My feelings about the Missions for Grendel

[HawkeyeGreen]

This is the first time I feel the urge to post a negative feedback for Warframe. Every other Event, new Enemy etc became something I liked or could accept.

But Grendels Missions were such a deep disappointment for me and I feel like they're so unfulfilling that I need to give some resonance - even if it would only be to get this of my heart.

When I first read about the way to acquire Grendel I felt like it would be awesome. Locked behind the already challenging Arbitrations and meant to be hard but with guaranteed reward I felt like I could really dive into this mission in order to get me a frame that really appealed to me.

But I now know that these missions ... I can't shake a bad feeling off.

In Warframe I feel like modding your Gear to suit your needs and personal ways to engage in combat is really rewarding and it feels just awesome to get a loadout to work for you.

I was hoping that these new mission would bring up new challenges to overcome. Maybe new enemies or new environmental dangers that we would need to counter with new ways of playing.

Instead this missions just take all that away in order to become dangerous - and true they are dangerous as you are running around with base stats fighting against somewhat around 40levelish enemies. And not only are you cutting away one of the most intricate parts of the gameplay away you are not offering anything for it. We are getting bombarded by waves of standard enemies and are fighting with base gear. That just feels ... bad. You have no way of counteracting anything. I just found myself picking Rhino over anything tactical because he could withstand enemy fire a little bit longer so I could gain some fun out of it.

What makes me really sad is that it feels extremely cheap - which I am not used to in terms of Warframe. You brought so much intriguing content over the last few years that I can't shake this bland taste away. Instead of offering a nice challenge which one would need to fight your da*** a** off against, were you can use tactic we are artificially - without ANY kind of explanation transmission whatsoever - made weak and thrown against far stronger enemies. Sure this makes this missions exceptionally hard to beat, but it doesn't feel like I am accomplishing anything. My friends and me have beaten the excavation only through excavator spam, because it was the most simple solution.

This is not the kind of gameplay I was hoping for - in any way. One could say that it was my fault to be looking for a nice new challenge here - maybe it is and all my rant here way without reason, but these mission left me so unhappy that I needed to write this post.

I have lost my interest in Grendel - which makes me really sad - because I just don't feel like throwing my time at this "Challenging Missions". Sorry ._.

[Skaleek]

Could've probably been on one of the 60 other threads about the grendel missions. Everyone wants a challenge until they can't beat said challenge. Try again, they are soloable, so in a 4 man group you should be ok!

Edited November 1, 2019 by Skaleek

[Lancars]

16 hours ago, Skaleek said:

Could've probably been on one of the 60 other threads about the grendel missions. Everyone wants a challenge until they can't beat said challenge. Try again, they are soloable, so in a 4 man group you should be ok!

I don't see these other grendel threads you speak of. I went a few pages in and this is the only one so far. Everyone else is complaining about the Halloween fight. Did you fight the 15 defense waves solo?

[AltheusV]

Even with a four person group, we probably could do the missions, however, and I apologise for shouting, "THEY WEREN'T ANY FUN".

This is really important, I don't mind working towards something if the process is enjoyable but the Grendel missions are the unfun kind of difficult and for that reason I won't be playing them or buying Grendel, I don't want to reward the production of that kind of mission.

Edited November 2, 2019 by AltheusV
Grammar

[HawkeyeGreen]

3 hours ago, AltheusV said:

Even with a four person group, we probably could do the missions, however, and I apologise for shouting, "THEY WEREN'T ANY FUN".

Don't apologise in this thread ;) I opened it under the heading of 'feelings' so shout if you want :D

So I've gone through all three mission together with a group of friends. I just love the idea of Grendel and when they asked me I went through with them.

And I must agree these mission were no fun and in a group of four not even that challenging anymore.

When we went through with the defense mission it got really, really tedious and boring.
After I read the post above me I just wanted to answer as it really wasn't any fun. 

There are many repetitive parts in Wf - like farming relics etc. But for me it always was fun to change things up with another Frame or Weapon but here even that just felt plain boring.

