will there be difficulty in this game some day?

[Nikikin]

On 2020-01-10 at 10:28 PM, Gasau said:

I am interested in the opinions of other players. Do you think there will ever be really difficult tasks in this game?

I hope not. I enjoy killing hundreds of enemies in one mission without too much hassle. Besides "real" hardcore players will never be happy. They like that kid on a block that always tries to hard to be "cool" until he breaks his neck in one of his stunts.

I hope devs focus more on regular player base this year, rather than hardcore one.

[Neon_Knight-]

On 2020-01-10 at 4:25 PM, Ham_Grenabe said:

God I hope not.

Warframe is the game I go to to be godlike powerful and wreck mass quantities of trash mobs, while looking stylish. I want to kick ass and find there are just far too many names to take.

If I want difficulty I’ll find another game.

I have never understood this response, that Warframe is a "power fantasy", so it should be just as effortlessly easy and completely devoid of tactical depth as it currently is.

AuroraSonicBoom's description of it being a gear check is all it is. Either you have the numbers to hack through a situation, or you don't. Skill will allow you to wiggle around within 10 or 15 levels of enemy scaling before you need to start cheesing them with whatever you've got. And before that point, it's just about how many low level enemies you can one shot as quickly as possible. That's If you feel like you need to kill them at all.

I don't get any sense that I'm powerful or skillful playing Warframe. Rather, I feel like a child being catered to. Like I've hired someone to make tiny lego buildings every couple rooms, so I can run into them and pretend I'm Godzilla, knocking it all down. Or like I'm running around popping balloons to collect the candy inside. And I get a sticker and a gum ball for my tiny, pretend achievements.

The game should be able to handle the pressure I put it under to try to get better at it. I shouldn't need to gimp myself either, to interact with the mechanics as though they're deep and require my focus. Especially not in a game where your power directly affects how many all important resources you can collect.

I don't think that'll ever happen though. With how many things would need to be changed to make it so.

 

[Ham_Grenabe]

It's okay, you don't have to understand it.

Edit: but understand that first, you have to define "difficulty," and second, when you want something that isn't the solved-in-the-arsenal Gear Check followed by a breakneck race to destroy everything as quickly as possible, you are fundamentally requesting a system Not Warframe. Or at least, Not What Warframe Has Become.

Railjack appears to be a (self-sabotaged?) attempt to bring such a system of interesting tactical choices, actual roles, and so forth. It's since boiled down to "spam Void Hole in Gian Point for shortest mission farm," but it was cut off at the knees by the devs even before it got out the door. And it's very much Not Warframe. It bears little resemblance to the main game, to the point that people warped it into as close-to-Warframe as they could. 

Edited January 12, 2020 by Ham_Grenabe

[Peter]

No please, the sergeant is hard already...

[Miledude]

3 hours ago, RoninFive said:

Edit: if it took anyone 4 months to reach max MR, that's insane and close to 4 months of actual playtime. As in 4 months of active play. If you're not satisfied with 4 months full worth of content you've got something else going on.

But i did took him 4 mounts, of course if you put effort to farm all frames and weapons + lvl them up as a content, (more like a grind to me) + you get in a clan that have 100% everything, get some nice wets that dont have anything to do, so thay play fissures, whit a sweet amfinity booster that D.E. sell, so new players like him can get faster to higer MR,  you have even less content after that to actually play, becouse you have everything served in a plate, and i didn have anything better to do ( instead i have and do that ), i than teach him what and where, there you go in 4 mounts you get another god ninja ready for a new war, so it is possible..., i feel sorry for a new players today since thay dont have whit anyone to play with, becouse people perhaps just advances fast and leave the game...

[AuroraSonicBoom]

11 hours ago, 844448 said:

More tactical and satisfying combat can be found on warframes other than saryn, inaros, chroma and any "mindless" warframe. Banshee or Vauban for example need the build and skill to use it at the right place and at the right time or it's just a squishy frame that can't handle enemies beyond level 50 as the majority see them

Tell me, why would I gimp myself playing "tactical" against one shotting enemies if I can just cast an ability and wait for them to die in a fraction of the time? Might as well tell me warframe allows for tactical combat because you can run sorties with unmodded Mk1 weapons. Enemies still arent fun to fight due to the lack of combat depth, and with so many better options available youre shooting yourself in the foot for playing that way.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

Railjack was deemed "too difficult for solo" at the beginning, even by famous youtube partners, to the point where they used workarounds to level the ship. My umbra frost prime, with over 1k armor, health AND shields still required high parkour and a new loadout style to defeat the heavier armored ground troops in the veil. While I do enjoy these upgraded enemies, some players HATE them and complained the entire mission. 

