for goodness sake, let us use our abilities!

[zoobmer]

the way the Plague Star, Eidolons, Orb Mother, and Ropalolyst undermine the core gameplay of this game is absolutely absurd. the primary gameplay of warframe is abilities; everything else is secondary. your sheer obsession with exploring "possibility space" repeatedly undermines the gameplay we come to the game for to begin with.

[gluih]

I would argue, that the different weapons are as important as the warframe abilities.

Your point still stands though.
I don't think it ever was about exploring anything new and all about the existing abilities and weapons being too strong. There needs to be some way to deal with the OP stuff, so they make it irrelevant in the bigger boss fights, so those aren't over in 5 seconds. I think it would be much better to finally invest the time to actually balance the different weapons and nerf the op warframes, so actually challenging content is possible.

[Loza03]

Ropalolyst and Orb Mothers (especially Exploiter), I get you, but not so much for Eidolons and Plague Star.

Plague Star has tons of mooks, making CC and nuke abilities somewhat useful, and Eidolons has lures to protect alongside buffing players. Admittedly, neither of these have abilities being anywhere near as powerful as the rest of the game, but abilities are still very influential. Bringing Loki to Plague Star will be a very different experience to bringing Chroma.

 

I also strongly disagree with the core conceit of this argument that everything else is secondary to abilities. Abilities are central to Warframe's gameplay and identity, yes, but no more so than weapons and mobility. If anything, abilities are, or should be, secondary to those two, in the sense that movement and shooting should always be considered the 'default' gameplay with abilities acting as modifiers to that. Often very significant modifiers, but modifiers nevertheless. All Warframes have the ability to jump around and shoot enemies, but not all Warframes have CC capabilites, not all Warframes have a DPS ability, a decoy, invisibility and so forth.

The fact that abilities are so dominant over weapons in 'conventional' play isn't a trait of the core gameplay loop, it's a sign of balancing issues.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Loza03

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, gluih said:

I think it would be much better to finally invest the time to actually balance the different weapons and nerf the op warframes, so actually challenging content is possible.

that won't change that much of these encounters are fundamentally built as Gear Checks anyways, and any fun in it comes from Players trying to limit break and do the content in really dumb ways.
but yno, sure it's a Shooter but that doesn't mean Bosses should be 'a thing that you shoot, but shoot some more than the normal things that you shoot'. plenty of Shooters have offered Bosses that are more than Gearcheck/timesinks and more than Zelda repetition. that's all i know.

[Loza03]

9 minutes ago, taiiat said:

that won't change that much of these encounters are fundamentally built as Gear Checks anyways, and any fun in it comes from Players trying to limit break and do the content in really dumb ways.
but yno, sure it's a Shooter but that doesn't mean Bosses should be 'a thing that you shoot, but shoot some more than the normal things that you shoot'. plenty of Shooters have offered Bosses that are more than Gearcheck/timesinks and more than Zelda repetition. that's all i know.

True. But it might be easier to make bosses that aren't gear checks if the abilities get rebalanced.

It's a bit of a vicious circle. There's going to be issues whichever side DE starts from (which is probably why it's taken them so long) but they're going to have to do something eventually. Poor balance has been screwing over their ability to make any kind of encounter for years, and it's showing.

[gluih]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

that won't change that much of these encounters are fundamentally built as Gear Checks anyways, and any fun in it comes from Players trying to limit break and do the content in really dumb ways.
but yno, sure it's a Shooter but that doesn't mean Bosses should be 'a thing that you shoot, but shoot some more than the normal things that you shoot'. plenty of Shooters have offered Bosses that are more than Gearcheck/timesinks and more than Zelda repetition. that's all i know.

It's ok in my book and even desired, that gear checks would be part of the challenge. Without gear checks there is no reason to get better weapons or to make a new build.
So it's a bit weird to talk about something being a gear check fundamentally. I would say, that boss fights should be more than just gear checks.