Make the game harder.

[Joezone619]

What with riven mods, all the weapons being boosted a while back, and all the new mods and combos and the "exlius slot" for guns about to come out. warframe has become way too easy. even the eidolons, the things that are supposed to be so powerful all of cetus refuses to go out at night, fall in a matter of minutes, but they're not the focus of this post, at least not directly.

 

Warframe, has become easier then ever, theres just not much of a challenge to anyone whos gotten towards the end of the main quest line. Theres arbitrations, but even those arn't too difficult when you stick as a group. Aside from them, i don't see much pushing us.

I think disruption missions, was a step in the right direction, but one that needs to be refined rather then build on. I think increasing the level cap and scaling rate is one way to ruffle feathers, but there needs to be more.

Eximus: These guys used to be a threat back in the day, now? they're lucky if you even aim at them instead of letting your companion do it for you.

Nullifiers: Defiantly a threat, but about as much as 1 speck of bug spray is to a hive.

Heavy units: Napalms, heavy gunners, and bombards are durable sure, but they lack the strength to do much. if you hold still maybe they can do much but keep moving and no threat here. and where are the corpus heavy units? bursas, aren't a common sight, hyenna's aren't seen anywhere not special, and isn't jackle supposed to be causing problems for our operatives in the field?

Hunters: This is probably the coldest shoulder thats been given to these guys, sydicates die as they spawn, stalker's a joke, and the grustrag three and zenuka arn't even batted an eye toward, and they are probably the most developed having their own special cases should you fall to them, with the zenuka escape mission and the G3 ascarisc (leg thing vor puts on you when you start)

 

All of these guys where you see in mission, are supposed to be the ones that pose a challenge to you, instead you usually bullet jump on them, killing them in 1 hit and stroll about your day.

I think the eximus and heavy units are where DE can do the most to make it challenging.

The powers of the eximus units are WAY too outdated, they need reworks, perhaps give them more then 1 ability they only use once per 10-20 seconds, and maybe have some new ones that focus on buffing allies similar to ancients do in ways that don't nerf tenno, but buff enemies, like faster fire-rate and reload, or double health, or increased movement speed.

one idea that comes to mind for a new eximus would be the "mimic" which constantly makes enemies near it look like it, and slowing tenno down significantly until it dies.

 

Heavy units, what ever happens to you guys. Remember when napalms could spit walls of fire like arson eximus? that was cool. nowa days i don't think it should do quite that, but give these guys something that makes the special units, like napalm might be able to shoot the ground under him and make everywhere in 5m on fire, or bombards could throw scatter grenades, or have small exploding minions, or when they're at low health, run up to you and EXPLODE. 

as for corpus heavy guys, there ain't much of em. DE defiantly needs to add more but also make bursa's a lot more common, and have hyena's spawn in everyday missions.

 

There are ways to spice up the game, that dont involve making new guys, sometimes the old ones just need a second look.

[Rubbertubtub01]

No matter how tanky something is or whether an enemy has "1 ability," with the amount of warframes and abilities we have at our disposal you'll be able to probably do the same "killing them in 1 hit and stroll about your day."

If you want warframe to be more challenging it would have to be mechanically challenging. For instance, more enemies like the Nox that have a headshot weak spot. But make them move faster so you actually have to AIM rather than just point your ignis in the general direction. The Nox barely moves which makes it still easy. 

[Joezone619]

yeah stuff like that to make things more challenging, i defiantly still think eximus and heavy units need reworks/overhauls though. as a side, the infested demonstrate the kind of "difficulty" im talking about, when they scale to around 60-80, their coordination with the ancients makes them difficult to break.

[Joezone619]

the cool thing about eximus back in the old says was that they could stop warframes from being able to hurt enemies with abilities, indirectly, with arson makeing fire useless, removed ember, arctic? stopped frost, guardian was much more powerful (or noticable back then).

[DrivaMain]

Easier said that done, DE tried to do this with the pre-nerf Orb Vallis enemies and got a massive backlash from the casuals (FYI they are the majority of Warframe's playerbase right now). 

DE Considered a difficulty slider to counter this, but we haven't received an update on that.

 

[Joezone619]

back then they added new ones, i think reworking the old guys is what they need. and most of the issue was the corpus units that disable certain abilties but not all, the ones that you need to knock hats off of, i think flat out disableing abilities is not the way, rather making enemies more resistant to them, or giving them creative ways around them.

