Why we cant have endgame content

[Cubewano]

2 hours ago, Felsagger said:

 

Of course DE can. The question is DE wants it? The ideal horde game, in my opinion, brings in a different bag in every round other than the same games with few Nox in them. The open question remains. Adding different types of enemies that are more strategic and careful in combat, does that throws away the horde game? I'm curious about this question. 

There are few examples that I commented before but here is a good list of horde mode: 

-snip-

On these games you can see the importance of the level design, the aids and the different tiers you see throughout the survival runs. The game play activity on these are satisfying and the 'grind' is pleasant because there is so much going on. ESO and SO are the horde modes available and so the defense modes such as Akkad and Hydron as the most common. I think that Hydron requires a big tune up and a better place making the grinding more entertaining and exiting other than leveling up weapons or frames. 

Arguably I'd say it would throw away the horde design of the game if they focused more on specialized enemies units and nuanced counter play, merely because there isn't really a way to make such a design work without scaling back enemy density which is inherent to a horde setup. Making enemy encounters highly tactical just by nature goes against a horde bashing design by prompting focused combat on individual units when horde combat is largely about fighting very large groupings, enemies are either largely trivial and just there to be bashed, or they are nuanced and require levels of individual focus to take down and both are very different combat styles, both can deviate slightly into the other but it won't ever have a noticeable impact without fully diving into the other form of play i.e nox units have a slight tactical leaning but its so minor they are still trivialized by standard large scale burst strategies. They're just not very compatible sentiments. That said, I don't know if this game has strengths in either tactical or horde combat at this point in balance, tactics wise most of our power is so overtuned we can brute force our way through all obstacles with very minimal (if any) adaptation or skillful play, bosses are the closest to an exception to that matter and they are highly specialized encounters that are far and few between, and horde wise frequently there is never enough enemies in a mission with a full group to entertain all players like a horde mode should, and playing solo spawns are similarly shifted and you still wind up typically with not enough enemies to entertain, it's a sort of lesser design success on both paths. 

DE has focused so much on loot acquisition that they've sort of sidelined gameplay for Warframe, it's there but as a very vague after thought. ESO and SO were a good concept for a horde rush mode but the lack of attention to balance in the game has failed it on multiple levels that make it satisfying, if you aren't mind numbingly burning through the mode with a nuke carry then you're struggling to even make it past entry points as anything not nuke oriented, assuming that is even optional since you can't filter what you matchmake with, except with great burden. Defense I was never fond of honestly but it's fallen behind further as our combat pacing has gone to the nines and scaling/endless has been made increasingly irrelevant, while the mode itself has adapted effectively none and been given consideration just as much. To solve either of those matters though is a much large matter of DE deciding how they want to prioritize engagement however, and if the focus is solely on rewards with gameplay as faint mask, or if they really want to pull up gameplay and make it a means of satisfaction on its own. Or maybe deciding is too late and what we have is all we'll ever have as stipulated by Steve somewhat some time ago when asked about intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Cubewano
typo

[Ham_Grenabe]

Define “endgame.” Be specific.

[(PSN)ARC_Paroe]

39 minutes ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

Define “endgame.” Be specific.

1) Enemies must take a "decent amount of time to kill" with a rank 40, 8 forma, exilus adapted, kuva bramma that has a beyond god tier riven.
2) Enemies must deal a "decent amount of damage" so that a 8 forma, exilus adapted,10,000EHP warframe is constantly on the verge of death and therefore "punishes" mistakes so that "skill" is a deciding factor 
3) It must be so long and artificially difficult that completing it is by default a flex on all the casual normies who will only ever be able to leech off of and support a true "good player". 

Or at least thats what i understand from years of perusing the reddit and the main forum. Bullet sponges are simply not good design. Nuclear warheads with low reaction windows are not good design. LOCKING CASUAL PLAYERS OUT OF CONTENT IS NOT GOOD DESIGN. 
Eidelons, for example, require specific weapons outside of already hyper-meta weapons to really do effectively; Before i got my buzlok (6 forma, radiation damage modded, and a crit damage riven for 10.8 crit damage) it took the whole night to kill ONE eidelon, but once i finished my buzlok i was able to clear tridelons solo. If i had been rocking a meta weapon, i would have been able to do it both earlier and without as much trouble.
 

[Felsagger]

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

Arguably I'd say it would throw away the horde design of the game if they focused more on specialized enemies units and nuanced counter play, merely because there isn't really a way to make such a design work without scaling back enemy density which is inherent to a horde setup. Making enemy encounters highly tactical just by nature goes against a horde bashing design by prompting focused combat on individual units when horde combat is largely about fighting very large groupings, enemies are either largely trivial and just there to be bashed, or they are nuanced and require levels of individual focus to take down and both are very different combat styles, both can deviate slightly into the other but it won't ever have a noticeable impact without fully diving into the other form of play i.e nox units have a slight tactical leaning but its so minor they are still trivialized by standard large scale burst strategies. They're just not very compatible sentiments. That said, I don't know if this game has strengths in either tactical or horde combat at this point in balance, tactics wise most of our power is so over tuned we can brute force our way through all obstacles with very minimal (if any) adaptation or skillful play, bosses are the closest to an exception to that matter and they are highly specialized encounters that are far and few between, and horde wise frequently there is never enough enemies in a mission with a full group to entertain all players like a horde mode should, and playing solo spawns are similarly shifted and you still wind up typically with not enough enemies to entertain, it's a sort of lesser design success on both paths. 

Horde bashing design is a syndrome of pleonasm and palindrome in these games. If there is not tactics involved or the four P (position, preservation, preference, priority) then the game becomes flat. I can't stay more than 20 doing the same action. A tactical flavor pushes further the game play and the parkour of the frames. The idea is to at least challenge the player skills and their tool kit. Decision making should be a thing instead of mindless squashing bugs. Look for example how precise the game in Titan Fall 2 Frontier is. I played two rounds with success. However we have to sweat heavy if we want to win. Hydron should provide variety of these troops. There is no distinctive behavior between them or activities that pushes the player to change behavior. 

