scarlet spear post mortem

[Loza03]

10 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Scarlet Spear has actually been my favorite WF event. I only played Ground, and loved the way it iterated on core gameplay while finally giving us a chance to fight stronger enemies for bigger rewards. While I have zero personal interest in Railjack, I love that DE gave us choice. My only significant criticism would be an obtuse scoring system that really screws uninformed players.

I agree with you, although I kind of wish they'd gone all-in on Railjack since the choice did exist at the end of the day. Would have been nice to see as many iterations on Railjack's core as Ground team's.

 

Either way, I enjoyed the event. It was reasonably thematic, I liked fighting off waves of Sentients for once and it was very rewarding. Condrix are suitably creepy, and the ground mission especially was pretty satisfying - not quite sure if I'd say the same about space, but yeah.

 

My own personal criticisms would be:

Fails to properly contextualise it (doesn't properly set up WHY Sargas is so angry, despite a perfectly reasonable explanation definitely being possible)

Aformentioned Railjack gripe.

Possibly could have done with some means to reward both shorter and longer runs, it could get a little tiring going for long durations, though that's probably not that easy.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

5 minutes ago, Midas said:

100% worst endgame addition ever 

Anyone remember when Steve on stream said New War will be for vets?

This happened when Rebecca asked about Railjack being for Mr28s

Where else in the game can you fight official developer-intended Lv200 enemies?

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't let the best be the enemy of the better.

[Loza03]

6 minutes ago, Midas said:

100% worst endgame addition ever 

Anyone remember when Steve on stream said New War will be for vets?

This happened when Rebecca asked about Railjack being for Mr28s

There were level 180+ Sentients which are some of the tankiest and highest-damage enemies around, I think that's probably as close as we can get without DE doing several more balance sweeps.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

4 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

doesn't properly set up WHY Sargas is so angry

He believes that the Tenno purposely brought the Sentients "here" to use as a weapon against the Grineer, and any conflict between Tenno and Sentient is a "ruse" deliberately manufactured to confuse the Grineer. My Sargas-related gripe is that I wasn't able to answer him when he demands "Tell me!"

[Midas]

2 hours ago, Loza03 said:

There were level 180+ Sentients which are some of the tankiest and highest-damage enemies around, I think that's probably as close as we can get without DE doing several more balance sweeps.

 

2 hours ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Where else in the game can you fight official developer-intended Lv200 enemies?

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't let the best be the enemy of the better.

If all we can expect from creativity is high level enemies and no boss/mob mechanics... then I think you are giving them way too much credit. With the s curve in place, one high level Condrix + sentients was beyond easy, even at level 200 (even a level 3500 sentient could be one shotted). The issue here is that higher level enemies on repeat = not endgame. Arbitration “farms” are another example of this. People afk and do hours and hours of defense, each wave is done IN LESS than a minute. Veterans will find infinite mob scaling on repeat beyond boring.

Edited April 28, 2020 by Midas

[Xylena_Lazarow]

1 minute ago, Midas said:

If all we can expect from creativity is high level enemies and no boss/mob mechanics... then I think you are giving them way too much credit.

I don't want creativity. That's how you end up throwing canisters because your vast collection of powerful gear is artificially made useless. I want a better version of core gameplay (ARPG shooter), and Scarlet Spear delivered on that for me.

5 minutes ago, Midas said:

Veterans will find infinite mob scaling on repeat beyond boring.

I do indeed find "endurance runs" extremely boring. I would not put Scarlet Spear in the same category. The rewards scale favorably with both time invested and enemy level, and it ends. The difficulty felt pretty good from my point of view as a solo/pug player, but I can see where someone who enjoys coordinated optimized teams would be disappointed.

[Loza03]

10 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

He believes that the Tenno purposely brought the Sentients "here" to use as a weapon against the Grineer, and any conflict between Tenno and Sentient is a "ruse" deliberately manufactured to confuse the Grineer. My Sargas-related gripe is that I wasn't able to answer him when he demands "Tell me!"

I know that, but it's pretty poor show to leave character motivations as fridge logic.

