Devstream 134 Overview

[[DE]Taylor]

There is so much to cover in this Devstream, and if you’re interested in learning about Empyrean: boy howdy, is this the Devstream for you! Text can only convey so much, so I strongly recommend skimming through the gameplay demo from this episode if you can. There is no way for me to truly capture the chaos.

As always, you can catch all the details and shenanigans on our YouTube channel, or read the highlights in our overview: https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-134-overview

[Ceryncross]

Its fine, Mako has the text summary covered.

[SnuggleBuckets]

Raised more questions than I think anyone wanted.
The way you dismissed concerns about liches was just cold.
That new resource sink in Railjack missions is just off-putting. Win or lose a mission, you'll still lose on a lot of resources as you spend so much time putting out fires, crafting energy to use powers or munitions to fire.
I understand using resources to boost potential, but needing resources to even simply keeping yourself afloat is a troublesome path to take.
And it makes the Railjack seem inferior to just using your archwing, just park that delicate transport somewhere away and deal with the threats in your free archwing.
Solo remains vague with even the stealth option having a lot of questions hanging over it. Even 4-person squads seem to have their hands full, I wonder how horrible the experience will be with 2 people trying to deal with the inferior tech ship compared to efficient archwings.
Please consider taking some time to thinking these design decisions through.

[MirageKnight]

So despite weeks of feedback from players saying that Death by Lich is a terrible mechanic, amongst other concerns, Steve decided to blow us concerned players off on stream and say " cuz y'all need some challenge lol"

Just. Wow.

I'm also really concerned about the almost forced co-op aspect of Railjack and the amount of coordination needed just to survive in battles. In addition, I really don't want to be running around half the time putting out fires, patching hull breaches, and having to make new repair tools every 5 minutes. Don't we have a non-Tenno crew on-board to help with things like that?

[HunterDigi]

All the twitch clips autoplay for me when I enter that page O.o what is going on...

 

  

27 minutes ago, [DE]Taylor said:

 There is no way for me to truly capture the chaos.

Sounds quite chaotic to me rn xD

[Bountyboy312]

8 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

So despite weeks of feedback from players saying that Death by Lich is a terrible mechanic, amongst other concerns, Steve decided to blow us concerned players off on stream and say " cuz y'all need some challenge lol"

Just. Wow.

I'm also really concerned about the almost forced co-op aspect of Railjack and the amount of coordination needed just to survive in battles. In addition, I really don't want to be running around half the time putting out fires, patching, hull breaches, and having to make new repair tools every 5 minutes. Don't we have a non-Tenno crew on-board to help with things like that?

That's what makes it fun anyways you can complain all you want but if dont want to build your railjack that's fine but you won't be able play the new war with out or what ever steve said they were going to call it so have fun 

[ENGINEEEEER]

Lich feedback response was pretty dismissive and condescending. There's obviously some disconnect between player feedback on Liches and what the developers are understanding. 

[Hello]

First Devstream since I started playing where I'm not hype at all about future content, oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry Railjack, I'll dust you off in a year when they feel solo players are worth the time.

 

 

[MirageKnight]

15 minutes ago, Bountyboy312 said:

-snip-

You might want to reel in that attitude, mate. It's not doing you any favors.

Quote

Sorry Railjack, I'll dust you off in a year when they feel solo players are worth the time.

At this rate, I think that might be the best option.

[Urlan]

3 minutes ago, ENGINEEEEER said:

Lich feedback response was pretty dismissive and condescending. There's obviously some disconnect between player feedback on Liches and what the developers are understanding. 

Yeah, I was feeling that too. Perhaps there is some quota or other hidden statistic that they are trying to fill to justify such a cavalier response to reasonable hands-on feedback. It was quite telling that god-mode was used during the presentation for keeping their ship and such alive.

[Aurumhart]

Horrible response about the Lich system. Cold and did not address the issues the system has. The thing is built in layers of RNG and it's just tiring to deal with. It's not fun to have a Lich. People have been posting about it since the Old Blood update came out. Now people in other platforms will see the same thing.
Railjack seems to be a huge resource sink and not being able to play it solo is straight up bad for me and other players who enjoy going solo. I can't believe I was so hyped for this content.