 

1 hour ago, Cubewano said:

DE has focused so much on loot acquisition that they've sort of sidelined gameplay for Warframe, it's there but as a very vague after thought. ESO and SO were a good concept for a horde rush mode but the lack of attention to balance in the game has failed it on multiple levels that make it not satisfying, if you aren't mind numbingly burning through the mind with a nuke carry then you're struggling to even make it past entry points as anything not nuke oriented, assuming that is even optional since you can't filter what you matchmake with, except with great burden. Defense I was never fond of honestly but it's fallen behind further as our combat pacing has gone to the nines and scaling/endless has been made increasingly irrelevant, while the mode itself has adapted effectively none and been considered just as much. To solve either of those matters though is much large matter of DE deciding how they want to prioritize engagement however, and if the focus is solely on rewards with gameplay as faint mask, or if they really want to pull up gameplay and make it a means of satisfaction on its own. Or maybe deciding is too late and what we have is all we'll ever have as stipulated by Steve somewhat some time ago when asked about intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards. 

THAT IS THE CENTRAL PROBLEM. Exactly that. DE threw away game play, enemy types, enemy behavior, enemy variations with more than one attack. The reason we play video games is to have satisfaction playing it. Beauty pageant fashion frame accessories should be put aside. Too much focus on that while game play is thrown out of the gutter. The balance must be made. More game developers and less interior designers or just designers. The core game play mechanics is the heart of any game. Without it any game is just decorated trash. Simple as that. 

[844448]

If people want the so-called endgame, there are several things to look at first

1. Many abilities make enemies unable to get close, let alone retaliate such as miasma for example. You can build miasma for a massive range and it ignores any kind of obstacle in the way where it goes "If I press this button for this ability, you're f*cked".

If enemies can't even react or do anything because of that, how different model of enemies make any difference when they're locked out 50 meters away unable to do anything?

Let's put you in their shoes, can you fight the tenno when you're burned, poisoned, lacerated, put to sleep or frozen 50 meters away from them? Even with the best technology you have, I doubt you can do something the moment you get hit by abilities far away and doesn't care if you're behind a wall or not

We want to make them able to do something? Our ability should take a hit first before making any combat worthwhile

2. The tenno isn't a thing boxed into one category. Look at Trinity where healer/support class is supposed to be weak and unable to ward off enemies quickly, and here we have Trinity that able to nuke health by energy vampire, tank using link and push the hardiness further with blessing and that's just one example

3. Our power is wild in variation. How do you balance the endgame so it's not trivial to 300% strength Chroma/rhino but not impossible to warframes other than those two?

Or perhaps you can find a game with massive power like warframe where you can disable enemies from 50 meters away without caring for obstacle or energy limit but has challenging endgame? Give us an example to take notes from

[Aldain]

4 minutes ago, 844448 said:

3. Our power is wild in variation. How do you balance the endgame so it's not trivial to 300% strength Chroma/rhino but not impossible to warframes other than those two?

Honestly this is probably the biggest issue Warframe is currently having with content design right now.

Anyone remember the how Melee 3.0 part 2 "nerfed" Condition Overload because it no longer could deal billions of damage in seconds?

People were outraged...despite literally nothing actually worthwhile needing that level of firepower, it also demanded that anything and everything DE wanted to be able to live for more than a second be Status immune, like the Wolf of Saturn Six, who would have been instagibbed if he was able to be hit with status even through that DR.

[Autongnosis]

Le 06/05/2020 à 02:20, Loza03 a dit :

Would YOU be willing to make properly designed enemies, under the circumstances? I mean, consider the Wolf. Bullet sponge aside, he DID have legitimate telegraphing. Also consider the Eidolons. Or even Lephantis.

Most enemies that DE is confident that we can't instantly delete have honest-to-god telegraphing. Even some that don't, like the osprey charges with both a visual and auditory cue before they go. In other words, it's most likely the latter case - we are so overpowered in terms of what we can do to cheese enemies, that to have even the faintest chance of threat, DE seems to think they must respond in kind. 

 

Sure, you've got grappling hooks (which, strangely, never give me much trouble, but I'm willing to waive that to playstyle), but those were a very early addition, which is probably in a similar case as pre-revised armour was.

There's a problem with every enemy you listed. 

The Wolf had telegraph but no dmg, and also it was ability, headshot and status immune. Also it was an invasion boss. It pretty much forced everyone to carry a high burst rad crit weapon everywhere. 

Eidola have telegraph but too much visual spam. Pretty much the only properly telegraphed attack they have is the stomps and the mag wave on limb break. But they're generally the best designed encounter DE did and i praised them many times for that. 

Similar to Eidola is Ropalolyst which has some good attacks (front beam, the red beams of death) and some terrible ones (the graph and the ability disabling pulse). But is generally a more fun and engaging fight although it's very low on the threat side. 

Lephantis has the telegraph but not the threat, and the encounter is pretty much only about waiting for him to do *something*. 

 

If you see a theme here, enemies have threat but no telegraph or telegraph but no threat. Properly telegraphed attacks have both. Ospreys for example would have the telegraph, but they deal next to nothing. 

And on top of that they added shield gate which was the worst decision ever, we now have a situation where if you just want to tank you can just use brief respite and rolling guard and be constantly immune or immortal. Genius move tbh. 

 

I agree it's a balance problem too, because there is A) a damage problem on our end (we went from 22-25k dps being top of the charts in 2015 to us pushing the 1-10 millions range now and going further even) and B) an Ehp imbalance made worse by shield gate, since we go from 1-2k to 200k+ with some frames having also the ability to abuse shield gate by instantly replenishing shields (looking at you trin). 

But DE has done nothing but making it worse and worse and worse to the point even their cheese is annoying at best, or stupid like the Lich were tank frames can just be grabbed and be totally unfazed about, with just the player being forced to watch a cutscene, and some frames being unable to melee because it's a death sentence. 

 

The script problem with grappling hooks is not that they actually do anything, just that they hit you when they shouldn't. 

Which becomes a problem when it gets applied to stuff like lich grapple that can actually hurt you. 

