Discussion and Feedback on Hard Mode shown on devstream

[vegetosayajin]

[Methanoid]

On 2020-05-10 at 12:36 AM, zehne said:

Exactly.

And when you're a noob you shouldn't be joining end-game content via matchmaking.

its not always "noobs" joining as MR0.

[Methanoid]

On 2020-05-10 at 1:00 AM, Krankbert said:

Sorry, I don't believe you. I don't think "the highest-level missions in the game by a fair margin aren't endgame" is an opinion anyone would honestly have. Byebye.

you could play appolodorus for long enough to easily surpass what you consider to be "endgame", the previous poster you replied to is correct in that the starting level is irrelevant when you can get there the old way, this new system doesnt instantly mean endgame just because it starts off a bit higher, plenty of people have been doing those levels for years on end without issue even at lower ranks.  I think even DE hinted that the new mode is more of a time saver to reach a higher level rather than BE some kind of replacement.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Methanoid

[Krankbert]

Name game modes that start at a higher level.

[akrid45]

1 hour ago, Krankbert said:

Name game modes that start at a higher level.

kuva lich missions 

[zehne]

2 hours ago, Methanoid said:

its not always "noobs" joining as MR0.

I recognize people starting over, switching platforms and the like.  They are the exception to the rule not the majority.

Also I stated nothing about MR = Noob.  If they are a new player with little experience, no effective weapons/mods, then 9/10 times they'd be classified as noob.  Such noobs shouldn't be in end-game content.

[Kaggelos]

How about universal medallions?

[GreyDeath789]

On 2020-05-10 at 11:47 PM, kevoisvevo said:

Now you are just copy pasting everything like a parrot. Pretty sure you are trolling in the thread lol.

Thanks for your opinion....but the hard / ultra hard mode is possibly the worst idea yet for Warframe.

Power creep is already a problem in Warframe...now players will make builds for 150+ level enemies and run everything with those builds.

Next content release will be "easy" because enemies won't be at level 150+ and the boss won't be 150+...

But yes..."finally...this is the greatest thing ever..."

 

On 2020-05-10 at 11:01 PM, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Ah I get it, you're just a massive troll. Don't get the concept of "easy" and "hard" into it, this game is a massive joke in terms of difficulty and we all know it, with or without this mystical power creep you're talking about.

How is pointing out concern about power creep with this addition to the game making anyone a troll? Labels instead of discussing the topic...classic...um...something...behavior.

This hard / ultra hard mode is possibly one of the worst ideas yet for Warframe.

Power creep is already a problem in Warframe...now players will make builds for 150+ level enemies and run everything with those builds.

Next content release will be "easy" because enemies won't be at level 150+ and the boss won't be 150+...

But yes..."finally...this is the greatest thing ever..."

[Vespilan]

For those of you unaware, in a recent devstream the devs have shown a work in progress of an upcoming hard mode for regular starchart nodes. This hard mode will raise the enemies starting level by 50 or by 100 for ultrahard mode respectively aswell as increasing the odds for some extra loot including exclusive cosmetic rewards. 

What remains completely unclear from this demonstration is, however, how hard mode will translate to non-vanilla-node gamemodes such as void fissures, arbitrations, sorties or invasions, if it will at all. Like fissures, invasions, etc. hard mode seems to run in a seperate instance of the node which becomes important for matchmaking.

There are several gleaming issues with the idea of hardmode

• Translation (see above)
• Content isle; Once you have the rewards you want and dont need the ressources from that specific planet /node, there is little reason in revisitng hardmode
  • Copy+paste; Hard mode seems like an inbetween of regular gameplay and arbitration, just without the fun arbitrations bring (this plays into the "content isle" point but the copying of another gamemode seemed important to me to mention)
• This is not difficulty; For years Warframe players have been complaining that simply scaling up enemy health, shields and armor does not equal difficulty. Every time enemies have been simply upscaled in an effort to create artificial difficulty players were all in DE's ears about it. What makes you think this changed? We want improvement to AI.
• And lastly, my biggest gripe with it; Matchmaking difficulties. Different instances of a node force players into different matchmaking to queue up for hard mode despite being on the same node as others. This will make nodes other than Hydron, the Index or Mot even more deserted than they already are especially on consoles. This is due to there being little reason for experienced players revisiting non-hard mode when farming for something particular, further amplified for even more experienced players sitting seperately in ultra hard mode.
  • It also greatly takes away form that awesome feeling when you are a new player, just running around on Earth and you see a MR 20+ player just showing it off and leaving you in complete awe. Or having an experienced player join into a boss fight and turn the tides. 

