Most missions are too easy to solo

[Two_0ns]

I've been playing Warframe since the summer of 2017. I was trying to get into MMO games and found it. The theme of being a fast ninja and the mechanics, design, possible possible story are what drew me in. However, over time I realized that I was being blinded by the constant daily caps and merciless RNG that I couldn't see one of the biggest flaws in Warframe; you don't need other people and there's no remnants of being fast and stealthy. Standard missions are too easy to solo, especially capture and spy. Every mission can be completed if you kill all the enemies. Some require you to get them before they reach a console, like spy, or to protect something, like defense or mobile defense. I have difficulty having fun with my friends in this game because we almost have everything in the game, we take turns feeling useless in certain missions, and there's not much challenge besides the scaling. I have made some suggestions with the mind set that if the standard missions can be speed through then lets make that a requirement, and missions should encourage teamwork.

• Spy: Increase the difficulty of hacking by adding multiple layers to the hacking puzzle or by increasing the number of locations to 8 (2 for each player). Add a big timer if the alarms are triggered outside of the spy area. If having 8 spy vaults is too much, then change it so that there is double the amount of players present in the mission.
• Mobile Defense: add 2 additional consoles that you have to keep enemies off of to prevent them from impeding on the hacking. Or have someone hacking the console either by locking them into an animation or add multi-layered hacking puzzles.
• Sabotage: Add a timer if the mission is about causing the ship to explode, and make more variations for the sabotage, like with killing Tel Regor's Tube Men. Add more points of interest that require fast travel between them in order to not trigger an alarm. It makes sense if the enemy caught onto what we were doing and tried to stop us.
• Rescue: If the alarms are triggered, then either initiate a lengthy timer or decrease the timer to save the hostage if a warden finds you.
• Capture: Add a target for every player in the squad.
• Trials: Bring them back. One of the reasons we loved to play the trials was because it had interlocking mission types. You could go from a mobile defense mission to a sabotage mission without seeing a loading screen. If there's no intention of bringing the Trials back, then at least make some interlocking missions. Invasion missions are short, so they'd be perfect to test the idea on.
• Overall: Make the game a lot harder for solo play or make the missions scale to the number of players in the squad. I'm not saying to make it impossible to play solo, but this game is intended to be an MMO with the theme of being fast ninjas. Give us a reason to even consider playing with others or to not get caught to complete a mission.
   

[AltairFerenc]

I don't think it's intented to be an MMO ever. I agree it should be harder but pls don't force people to play in squad if they prefer solo(me too) 

[Two_0ns]

4 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

I don't think it's intented to be an MMO ever. I agree it should be harder but pls don't force people to play in squad if they prefer solo(me too) 

At the time it was considered an MMO. Now they removed the tag. My intent was not to suggest forcing players to do something solo, but it make it difficult if they do, or at lease make the challenge scale to the number of people. So far the only scaling to squad count is enemy spawn cap. I would like it for the missions themselves to feel like you're either a one-man-squad, able to accomplish actions that take 2-4 people, or have something for everyone in a squad to do. Most standard missions are easy for one person. Capture, mobile defense with Limbo, and rescue feel like playing with others will just slow you down, and spy missions only have 3 spy vaults, leaving 1 person out. 

[kapn655321]

I don't agree that speed is no longer necessary. ..I feel that has taken a greater importance. (Lots more zoomers these days. ;)) The lust for optimization and rapid returns is higher than ever.. so much so, that people are doing that without even enjoying it.. more than they feel obliged to.

Ok, so.. difficulty..

Many of the weapons were too weak to take on enemies that scaled into crazy armor levels.. enemy health has gotten a rework, which was good at trimming down that top end scaling, but also made the bottom end of basic units Way squishy. Those weapons never got a rework though, and so damage scaling between the enemy and us is like.. all over the place.. while their health is generally critically low in star chart, and critically high for many options beyond it. ..it's all kinda wacky, so making difficulty of that is more about picking either good or bad weapons. What I suspect is the Main reason difficulty had to come down, is players are allergic to losing their loot. Everyone is playing as risk averse as they can, being as OP as they can, to outpace RNG frustration and be certain they keep their rewards.

For people to be willing to accept challenge openly across the game, losing loot can't be a thing, and practically everything needs to scale into some amount of competency. Then if everyone is confident they're prepared, they're not gonna get screwed, it's ok to take risks, the game could get much harder without the same level of backlash.