Le 06/05/2020 à 04:12, (NSW)Greybones a dit :

I read the rest of your post and consider it food for thought for myself. Except the idea that DE is either unwilling or unable to make properly designed enemy abilities. I don’t agree with that, personally.

This quoted bit though. Am I correct in thinking that you overpower every challenge with the best equipment? I’m under the impression that you delete standard Star Chart enemies the moment you see them.

I have something to bring to this conversation, but I need a little more info before I lay it on the table

This rather depends on what you mean by "the best". I use all kinds of things, and am a great fan of precision weapons like snipers, DMRs and stuff like bows and Nagantaka. So technically speaking if you mean by "the best" the meta Aoe guns of Doom like bramma etc, then no. I don't. The Tonkor I used a lot because I used it on Hieracon to rank up frames and get endo and relics years ago, and that's pretty much it. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Autongnosis

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

2 hours ago, 844448 said:

If people want the so-called endgame, there are several things to look at first

1. Many abilities make enemies unable to get close, let alone retaliate such as miasma for example. You can build miasma for a massive range and it ignores any kind of obstacle in the way where it goes "If I press this button for this ability, you're f*cked".

If enemies can't even react or do anything because of that, how different model of enemies make any difference when they're locked out 50 meters away unable to do anything?

Let's put you in their shoes, can you fight the tenno when you're burned, poisoned, lacerated, put to sleep or frozen 50 meters away from them? Even with the best technology you have, I doubt you can do something the moment you get hit by abilities far away and doesn't care if you're behind a wall or not

We want to make them able to do something? Our ability should take a hit first before making any combat worthwhile

2. The tenno isn't a thing boxed into one category. Look at Trinity where healer/support class is supposed to be weak and unable to ward off enemies quickly, and here we have Trinity that able to nuke health by energy vampire, tank using link and push the hardiness further with blessing and that's just one example

3. Our power is wild in variation. How do you balance the endgame so it's not trivial to 300% strength Chroma/rhino but not impossible to warframes other than those two?

Or perhaps you can find a game with massive power like warframe where you can disable enemies from 50 meters away without caring for obstacle or energy limit but has challenging endgame? Give us an example to take notes from

Personally I’ve been playing bdo on console and pc way way more and while

they are themed pretty differently. It’s easy and fast to level up to soft cap and hard cap is pretty easy to get to as well if you have a friend. After that most content in the game short of PvP and bosses are pretty trivial and easy. You’re an overpowered ( insert class here) with very high mobility in many cases (I play ninja so I literally have carpel tunnel after every session) 

but it’s rewarding combat that is somewhat balanced. In PvE again regular mobs are a trashcan and it reminds me of a more stylish dynasty warriors and PvP can be very very intense. While they do balance it through gear score and such I think overall compared to old bdo it’s way more balanced and allows you to have your power fantasy in some areas (while PvP is somewhat always enabled in some servers. Unless you run into a flagged player most people are very passive about it given the “I won’t hit you don’t hit me mindset”) 

and killing people too below your level will karma bomb you “karma is reputation” so the average player tends to not just kill weaker players in fear they become a target by everyone else

and while I don’t think a gear score system would work in warframe. Tying content and reworking how mr works in tune with the playerbase so its more or less not just gratifying the farm and more so providing useful things and stats to the player and adding the option of scaling content by mr could be an interesting step. Also removing the need to just farm things to get mr. I think all affinity gained should be used to level up mr. Granted i think it should take much longer if there is nothing to be leveled but it makes the mr grind a tad bit better.

[(XBOX)ALTBOULI]

Arbitration? I guess it's difficult to have end game when the game is constantly evolving.

But for the people complaining about a lack of challenge, stop using optimal builds/load-outs, check dont equips mods if your so desperate for a 'challenge'

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

1 hour ago, (XB1)ALTBOULI said:

Arbitration? I guess it's difficult to have end game when the game is constantly evolving.

But for the people complaining about a lack of challenge, stop using optimal builds/load-outs, check dont equips mods if your so desperate for a 'challenge'

Why remove the items we worked for to create a pseudo challenge when the devs should be capable of balancing content around their released mods and weapons 

[White_Matter]

1 hour ago, (XB1)ALTBOULI said:

Arbitration? I guess it's difficult to have end game when the game is constantly evolving.

But for the people complaining about a lack of challenge, stop using optimal builds/load-outs, check dont equips mods if your so desperate for a 'challenge'

lol.

If you think the game is too easy, try playing bad. That'll pose a challenge for you.👍

[Loza03]

2 hours ago, Autongnosis said:

There's a problem with every enemy you listed. 

The Wolf had telegraph but no dmg, and also it was ability, headshot and status immune. Also it was an invasion boss. It pretty much forced everyone to carry a high burst rad crit weapon everywhere. 

Eidola have telegraph but too much visual spam. Pretty much the only properly telegraphed attack they have is the stomps and the mag wave on limb break. But they're generally the best designed encounter DE did and i praised them many times for that. 

Similar to Eidola is Ropalolyst which has some good attacks (front beam, the red beams of death) and some terrible ones (the graph and the ability disabling pulse). But is generally a more fun and engaging fight although it's very low on the threat side. 

Lephantis has the telegraph but not the threat, and the encounter is pretty much only about waiting for him to do *something*. 

 

If you see a theme here, enemies have threat but no telegraph or telegraph but no threat. Properly telegraphed attacks have both. Ospreys for example would have the telegraph, but they deal next to nothing. 

And on top of that they added shield gate which was the worst decision ever, we now have a situation where if you just want to tank you can just use brief respite and rolling guard and be constantly immune or immortal. Genius move tbh. 

 

I agree it's a balance problem too, because there is A) a damage problem on our end (we went from 22-25k dps being top of the charts in 2015 to us pushing the 1-10 millions range now and going further even) and B) an Ehp imbalance made worse by shield gate, since we go from 1-2k to 200k+ with some frames having also the ability to abuse shield gate by instantly replenishing shields (looking at you trin). 