[Althaline]

43 minutes ago, Joezone619 said:

Hunters: This is probably the coldest shoulder thats been given to these guys, sydicates die as they spawn, stalker's a joke, and the grustrag three and zenuka arn't even batted an eye toward

I'd be happy for the Assassins to get a buff of some sort (why is Shadow Stalker easier than regular Stalker?) other than New Loka. Have you ever fought the New Loka death squad? It's a nightmare, and I hate it. They shrug off hits from Rubico, that's how stupid they are.

[Joezone619]

ya new loka is probably the only noteworthy assassin. definatly more noteworthy then stalker XD

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

The disruption mission in Sedna has NPCs that scale up quite fast, the demolyst can be tricky to kill before they reach the conduit and conduit debuff can be tough. Then Mot in the void is OK too (but the nullifiers spam can make it unfun).

My concern are

• difficulty that doesn't imply ~1h before it gets fun
• not just crippling mutators (or units immune to everything --> demolyst are way better than nullifier spam)
• not balanced for bad meta (see posts about "which frames are balanced")

[Joezone619]

There are a few good missions that are somewhat difficult, but they are very limited, and the "boring" kind of difficult, using pure levels instead of fun twists. for disruptions though honestly, i think they need to increase the nullifier wave delay on the demolyst, at least double.

[Xzorn]

Go higher in level dude.

Napalms and Nulifiers are notoriously among the most broken enemies in the game so I can tell you're not facing high level versions.

That's mostly what we need. There's plenty of other things but just giving players easy access to higher levels would solve a lot of difficulty issues. Challenge is another thing but the game most certainly gets difficult after a point. Least Solo. A determined group just can't be stopped but that's a whole other subject honestly.

Not sure how Disruption was a step in the right direction either. It's a mission where you pretty much stand around and ignore all but one enemy who's immune to a lot of effects and dispells the ones it's not flat out immune to along with some arbitrary mystery DR cuz Sentient excuses.

[Joezone619]

i stand by what i said, heavy units and eximus units are due for an overhaul.

[Rubbertubtub01]

Man I remember when I first versed the stalker in 2014 or something, the fight took like 10 minutes it was awesome (although i was MR4 or something like that idk)

I also remember being a little nervous, whether I was gonna die or not. That would be cool to feel again. 

[Garruhson]

I concur entirely with this post.

Not only do enemies stop becoming a threat, eximus enemies become a chore to take care of rather than a 'oh S#&$ an eximus' and being legitimately concerned of that eximus stomping on our progress, for me and im guessing many other players, they do not give us a legitimate challenge, only just annoy us when they knock us over or slow us down-- and that's all eximus enemies do at higher levels in my experience, knock us over or slow us down, they're not a threat, just a chore or a slight annoyance.

Heavy enemies are about the same way aswell, the only type of threat i can think of for high level special enemies are corrupted bombards and heavy gunners that are level 100+ and not even because they're tanky, it's because their weapons eat you alive and i believe that is the type of 'boring-fun' joezone mentioned in his prior post, for me, it's boring fun because half the time you won't get a chance to do anything about it - or even see them before they instantly gun you down or blast your warframe into pieces (which clearly isn't fun)

Syndicate and hunter enemies are also in need of a power re-balance, i remember the first time each hunter spawned on me; i was scared because i didn't know what was going to happen, if i'd get taken out by stalker, get my warframe snatched by zanuka, or uh - whatever G3 does with you, but after significant level increases and their changes over the years (wink wink shadow stalker) they aren't a threat anymore, more of a 'uh oh, i wonder where stalker is gonna spawn' and 'hmmm i wonder if he won't drop a dread this time', they don't possess a legitimate threat or challenge anymore just a faceblast of any primary or secondary weapon and they get deleted

[Xzorn]

You can stand by whatever you want but if you haven't fought an enemy at an adversarial level then you have no basis from which to claim their difficulty or challenge. It's just simple as that. I assume players are still misled that lvl 100 is high level and it's not. Hasn't been for years. Lvl 300-400 is the current parse for Solo.

...and as I mentioned; Teams? Forget about it. Nothing can stop a well built and determined team from hitting level cap outside old age.

What you propose just plays into DE's illusion of difficulty that does nothing but cause these enemies to break after scaling kicks in. Napalms and Nullifiers are two of the most dangerous enemies in the game and probably amount to 90% of Endurance runner deaths. Napalms also have the 2nd highest eHP after Bursa and Eximus are very much a problem when they shut down elemental damage types or damage in total preventing you from just AoE-No-Aim-Spamming your way through the game.

