Devstream 136 Overview

[[DE]Taylor]

Tenno, we’re back on the couch for the first Devstream of 2020! In this week’s livestream, we talked about our holiday survey, and gave you a look at what to expect in this new year of Warframe! 

What’s to come in terms of content and iteration? Check out the livestream for the full discussion on what to expect, or read the highlights in our overview here: https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-136-overview

[Big9869]

Gimme dat Ivara deluxe .-.

[Kylo.]

That Ivara Deluxe looks better than I thought it would. 

[Tricky5hift]

I'm a bit put off about how DE addressed Empyrean's shaky release.

It's great that they tried to involve the community in deciding the future of the project but I think they should have approached it in a pragmatic way.

I think instead of just pushing out an alpha/beta version of the update which if we're being perfectly real here, is what Empyrean feels like, they should've just released a devblog or something detailing where they are on the update and open up to suggestions from there.

It feels incredibly jarring to have the content then have it undergo considerable changes within the subsequent updates.

I hope in 2020 they plan things out better and release updates not for the sake of releasing updates but to actually deliver complete and comprehensive content.

[Rahetalius]

Tweak the Armor buff duration from Bastille and replace Vector Pad with something more useful. Vauban is SO close to being great, and I really hope that talking about giving him an Armor buff on today's Devstream won't be the last "change" he gets.

[KCToxic]

If clan emblems get to be actual sigils (even glyphs, perhaps?), hopefully the image resolution for submission gets increased. 

[Atalandros]

I hope they'll implement the option to banich a lich really fast : I just gave birth to the seventh in a row with no ephemera (the only reason why I bother doing this though) and no new weapon (I don't even have half of them). I just don't feel like forcing myself to go through another 3 hours of boring gameplay for nothing 😡🤮

[Redfeather75]

That warframe sneak peek sounded awesome. 🙀

[Chroia]

Warframe Survey

As per dkah41's comment and LtGreen649's Reddit thread I'd wonder about selection bias with regards to who filled out the survey.
I consider myself fairly up-to-date on Warframe matters (check recent dev posts at least once a day, skim forums, browse the subreddit by newest).
That said, I'm not on twitter, and I only caught one mention/link to it. Further, you needed a logged in Google account to actually submit your form.
Suffice it to say, I didn't end up participating.
Between one and the other, I doubt I'm the only one.

Kuva Lich Iteration

Glad to hear it.
That said:
Removing forced failures system. Being forced to die to learn how to progress is a pain point in the community, and we are looking at other options to approach this mechanic.

Removing the script-kill is certainly good. However, to repeat myself: 

On 2019-12-07 at 3:43 AM, Chroia said:

This is not my issue with Liches.
<snip>

Forget the weapon grind.
Forget the forma-grind (why was this a thing, btw? It lengthens the time players'll spend with those weapons once, at the cost of disincentivising getting multiples for different builds, and more importantly - accelerating burnout with the Lich system, and most importantly: undercuts the uniqueness of the Paracesis for no apparent reason beyond Grind More™).
Forget even the content-isolation of Thralls.

Sure, I don't like it, but my issue with Liches, is primarily - even ignoring the difference between the Tennocon concept and what actually shipped - that they're internally inconsistent.
Even with my concerns about the representatives of the survey responses, note that the single largest chunk (above even 'I play Warframe daily') was given to highly valuing lore, story - both aspects relating to immersion.
Call it Gameplay and Story Segregation (Warning: TVTropes), call it Ludonarrative Dissonance, whatever.
Taking Liches naively - at face value and uninformed by anything but what the game gives me:
Lady, I killed you once, and even that didn't take.
Stop ranting about the travails and trauma of repeated death and reincarnation. Immediately after I failed to kill you and you QTE-killed me. 
It never happened.
Go home. You're drunk.

Softening the blow of the RNG hunt. Both in allowing you to Banish a Lich, but also using an undesired Kuva Weapon to receive a “bait” that will guarantee you a specific Weapon.

Certainly this'll decrease frustration and burnout, but it won't actually increase how long most players engage with Liches.
They need to be less of an island for that, or so it seems to me.
If all they are is weapon dispensers (and Ephemera dispensers if you're lucky, a completionist or a fashion addict), once you're done you're done.

On that note: I can't wait for the ability to rename primaries.
With Liches being churn content, attaching their names to the weapons loses all significance.
At least once they're renameable, I'll be able to know what bonus a given weapon has at a glance.

Thrall farming needs a little bit extra goodness.

Yes, it does.
What specifically you mean by this matters a lot, though.

 

Next Warframe - Odalisk
Interesting passive.

First Ability
Cool.
Second Ability
A line nuke that scales with density.
Good vs. Infested. Good in corridors.
Given those and barring a damage and eHP rework, likely to be of strictly limited use.
Third Ability
Well, people have been asking for this for Vauban for ages, so alright.
Fourth Ability
Oh, interesting.
I love this ability pretty much everywhere I've come across it, quite aside from loving the concept.