But DE has done nothing but making it worse and worse and worse to the point even their cheese is annoying at best, or stupid like the Lich were tank frames can just be grabbed and be totally unfazed about, with just the player being forced to watch a cutscene, and some frames being unable to melee because it's a death sentence. 

 

The script problem with grappling hooks is not that they actually do anything, just that they hit you when they shouldn't. 

Which becomes a problem when it gets applied to stuff like lich grapple that can actually hurt you. 

Well, yes, that's a good point.

Shield Gate, I would argue, is both a positive and a negative change for this. On the one hand, yes, there are ways to technically be immortal, but they do require upkeep on a lot of frames. For some with a lot of shields, that's a different matter, but on something like, say Banshee who'll be dropping to shieldgate levels constantly when in the line of fire, it's not exactly the most efficient playstyle when it comes to gunfighting. Kind of like Turtling in Team Fortress 2. Sure, you'll be a living sentry man a lot longer, but you're not going to be doing an awful lot.

On the other hand, it offers up an important stopgap when it comes to making threatening enemies, in that DE does at least now have a guarantee that squishies won't get oneshot. Before, DE outright couldn't make anything do a significant amount of damage due to the EHP imbalance in 'endgame' builds, since quite frankly, the baseline, average, and peak health for the most powerful a frame could be were ludicrously far apart. And, granted, they are still. But before, if you wanted to design even around the average endgame EHP, not only would tanky frames feel no threat, but squishy frames would be deleted from the face of the gamemode with nary a blink of an eye. At least now, the lower bound has been raised. There's still plenty to do to the upper bound, a bit more now since shieldgating has indeed brought in some new abuse tactics for it, but it's a good enough first step.

Like I said for the likes of the Empyrean on-foot enemies, it's a matter of getting everyone on an even playing field. DE didn't, for quite a long while, which is probably contributing to the increase of cheese. I mean - compare Eidolons to Profit Taker. Eidolons, at worst, have some visual overload, maybe a couple slightly unclear tells? Then PT comes along and has a bunch of her tells be out of clear view if you're close to her, and her homing rockets not having tells at all, and overall is clearly actively avoiding the kind of cheese that worked on Eidolons. Failing miserably at it mind you, but still. Cheese breeds cheese.

[Plutocola]

why?`bcs the game is still a open beta. maybe in 3-7 Years. if the game survive.

[STUVash]

Il y a 7 heures, 844448 a dit :

If people want the so-called endgame, there are several things to look at first

1. Many abilities make enemies unable to get close, let alone retaliate such as miasma for example. You can build miasma for a massive range and it ignores any kind of obstacle in the way where it goes "If I press this button for this ability, you're f*cked".

If enemies can't even react or do anything because of that, how different model of enemies make any difference when they're locked out 50 meters away unable to do anything?

Let's put you in their shoes, can you fight the tenno when you're burned, poisoned, lacerated, put to sleep or frozen 50 meters away from them? Even with the best technology you have, I doubt you can do something the moment you get hit by abilities far away and doesn't care if you're behind a wall or not

We want to make them able to do something? Our ability should take a hit first before making any combat worthwhile

2. The tenno isn't a thing boxed into one category. Look at Trinity where healer/support class is supposed to be weak and unable to ward off enemies quickly, and here we have Trinity that able to nuke health by energy vampire, tank using link and push the hardiness further with blessing and that's just one example

3. Our power is wild in variation. How do you balance the endgame so it's not trivial to 300% strength Chroma/rhino but not impossible to warframes other than those two?

Or perhaps you can find a game with massive power like warframe where you can disable enemies from 50 meters away without caring for obstacle or energy limit but has challenging endgame? Give us an example to take notes from

This guy gets it, whatever endgame content you may find. You'll still come back here to announce it was too easy if you can use all your powers.
And if you can't, like with Sentients, then you say it's boring and you mod for the highest burst of the game to avoid meeting the actual strong suit of the faction.

The RPG side of Warframe, the planning is here to solve the issues you'll meet. Meaning that if you're paying enough attention to the game, you'll find the enemy weaknesses and exploit it. Most of the game is decently tuned to make squad play something interesting. The issue arise when you desync from this core design.

Say if you're low gear, going against lvl 4000 enemies would be impossible.
And if you're high gear, all the limitations you previously had are now removed. You can use gear items all you want since resources will mostly be used for that. You can have access to Arcanes, some adding damage, others giving a huge chunk of energy back. Allowing you to spam the abilities that previously had limited uses and required you to think before spending all your energy.

Those who did the Grendel missions will tell you how fun it was to plan for it. Sure, there's always a game plan. But removing the access to abilities that either make you immortal or make the enemies not even play the game anymore allow the players to play the game with actual obstacles.

It's like old map designs, most of it can simply be ignored and rush through the levels. While if you play a spy mission, stealth melee only, no invisibility. You can now play with the environment, as it's the only way to hide from the enemy, just like when you were low ranks and didn't have an invisibility ability yet.

Most other games don't give as much Freedom as Warframe when it comes to modding. Most other games don't have as many "Classes" as Warframe. The very few abilities a warframe has are often highly powerful to make sure the players in a 4-men squad can make use of them.

If you play like in WoW, then each of your "Warframe" need their own gear you'll be farming. No sharing between frames. Everytime a new "Warframe" would be released, no one would be able to use their OP gear yet, it would take them ages.

If you play like in Vindictus (old one at least, dunno how it is now), a fast paced action rpg with 4-men squad only, each of your "Warframe" need their own XP you have to farm. Gear is easy to get but can't be modded much, and your "Warframe" needs to fight battles for more than months to get max ranked.

In both of these games, when you do reach the highest gear, the game is also a breeze, because you have so much you can do now. Except WoW needs you to gather more players to get the job done. You can't expect an RPG to become hard when the only obstacle is planning ahead with what you got.