9 minutes ago, Midas said:

If all we can expect from creativity is high level enemies and no boss/mob mechanics... then I think you are giving them way too much credit. With the s curve in place, one shoring Condrix + sentients was beyond easy, even at level 200 (even a level 3500 sentient could be one shotted). The issue here is that higher level enemies on repeat = not endgame. Arbitration “farms” are another example of this. People afk and do hours and hours of defense, each wave is done IN LESS than a minute. Veterans will find infinite mob scaling on repeat beyond boring.

Hence my "Without a few more balance sweeps" point.

I've already said my piece on this several times and will many more, mostly agreeing with this sentiment. Nevertheless, it's as important to judge scarlet spear on its merits in the situation it is in, as well as the larger problems the game experiences.

[vanaukas]

21 minutes ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

Again, are we sure about that? Yes, the bugs are indeed inevitable regardless of what update that comes out, but you cannot tell me that the SS update was a complete mess. They tied Railjack into it which was not a wise choice of doing since Railjack isn’t even in a good spot right now. The oplink thing wasn’t as they had promised it was going to be back from Tennocon so players were bummed about that. Not only that, but they had a knee jerk reaction of nerfing Khora and Limbo because of a timed event, that shows you they don’t play test their own game since they would’ve known that when they were designing the event.

It doesn't matter if you think "it's not a wise choice" when you have to test things to improve your game on the direction you, as a dev, want. They literally talked about it. Of course oplink isn't waht they promised, railjack and liches, the mistake on them was showing their goal as the next new thing (and going on vacation after they dropped railjack, that thing was awful), but their goal is pertty far from us right now. You can develop a son intrincated system from nowhere and without stresstesting more basic things (take a look on liches, they are still being developed by now and used as testing for new mechanics regarding status changes). Khora nerf was a mistake (but hey, you always can count on vazarin if you knew what you were doing) and Limbo was one of the few frames who their CC wasn't consisten with other frames (take rhino stomp as an example, sentients adapt to it since long ago), right now we need more consistency on that (cc and heals) and we are going to get them (at least, heal side, confirmed like a month ago). 

21 minutes ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

Then you got the whole thing where the time invested into it wasn’t enough for the rewards that were given as well. Now yes, players are indeed going to find bugs and report them to the devs about what’s broken and what not, but a lot of this can be avoided if the devs play tested it to see if it’s broken in design or can be broken.

Seems like to me that they don’t play test their own game if you ask me. 🤷‍♂️

What? We finally are reaching the point of "grind = choose your desired reward" thing as a community we've been asking for literal years. RNG rewards (arcanes were RNG rewards since the introduction). Of course it needed (and stil need) some tweaks, but was fair enough play 2 hours for me and get 8 arcane energize. I played tridolons on solo for years by now and I wasn't able to get more than 2 or 3 on all of those years. If you ask me, the event was pretty rewarding (40% base status chance weapon with almost 1.10 of speed? A weapon with heals, status, CC and with battery? That is bad now?).

A lot of this cannot be avoided because most of the bugs were network related, wich is something you still fail to realize. Seems like to me you don't know what are you saying if you ask me 🤷‍♂️.

[HoustonDragon]

29 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

I agree with you, although I kind of wish they'd gone all-in on Railjack since the choice did exist at the end of the day. Would have been nice to see as many iterations on Railjack's core as Ground team's.

Could have definitely had the Ground teams working as proper Away groups, while the RJ pilot and gunner were doing the stuff in space. I really love the concept of Railjack, there just needs a little better execution and ESPECIALLY some better explanation for people who have not completed their own. A couple of tutorial style missions where the player could be directed to do certain tasks for each role (Pilot: Go to here, pick up this item, bring back, etc) and walking through the Omni/Revolite usage would have done wonders to smooth out some of the Murex stuff.

 

Big issue is if people have not actually unlocked or done their RJ, they may not even have an Omni and would not have access to be able to build/farm materials for Revolite in the first place. Same for the Intrinsics people were earning during SS, I had to explain to several folks who had no clue they should have been spending those for the upgraded Gunner 360 or the extra Omni teleport back to the RJ via their Engineering. An actually well geared and communicating crew makes the entire process so much less frustrating, so there needs to be a few pointers going into whatever the next event may be as a prerequisite.