That said, its her only non-stationary defensive ability, and it's hard countered by oneshots.
tl;dr- she'll probably be a fun Star Chart frame. Might have a spot in premades, depending on how her energy orb dispenser's cooldown works.
But not more than that.

Armour Scaling
Scott mentioned the concept of “S-curve” scaling, where the exponential increase would plateau out at around level 75-80, but still increase with levels.

Probably better than a cap, if you're not going for a flat, universal amount of armor/%DR.
That said: I'm still of the opinion that Damage 2.0 needs a look.
As it is, Steve's bemoaned player damage spikiness, and a lot of that stems from the TTK disparity between 'right elements' and 'wrong elements' - especially vs. armored enemies.
A 75% double-dip on both damage done and armor-damage-mitigated is a big honkin' deal. Combine that with the swing of -50%->+75%? Yikes.

With changes to armour, we still want higher-level enemies to feel deadly, so altering damage output scaling would most likely be part of the change -- doing so without making players be one-shot is a tricky balance here.

Let me be very very clear: max level DEAC enemies are already lethal.
Top-level DEAC enemies already do enough damage that squishy frames require reliable, constant lockdown to survive already.
Which you were trying to get away from, what? 5 years ago? (cue Nullifiers and VIP CC resist.)
Consider the frames taken into an Arbitration.
Increasing high level enemy damage even higher will do nothing but further restrict the viable choices.

Archwing Rework

Good. They need it.
The range limit vs. OW environments is terrible for them, quite aside from anything else.
And almost every single ability needs a look.

(Also: MORE SPACE VACCUUM.)

 

 

Prex Cards

Gorgeous.

Vauban needs more armour - Scott!

The bonus from Bastille is good, it just needs to last longer.

 

That's all from the overview.
ty, Taylor.

This reminds me so much of a R/B nonbasic land from 2+ years ago, but I can't find it atm...

aaand the spoiler ate the end of my post and can't be edited.
%(*^(!#$@%

 

The Prex cards are gorgeous.
re: Vauban armor - If Scott was talking about his stat-armor, the armor bonus from Bastille is good, it just needs a longer base duration.

Haven't seen the stream yet, so that's that.
ty for the overview, Taylor.

[Ham_Grenabe]

Can I ask why “Odalisk?” Given what the word means?

[TheGrimCorsair]

13 minutes ago, Chroia said:

With changes to armour, we still want higher-level enemies to feel deadly, so altering damage output scaling would most likely be part of the change -- doing so without making players be one-shot is a tricky balance here.

Let me be very very clear: max level DEAC enemies are already lethal.
Top-level DEAC enemies already do enough damage that squishy frames require reliable, constant lockdown to survive already.
Which you were trying to get away from, what? 5 years ago? (cue Nullifiers and VIP CC resist.)
Consider the frames taken into an Arbitration.
Increasing high level enemy damage even higher will do nothing but further restrict the viable choices.

 

Gotta agree with this.

Any perceived lack of lethality our foe possess has much more to do with the wide availability of *incredibly* powerful EHP boosters than it does anything enemies chuck at us. If you compare Banshee, arguably one of the squishiest frames in the game accounting for her defensive skills, and them compare to the opposite end of the spectrum like say, Nidus, you get a gulf in survivability where what is a surmountable-yet-deadly threat to Banshee in terms of damage is not even remotely in danger of threatening the health pool of Nidus (expecially a Nidus at 100 stacks and linked to an enemy and standing on their carpet) while the kind of damage that would at least give that very same Nidus pause evaporates Banshee without so much as vapors being left behind.

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

Can I ask why “Odalisk?” Given what the word means?

Yeah, I was wondering that too, since its meaning is pretty clear as a female sex slave usually in a harem, from Turkey. Odd choice considering the discomfort around saying words for mammary glands are often considered not family friendly. Hopefully, a more thematic and less awkward warframe name can be picked if this isn't fully intended.

[BloodRavenCap]

If you want enemies that don't oneshot you, maybe it's time to finally introduce shield-gating to all warframes? Also, at this point, the matter of survivability will be more important than damage output. But we still don't have enough mod slots to really balance things out. And you will diminish the problem of armor scaling, but will create a problem of one-shotting.

And as I've been talking about Liches, even after all the balancing issues, there is still no point to grind them, aside from getting the weapons. And, as I said, you could fix two problems with one system:

Here I've been talking about fixing Lich system pretty extensively, but TL;DR is that you not only get weapons, but also random artifacts that buff you in a number of ways for a fixed amount of time. So, in the future, if people want to tackle some really hard content, they could make it easier for themselves by grinding Liches first, getting some artifacts that will make their life easier, and they will still have a reason to take on Liches in the future, because they need more artifacts all the time. And by that, artifacts could prevent enemies from one-shotting you and you don't have to rework mod system this way.