The issue isn't on enemies since Sentients were supposed to be the answer to this issue. Tactical decisions and key targets exist already in a crowd of enemies, like Ancient Healers, letting them live is a bad idea, as they make their allies tankier. And Nox which has damage reduction on most body parts except his head. If you have too many of these it can become a mess. In fact, you can already see what it looks like with an eximus crowd. Caustic, Artic, both in a nullifier bubble. These enemies aren't exactly trying to protect each other but in that specific setup, they do. Nullifier prevent warframe abilities, Artic protects from shots, Caustic pushes away any warframe getting too close. (Assuming they don't avoid it using operator, block it with melee or aren't immuned to knockdown)

Adding more failure conditions to the game so far, seem to be the only true way of having difficulty made fun. As for something that "looks" endgame, you want to rely on missions that plays in a total different way and look unique. This is usually what the Quests are for. You get in a mission, it plays out differently, you meet unique enemies or allies, they talk to you, there's a specific plan for this mission. Sometimes it even has additional failure conditions like "Do not get detected or you fail the mission".
"Do not let the bomb in your hand blow up"
"Do not fail a hacking"
"Do not get scanned by any laser"
"Get out before the timer runs out or you lose"

They even add limitations sometimes "Carry the satellite to the Murex, you can't use your guns as a pilot when you're carrying it"
"You have to walk"
"You have to find and scan the objectives to move on"
"You have to hit the enemy with Void Energy"
"You have to survive in a close space for 1min"

When you sum up the equation " Unique Dialogues + Unique interactions + Unique Challenges  " that's when you get something close to what EndGame would be. Thing is making "Unique" stuff is highly time consuming, a live service can do that of course, but it takes time. Some of our repeatable missions give decent rewards while it's tied with a quest we already did.

Like Profit Taker, or Exploiter Orb. They have unique patterns, we get dialogues, there's a unique strategy and rythm. So DE already found out how to do it. They don't really need you to tell them how to do what.

Latest content is Railjack, this time, it's lot more flexible, it's not tied to one boss fight but it still has "Unique Dialogues from Cy + Unique Interactions from Piloting and handling the Railjack, resources management + Unique Challenges" the system is unique enough to throw off most new comers getting in the mode even after RJ Revisited part 1.

Not only that but it even adds new failure conditions for all missions. The Railjack itself isn't allowed to blow up, it becomes an objective you have to protect. It will get tricky when you'll have other objectives to protect aswell. Do not worry, it's still an RPG, so if you plan ahead you will solve all the issues DE land before you, because they were designed to be solved in one way or another. They were designed to become easy once you master the game.

There you have your "EndGame content". Now if the issue is "it's too easy" because you planned too much, then plan less, or plan to fail a bit more. We're not getting rid of this side of the game anymore, we're on update 27.4.3 after 7 Years You can't expect to have it just go away, and like we saw with Grendel missions a lot of players hated losing their gear and ranted about it.

So now, players enjoying the stomping can go stomp some more, and players wanting to have fun can start to use their head and explore new ways of playing.
And if you're just looking for a challenging mode that sets the handicap for you then give your powers back, then dig in something like this

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by STUVash

[Lenti]

because:

End game = higher difficulty

Higher difficulty = better rewards

Better rewards = there aren't any here

 

The problem with end game in warframe is that the game is build on time, play a certain amount of time and everybody with have the same thing.

There are very little variation between high MR players, they all have the same items and weapons with the same mods ( excluding rivens ), there is almost nothing that someone can obtain with a bit more effort. As long as you play a certain about of time, you all always get the same thing

And because of that, is hard to make and "end game", because there is nothing to offer.

A new frame of weapon is not a good reward for a more difficult part of the game, because that weapon or frame doesnt mean progress, it can be even worst then what you have ( like grendel ).

tldr: to get and end game we need better rewards so that we can feel a progress

[---UMBRA---]

Because Dark Sectors deleted.

[SneakyErvin]

11 hours ago, Felsagger said:

More relevant definition according to you and your perspective. I picked the classical definition. Let me put it this way. When you get all the items in an update that is it. There is no more items to get or things to do. You consumed the full package of that update. Sorry but DE can't entertain you forever. I wish they could but that will never happen. 

Classical definitions doesnt always fit since the classical definition is derived from the description of a very specific set of rules or paramenters for a single activity/behavior/items etc. A Trojan horse is more than a wooden horde filled with warriors these days, a virus is more than something that effects biological beings etc.

WF is different than chess since WF is open ended. WE dont have endgame in the classical sense, neither that connected to chess or that connected to WoW. Endgame in WF so far is what we make it out to be on our own. The tasks we set out to achieve to progress our account in some way. DE could in reality introduce MMO-like endgame. Like they have with say Arbitrations, which can be seen as the endgame of the star chart, since it requires you to unlock the whole star chart before accessing it, leaving you with new options for progression in the shape of new mods and arcanes. It still doesnt follow the MMO-like endgame where arbitrations would more be a tier that prepares you for the next coming piece of content that in turn prepares you for the one coming after that and so on into the infinite.

Grinding for Condition Overload is for instance an endgame activity for some, yet it is done on extremely trivial maps. Getting every frame is endgame for others. It all depends where people place their priorities, what comes first, what comes last.

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

Why remove the items we worked for to create a pseudo challenge when the devs should be capable of balancing content around their released mods and weapons 

Because there are far too many factors and combinations for that to be in any way a reasonable request.

[(XBOX)ALTBOULI]

1 hour ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

Why remove the items we worked for to create a pseudo challenge when the devs should be capable of balancing content around their released mods and weapons 

Because the items you get are constantly evolving raising the bar higher, something that was considered meta a few years ago likely wouldn't be able to compete with the weapons now. 

Also given the sheer number of items, weapons, warframes there are now this wouldn't be a simple task, what your asking for might sound simple but in practise it takes a lot of thought and time to implement.

In a sense your basically saying 'change everything that affects everyone just to satisfy my needs'

And for people asking about difficulty, the devs have already mentioned at looking at a system in which you can change the difficulty of existing missions, for example star chart missions starting at level 100+

That way people who aren't as advanced in their journey can still progress and people who want more of a challenge can have it. 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

45 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Because there are far too many factors and combinations for that to be in any way a reasonable request.