What's the first thing we do when we lose? Statistically speaking, blame the party for wasting your time, and drop squad. ...So.. what if the game did that for us? Kick us into our own instance determined by performance stats, party is hauled away, and you're given a challenge more your speed, without having lost anything.

Example, you're in a sabotage, and the timer is WAY tighter to escape. ...if the facility blows up first, you wake up separated from your party, picked up by an enemy dropship, and taken somewhere else. Some detainment facility.. your drops can be in the lockers there, hidden in containers... anything you don't get? The local boss has in a hoard like Lich do. Nothing is lost forever. Take great risks, welcome great challenge.
 

[AltairFerenc]

7 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

At the time it was considered an MMO. Now they removed the tag. My intent was not to suggest forcing players to do something solo, but it make it difficult if they do, or at lease make the challenge scale to the number of people. So far the only scaling to squad count is enemy spawn cap. I would like it for the missions themselves to feel like you're either a one-man-squad, able to accomplish actions that take 2-4 people, or have something for everyone in a squad to do. Most standard missions are easy for one person. Capture, mobile defense with Limbo, and rescue feel like playing with others will just slow you down, and spy missions only have 3 spy vaults, leaving 1 person out. 

spy missions are the worst to do in squad especially in sortie, someone messes up and just quits. Warframe will never have that "evryone in the squad will have something to do". when there were no corrupted mods/they were very new AND there was no nuke frames there were actually organized squads, I remeber that, frost/vauban was a blessign in every defense type mission as well trinity, Nyx actually had an use. Then everyone got thier corrupted mods, everyone suffered to get mesa and nuke frames and weapon made support/CC frames useless because why bother doing that when you can just oneshot tilesets/rooms? Thats why I swiched to solo because in squad the fun is dead, first a couple of year ago maiming strike slide killing 2 rooms, and saryn/mase nuking everything, not leaving any fun to anyone else. Now maiming strike slide is dead and replaced by bramma. Unless every nuke frame and weapon gets nerfed to to ground organized squads won't exist in this game because they are not needed unless you want to do those stupid multiple hour long surv mission, but there is zero to no reason to do that.

[Two_0ns]

14 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

spy missions are the worst to do in squad especially in sortie, someone messes up and just quits. Warframe will never have that "evryone in the squad will have something to do". when there were no corrupted mods/they were very new AND there was no nuke frames there were actually organized squads, I remeber that, frost/vauban was a blessign in every defense type mission as well trinity, Nyx actually had an use. Then everyone got thier corrupted mods, everyone suffered to get mesa and nuke frames and weapon made support/CC frames useless because why bother doing that when you can just oneshot tilesets/rooms? Thats why I swiched to solo because in squad the fun is dead, first a couple of year ago maiming strike slide killing 2 rooms, and saryn/mase nuking everything, not leaving any fun to anyone else. Now maiming strike slide is dead and replaced by bramma. Unless every nuke frame and weapon gets nerfed to to ground organized squads won't exist in this game because they are not needed unless you want to do those stupid multiple hour long surv mission, but there is zero to no reason to do that.

I agree. I know I didn't have a suggestion for every standard mission type, like hijack (DE could increase the speed if more people are contributing?), but I couldn't think of suggestions for those missions because their objective IS to kill as many as possible as fast as possible. My aim was for the missions were the goal wasn't to kill mass numbers. And I do want some missions were going a little slower and stealthier with increase the likelihood of success. It no longer feels like the "ninja" aspect is in this "space ninja" game. As my friend put it "Warframe is a much 'ninja' as Naruto is."

[Two_0ns]

23 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

I don't agree that speed is no longer necessary. ..I feel that has taken a greater importance. (Lots more zoomers these days. ;)) The lust for optimization and rapid returns is higher than ever.. so much so, that people are doing that without even enjoying it.. more than they feel obliged to.

Ok, so.. difficulty..

Many of the weapons were too weak to take on enemies that scaled into crazy armor levels.. enemy health has gotten a rework, which was good at trimming down that top end scaling, but also made the bottom end of basic units Way squishy. Those weapons never got a rework though, and so damage scaling between the enemy and us is like.. all over the place.. while their health is generally critically low in star chart, and critically high for many options beyond it. ..it's all kinda wacky, so making difficulty of that is more about picking either good or bad weapons. What I suspect is the Main reason difficulty had to come down, is players are allergic to losing their loot. Everyone is playing as risk averse as they can, being as OP as they can, to outpace RNG frustration and be certain they keep their rewards.