Your problem with Difficulty is a simple fact of scaling. Nothing more. Challenge on the other hand would be more kin to what other Tenno said about Stalker. Old Stalker was more difficult. New Stalker tried to have more challenge. Baby level challenge but less difficult overall as he no longer has hit-scan weapons. You can fight new Stalker at any level range if you know his moves and don't make a mistake. That's the difference.

[Joezone619]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Lvl 300-400 is the current parse for Solo.

Thats the issue, relying on levels that high is ridiculous, your only ever gonna find them in 3 places, disruption, arbitraion, and sortie mission 3, and those last 2 are a maybe. Instread of relying on super high level scaling, DE should be making things difficult in a fun way, not a "do this mission and after an hour it'll start to be pretty difficult" way. missions already spawn enemies numbers based on # of players in a squad, unforunatly that was built on an old system. 

The difficulty system i'm looking for, is similar to the old napalm wall of fire, with some nox mixed in, heavy unit enemies, seen in common and rare places, that A) have some abilitie, power, or technique, and B) have an interesting twist to defeat them. with Noxes, its the head, they are tough to break everywhere but the head, something like that in common place would spice things up.

One thing i definatly think they need to come back to are eximus, they're not a fun threat, they're either just annoying pushing you around, or overlooked, being 1 shot with the rest. i want something that'll make me go "oh S#&$ better get ready" not "oh its this guy again, pass"

[Xzorn]

14 minutes ago, Joezone619 said:

Thats the issue, relying on levels that high is ridiculous, your only ever gonna find them in 3 places, disruption, arbitraion, and sortie mission 3, and those last 2 are a maybe. Instread of relying on super high level scaling, DE should be making things difficult in a fun way, not a "do this mission and after an hour it'll start to be pretty difficult" way. missions already spawn enemies numbers based on # of players in a squad, unforunatly that was built on an old system. 

The difficulty system i'm looking for, is similar to the old napalm wall of fire, with some nox mixed in, heavy unit enemies, seen in common and rare places, that A) have some abilitie, power, or technique, and B) have an interesting twist to defeat them. with Noxes, its the head, they are tough to break everywhere but the head, something like that in common place would spice things up.

One thing i definatly think they need to come back to are eximus, they're not a fun threat, they're either just annoying pushing you around, or overlooked, being 1 shot with the rest. i want something that'll make me go "oh S#&$ better get ready" not "oh its this guy again, pass"

 

Level is just a measuring tool. That's why nothing can be difficult in Warframe anymore. We simply out-stat everything by a huge margin.

Put simply the level of enemies we're fighting. The enemy's stats are too low to ever present difficulty or challenge regardless of the mechanics. That's why this game has turned into one big eHP + DPS meta. We just smash our stats against a problem until it goes away made worse by DE's failed attempts of difficulty with immunity.

Have you ever seen a lvl 300 Nox? That's a perfect example of what I mean by designs breaking. I don't dislike Nox. I like that it requires aim to kill... However. A lvl 300 Nox has 27,124 Alloy armor on it's head. That's 98.91% mitigation. Good luck with the same tactic of simply shooting it's head.

Lastly both Nox and Napalms ignore all cover with their AoE attacks. They ignore most Warframe created barriers as well so most legit skill techniques can't actually be used to avoid damage from their shots. That's why Napalms kill so many players at higher levels. You will get tagged by the outermost layer of AoE through a wall or floor and you will die.They both have serious flaws in their designs. Nox should not have scaling armor on it's head and neither should be ignoring cover but all this you don't notice unless you actually fight difficult versions of the enemy otherwise Nox / Napalms, whatever don't make any difference to a Butcher or crewman. They all die instantly without threat.

We both want the game to be more difficult. I'm just saying it doesn't work by trying to just buff an enemy to work in otherwise trivial content.

[Talinthis]

i met a venomous corpus (cant remember name.. " Venomous *something* ") unit in my arbitration, he took 0 damage from all my guns and had a blue aura so basically he just followed me around for about 30 minutes shooting me since he couldnt be killed. didnt put up a threat of any kind to me so idk what his deal was.

Edited October 10, 2019 by Talinthis

[Joezone619]

if your weapons were all toxin based, and if it was an armored target like a bursa, that could explain the no damage, but thats what im talking about, that one time it couldn't be killed, not because it fought better, but because the game's difficulty system is so broken it slipped into an "immortality gap" and coudln't be hurt, the prosecuters of ceres have the same problem.