But as the player and by design warframe has always been “get this gear for x reason” 

i as the player shouldn’t have to remove the mods the devs want me to grind for to create a challenge for myself. The beauty of the game is it’s freedom and choice to mod however you want. It’s not a challenge to play without mods imo I see it more as a restriction. For example people didn’t see the Grendel challenges as hard moreso. They saw them as annoying and teidous because they did what warframe was soo keen against. Restricting a players choice.

24 minutes ago, (XB1)ALTBOULI said:

Because the items you get are constantly evolving raising the bar higher, something that was considered meta a few years ago likely wouldn't be able to compete with the weapons now. 

Also given the sheer number of items, weapons, warframes there are now this wouldn't be a simple task, what your asking for might sound simple but in practise it takes a lot of thought and time to implement.

In a sense your basically saying 'change everything that affects everyone just to satisfy my needs'

And for people asking about difficulty, the devs have already mentioned at looking at a system in which you can change the difficulty of existing missions, for example star chart missions starting at level 100+

That way people who aren't as advanced in their journey can still progress and people who want more of a challenge can have it. 

Again. How is that the players fault. Mods frames etc change. It’s their job to balance the game accordingly and around the knowledge that things change as well as the meta. 

And im aware of that but again that’s on them. They’ve previously stated that they themselves ignored balance for so long that it became an issue a long time ago. (It was in a devstream I think)  we are just now getting warframe revisited and many balance passes this year mind you. Things that should’ve been thought about or implemented are just now being brought in years later. 

Where did I state or imply that. In many cases any other dev team and any other game is known to balance items in a way that is “mostly” future proof and don’t leave it up to the player to create most of the challenge in game. As in my opinion that’s bad game design. 

Another example of something that players have been asking for.... for years brother. It’s been a topic for a long time now and to be frank until it happens I don’t believe them saying anything about it.

In the long run. Proper balance dosent require the game to have dark souls level of difficulty but more engament and less cheese and Likely less abuse of meta. If more things are in a balanced and useable realm it’s more likely that many many more options are viable. For example if ips was more balanced then it has been for years and slash wasn’t leagues ahead of other ips. You’d see many more slash and impact heavy items and less people asking for more slash heavy options. Because yes while slash would still be great the other contenders are just as good allowing for more variation.

and while I say this I myself am an advocate for optional difficulty. I understand that not everyone wants to do the same level of content I do. But balance is beyond enemy level and in my honest opinion it would take a major revisit to warframe at its core. Something the community doesn’t want and de does not, can not, will not, or simply does not know how to do or want to do right now. 

[Teridax68]

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Let us start with the first lesson. We have a forum where everybody writes down and even document what DE does. Many people got frustrated to the point of showing apathy. We can't force DE work our way. We tried before and we got three strikes in a row.

I have no idea what you're talking about, considering that DE in fact has a track record for bending to the playerbase when they get particularly angry, which is in fact how we managed to obtain the latest update to Railjack. The problem isn't with DE punishing us for yelling at them, the problem is that DE doesn't seem to listen until they get yelled at (and even then, they fall back on old habits pretty quickly afterwards).

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

I decided not critique anymore. If they fumble, I walk away without spending energy typing more critiques. You are still here being hopeful that they will rectify. The initiative of quality should start within themselves without us pushing them. If they get more professional with their job we stick our wallets in and continue the journey. If they lay back I'm not going to force them to work either. This is a developer choice. 

This feels more like a you problem than one with the whole playerbase, as it appears you are using your own disenchantment with DE to discourage others from giving feedback of any kind. Not only that, you seem aware that the fault lies with DE, but instead prefer to shift blame towards targets who will actually give you a response, i.e. other players. That's not really a healthy attitude with which to enter discussion.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

In here people have different ideas and opinions on the definition of the term 'end game'. 

Yes, sometimes due to the simple fact that they read the wrong definition on Wiktionary. 🙂

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Because they knew how low they went in terms of quality. Even the last patch required another quick patch. The quick patch rendered the game useless for two hours. They had to work with the third patch. 

Sure, but that does not invalidate the fact that the playerbase clearly expects some higher standard of quality, and has mobilized to demand it, with positive results.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

In this same paragraph you confirm that different developers don't coincide with the concept 'end game'. Deadstiny and 76 are jokes for games. I don't even mention them in a formal discussion. Rail jack is a bridge more of an 'access gate' between battle scales and conditions. Railjack joints battles on 'land' and Arch Wing battles. Never was intended as 'end game' content. 

"I don't like these games, therefore I won't even count them in discussion" is a rather silly way of dismissing valid arguments. You may not like those games (I certainly don't like Fallout 76 either), and you may choose to believe that a game with a concurrent player count of over 63k (more than Warframe!) is "dead", but the fact remains that these games have delivered different means of endgame that work. The fact that you did not even attempt to debate World of Warcraft on this either is telling. The fact that these different games have implemented their endgame differently is itself a positive, not a negative, as it means there are many different avenues Warframe could employ to implement endgame. Railjack isn't one of them, though DE certainly intended to make it endgame for a while.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

The sense of bragging rights was thrown out of this game by DE. DE threw out the Leader Boards. DE threw out the solar Rails. Having a maxed out Rail Jack or all the Tenno schools or even having everything in the game doesn't grant a sense of superiority or position. That is completionism. Let the contrarians enjoy their status. That will not change the size of the fridge on my house, the number of books and much less the structure of the game. If this contrarians sees people over the shoulders, that is their problem not yours or mine. If they want to be competitive then they should pick up a PVP game and test their talents there. War Frame focuses on other aspects.  

It is interesting that you went on a pointlessly lengthy rant on the irrationality of the playerbase, only to somehow assume perfect rationality of them here. I am myself underlining the fact that the entire notion of bragging rights in Warframe is absurd, particularly one founded upon the confusion between difficult content and unpleasant content, hence why the OP's position is fundamentally wrong. That was, in fact, the entire point of my first post on this thread, which you've apparently responded to without understanding any aspect of it at all.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

I simply quoted the consensus that Merriam's Websters says over such phrase.