For people to be willing to accept challenge openly across the game, losing loot can't be a thing, and practically everything needs to scale into some amount of competency. Then if everyone is confident they're prepared, they're not gonna get screwed, it's ok to take risks, the game could get much harder without the same level of backlash.

What's the first thing we do when we lose? Statistically speaking, blame the party for wasting your time, and drop squad. ...So.. what if the game did that for us? Kick us into our own instance determined by performance stats, party is hauled away, and you're given a challenge more your speed, without having lost anything.

Example, you're in a sabotage, and the timer is WAY tighter to escape. ...if the facility blows up first, you wake up separated from your party, picked up by an enemy dropship, and taken somewhere else. Some detainment facility.. your drops can be in the lockers there, hidden in containers... anything you don't get? The local boss has in a hoard like Lich do. Nothing is lost forever. Take great risks, welcome great challenge.
 

I love your suggestion. It reminds me of what could happen if Zanuka captured you. Wish DE made it harder to escape it. Maybe something like with the Gustag 3 where Lotus panics and tells you to leave, and if Zanuka reaches you from the beginning, then it's instant capture, or at least difficult to escape (maybe a quick time event that drains your HP every time?)
But wouldn't that trivialize failing (even though I'm all for this)? 

[AltairFerenc]

2 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

I agree. I know I didn't have a suggestion for every standard mission type, like hijack (DE could increase the speed if more people are contributing?), but I couldn't think of suggestions for those missions because their objective IS to kill as many as possible as fast as possible. My aim was for the missions were the goal wasn't to kill mass numbers. And I do want some missions were going a little slower and stealthier with increase the likelihood of success. It no longer feels like the "ninja" aspect is in this "space ninja" game. As my friend put it "Warframe is a much 'ninja' as Naruto is."

The game has 4 faction each with a lot of different units. DE just need to rework the AI to be good, and nit spam every unit out like sh*t but to adapt the players playstyle, Using to muuch explosive weapon? Spam cold and guardian(anchient healers in infested and corrupted faction) eximuses to stop you and change what you do. You spamming abilites? Spam out nullifires to stop you and make similiar units to the other factions too. Do similar things with all eximuses and heavy units, you don't have a problem killing ferrite armor units? Lets change them into alloy armor units. 
these kind of changes are needed not just decreasing the accuracy and cahnging the scaling(that was needed too) as wellas making older weapons great, because that was the porpuse of rivens but that didn't happend. And reworking old frames that need it like they did with vauban. Nyx needs love, zephyr needs love, revanant need changes. 

[kapn655321]

15 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

But wouldn't that trivialize failing

Doesn't everything, already?

We're more worried about our loot, than our lives, or those of our party. ...we're bottlenecked into loadouts that make us practically invincible, to prevent something we allege not to fear.. Failure means being upset at the game more than it feels it's checked our skill.. most often, that resentment comes down on the party and the devs. Neither are the result of fulfilling design.

I'd say 1 life.. go unconscious.. party can revive, else you're getting hauled off by an enemy faction, and have to fight your way back to the region and resources you were working towards. On the way, you can get back on schedule by accumulating a sort of, "revenge," bonus toward your loot finding.. which brings me back to matchmaking as you mentioned.

One thing matchmaking seriously could use (especially before my idea could work,) would be a way to find missions and parties by loot and loot priority. Then, remove the risk of losing loot, but increase the odds of, "failure," meaning you're removed from the farming party.. and worst case scenario you make your way back there, on your own merit. ...The obscurity of loot mostly exists to retain player engagement, so.. if the player remains engaged for the expected amount of time, and clears the objective intended to clear, I see no reason they can't wind up back on schedule with no harm done, and all working, "better than expected."

Say you're farming oxium.. you lose the mission you're on, and get taken to another facility.. from there, you get a tip off that there's a freighter heading to the Oxium Osprey manufacturing branch on another planet. Whether you got 300 oxium from going 20 waves on Paimon, or populated 3 nodes with modifiers specific to you, (like spawning more oxium ospreys when you arrive,) then there's little real difference in how a player spends their ~20min, so long as they spend it in game. Not to mention, that's a hell of a lot less boring than brute forcing the same mission Over and Over with OP gear on.