 

 

[Vit0Corleone]

Since we will be able to build consumables while in mission, this raises the question: Who owns the resources?

Can a squad member just build 1000 missiles and bankrupt the Railjack owner's resources? Or the resources to build are personal?

How will resource sharing and usage work in general with Railjack?

[Bountyboy312]

8 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

You might want to reel in that attitude, mate. It's not doing you any favors.

At this rate, I think that might be the best option.

you too

[DeMonkey]

30 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

So despite weeks of feedback from players saying that Death by Lich is a terrible mechanic, amongst other concerns, Steve decided to blow us concerned players off on stream and say " cuz y'all need some challenge lol"

I totally see their point now though. Realistically we're all a bunch of nerds, and for us physical exercise is an unwanted and horrifying concept.

Thus having to pull the lever on slot machine of death is difficult for us, with our weedy arms, lack of proper sustenance (mountain dew and doritos don't count) and general inability to even access the slot machine in the first place due to being under the legal age for gambling.

Why, so challenging in fact that I've even started to develop muscles in places I didn't even know I had muscles, namely my arms (I alternate arms when pulling the lever so that one arm doesn't get too ripped). /s

[MirageKnight]

1 minute ago, DeMonkey said:

I totally see their point now though. Realistically we're all a bunch of nerds, and for us physical exercise is an unwanted and horrifying concept.

Thus having to pull the lever on slot machine of death is difficult for us, with our weedy arms, lack of proper sustenance (mountain dew and doritos don't count) and general inability to even access the slot machine in the first place due to being under the legal age for gambling.

Why, so challenging in fact that I've even started to develop muscles in places I didn't even know I had muscles, namely my arms (I alternate arms when pulling the lever so that one arm doesn't get too ripped). /s

Thanks mate - I really needed a good laugh 🙂

[jofipa]

this devstream today was a massive failure, i think most of its problems was cause rebb wanted to do a medium level mission with a rank 0 Railjack, and it just showcased the worst parts about railjack, the resource management part of railjack might be a cool gameplay feature in FTL type games but i dont think it fits warframe, or at least not on the way you guys implemented. 

56 minutes ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

Raised more questions than I think anyone wanted.

best way to put it honestly.

also another thing people are talking about is steve's response to the lich system, i dont care about the lich killing me, i mean you have 4 revives in a mission and you barely even get to use them, the problem is when you know all 3 requien mods you have to do waste a mission to see if they are in the correct order, and getting your lich to spawn is already a pain in the ass. once they are rank 5 you dont get kuva anymore from them so its just a waste of time spawning them multiple times.

[DeMonkey]

4 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

Thanks mate - I really needed a good laugh 🙂

On a serious note, I do agree of course. This is a genuine issue I have with the system, one that has stopped me from engaging with the system, and it sucks to see it get blown off. 

1 minute ago, jofipa said:

i dont care about the lich killing me

That's fine, others do. If the Lich beats me in a fight fair and square, I'll take the death and learn from it, just as I learn from all my deaths.

If the Lich beats me in a fight because I stopped shooting him, reached under his belt, tugged on this slot machine lever and it came up with "No U" and I dropped dead of shock... I'm going to be pretty annoyed. There's nothing to learn there, I didn't make a mistake.

[MirageKnight]

1 minute ago, DeMonkey said:

There's nothing to learn there, I didn't make a mistake.

Yes you did. You had the absolute GALL to stab that Lich while using the WRONG power words.

[Aldain]

Just now, MirageKnight said:

Yes you did. You had the absolute GALL to stab that Lich while using the WRONG power words.

Not only that, the sheer AUDACITY to stab a Lich with the right mods in the WRONG ORDER which is never told to you even with all 3 murmers.

Can you ever think of anything so utterly rude?! /s

[DeMonkey]

5 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

Yes you did. You had the absolute GALL to stab that Lich while using the WRONG power words.

3 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Not only that, the sheer AUDACITY to stab a Lich with the right mods in the WRONG ORDER which is never told to you even with all 3 murmers.

Can you ever think of anything so utterly rude?! /s

You're both absolutely right.

Lesson learnt, don't bother booting Warframe, Lich can't kill me if I don't log in.

Spoiler

 

[Aldain]

5 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Lich can't kill me if I don't log in.