Here is Merriam-Webster's definition:

Definition of endgame

: the stage of a chess game after major reduction of forces

also : the final stage of some action or process

Notice how the wording is completely different. By contrast, here is the first of the Wiktionary definitions:

(chess) The final stage of a game of chess, when there are few pieces left.

Notice the wording matches yours near-verbatim. Not only are you pointlessly lying about the source of the definition you have picked, you also conjure up the notion of "consensus" out of thin air, despite the fact that neither of the above list any sort of process of consensus that led to said definitions. All of this, by the way, does absolutely nothing to detract from the fact that you very clearly applied the wrong definition, using the one for chess rather than the one for video games.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

We passed through that concept pages ago. We all agree that gear checking and grinding are not 'end game'. 

Yes, which makes your attempt to foist pointless conflict on the false assumption that we were in disagreement over this all the more perplexing.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

And what about short term players? Sorry but is not all about Veterans. Veterans already outgrew the game. In other words what you are advocating is simply wishful thinking or just a wish list. Yes, you know how this goes typing wish lists for the long term player enjoys the game. 

Hello, welcome to the discussion on endgame content, content that is specifically aimed towards long-term players. We can talk about earlier content for players if you like, but that is an entirely different discussion to have, and bringing it up here is missing the point rather impressively.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

More relevant definition according to you and your perspective. I picked the classical definition. Let me put it this way. When you get all the items in an update that is it. There is no more items to get or things to do. You consumed the full package of that update. Sorry but DE can't entertain you forever. I wish they could but that will never happen. 

Ha ha, no. Definitions aren't some purely subjective matter, there is a clear matter of context at hand, and as it so happens, the definition I picked is exactly the one appropriate for this context, whereas yours visibly isn't. You can choose to ignore reality as you like, but claiming that everything you disagree with is subjective isn't exactly going to magically handwave away the existence of facts that inconvenience you. As it stands, there is clear evidence that many games in ongoing development have managed to successfully implement endgame content, so your refusal to accept that this is even possible is simply wrong.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

End game of Spider Man is the strongest suit and set of perks. 

End game of Horizon Zero Dawn is the top damage weapons, best shields and equipment for Alloy. 

End game for Doom Eternal is the most powerful gun in the game, the top difficulty settings for the missions and the rewards in them. 

End game for Batman Arkham Knight is the top tier equipment in his arsenal an the best build of weapons in the game. 

End game for Fez is the collection of all the golden pieces for the longer ending.

End game for Titan Fall 2 is the last level of the campaign in it. 

The term applies to finite games hence there is an end. Simple logic. You are confusing progression with the concept 'end game'. However you are referring to exclusivity of activities in a game that only long seasonal players will be the only ones to enjoy. Those missions are intended at a small portion of players in comparison to the number of players the game has. 

I guess if I only picked singleplayer games with finite endpoints as examples (or, in Titanfall 2's example, only its campaign and not its multiplayer), I too would come to the false conclusion that endgame can only apply to finite games. As it stands, your argument is self-evidently fallacious, precisely because your examples are clearly cherry-picked to include no massively multiplayer games. I cited examples of those, by the way, so you really have no excuse.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Warframe is a GAAS game. It can't has it. The structure of the game doesn't allow any form of endgame. 

Why not? As my examples and the associated definition shows, endgame is clearly possible in GAAS, and is in fact commonplace. Perhaps "endgame" according to your own incorrect definition may never happen, but this other set of content that most normal people typically refer to as "endgame" certainly can.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Yes, the classical line of 'you are wrong, I am right'.  

Not really, I am asking you to clarify and substantiate the vague and confusing statements you've made, which you seem unable to do. As it stands, the problem here isn't that you're not right, but that you're not even wrong. Your argument is gibberish, to the point where even you seem unable to explain it.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

If there are no meta, then there is no endgame. If there is no top, then there can't be any final goal. Pretty simple. 

Putting aside how there is in fact a meta in Warframe (and how that meta really doesn't relate to endgame)... there is in fact a "top". Warframe may be constantly evolving, and so that "top" may shift, but every state of the game will always have a "top". Even if we define endgame along the very limited lines of content that engages players who have reached this top in the long term, that kind of endgame is possible. Simples!

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

This is the type of guy who brings a knife for a discussion and a sword for diplomacy. I'm afraid he will bring a mallet next. 

 :3

Except this isn't diplomacy, this is a debate, and I see no reason why I should humor behavior that itself shows no respect for the discussion or your interlocutor. If you don't want to be criticized for saying dumb things, then perhaps try not to say dumb things when/if you can avoid it.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Is plain bizarre that a GAAS gets 'end game'.

No, it really isn't. In fact, lack of endgame in a GAAS is what's uncommon, and one of the major reasons why Warframe is struggling with long-term player retention.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

What you are asking is something different. The materialization of that idea is the increase of engagement. Let me help you write down such idea. For example, different tier of enemies with better capable weapons could be something worthy for seasonal players. This is how you dynamically do a gear checking performance. These enemies have different load outs, sets of abilities and an increase in damage level keeping the same level of shields and armor. The factor that scales up are their weapons, their tactics and the tier composition and the A. I.. In levels there should not be endless horde except on horde modes. For example if you take out all the enemies in a certain level then the enemy can call reinforcements that are stronger on believable insertion points or spawn points. 

This sounds like a lovely concept you could write and propose in a separate thread, as I fail to see its relevance in this discussion.

12 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Entertainment happens when the game gets more interesting asking the player skill, precision, priority, preservation, better positioning and preference of enemies to be taken down first due to the level of risk they possess. Every encounter is dynamic. It doesn't repeats constantly the same volley of turtle shell enemies. This doesn't exclude the seasoned player or the new player. Everybody may explore their luck in the game. Hardened player may run the risks to stay for a bit longer and some missions will have these parameters to more aggressive tiers. Another example are the introduction of three or four Liches attacking at the same time or bosses in the middle of a fight without any previous alert. This is not the only solution but it tries adding a better engaging combat. 

I can agree that the game could do a lot to make itself feel less repetitive... but again, that is neither here nor there with regards to the specific discussion of endgame. At this point, it sounds like you don't even want to discuss endgame at all, so much as something else entirely, which begs the question of what you are trying to achieve in this thread.