Edited April 16, 2020 by kapn655321

[kapn655321]

Sorry to get long winded here.. I've been working toward editing this concept down for a week almost, and it's impossible to wrangle it all into an easy to read few paragraphs.. I'm just.. way too excited about it.

[Twilight-Knight]

There are things that too easy in this game but not THESE.

You really think these too easy ? why ? because you've played them over and over again ? How was your 1st time you done them ? Did you tried to do them by yourself when you are newbie ? all in solo BTW. Or you just use warframe with benefit skill for the mission ?

I still remember the 1st time I play this game and I just do it solo in all and I even do sortie with no primed mods or even a prime weapons, all how things work by myself and I'll never forget how it's feel.

If you saying these mission too easy and they need to be harder ? Sorry but looks like you've failed and missed the joys . And surely everything is too easy when you've played them many times before.

The ONLY THING is too easy in the game is that plenty of mastery rank tests.

 

[Two_0ns]

4 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

You spamming abilites? Spam out nullifires to stop you and make similiar units to the other factions too.

My friend and I have noticed that seems like it's already a thing. We feel it's just paranoia caused by our hatred for those metaphorical pimples and our preference for having Scramblers completely replace them, but it still feels like it.

4 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

revanant need changes.

My friend would disagree, but I agree. What's the point of having one of the best invincibility abilities AND healing? Reave and Enthral doesn't match the Eidolon aesthetic. I agree with keeping Mesmer Skin because it's like the Eidolon's shields, and it's obvious why Dance Macabre should stay ... spinning ballerina kill lots.

[AltairFerenc]

1 minute ago, T.W.O. said:

My friend and I have noticed that seems like it's already a thing. We feel it's just paranoia caused by our hatred for those metaphorical pimples and our preference for having Scramblers completely replace them, but it still feels like it.

well I don't really play like that so I don't know that, but that something good imo.

2 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

My friend would disagree, but I agree. What's the point of having one of the best invincibility abilities AND healing? Reave and Enthral doesn't match the Eidolon aesthetic. I agree with keeping Mesmer Skin because it's like the Eidolon's shields, and it's obvious why Dance Macabre should stay ... spinning ballerina kill lots.

when he camed out mesmer skin was not reacastable when active so it was bad, not it is reacstable and he is just one more immortal in the line. He supposed to be a vampire/warlcok lets change everything he has to that, because his 1 is bad in squad, and it's barly alright in solo. mesmer skin should not work they it does, I don't even know what his 3rd does so I won't comment on that, ballerine is somewhat alright bevause it doesn't have that big of a range but all revenant players do that I sometime see is just press 2 and spin, and that bad, that why mesa and saryn needs changes too, saryn is just press 1 wait a big press 3, mesa is press 3 to not die and press 4 if you see more than 2 enemies, neither of these are hardly enjoyable or good imo.

[Two_0ns]

5 minutes ago, Twilight-Knight said:

There are things that too easy in this game but not THESE.

You really think these too easy ? why ? because you've played them over and over again ? How was your 1st time you done them ? Did you tried to do them by yourself when you are newbie ? all in solo BTW. Or you just use warframe with benefit skill for the mission ?

I still remember the 1st time I play this game and I just do it solo in all and I even do sortie with no primed mods or even a prime weapons, all how things work by myself and I'll never forget how it's feel.

If you saying these mission too easy and they need to be harder ? Sorry but looks like you've failed and missed the joys . And surely everything is too easy when you've played them many times before.

The ONLY THING is too easy in the game is that plenty of mastery rank tests.

 