My suggestion:
Instead of node instancing, I suggest modifiers that are purely clientside, solving almost all of my concerns.

Fans of the critically aclaimed Borderlands 3 will know these as "Mayhem Modifiers". In Borderlands 3, players can pick their mayhem modifiers themsellves before they jump into any activites, for Warframe I would suggest to give players in hard mode random modifiers, changing between rotations as the variety of gear we have would allow you to just pick the tools to prevent impact of these modifiers entirely. Further, in Borderlands the amount of modifiers and their difficulty rating is affecting enemy health. This would not be possible in Warframe if we are to prevent node-instancing so I suggest instead adding downsides to modifiers.

Here are some examples of Mayhem modifiers similarly to how they function in Borderlands but appropriated for Warframe:

• Big Kick Energy: +25% gun damage, +100% recoil, +100% spread 
• Lootsplosion: +100% double loot chance on headshot, -20% loot on bodyshot.
• Speed Demon: -50% base movement speed, +50% movement speed per enemy killed, stacks up to five time
• Radioactive: Rad-procced enemies deal +1000% damage and die after 30s. -99% damage against rad-procced enemies.
• The floor is lava: Tenno and enemies are heat-rpocced when standing on the ground.

I could go on for hours thinking of funny little perks but I think you get the idea; Have them be impactful but not gamebreaking for others.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Vespilan

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

Yep the idea has a number of faults as you point out. And i agree with some of your proposed ideas.

At least de is working on something. Give it some time for polishing to happen could be something great for the more hardcore folks.

Personally i doubt i will do the hardmodes much. For leveling faster perhaps. If cosmetic rewards are skins, colors, sysndanas, ephemeras, rare mods, and armor bits ill grind those.

Credits, glyphs, potatoes, etc. Though naw.

Edited May 11, 2020 by (PS4)Kakurine2

[Tenno76856]

You already have a section of the community who will do hard mode regardless : those who do survival and defense for hours (seems senseless to me ). For me the game his about grind, progress and loot. Loot. Without appropiate rewards it simply wont be worth it for majority of players

 

[IceColdHawk]

48 minutes ago, GreyDeath789 said:

Power creep is already a problem in Warframe...now players will make builds for 150+ level enemies and run everything with those builds.

But they already do. This is already happening. People also always test their stuff against max level in the simulacrum which is above lvl 150. This addition would only allow people to give them a GOOD reason to create builds and use them instead of going in like a donkey and expecting to still win missions without a sweat. I'm definitely looking forward to that even though i'm not expecting too much.

54 minutes ago, GreyDeath789 said:

But yes..."finally...this is the greatest thing ever..."

Definitely miles better than the past things we've gotten.

[JackHargreav]

Higher level enemies is what exactly what many players, most players wanted. And it should be just that. There's no need to over complicate the entire thing with all sort of modifiers and whatnot especially because we already have nightmare and sortie missions.

[taiiat]

the main thing that i care about Difficulty Tiers for, is the potential for the entire Solar Map to be an appropriate Level to play and maybe have some fun in, while aiming at the handful of Reward Types i actually want. the excuse has always been about newbies, but if we added a second Tier to the Solar Map, then that could finally be bypassed and i would be actually allowed to play __ Tileset and still actually get useful Rewards for me.

what they said they're going to do probably won't be able to do this, but having Difficulty Tiers COULD DO THAT. and everyone should probably be pushing for that, if you care about the lack of variety in what there is to play in the game generally.

[zehne]

1 hour ago, GreyDeath789 said:

Power creep is already a problem in Warframe...now players will make builds for 150+ level enemies and run everything with those builds.

Players already do.  Nearly every youtuber puts out builds for high levels.  There will be very few people who see level 150 and say "huh, now I need stronger builds".

My warframe already has a forma in every slot.  Increasing base level mob difficulty CANNOT result in me having a stronger build.  Only rewards from said missions could cause power creep, but as it has been stated many times, warframe already has power creep.  But that's true for nearly any game wanting to retain players.  Progress is a necessity when it comes to player retention.

Power creep is inevitable in warframe.  No-one (sane) will argue that.  Increasing enemy levels however, does NOT increase player power.