So, what should DE do about that? Personally, I'd love for them to be less hard hitting while still keeping their toughness but I'm quite sure others may not agree. Some just want the rewards asap.

Difficulty isn't the problem. The problem is long term players who, after 500-2000 freaking days of experience, are trying to campaign their way towards something like a warframe 2...while keeping their rewards and resources. I believe Empyrean is attempting to do this but, with this generation of "I want everything now or else" players, it's quite difficult to build this new adventure to their unrealistic expectations and in a timely manner they'd like. Hell, Empyrean is less than a month old and people are complaining about why the WHOLE STORY isn't out yet.

 

[844448]

1 hour ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

Tell me, why would I gimp myself playing "tactical" against one shotting enemies if I can just cast an ability and wait for them to die in a fraction of the time? Might as well tell me warframe allows for tactical combat because you can run sorties with unmodded Mk1 weapons. Enemies still arent fun to fight due to the lack of combat depth, and with so many better options available youre shooting yourself in the foot for playing that way.

It's your choice to play using warframe that kills in a fraction of time, if you say you want tactical, might as well nerf those that kill in a fraction of time to make them in line with those who don't

[AuroraSonicBoom]

11 minutes ago, 844448 said:

It's your choice to play using warframe that kills in a fraction of time, if you say you want tactical, might as well nerf those that kill in a fraction of time to make them in line with those who don't

The option being available isnt an issue, the lack of reward for taking more time is. Yes, blanket nerfing would be acceptable, but DE has shown to rarely do this, which is why rampant powercreep has become a permanent issue with the game. The other more future proof solution is to work on enemies to slow down frames regardless of how much damage they can deal. That means direction invulnerability, conditional DR, and many other ways to make combat more tactical without inflating enemy health and damage numbers. Stealth gameplay suffers from exactly the same issue, and is linked to the shallowness of both the tiny amount of time it takes to kill enemies, and their lack of advanced tactical responses.

[Rakosta_Kai]

On 2020-01-10 at 12:28 PM, Gasau said:

You know what I mean. Most of the content in this game has become too simple.

Almost all missions are spammed by one button. Enemies up to level 100 die with a single shot. Even sorties no longer pose any danger.

There's irony in posters asking for challenge and then modding their way out of having to deal with it.

The simple answer to your question is: Probably never...

As long as there is a meta, youtubers to tell players how to mod, mechanics, synergies, and interactions to trivialize gameplay— then the game will never be challenging for some players.

That's no one's fault...It just is what it is.

 

[Danielw8]

On 2020-01-10 at 6:25 PM, Ham_Grenabe said:

God I hope not.

Warframe is the game I go to to be godlike powerful and wreck mass quantities of trash mobs, while looking stylish. I want to kick ass and find there are just far too many names to take.

If I want difficulty I’ll find another game.

what about if you keep playing those missions against lvl 20 enemies, and let us have any content to play agianst lvl 300 real quick without wait 2 hours survival kuva requiem

Just saying if you want include everyone in the game, you should have both content. Something hard, a real challenge to do and easy missions like you say, you love press 1 buttom and everyone is dead, you already have a lot of that

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

1 hour ago, Danielw8 said:

what about if you keep playing those missions against lvl 20 enemies, and let us have any content to play agianst lvl 300 real quick without wait 2 hours survival kuva requiem

Just saying if you want include everyone in the game, you should have both content. Something hard, a real challenge to do and easy missions like you say, you love press 1 buttom and everyone is dead, you already have a lot of that

Fight the ground troops in the veil. They're pretty tough.

[RoninFive]

I'll reiterate, everything in warframe is designed to be hard for a player just playing the game normally. There's no frame that, without all the best mods, will insta-kill high level enemies. And to get the best mods, you must farm one way or another. To rank them up, you must farm more.

Farming makes you more powerful as it does in any game. Farming rewards you for the time you spent, and the other content gets easier.

They could make an optional difficulty for every mission, where all enemies have your mods. Your ridiculous health and armor, your ridiculous 90% damage resistance after being hit once, your self-heal on heavy melee, 150% multishot with 120% crit and 8x critical damage, etc. - but why? If they add unique rewards for such a mode that are worth anything, the worth is going to be in becoming even more powerful which in that mode would be moot and in other modes is unnecessary. If they don't add unique rewards, "ugh this is pointless ill go do something else".