[667st]

NO! to enemy damage buffs. At certain point you just instantly die if a high level enemy catches you without defensive ability even for a second. You either avoid damage by stealthing, CC or jumping all over the place (this leaves very little window to kill things because high-level AI is very accurate and good at tracking the player) or you use maxxed defensive abilities and hope it's not an elemental enhancement sortie 3.

YES! to enemy armor crunch.

 

[walking_OREO]

what is the Gin brand they drank yesterday ?

[MysteriousTenno]

Hello, Is that was new open-world map for infested? Like Orb Vallis? Or just random things on railjack missions? Pictures kinda epic.

[Ham_Grenabe]

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

Yeah, I was wondering that too, since its meaning is pretty clear as a female sex slave usually in a harem, from Turkey. Odd choice considering the discomfort around saying words for mammary glands are often considered not family friendly. Hopefully, a more thematic and less awkward warframe name can be picked if this isn't fully intended.

Hey, in fairness, it could also mean "highly erotic artwork of a harem girl."

Well, they're going with it on Twitter too. I was assuming this was a code name spat out by something. I kinda wonder if they meant obelisk. 

[(PSN)TlrbmGame]

I enjoyed the stream, really. However, for an event that was hyped up for several months, it was very lackluster. It was basically a 3 hour long devstream without prizes (yes, we got a few titanium/asterite/3 day boosters) and someone got an ivara prime access but if you consider 3 hours of prime time/xb1/ps4/nswitch theres a heck of a lot more winners, and those are every week. So a 3 hour 2 months of hype 1million follower stream was worth about 1 Prime time... Maybe.

Just doesn't make sense? Either way, props to sound devs. Loved that bit in the stream. Card game was meh, stalker was ok. We need more devstreams involving each group: sound, art, visuals, quality control(maybe they can bring us through how they go about testing/patching) etc.

Thanks

[Shonaney]

vor 12 Minuten schrieb (PS4)TlrbmGame:

We need more devstreams involving each group: sound, art, visuals, quality control(maybe they can bring us through how they go about testing/patching) etc.

They did stop their deconstructing 4 months ago, im not going to expect that involving to ever happen.

Ofc there are ppl around that like these kind of insights, i kinda like these dives behind the scenes too, but im also fine with not distracting the devs from their work ;D

And may the survey shouldve been spread more across the playerbase, thats a missed opportunity, but at the end the devs also just pick the conclusion they want to find out of it.

There is good stuff about to come, we now know why vauban didnt get the stuff he should have, cause his "wife" get all of that within the divorce

Just dont forget the lore DE, pls give us backgrounds and tell a good story, everyone likes good stories

[(NSW)Finlaena]

Odalisk looks really sweet and deffo one I will add to my stable... but yeah, the implications of the name are kinda... ehhhhh. 

Looking forward to the Archwing re-work. Right now, they're my least favorite mission type in the game so far, but I'm willing to grin and bear it until it gets improved.

[Urlan]

3 hours ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

Hey, in fairness, it could also mean "highly erotic artwork of a harem girl."

Well, they're going with it on Twitter too. I was assuming this was a code name spat out by something. I kinda wonder if they meant obelisk. 

No, that is just that many European artists presented them as such, in actuality the girls wore androgynous page robes similar to the male slaves. The word actually means "One that is owned or subservient or secondary". But its meaning is female sex slave, thus being part of those harems. In Turkey it became something of a class signal to have Odalisque as wives, due to not needing to pay off the father with dowry or other relationship hurdles and the women being slaves were often trained to be subservient and there were/are many places that train the women in the manners of higher society.

Think of it like a Geisha, but a geisha is usually - but not always - a working girl; while an Odalisque sometimes romanticized as Odalisk is not, they are property.

[Ham_Grenabe]

2 minutes ago, Urlan said:

No, that is just that many European artists presented them as such, in actuality the girls wore androgynous page robes similar to the male slaves. The word actually means "One that is owned or subservient or secondary". But its meaning is female sex slave, thus being part of those harems. In Turkey it became something of a class signal to have Odalisque as wives, due to not needing to pay off the father with dowry or other relationship hurdles and the women being slaves were often trained to be subservient and there were/are many places that train the women in the manners of higher society.

Think of it like a Geisha, but a geisha is usually - but not always - a working girl; while an Odalisque sometimes romanticized as Odalisk is not, they are property.

I think the bottom line is, I will be completely unsurprised if the name of that warframe changes fairly soon. 

[Urlan]

5 minutes ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

I think the bottom line is, I will be completely unsurprised if the name of that warframe changes fairly soon. 

That would be a good call; either way, the concept art looks nice.

[Ham_Grenabe]

Just now, Urlan said:

That would be a good call; either way, the concept art looks nice.

Yeah, I like the look, and the concept (although poor Vauban 😞 ) - the name just has a few issues. 

[kapn655321]

Personally, I feel heard as a player to know you're addressing armor. Thank you. Thank you.
I know that's going to be difficult, and may even take a few iterations, but I'm really grateful that you're willing to revise these sorts of integral systems.

Best of luck!