[Felsagger]

6 hours ago, 844448 said:

If people want the so-called endgame, there are several things to look at first

1. Many abilities make enemies unable to get close, let alone retaliate such as miasma for example. You can build miasma for a massive range and it ignores any kind of obstacle in the way where it goes "If I press this button for this ability, you're f*cked".

Simple, make enemy units resistant to any War Frame abilities. These enemies can be taken down by long range, medium range, short range and melee weapons.  

Right now enemies are retarded autistic idiots who awaits getting slaughtered once they came in. Other games pushes the A.I. do other things like for example give then an initiative, work as a team and do gun emplacements. They are team work oriented.  

6 hours ago, 844448 said:

If enemies can't even react or do anything because of that, how different model of enemies make any difference when they're locked out 50 meters away unable to do anything?

Enemies are resistant completely. They have equipment that cancel out any War Frame ability. Their technology is way better, they have a different equipment that take care of crowd control or cancels War Frame damage multiplication like Chroma. These enemies are only dealt with tactics. 

6 hours ago, 844448 said:

 

2. The tenno isn't a thing boxed into one category. Look at Trinity where healer/support class is supposed to be weak and unable to ward off enemies quickly, and here we have Trinity that able to nuke health by energy vampire, tank using link and push the hardiness further with blessing and that's just one example.

Simply put. Trinity is screwed against these enemies. If this frames wants to survive then the only way are powerful weapons against these special enemies in hordes. Common enemies will be the energy resource for her. 

6 hours ago, 844448 said:

3. Our power is wild in variation. How do you balance the endgame so it's not trivial to 300% strength Chroma/rhino but not impossible to warframes other than those two?

Super simple. War Frame abilities are all null against these enemies. The only way you treat them is with your weapons and artillery cool downs. 

6 hours ago, 844448 said:

Or perhaps you can find a game with massive power like warframe where you can disable enemies from 50 meters away without caring for obstacle or energy limit but has challenging endgame? Give us an example to take notes from.

Doom Eternal. 

Titan Fall 2. 

 

[Redthirst]

12 hours ago, (PS4)Kakurine2 said:

And there enlies an issue power creep, bullet sponges, etc.

What exactly makes something a challenge per person.  And do they even want it?

No matter how much the npcs are scaled we the players can min/max to cheese it or it just becomes a bullet sponge.

Its a looter hack and slash shooter. Not a mmo with raid tiers.  Its not really an animal designed to have the "end game" stuff i believe you are actually after.

They had raids and pvp relays but they all failed so there where scraped.

Yeah, it's obviously the issue of power creep and non-existent balance, and that's why we can never have any challenge. I'd say changing the way energy system works would allow for some actually challenging content, because a lot of the challenge goes out of the window due to spammable abilities.

 

Trials were actually fun. They weren't challenging(because, again, ability spam), but they required coordination and decent group dynamics. They didn't really fail, they had a dedicated community, they were just pulled because DE broke them with every update. DE also absolutely failed at integrating them into the game(there was basically no way that a new player would be able to tell that Trials existed at all. They weren't even visible on the star chart, and IIRC, the game never even mentioned them to you, or maybe it sent one inbox message at best).

[Autongnosis]

Il y a 3 heures, Loza03 a dit :

DE didn't, for quite a long while, which is probably contributing to the increase of cheese. I mean - compare Eidolons to Profit Taker. Eidolons, at worst, have some visual overload, maybe a couple slightly unclear tells? Then PT comes along and has a bunch of her tells be out of clear view if you're close to her, and her homing rockets not having tells at all, and overall is clearly actively avoiding the kind of cheese that worked on Eidolons. Failing miserably at it mind you, but still. Cheese breeds cheese.

Which means either of three things: they don't care about it, don't want to do it or aren't capable of doing it. 

Since they seem to care about this game a whole #*!%ing lot, I'm assuming it's etierh if the other two. 

 

Also yeah, while eidola are a very good basis for a boss fight and are generally designed well enough (the problem with eidola is the kind of drops they make, pushing towards a fast fast fast game play for farming purposes), the orbs, both of them, are some of the worst and most pedantic game design I've ever seen. One can be even won passively for Christ's sake. 

[HexOmega111x]

Il y a 12 heures, Felsagger a dit :

Of course DE can. The question is DE wants it? The ideal horde game, in my opinion, brings in a different bag in every round other than the same games with few Nox in them. The open question remains. Adding different types of enemies that are more strategic and careful in combat, does that throws away the horde game? I'm curious about this question. 

What is warframe exactly? We might all have a personal view on it but the only view that matter is DE's one. 

As I see it, warframe is an hack n slash with a tps view. Bringing more tactical ennemies could turn warframe into a tactical shooter. The problem would be that that kind of end game would suddenly make you play something different than what you played during the whole game. They can make that change for the entire game of course but it would mean to change the identity of warframe. 

And there are few elements, in my opinion, that shows why DE is struggling to make warframe evolve because of that. Why, in every new content, we see missions with a max enemy level around 80-90. Never more. Why don't we have few missions with enemies level starting at 120 or 150? Never. 

They don't want to fall into the D3 build trap. They don't want to see 1 or 2 mandatory builds that 3/4 of the players will use and instantly make every other items in the game useless or obsolete at every new update they release. There would be no possibility for them to release any new frame or weapon. They want to keep this game as accessible as possible for the biggest part of the gears present in the game while being able to release new stuffs that players will have a reason to farm buy and play. 

Still no difficulty slider? It seems to be easy to implement and could give some kind of challenge to some of us but for the reason I gave above, they can't. 

Suddenly, they started to rebalance the entire damage system. It could simply be because they want to keep warframe as it is now, an hack n slash but with the possibility to make higher enemies level and keep some potential challenging content playable for the biggest possible diversity of build. 

You are right. DE can make more interesting enemies, why should it be a problem for them? They just don't want to turn warframe into what it is not supposed to be. 

This is just my interpretation of the situation of course. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by HexOmega111x