Some people will never be pleased, and any attempt to appease people like that is wasted effort. You want challenge, stop purposefully bypassing the challenge with the meta builds. "But there's no reward for taking it slow" yes and? What reward would you like? Mods that make you even more powerful? Unique weapons that deal more damage? What was the point of the complaint again?

Edited January 12, 2020 by RoninFive

[Cloud]

On 2020-01-10 at 9:28 PM, Gasau said:

Not rant or whiny post.

I am interested in the opinions of other players. Do you think there will ever be really difficult tasks in this game?

 

You know what I mean. Most of the content in this game has become too simple.

Almost all missions are spammed by one button. Enemies up to level 100 die with a single shot. Even sorties no longer pose any danger.

 

The game is just huge powercreep. But this is not so bad. It only needs to be used correctly.

 

For example, I really liked the grendel’s missions. It was a good challenge and for the first time in a long time I was putting together a team and thinking about tactics.

I really liked the grineers on railjack missions (veil). They are fat, they are dangerous.

 

Lvl 200 super sorties? Heck lets go lvl 300 mega sorties with cool rewards. Players who collected super gear finally feel that it was not in vain.

For me, the game has recently been reminiscent of boring work. Yes, I understand that Warframe is all about grind. 

 

Why not add more meaning to this grind instead of this new dull RNG?

The problem is people in this game ask for challenge and difficulty but when they got that they whine on forum cause they don't feel satisfied or powerfull. Just see RJ as example where the first week there were at least 10 topic on how "too strong are the enemies".

Instead the real problem in warframe is that difficulty and time spent is not proportionally rewarded. Just see rush drones as an example, you could either spend hours farming for resources or minutes farming prime parts to sell for plat and buy drones.

What I'm trying to say is if I spend 15-20 min for mission I should be rewarded more than a bunch of resouces, dirac and relics. That's the main reason I never touch long bounties, because they are not worth the time invested.

I'm up for all the difficulty you want, and so I guess others, but you need to give something worth of the more time spent and additional challenge.

[ikkabotz]

Game will always be an example of what could have been to me. Started strong, then veered off into some type of appeasement machine never executing on a level of intrigue of core mechanics. So many cool aspects misapplied to bring it together. Pie with no crust. Core issue w armor scaling never addressed. Inflatation difficulty. Horde Shooter. All the other nomers applied to it. Unsatisfactory risk/reward. Basic principles missed for years. Wonky development ideas focused on uninteresting background mechanics taking signicant time and resources.

Edited January 12, 2020 by ikkabotz

[Danielw8]

On 2020-01-12 at 4:38 AM, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

Fight the ground troops in the veil. They're pretty tough.

with pretty mediocre teammates i end the "hardest" mission of railacjk in 14 min.

With the proper squad can be in 10 ? maybe less, every single enemy there die real quick..

[DTRaptor]

As it stands, part of why I believe there will never be a true endgame for Warframe is because of the power disparity between casual/hardcore players. Although I've played more than enough to have access to the higher end of the meta available, I prefer not to use it because there are some weapons I fell in love with earlier on and just don't want to give them up because I like them. I would consider myself a casual with regard to the balance of Warframe because of this.

The problem of making higher leveled endgame content is that it often results in simply making a "dps check" where the meta is only enforced more prevalently while leaving build creativity out in the cold. In my honest opinion, the creation of and addition of rivens to the game only exacerbated the problem of balance between various players and is part of the reason why an endgame will never exist until DE goes back to the drawing board to redesign everything.

[ILOHARTA]

I see this topic pop up cyclically, and I'll throw my 2 cents at it again:
 

the topic is destined to fail because of two fundamental core flaws:

- first, we should have a common descriptor for the concept of 'difficult' (which we haven't and we'll never get, because 'difficult' is subjective)
- second, no matter the complexity or the stakes: given enough time and efforts, players will always find the meta (i.e. the most efficient way to do something).

I'm all up for tougher content, as long as it is fair; I think most of the 'hard' content so far is not fair,  the only way for developers so far to give us challenge has been to cheat (nullifiers, timegating, invulnerability, immunity, limiting abilities usage etc). I must also say, among all the games I played, Warframe is among the best when it comes to convey the feeling of power to the player, and that's an incredibly difficult thing to do.

[TheKurtiStryke]

yes, and when there will be some difficulty, it probably...it will surely get nerfed because when people ask for difficuly, and De adds some, then people start complaing and De is ""forced"" to nerf.

[Benour]

Didnt read everything, but simple difficulty slider where you can set starter lvl of mobs would be awesome, even mobile games have such feature.