 

The fact we have this awesome honking spaceship in the game that barely gets used for the majority of missions definitely should be looked at :P

[Yamazuki]

33 minutes ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

Again, are we sure about that? Yes, the bugs are indeed inevitable regardless of what update that comes out, but you cannot tell me that the SS update was a complete mess. They tied Railjack into it which was not a wise choice of doing since Railjack isn’t even in a good spot right now. The oplink thing wasn’t as they had promised it was going to be back from Tennocon so players were bummed about that. Not only that, but they had a knee jerk reaction of nerfing Khora and Limbo because of a timed event, that shows you they don’t play test their own game since they would’ve known that when they were designing the event. Then you got the whole thing where the time invested into it wasn’t enough for the rewards that were given as well. Now yes, players are indeed going to find bugs and report them to the devs about what’s broken and what not, but a lot of this can be avoided if the devs play tested it to see if it’s broken in design or can be broken.

Seems like to me that they don’t play test their own game if you ask me. 🤷‍♂️

It should be "common" sense that testing a game with a small population won't reveal problems that only exist when a lot of people are playing. This is before taking into account any differences between the test and live environments. This is why popular multiplayer games on release, or when updated, run into major bugs and problems, they didn't exist when the game was tested, but suddenly having so many people doing something a bunch of issues pop up.

You can take League of Legends for example, it has a test server for people to play on, but there are game breaking bugs that appear on the live server, but they weren't even present at all while the patch was tested.

As for parts you personally don't like, that's your own personal opinion. I don't really care Murex had Railjack, and to complain about Railjack is pretty silly given the complete lack of Railjack combat, it was just a ground mobile defense with an interactive loading screen at that point; if anything it at least got people some free Intrinsic without having to actually play Railjack. This was also optional, you could have just done ground missions and never bothered with space missions.

The "disappointing" elements have nothing to do with testing their game, and all to do with DE showing their plans too early in development, which should also be "common" sense that so many things developers want to do will rarely ever play out that way; just because they want to do a bunch of fancy things doesn't mean they'll be able to. The solution to this would be to have DE never show off what they are working on so early, but that's not what anyone with responsible expectations would want.

[xXDeadsinxX]

6 minutes ago, xHeretic said:

It doesn't matter if you think "it's not a wise choice" when you have to test things to improve your game on the direction you, as a dev, want. They literally talked about it. Of course oplink isn't waht they promised, railjack and liches, the mistake on them was showing their goal as the next new thing (and going on vacation after they dropped railjack, that thing was awful), but their goal is pertty far from us right now. You can develop a son intrincated system from nowhere and without stresstesting more basic things (take a look on liches, they are still being developed by now and used as testing for new mechanics regarding status changes). Khora nerf was a mistake (but hey, you always can count on vazarin if you knew what you were doing) and Limbo was one of the few frames who their CC wasn't consisten with other frames (take rhino stomp as an example, sentients adapt to it since long ago), right now we need more consistency on that (cc and heals) and we are going to get them (at least, heal side, confirmed like a month ago). 

I guess we will agree to disagree then. I personally believe they shouldn’t have released the update in the state it was without testing it first. Yes there will be bugs regardless, but there was much more than bugs that should have been looked at. For starters, why was Railjack included in the event when Railjack is in a horrible state right now?

7 minutes ago, xHeretic said:

What? We finally are reaching the point of "grind = choose your desired reward" thing as a community we've been asking for literal years. RNG rewards (arcanes were RNG rewards since the introduction). Of course it needed (and stil need) some tweaks, but was fair enough play 2 hours for me and get 8 arcane energize. I played tridolons on solo for years by now and I wasn't able to get more than 2 or 3 on all of those years. If you ask me, the event was pretty rewarding (40% base status chance weapon with almost 1.10 of speed? A weapon with heals, status, CC and with battery? That is bad now?).

A lot of this cannot be avoided because most of the bugs were network related, wich is something you still fail to realize. Seems like to me you don't know what are you saying if you ask me 🤷‍♂️.