[Xzorn]

5 hours ago, Talinthis said:

i met a venomous corpus (cant remember name.. " Venomous *something* ") unit in my arbitration, he took 0 damage from all my guns and had a blue aura so basically he just followed me around for about 30 minutes shooting me since he couldnt be killed. didnt put up a threat of any kind to me so idk what his deal was.

 

It's because Venomous Eximus negate all Toxic and combined Toxic damage types. Toxic, Gas procs and Viral though for some reason not Corrosive.

They're a huge pain in the &*^$(  and until recently you would only see them with Infested. Since Fortuna or around that time Corpus now have both Arson and Venomous Eximus. Arson making enemies immune to Heat / Blast damage types. Infested had both of these types and would be a serious handful if they got together at higher levels since you could end up with groups of Infested immune to all Toxic damages, all Heat damages, stacking reduced ability effect from Disruptors and being shielded from damage by Healers.

Anyone who suggests a damage type outside Corrosive + Slash / Rad against Infested hasn't seen the mess they can turn into.

[Talinthis]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

 

It's because Venomous Eximus negate all Toxic and combined Toxic damage types. Toxic, Gas procs and Viral though for some reason not Corrosive.

They're a huge pain in the &*^$(  and until recently you would only see them with Infested. Since Fortuna or around that time Corpus now have both Arson and Venomous Eximus. Arson making enemies immune to Heat / Blast damage types. Infested had both of these types and would be a serious handful if they got together at higher levels since you could end up with groups of Infested immune to all Toxic damages, all Heat damages, stacking reduced ability effect from Disruptors and being shielded from damage by Healers.

Anyone who suggests a damage type outside Corrosive + Slash / Rad against Infested hasn't seen the mess they can turn into.

oh wow really? yeah that would be it. my weapon was gas, my melee was viral. i was wondering why TF nothing was working.

[Xzorn]

7 minutes ago, Talinthis said:

oh wow really? yeah that would be it. my weapon was gas, my melee was viral. i was wondering why TF nothing was working.

 

Yea I made a post about it a while back and players just wanted to correct me on saying Corpus didn't have Energy Leech Eximus.
The point of the post was now Corpus can be immune to the main damage types players use against them.
So I guess DE really does want us to use nothing but Corrosive and Bleeds.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

At this point in the game I'm ready for more giant monsters like the orbs, thumpers, and eidolons along with some real size juggernauts running around these giant open worlds...When it comes to the open worlds if they are not going go Skyrim they need to go Monster Hunter World instead...

[Teridax68]

Asking for more difficult content is easier said than done, because not only are we capable of multiplying our health, damage, etc. via mods by a factor of tens or hundreds (which creates an equally large spread of power across the playerbase the game has to balance itself across), many of our frames can end up removing practically all interaction with enemies via 100% uptime abilities, particularly when it comes to radial damage, hard crowd control, crazy durability steroids, and so on. I can agree that the game could benefit from more challenging enemies, because right now the vast majority of enemies in Warframe are cookie-cutter and fail to bring any interesting mechanics to the table (The Vapos units on the new Corpus Gas City tileset, on the other hand, do at least offer some measure of diversity), but even those enemies are likely to fall too quickly due to the problems with our balance and design, as evidenced by the Nox, an enemy with an interesting mechanic that has become more of an annoyance than a real challenge.

In this respect, the most direct solution would be to rework much of our modding, as well as many of our frame abilities, so that we don't have such a crazy power spread, and can't play the game on autopilot with the right setup: trouble is, this is obviously not going to go down well with the playerbase, at least not in the short-term, because a lot of very vocal players are allergic to nerfs, and may not understand why their frame or build is getting toned down (or may simply not want to understand, because they think their frame/build is special). Thus, while such changes are likely necessary if the game is to shift to a healthier state, is is not an easy design path to take, which is almost certainly why DE have put it off for so long.

[woggs123]

I don't remember where but I read once that Warframe's enemy AI is artificially limited so there's hardly a moment when every single enemy spawned is taking aggressive action. I'd love to see a game mode where none of the enemy stats are buffed, just their AI being taken off the leash. Maybe scatter some environmental hazards around too. I agree that a lot of the content gets too easy to cheese but I don't want to see heavy gunners and bombards with even more armor, I'd rather have to fight an enemy that never lets up their assault.