Solo, with a full squad of randoms, friends, weapons without mods, warframes that "don't work with that mission", I tried it all. Have you tried doing the quests to get Grendel? You're forced to go in without any mods except augments and precepts. I thought the idea was great, until I learned that my unmodded Tigress Prime can't kill a level 25 Corpus grunt. The "difficulty" that's currently in the game is artificial. Just increasing the levels of enemies doesn't feel challenging or fun to deal with. That's why people copy other's loadouts, because you can't deal with high levels without doing that. My suggestions were aimed at the structure of the missions where the objective ISN'T to kill large numbers. With mobile defense, you can either close off the terminal or just kill everything that comes close. Spy; can't be seen if everyone's dead. Hijack ... is hijack. Capture; only 1 target ... for a squad of 4. Sabotage; "Tenno, get out of there!" *Katamari Damacy theme plays while you walk*. Rescue; kill any witnesses or just banish the operative (I tell my friends to NOT bring Limbo and Mesa for Sortie Defense for the challenge ... I always regret it).
Maybe I have played this game too much and need a break, but my criticism comes from love. This game has potential, and a lot of it. This game is advertised to be co-op, but a lot of vets. will show off ways to play it solo. I've tried their ways and it just makes the mission feel like a repeat of the same buttons with a couple swivels of the mouse. kapn655321's suggestions, and mine, are just what I want; to give the game urgency, chaos, the drive to be a one-man-squad with other "one-men-squad"s, but also put the fear of my character dyeing back in me. That's why I loved the idea of getting captured by Zenuka. The fear of having everything removed and having to actually sneak to regain your ability to kill and leave was great, but I'm not getting kidnapped without a fight. However, killing Zenuka is too easy. And yes, if I used a weaker weapon then it wouldn't be, but where's the challenge in that? Where's the feeling of being at your best and still struggling to keep up with the game. Increasing the level and states of the enemies is an artificial difficulty. Have you played a Kirby game? The extra bosses, and extra extra bosses are faster versions of the originals BUT they have more than the originals. That's challenge. It's not the enemies I want stronger, it's the game itself.

[kapn655321]

3 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

Hijack ... is hijack.

Suggestion I came up with from a previous thread

Spoiler

 

Hijack a Coildrive.
You know that one Fortuna bountry where we trap a coil drive, defend it for 2min.. then just leave it there?
That Bonus Objective could be way different..
 

Spoiler

Once trapped and hacked, give the Coildrive the properties of a Alarm Beacon, so it's regularly summoning enemies.
Have it take a course that includes getting things from (potentially) every facility and site on Orb Vallis. ..Scheduled automated route.
Once that objective is complete, it begins moving to the next nearest facility, parks outside for 30s, and resume it's route.
Corpus will constantly try to take it back over as they do with Hijack, Interception, or Capture the Cases.
^{If the Corpus succeed in recovering the Coildrive, they will drive it to the next facility, where it will end/forfeit unobtained reward(s) after the 30s parked phase.}

As it arrives at each facility, there will be between 0-(X) packages to deliver either outside or inside of locations.
So you may have to beat cheeks to pop into a facility, steal a thing, bring it back to the moving vehicle.
Players carry them (1 or 2 handed depending size of cargo), and bring them back to the vehicle.
Every package is loaded onto the Coildrive is optional... but will weigh down it's movement speed slightly.
Some packages may instead be a sort of Power Cell (from Excavation.)
At any time, be able to remove packages from it's cargo storage, if you need it to speed up.. (Tap context action to Rotate cargo storage list, hold X to remove)
Perhaps some volatile deliveries that only go as far as the next facility, but if the Coildrive drops below >80% health, it detonates.
When you reach it's final destination, (not sure whether we should know it's itinerary or not.. maybe not?,) something unlocks the packages to see what we get.
Each delivery package could represent a different drop pool, or values of drop chance from a shared pool.

Non delivery packages:
Different potential cells w/ unique buffs to the Coildrive: (Limited dur. or lump sum bonus) Speed, shield, enable guns vs. Corpus, party drain efficiency, etc.
Some may be like Datamasses, that program an extra course into it's route.

TL;DR - Basically, a scenic tour of open world + continuous defense mission, where we choose the difficulty on the fly by how much loot we want. Just brainstorming.

 

[Two_0ns]

9 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

Suggestion I came up with from a previous thread

  Hide contents

 

Hijack a Coildrive.
You know that one Fortuna bountry where we trap a coil drive, defend it for 2min.. then just leave it there?
That Bonus Objective could be way different..
 

  Hide contents

Once trapped and hacked, give the Coildrive the properties of a Alarm Beacon, so it's regularly summoning enemies.
Have it take a course that includes getting things from (potentially) every facility and site on Orb Vallis. ..Scheduled automated route.
Once that objective is complete, it begins moving to the next nearest facility, parks outside for 30s, and resume it's route.
Corpus will constantly try to take it back over as they do with Hijack, Interception, or Capture the Cases.
^{If the Corpus succeed in recovering the Coildrive, they will drive it to the next facility, where it will end/forfeit unobtained reward(s) after the 30s parked phase.}

As it arrives at each facility, there will be between 0-(X) packages to deliver either outside or inside of locations.
So you may have to beat cheeks to pop into a facility, steal a thing, bring it back to the moving vehicle.
Players carry them (1 or 2 handed depending size of cargo), and bring them back to the vehicle.
Every package is loaded onto the Coildrive is optional... but will weigh down it's movement speed slightly.
Some packages may instead be a sort of Power Cell (from Excavation.)
At any time, be able to remove packages from it's cargo storage, if you need it to speed up.. (Tap context action to Rotate cargo storage list, hold X to remove)
Perhaps some volatile deliveries that only go as far as the next facility, but if the Coildrive drops below >80% health, it detonates.
When you reach it's final destination, (not sure whether we should know it's itinerary or not.. maybe not?,) something unlocks the packages to see what we get.
Each delivery package could represent a different drop pool, or values of drop chance from a shared pool.