I worded that wrong, my bad. I meant more along the lines of that the time you invest a lot of time into 1 round without much reward. You gotta do the event a ton of times to get all the rewards that you want, that’s a lot of the same event over and over. I am however all fine with choosing the reward that you want, that’s perfectly fine.

Again yes, there were a lot of bugs with the event, but there were also a lot of fundamental problems with the event itself as well.

[le_souriceau]

Completly hated it.

While it were worse events overall, this is mucking worst of large and important ones.

Edited April 28, 2020 by le_souriceau

[Sergent-Qc]

I've tried a couple of ground missions only ... The first day it came out, I was always alone. People had connection issues, among other things. Gave it a second try like 2 days ago. I had a couple of good games, then, people kept quitting after a couple of waves ... Sorry, but it will NOT be missed ! 

[Holo]

  

46 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Scarlet Spear has actually been my favorite WF event. I only played Ground, and loved the way it iterated on core gameplay while finally giving us a chance to fight stronger enemies for bigger rewards. While I have zero personal interest in Railjack, I love that DE gave us choice. My only significant criticism would be an obtuse scoring system that really screws uninformed players.

Favorite warframe event. Really. Actual challenging and competitive events like hostile mergers or the plethora of events that occurred 2+ years prior to this event are bad compared to this lazy, thoughtless, one meta, grind event? The meta was the same for the ground squads since DAY ONE. All the speed strats (almost) were discovered DAY ONE. Contaigion? Day one. Limbo? Day one. Buffers? Day one. Static pattern of condrix spawns? Day one. Day one, day one, day one, NOTHING changed in all the 40~days this event was out and the entire event was just mindless, crappy grind for the shiny item at the end. Whats the point of the reward if the journey sucks and is laced with boredom and burnout?

The ONLY reason this event will EVER get a pass is because arcanes, but for many people in endgame, we already have all our arcanes and we have for more than a year or two.

54 minutes ago, DroopingPuppy said:

We are proud of that, at least.

We should be proud of testing content that DE surely could have tested but didnt because they are lazy? Really? Why play Warframe if all I'm going to get is a false sense of pride from testing content that should've been tested before it was released to us? I play games to have fun and enjoy the grind (yes this is the type of player I am) yet I can't enjoy the grind of events that are boring and buggy as hell on release. 

40 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Where else in the game can you fight official developer-intended Lv200 enemies?

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't let the best be the enemy of the better.

What are endurance runs?

Oh wait, DE doesn't care about endurance runs. That's why they made them easier. That's why they made them pointless compared to other game modes (beside arbi's). That's why they nerf things like the Zenistar which is nearly exclusively an endurance weapon. Or why they nerf things like status shotguns, which only really outperformed crit shotguns at extreme levels.

 

And yet again they show they are unwilling to implement actually difficult content in the form of endless runs in this event. And to top it off, after myself and many others one-shotting the condrix's health day one of the event, DE decides in all their wisdom that it was too hard and nerfs it. Why, where in this game you can do damage cap with 2 frames buffs, is DE limiting the power we can output when all we want to do is use all these cool toys we have?

[MacDex]

This thread is living proof why there is no such thing as "we" or "the community wants". Let's face it: there are more opinions than just one. And if you have one, it is never "we", it is only "me".

I think this is something to keep in mind next time someone writes "give us back" or "we do not like this". It is always "give me back" and "I do not like this". Everyone can have their opinion. But it is the opinion of a single person. Don't try to make it look more heavyweight than it is.

It is also the reason why, on a global scale, DE cannot release a new content that pleases all. There will always be someone who does not like it and the louder they shout, the more ppl might think it is important, so everybody shouts as loud as they can to make their own opinion look more important.

Personally I thought it was an average event after some serious troubles. The best was that it did away with RNG drops like Tridolon and instead let me approach my rewards in a way more plannable and foreseeable way.

The scoring itself, the flotilla rules and the concept behind the team link are broken, potentially beyond repair, to me. For that it should be "back to the drawing board".

[Xylena_Lazarow]

4 minutes ago, Holo said:

Actual challenging and competitive events like hostile mergers or the plethora of events that occurred 2+ years prior to this event are bad compared to this lazy, thoughtless, one meta, grind event?