I don't know. Maybe the missions got me on the wrong foot or something but I felt like sharing this.

Edited November 2, 2019 by HawkeyeGreen
missing word

[Meelicorn]

I've always been more of a quiet player over the past two years but now I really feel the need to bring attention to this.

I mean, yes, the Grendel missions are kinda "challenging" due to the fact that you get in without mods except for some augments, arcanes, gear (and your 5) and it kinda presents a new way of playing. Like "oh, yeah that doesn't work anymore, what can I do instead?" in theory at least. I practice you just get your work towards your play style erased. It doesn't really matter how well you understand the mechanics of modding or how different effects work on your frame because that isn't a factor in these missions. So instead of what I mentioned above it's more like "well, which frame sucks the least if I strip every mod off them". Yeah maybe it gets you to play different frames than you usual go-tos, maybe the intention and the thought behind these missions were really smart but I don't see it.

The only thing I get out of these missions is the perception that Warframe isn't any fun without modding and the thought: "At least I have all parts and never have to do this again."

I have farmed a lot of frames (only mission three, now that I have Grendel) but none of them felt as tedious to farm as Grendel, although the drops were guaranteed. It's true that it isn't that hard anymore if you bring friends but still, that Defense took forever. (I think we spent ~45 minutes for 15 waves)

tl;dr - The idea of the missions isn't bad but it also isn't fun. 

[Pilot_101]

So here's my take on the missions. as a mission that realistically you're only going to do once because it's a guaranteed drop for the piece you're going after, I honestly was ok with the mission.  I was speaking 1 a friend while we were doing the missions, and we came around to the same general conclusion.

Was it an interesting idea? yes.

was it fun? not really but it's for a guaranteed reward and you're only doing it once unless you decide to help others through it.

Was it difficult? if you just went in with your favorite frame and not with a plan potentially too difficult to complete. we went in with a frost w/ gram prime and a trinity w/ skiajatti which worked great for defense and excavation, and for survival we swapped out frost for mirage prime. which some times in a game where you have so many choices it's good that you have to actually use a specific type of frame like a support frame every once in a while. not just picking inaros who in some builds starts healing before he's even lost half his health becoming virtually unkillable or a nuke frame making things boring. (which nuke frames have their place, but it's not every single mission)

If you look at them like 1 time challenges they're not that bad. they're far from perfect, and need refinement, (maybe allowing specific mods like normal vitality/redirection or maybe giving frames a bit of a buff in the mission while still disabling equipped mods but certain values increase) but there are definitely bigger issues to work on at the time (even from this update kuva flood missions are still not dropping relics 100% of the time like what it's supposed to do, but that's for another post) the biggest issue i see now is in the future when you have newer players wanting to farm but because we all have it, not many of us will redo the mission because there won't be an incentive to go through it again, and they're hard to do solo, but a 2 man or more that knows what they're doing makes them trivial (just rather long for defense/survival. excavation is honestly ok)

1 other plus I will say is that it also did a good job of re teaching the basic melee mechanics.

[Daiwulf]

First of all, DE should have made the missions with a public matchmaking, with everyone needing to carry a key like razorback/fomorian instead of locking teams to recruit chat/clan only. I never used (and refuse to) use recruit chat and i'm in a solo clan. I either go solo or public, so give us the option to go public.

Second, disabling all of the things you've farmed for years just to "make things challenging" is a really, really lazy bad design. All the forma, affinity, potatoes, gear, focus, mods, endo, rivens and build planning are just thrown into garbage Grendel's belly.

I don't mean "you gave me a challenging content and I'm mad at you because I can't cheese it". I mean it's a really bad idea from a game design perspective to lock people out of things they farmed for years in a grinding game to try to make something challenging. It works in short games, like a challenge in a DMC or forcing you to go stealth in a FPS mission instead of guns blazing everywhere because you don't have enough time to get attached to your things, but when it comes down to Warframe and MMORPGS, we grinded to use them, so it feels wrong to go against the logic behaviour of a grinding game by not using them.