Im tired of having to sit in any mission for 2h until enemies become threat somehow and i have to actually pay attention what is happening on my monitor. But then we need also scaling in rewards (well i would be fine even without it kinda). How awesome would be starting Xini or w/e at lvl 100 (or even more) and getting 2x relic each rotation or scaled up amount of resources.

But then again we get to the "cheesing" that is making most content trivial (well its not THAT easy for most ppl), but atleast ppl would be working together more, and bored vets would have something to do finally, you could also recycle lots of dead nodes this way. This feature would be just for ppl who finished star chart (like arbies) and certain MR or something, you assemble your group first and THEN you can use the difficulty slider, there is no option to join in pubs in such mission.

[OrSpeeder]

I am a newbie of sorts in Warframe.

 

I am also, a game designer.

 

To be honest Warframe design in many senses, is correct and fine... But it does have an issue that annoys me a lot, that is result of much of the complaining I believe:

Bullet-sponge scaling and reliance.

 

Many, MANY missions the enemies are just too bullet-spongy but offer no "real" threat, I mean, I see veteran players still needing to be rescued, but that is because they ended being overwhelmed by all the bullet sponges...

 

As a newbie what is obvious is that guns in general, suck, or melee is OP, one of the two. So usually how my missions go: I shoot things, then when tons of enemies show up I just start to jump and press middle mouse button, unless I am with a very quick sword, then I just spam "E" button.

 

The game feels easy because you can win without thinking: just mash melee, or use your warframe area abilities (for example: some high-MR guys took me to index, and just stood in our base, spamming their abilities, or I went to a pub defense mission, and one guy showed up with Saryn, and just spammed whatever Saryn can spam, and the screen just keep saying: "Wave Cleared" as enemies insta-dropped dead).

 

 

Some things that could help:

 

better AI (for example although I easily kill the junction Warframes, I noticed I have to think BEFORE I engage them, if I just bum-rush them I get killed easily, for example when I rushed frost with my excalibur intending to just spam "E", he froze me in place and insta-killed me, thus if normal enemies could use some of Warframe AI they would already be more challenging)

 

enemies that could Parkour too (just to make it more fun, require you parkouing after them, or to avoid them)

 

less focus on health scaling (I noticed the enemies health scale much faster than the damage they do, making high-level play boring, as long I don't get hit I can kill them... except very slowly, for example I went to a mission with a guy that was using that warframe that can spawn a chain that paralyze enemies, it was all a matter of using ground-slam to make them bounce into the chain, and then pressing E for 30 seconds to kill one enemy...).

 

occasional enemies immune to the most popular warframe skills but vulnerable to normal shooting OR normal melee (to force players to sometimes use one or the other).

 

hard-hitting enemies but that are fragile and obvious (NOT the current ones in Orb Vallis that insta-kill you with no way of you figuring out wtf just happened... ie: not mortar launchers, no hit-scan no-trace snipers, etc...)

 

enemies with some more interesting attacks (for example, stuff from Earth Defence Forces: there are some rolling enemies that can perma-stun you if you don't parkour out of their way if they are in sufficient numbers, some flying enemies that launch armour-corroding acid and affect some area, spiders that web the map and can make you stuck if you are not paying attention... or one enemy from Terraria: there is a guy that can suddenly go into a mode where it reflects bullets, often kill inattentive players relying on high-damage ranged builds).

 

have damage change based on position: so that strafing and moving becomes more important, for example you can have extra damage on the back of enemies, or even an enemy intended to discourage mindless melee: if you try to melee him in the front, he will deal some high-damage attacks, but he turns slowly, so you can for example slide next to him and hit his back instead.

 

PvP (yep, there, I said it... I know warframe for PvP is horribly unbalanced, still you could let players duel somewhere even with no reward, without it being in the dojo, also player vs player "race" would be interesting, for example two players start the same PvE mission at same time, whoever is faster or rack up more kills wins).

 

Better level design (current levels often have the same issues):

 

1. unecessarily difficulty parkouing for newbies and veterans in hectic fight, like negative-angle ledges, paths you must take yet look like a secret entrance, etc...

2. arena-style areas with too little cover, or too much cover

3. lack of sniper-locations (For those that want to attempt to snipe stuff)

4. many decorative things that detract from gameplay (a common annoyance is tiles that is not obvious where is a hole that respawns you and where is a hole that make you go down...)

5. levels that are annoyingly too big, specially when you need to find "optional" stuff (caches, synthesis targets, etc..)