I have the weapons from Hostile Mergers, so I did it, but I have literally no memory of it. The wiki says it was a series of low-level Disruptions... what was the challenge?

While the meta Mesa Limbo combo sure made Scarlet Spear easy, I saw a wide variety of frames and weapons used successfully in pugs, which is a sign of a healthy meta to me. You had massively more freedom of choice for doing 17/17 condrices than doing 6x3 eidolons.

[Holo]

17 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

I have the weapons from Hostile Mergers, so I did it, but I have literally no memory of it. The wiki says it was a series of low-level Disruptions... what was the challenge?

While the meta Mesa Limbo combo sure made Scarlet Spear easy, I saw a wide variety of frames and weapons used successfully in pugs, which is a sign of a healthy meta to me. You had massively more freedom of choice for doing 17/17 condrices than doing 6x3 eidolons.

You can do 4x3 eidolons with pretty much any set of frames as long as you have a buffer. But honestly, dont event need that, as long as you have good shield dps your frame doesn't really matter. And yes, you can do 17/17 condrix with any frame. But any frame isn't efficient, and in an event that is hard, long, mindless grind, that little bit of time saved per run is super important. To run 20-21 minute you hard need a Limbo, a buffer (chroma / volt / mirage / wisp), a trash killer (khora), and a dps (same frames as buffer). The compairison becomes even more irrelevant when you look at speed runs (sub 20 minutes) of the ground event which are nearly all identical in frame loadout. It just so happens that as the respective gamemodes get more efficient, theres more a need for specific frames.

Ah I should mention, the efficient weapons used were... Regulators, Whipclaw, Any Contagion setup, and Redeemer Prime. Wow, such weapon variety.

And yet, a 5x3 / 6x3 eidolons actually requires skill, something which 21 minute runs of this grind event DON'T. 0 skill as levels are too low. 0 skill as enemies have too little health. 0 skill as theres no twitch reactions. Eidolons atleast require a miniscule amount of game knowledge and aim unlike this borefest of an event.

Hostile mergers was a game mode that scaled endlessly. Meaning you could theoretically run 10hour runs fighting against level cap enemies. That is difficult, especially since the demolysts were stupid tanky later on. Sure you can say its artificial difficulty, which is yet another reason this game needs actual challenge, actual puzzles, in the form of raids.

 

Edited April 28, 2020 by Holo

[Xylena_Lazarow]

26 minutes ago, Holo said:

Hostile mergers was a game mode that scaled endlessly. Meaning you could theoretically run 10hour runs fighting against level cap enemies. That is difficult, especially since the demolysts were stupid tanky later on. Sure you can say its artificial difficulty, which is only yet another reason this game needs actually challenge, actual puzzles, in the form of raids.

See the post from @MacDex above. I personally do not want "puzzles" or "raids" in my solo/pug ARPG shooter, but I'm not opposed to those things existing, so long as there are no monopolies on specific resources, like Raids/Eidolons and Arcanes for so many years. Scarlet Spear actually gave us a choice between core gameplay and the new spaceship thing, which was brilliant.

As for Hostile Merger, so it scaled endlessly, but there was no reward for rising to that challenge, other than personal satisfaction to those who enjoy endurance runs. To me, that is no different from equipping 4 Dragon Keys or switching your keyboard and mouse to opposite hands. Scarlet Spear represents the first event DE has offered significant rewards for playing longer missions and fighting higher level enemies.

Edited April 28, 2020 by Xylena_Lazarow

[Zendar_Draconis]

I had an overall good experience with Scarlet Spear. I waited two weeks to avoid being a beta tester before jumping in and ended up with around 186K score. I played a lot of Condrix raids but only got into I think five Murex raids, one of which bugged out for me after one Murex run. I did not get around to building a railjack yet even though I have the credits & resources and found it hard to join a Murex raid squad when I had time to play.

I prefer the Condrix raids and is the first time I played a lot of Warframe in public mode since I can only solo to about the 7th Condrix with my current gears. After getting used to it I found the public Condrix raids to be quite enjoyable. The Murex raids were kind of meh although I did not get  to play much of that but still ended up with two Murex Emblem Rank III LOL.