Non delivery packages:
Different potential cells w/ unique buffs to the Coildrive: (Limited dur. or lump sum bonus) Speed, shield, enable guns vs. Corpus, party drain efficiency, etc.
Some may be like Datamasses, that program an extra course into it's route.

TL;DR - Basically, a scenic tour of open world + continuous defense mission, where we choose the difficulty on the fly by how much loot we want. Just brainstorming.

 

That sounds more like a heist than a hijack ... and I love it! The Tenno are space mercenaries, so where's the getaway chase or the sneaking into AND out of a vault with loot?!  

Edited April 16, 2020 by T.W.O.

[kapn655321]

Just now, T.W.O. said:

That sounds more like a heist than a hijack ... and I love it! The Tenno are space mercenaries, so where's the getaway chase or the sneaking into AND out if a vault with loot?!  

I've had an awful lot of time on this game to think of these kinda things. Personally, I'm happy so long as I can put bullets in Grineer with weapons I enjoy.. but if there's a side mission to ghost-ride-the-whip around the entirety of Orb Vallis, while fighting Corpus, stealing loot, playing support, and learning the layout of the map.. I'm all for it.

[TheLexiConArtist]

As a solo player, kindly do not do anything that arbitrarily slows me down for the 'crime' of simply not bloating my mission with ambulatory potato sacks.

Warframe is more parallel play than co-op. Everything in the game should be fairly possible solo, and not more punishing than being solo (therefore having less versatility and a single point of agency) implicitly makes it.

 

Scarlet Spear is currently a violation of this in multiple ways. Firstly, the Op Link defense time is upscaled to 400% for no real reason as a solo player, with no agency to change that other than bringing in some extra sacks of potatoes when you are, and should be, able to otherwise finish the mission alone. Secondly, on Ground (ironically called the 'solo friendly' option by DE) you're tasked with mandatory fighting of higher enemy scaling (in addition to your Control/Defense obligation) - being solo and not versatile limits options to scale for your fighting while maintaining sufficient defenses - and you are tasked with shooting the Condrix, a giant damage sponge that soft-caps damage per second scaling from any single source. Guess who's a single source? Of course, the solo player. You want to have a group assaulting it because your lone efforts are being forcibly diminished.

[Two_0ns]

4 hours ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

As a solo player, kindly do not do anything that arbitrarily slows me down for the 'crime' of simply not bloating my mission with ambulatory potato sacks.

Warframe is more parallel play than co-op. Everything in the game should be fairly possible solo, and not more punishing than being solo (therefore having less versatility and a single point of agency) implicitly makes it.

 

Scarlet Spear is currently a violation of this in multiple ways. Firstly, the Op Link defense time is upscaled to 400% for no real reason as a solo player, with no agency to change that other than bringing in some extra sacks of potatoes when you are, and should be, able to otherwise finish the mission alone. Secondly, on Ground (ironically called the 'solo friendly' option by DE) you're tasked with mandatory fighting of higher enemy scaling (in addition to your Control/Defense obligation) - being solo and not versatile limits options to scale for your fighting while maintaining sufficient defenses - and you are tasked with shooting the Condrix, a giant damage sponge that soft-caps damage per second scaling from any single source. Guess who's a single source? Of course, the solo player. You want to have a group assaulting it because your lone efforts are being forcibly diminished.