In my case it is more "A Lich can't kill me if there is no Lich" but that works too.

[Chroia]

Quote

Any plans to change your consequence of dying when stabbing your Lich with the wrong combo of Parazon mods? No.

This is not my issue with Liches.
Is that clear enough?

I don't mind losing, though - and Warframe's an egregious offender here - I'd really like to know what killed me and why I died, so I can improve.
I don't mind dying if I was playing poorly.
I don't mind dying if I made an error in split-second judgement.
I strongly dislike losing arbitrarily. (again, Warframe's an egregious offender here, due to RNG ^{particularlyhitscan} enemy weapon accuracy with damage scaling on top of a Damage <-> Health asymmetry combat system. TVTropes link if the concept is unfamiliar.)
You want to kill me because I had bad RNG behind a QTE? I don't like it, and it's certainly not the look I'd want my game to go for, but *shrug* you do you.

What gets me is that as they are, Liches are internally incoherent, and you are constantly rubbing that in my face.
I'll lay off the bolds now, hope I made my point.

* Lich. Cannot be permanently killed until their Phylactery is destroyed.
Want to translate that into needing the secret chant? Alright, it does fit in the game that Warframe is better.

* A Kuva Lich is created by the player shanking a Larvaling.
The resulting Lich prominently displays the proginator's  (not the type's helmet, your actual, customised) helmet.
Where, exactly, did they get it?

They talk about repeated grievous bodily harm, inflicted by the player, and resulting in repeated death and empowerment.
Aside from Parazoning the Larvaling, you literally only ever kill the Lich once: At the end, after they've been nattering at you for a bare minimum of 1.25 hours, 3-4 hours is anecdotally more accurate, and potentially days or weeks if you don't clear it out ASAP.

Steve says you failzon them, they kill you, then they die.
This is not, at all, in the probably-60+-times I've seen those animations, conveyed.
They no-sell you, they script-kill you, they RAAAAH powerup and they port out.

So, every single other time, you fail to kill them, and they unavoidably kill you.
Did I die because I wasn't good enough? No, I died because 'fk you'.
And I can live with that. Just stop immediately following it up with the Lich expounding on how I've repeatedly killed them.
I haven't. That's the whole point, apparently.

[OvisCaedo]

Still laughing that they somehow decided the best demo for railjack to show off would be doing mid level missions with an unleveled ship, without any of the resources crafted (a concerning system on its own), with god mode on. And never acknowledged the ENTIRE time that god mode was on, while instead constantly praising those hard working fire extinguisher drones they had the two other DE staff acting as. Did they like, seriously not realize they had god mode on?

edit: It might have been an extremely bugged ship mod as opposed to actual god mode, though I'm kind of skeptical since this does not read like it should have been jumping up to max every time like it was.

 

[Foefaller]

Not sure if the narrative uniqueness of getting killed by our Lich for failing is worth the frustration that people feel for it.

Especially since it isn't currently obvious that the "best" way to do Liches now is to scare away or avoid them until you have all 3 murmurs, or maybe try after each reveal to see if it's the first one or not. I had to take a week break after going through literally Every. Single. Requiem. for the first slot and failing, confirming the correct choice by process of elimination by the time I unlocked the last murmur. It was not fun seeing myself die over and over like that for what amounted to bad luck.

Maybe have Ordis chime in something to the effect? "Operator, if you don't know the proper Requiem that will defeat the Lich it maybe be better to avoid getting in close. If you keep up with your attacks without going in for the finish, they will probably *static*RUN LIKE A COWARD!*static* make a tactical withdrawal."

That said, I can understand you wanting to get the first phase of Empyrean done, and done early enough that you're still around to fix critical issues before the holiday break makes Liches a secondary concern at the moment. That said, really hope you reconsider the way making the "wrong" choice punishes you.

[MirageKnight]

I've been thinking about this a bit...and I think that Empyrean really needs to ship with the Command and NPC crew system working properly.

I honestly don't care if it delays the update, I just think that shipping without that feature will result in just another buggy, frustrating, half-baked release with a lot of negative criticism following it.

There's also solo clans to consider as well. Shipping without an AI crew option to help out might wind up alienating solo players a good deal.