I found Scarlet Spear to be quite rewarding because of where I am in the game. I finished War Within but did not start Chains of Harrow yet, unlike my son who blazed through all the main quests. For arcane purchases I managed to max out Arcane Grace (started with 1 from Nightwave), max out Arcane Nullifier (started with none), & got arcane energize (started with 2 from Nightwave) to rank 3.  I like the void relic rewards since I quickly go through lith & meso relics on void fissure survival missions, which are my favorite regular missions. I REALLY like the abundance of sentient enemies since it rained intact sentient cores in Condrix raids. I was able to build the 1-1-1 amp, 2-1-2 amp, & ready to go to rank 3 in the Quills syndicate when I start hunting eidolons. Before Scarlet Spear it was quite a slog for me to farm intact sentient cores from hunting Vomvalysts on the Plains of Eidolon or from the few Battalysts & Conculysts that spawn on Lua missions.

I look forward to Scarlet Spear returning in the future.

[Morthal]

2 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

If I could upvote more than once.

Sorry but it's horsecrap.
I've done QA for a well known publisher/developer on a few titles and in many cases there's more contractors working on Console than PC. Even though PC has the most potential for conflicts, it doesn't require MILLIONS of people to stress test. That's a "games as a service" scapegoat used to lubricate the idea "we can always fix it later". Don't bother taking my advice or the modern 'game designers'. Instead get a job at one of the leading publishers like CDPR and test for them, it's a starting position that will give you front row seats to the mobile game disease that's spreading throughout the industry. 

 

[Meneliki]

I've got leftover credits, now that it's over is there no way to spend them? Unless the event comes back every so often?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

Scarlet Spear will be back in the future, hopefully with a few more improvements, additional rewards and a change of Scenery for the ground team. now, it's time to find out who's been turning people into glass that isn't Gara..

[p_silveira]

5 hours ago, Jemmies said:

You will be missed

Ehe event? Not so much.
The easy Arcanes farm though, I'll miss.
On the good side, never gonna touch Tridolons again, unless they change the rewards there.

[Holo]

17 minutes ago, Meneliki said:

I've got leftover credits, now that it's over is there no way to spend them? Unless the event comes back every so often?

Event comes back. See plague star, it'll likely come back once per year.

1 hour ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

but there was no reward for rising to that challenge, other than personal satisfaction to those who enjoy endurance runs. To me, that is no different from equipping 4 Dragon Keys or switching your keyboard and mouse to opposite hands.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. DE refuses to put any rewards that matter behind difficult content. Its true that there was no purpose of hostile mergers beside a leader board score. So my biggest question is why can't we have both. Good tangible rewards like arcanes along with leaderboard content?

And to boot, this actually has happened in the past (to a degree). See the ignis wraith blueprint or even dark sector battles, difficult content unlocked rewards for you and your clan. You, along with your clan, could work toward getting a goal (ex placement on the leaderboard or the ignis wraith blueprint in pacifism defect) while also getting good rewards for yourself and your clan in the form of limited blueprints and such. I want more clan based content, I want more cooperative content, I want difficult content because all of those things are conducive to bringing players like me back to the game and continue to play. Otherwise, I'll find another avenue to pursue because Warframe (no longer) offers the content I want.

Warframe no longer provides us with a testing ground to test our builds. It used to be survivals, but even mediocre setups can now reach absurd levels due to the changes in armor scaling and damage in general. So if high levels are out of the equation, does Warframe provide us with puzzles/difficult levels? No, not at all, that avenue is gone. All the unique weapon builds this game had like 100% status shotguns, condition proccers for corrosive or condition overload, and bane setups with gas faction damage are all gone. Its all been reduced to mindless hybrid viral setups.

But, more then ever, currently it doesn't matter because 'hard' content like scarlet spear is an absolute joke to the damage we do. The hardest faction combined with some of the highest levels we've been able to see in non-endurance runs in a long time amount to a grand total of nothing if we're still one hitting them and tanking them like a Rhino Prime with arcane tanker.

[_junguler]

gone but not forgotten, and in this case that's a bad thing.