As a versatile player, I must ask you this: Is capture fun? Is hijack fun? Is mobile defense fun? Is spy fun? Was farming for Grendel fun? What those have in common is the lack of challenge. Capture: kill ONE guy. Hijack: get near a slow objective to move it. Mobile defense: keep the objective alive until the timer runs out. Spy: rush to the vault AND THEN turn invisible. Grendel's missions: ... I didn't even attempt solo. I've played those missions solo, aside from Grendel, and they were just as boring as when I'm with someone else. Sure I could give myself a handicap, but why should I? Wouldn't it be fun to be at your best and still have a little trouble doing non "kill everything that moves" missions? My main desire is to have the missions themselves scale to player number, while my wishful thinking was for DE to make the missions challenging enough that most would consider going with a squad while others, the hardcore solo players, would say "challenge accepted!" with enthusiasm. Everything in the game can be solo'ed very easily, and THAT'S my issue. Part of the problem is that DE copied and pasted missions onto their nodes. Sure there's some differences, but not enough to create the feeling of being challenged or emerged.

And Scarlet Spear was designed for co-op play. They at least made it possible to solo. Why would anyone go for an endless mission and not have a set up where they fill as many roles as possible. That defeats the purpose of going solo; to be a one-man-squad; to be the support, CC, and DPS. If you're having trouble with doing it solo, then look at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTR7wxZ_91orxoOXiKr5GDw. Grind Hard Squad specialized in finding great builds to solo everything. 

[Two_0ns]

I want to point out that I would be temporary satisfied if DE either brought back the trials or made some missions have converging mission types. I thought it was fun going from an exterminate mission to a sabotage mission, while still in the same mission. 

[TheLexiConArtist]

58 minutes ago, T.W.O. said:

As a versatile player, I must ask you this: Is capture fun? Is hijack fun? Is mobile defense fun? Is spy fun? Was farming for Grendel fun? What those have in common is the lack of challenge. Capture: kill ONE guy. Hijack: get near a slow objective to move it. Mobile defense: keep the objective alive until the timer runs out. Spy: rush to the vault AND THEN turn invisible. Grendel's missions: ... I didn't even attempt solo. I've played those missions solo, aside from Grendel, and they were just as boring as when I'm with someone else.

Everything in the game can be solo'ed very easily, and THAT'S my issue. Part of the problem is that DE copied and pasted missions onto their nodes. Sure there's some differences, but not enough to create the feeling of being challenged or emerged.

And Scarlet Spear was designed for co-op play. They at least made it possible to solo. Why would anyone go for an endless mission and not have a set up where they fill as many roles as possible. That defeats the purpose of going solo; to be a one-man-squad; to be the support, CC, and DPS. If you're having trouble with doing it solo, then look at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTR7wxZ_91orxoOXiKr5GDw. Grind Hard Squad specialized in finding great builds to solo everything. 

Not everything has to be a total rigmarole. Short, succinct missions have a fairly important place in Warframe because there's often something else you're doing that is (almost) completely agnostic of the actual mission objective. Are you hunting rare crates? Synthesis targets? Topping up your Apothic flora? Unveiling a Riven? Cracking a Relic or even just farming Traces? These are all things off the top of my head you generally can do in any mission, but you want a simple, done-and-dusted objective so you can put your efforts to what you came for (because sooner or later, you've done the mission objective enough for no novelty to remain).

I had fun soloing for Grendel because it was a bit of a thought experiment for me, finding the right loadout and approach that worked without just hitting the nuclear options that work forever regardless. It wasn't easy, even so. Not everything in the game can be soloed very easily and especially not if you disfavour certain... questionable tactics. It's still not 'very easy' to solo ESO, for example; it can be reliable once you have your build set out, but that doesn't necessarily equal easy in comparison to what squads do.

I've done Scarlet Spear solo, both sides. The fact remains that OpLink speed is just an arbitrary 'head count' penalty, and DE said one of them was 'solo friendly' when it's most objectively not the case. Yes, I used Limbo after a few bugs cut short a couple of my Frost runs on the ground, and Sentients being Sentients, a diminished return one-second freeze of Avalanche isn't going to give the perfect guard necessary in space. Limbo got the axe against Sentients shortly afterwards, so I found myself a couple viable if imperfect alternatives.

Ground is still horribly slow by the later levels, and don't forget that they reduced the player scaling of Condrixes before further reducing their absolute base scaling. Making squad-life easier when it was already significantly more effort to chip through alone... on the so-called 'solo friendly' side.
The point of that was that the DPS source-softcap made it another middle finger to people on their own, just because they're on their own. A squad brings 4 basic weapons and manages fine, a solo player brings 1 weapon as souped-up as they can.. and then don't get to leverage most of that investment because of the soft-cap, I'm ignoring the Exodia thing because from what I've heard of it, it sounds more like exploiting a bug.