the cheesing (finding fastest & optimal loadout to get stuff done quick and low effort input)

problem is as the game is currently we have a few scaling mechanics in certain frames, while others are left to hit a peak and rely on weapons more then powers .

armor and damage scales of enemies is also all over the place. as you can make enemies kill one another via  mind control/chaos like nyx but then you will notice that enemy vs enemy they dont damage each other very much even with buffs , this is due to armor > damage scale , enemies become such a bullet sponge its hard to even damage them with their comrades, yet a simple bullet graze will down the user player.

When i started farming with keys originally we could go till we saw level 1k + enemies easy , focusing on cc, healing, defense and damage in squads

Now its more varied and not worth the effort to stay past 40 min in something like kuva 

so now the common id say is 100+ enemy range and its noticeably harder in cases compared to the old 1k + enemies , as the enemies damage scales rapidly and now so does their armor.

imo the problem is enemy AI failing to scale with the level then armor/damage should only slowly build up as if the enemies use more tactics and actually work well against the player it would add the challenge and immersion while also keeping the grinding fair 

I always refer to the FEAR ai system for this as it was simple yet really made the game different , the ai rework after earth rework was a good step but it needs to progress 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/04/03/why-fears-ai-is-still-the-best-in-first-person-shooters/

https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf

some articles if you want to understand more on the system

as it stands we have CANNON FODDER who spam shoots and sprays without reason or intent and it makes the enemies feel unrealistic and rather fake to go against.

like dynasty warriors vs halo , we have these powerful frames going against things in heroic mode that are so mindless in their actions its just swarm mentality.

[Jarriaga]

20 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

My point stands. You listed several things that can increase your supply of energy.

Yes, which I and many others see as a problem for game balancing. Nuking everything is why the game is so easy, and CC abilities (Which are cheaper energy-wise) are made irrelevant when nuke abilities can be made to be as cheap as CC abilities. It all has a ripple effect.

20 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

If YOU think energy should be more scarce YOU are more than welcome to not use certain mods/arcane energize to make it more scarce. The game gives you that option.

I already don't. More so, I don't play nuke frames either. I don't see the point here.

Plus, the problem here is how nukes can be spammed so reliably that you don't even need to use your weapons, further making the game easy. The time I nerfed myself for testing was by removing damage mods.

20 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

If you want to ask DE to break both of our arms so you dont feel like you arent making progress (which makes no sense) dont be surprised when people disagree with you.

I do not feel like I am not making any progress because I am MR27, I have every single weapon and frame in the entire game except Zenith, I have every single mod I am interested in, 2 max-rank copies of every Arcane I use, and have maxed-out all 5 focus schools.

Where do I go from there? Where do I put all of that to use? Where do I test if farming all of that was worth it with regards to challenge? Where am I required to use all of that just to stay alive?

You can disagree with me all you want. I am not surprised, and I am happy to stand my ground and defend my points. Waframe felt a lot better at the beginning of the game because I felt challenged. I felt I was making progress because I felt I was catching-up to the game. It was slow and gradual. It felt like progress. It felt like I was becoming more powerful. But then there's that wall in which rather than feeling you're becoming powerful, everything just became weaker. There's a sudden jump in power with a gap the game was not prepared to handle that it feels you were never meant to be that powerful, because the game was not designed for it.

Edited October 14, 2019 by Jarriaga

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

26 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Yes, which I and many others see as a problem for game balancing. Nuking everything is why the game is so easy, and CC abilities (Which are cheaper energy-wise) are made irrelevant when nuke abilities can be made to be as cheap as CC abilities. It all has a ripple effect.

I already don't. More so, I don't play nuke frames either. I don't see the point here.

Plus, the problem here is how nukes can be spammed so reliably that you don't even need to use your weapons, further making the game easy. The time I nerfed myself for testing was by removing damage mods.

I do not feel like I am not making any progress because I am MR27, I have every single weapon and frame in the entire game except Zenith, I have every single mod I am interested in, 2 max-rank copies of every Arcane I use, and have maxed-out all 5 focus schools.

Where do I go from there? Where do I put all of that to use? Where do I test if farming all of that was worth it with regards to challenge? Where am I required to use all of that just to stay alive?

You can disagree with me all you want. I am not surprised, and I am happy to stand my ground and defend my points. Waframe felt a lot better at the beginning of the game because I felt challenged. I felt I was making progress because I felt I was catching-up to the game. It was slow and gradual. It felt like progress. It felt like I was becoming more powerful. But then there's that wall in which rather than feeling you're becoming powerful, everything just became weaker. There's a sudden jump in power with a gap the game was not prepared to handle that it feels you were never meant to be that powerful, because the game was not designed for it.

That's because you've played the game for a very, very, very, very long time and, within that time, players asked for more of everything. Seriously guys, how long is this game supposed to keep us challenged without hitting a gigantic wall of completion and needs a reset button. The same thing that made the game awesome for years is the EXACT same thing we're arguing against. You're fighting your younger self...actually, just envious of your younger self. You have everything you want, mastered everything and it took years to do it. CONGRATULATIONS! Completion is the reward until the game creates something bigger, better and badder enough to keep the party going. That takes a heck of a lot of time, as DE Steve said. It's gonna take a while and no amount of counter logic is going to speed things up. That's what other games are for. 

Trust me, DE isn't expecting consistent retention from everyone. Breaks are welcomed. There is a you that has just started this game and won't be where you are until 2023 or longer. That's a lot of gaming from one title.

[Chaemyerelis]

Today i was leveling the mk1-braton on helene and the game felt balanced 😕

Edited October 14, 2019 by Chaemyerelis