[Vespilan]

2 minutes ago, taiiat said:

get useful Rewards for me.

Maybe this has been unclear from my suggestion since I did not go into it at all but loot would mostly remain the same with modifiers. So we could all have our compromise, you get your loot, the silent majority gets their new-player friendliness (see why they nerfed railjack into braindead territory).

4 minutes ago, taiiat said:

and everyone should probably be pushing for that, if you care about the lack of variety in what there is to play in the game generally.

So.. a gamemode that does nothing for gameplay but scale up enemy armor and health is encouraging variety? I would argue it is just the same stale design we have seen a hundred times. I slice through lv. 60 enemies as easily as I slice through level 10 enemies, there is no "variety" in that.

10 minutes ago, JackHargreav said:

There's no need to over complicate the entire thing with all sort of modifiers and whatnot especially because we already have nightmare and sortie missions.

And coming to think of it, actually instead of making hard mode, DE could revamp nightmare mode. Integrate nightmare mission conditions as modifiers and let every mission have a clientside opt-in nightmare mode.

[Hypernaut1]

I'm ok with higher levels. Better than nothing. Let's get it first before panicking

[Uhkretor]

I keep saying that:

The different Difficulty Settings, from 1 Star to 5 Stars, should have never been removed.

 

All the crap that all of you complain about Warframe not having? IT HAD BEFORE! But no, someone had to crap out that the Difficulty Settings was "senseless" so it was best to be removed... With its removal, it included the removal of:

• Spawn count multiplier - Players were handling full spawns AND could affect the amount by multiplying it through higher difficulty setting
• Heavy Unit Spawn %% - Higher difficulty setting increased the heavy unit spawn %%.
• Higher base mission reward - For those that couldn't care less about any other reward than what the mission gives as baseline, higher difficulty setting increased it.
• Higher affinity gain - Higher enemy count resulted in this.
• Higher amount of drops - Higher enemy count also resulted in THIS, including resources and what is now known as ENDO.

 

There are more reasons, but guess what? This was available on U7. And it was a system that catered both new players and veterans alike.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Uhkretor

[Vit0Corleone]

I don't think the issues you are identifying are issues at all, tbh.

Let's not forget the reason why they are giving this: A way for players who like to test their gear against higher level enemies without having to use Simulacrum or spending hours in endless missions before they show up.

This isn't intended to be "new content!", "new challenges!", it's just a quick way for the devs to give us quick access to high level baddies, which is something players have been requesting for years. Nothing more. All the arguments/discussions that come up around this new hard mode seem to forget about the original reason behind this.

Now, they did mention adding cosmetics as rewards to completing hard/ultra hard content. These are a nice icing on the cake, it's a reward you get for completing either each planet or the full star chart in hard/ultra mode. It makes sense to be a one off reward, as its purpose is to give you a "I did it!" reward to pursuit. It's not more than that.

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Vit0Corleone
typo

[taiiat]

41 minutes ago, Vespilan said:

Maybe this has been unclear from my suggestion since I did not go into it at all but loot would mostly remain the same with modifiers. So we could all have our compromise, you get your loot, the silent majority gets their new-player friendliness (see why they nerfed railjack into braindead territory).

So.. a gamemode that does nothing for gameplay but scale up enemy armor and health is encouraging variety? I would argue it is just the same stale design we have seen a hundred times. I slice through lv. 60 enemies as easily as I slice through level 10 enemies, there is no "variety" in that.

yes, it does allow for some more variety - because currently roughly 3/4 of the entire Solar Map, you literally aren't allowed to play as a latergame Player because the Mission will not give you Rewards that are appropriate for your position in the game.
and it's because that Mission is Lv1 or Lv5 or whatever. therefore it won't give you useful Rewards because the Mission is accomodating newbies.

so having one (just one is really needed frankly) extra Tier means that i could play whatever Tileset i feel like and still be able to (probably) get the Rewards that i'm looking for.

 

that's what i want out of having another Solar Map Tier, atleast. that then also leaves the game another way to be able to setup Missions differently with different Enemy Variants/Types, and Et Cetera.
the 'higher Tier' version would be where pmuch everyone else up in the longterm anyways, because once you go past the initial newbie progression, you have no purpose in playing, well, 3/4 of the 'standard' Solar Map.

22 minutes ago, Uhkretor said:

The different Difficulty Settings, from 1 Star to 5 Stars, should have never been removed.

it never was, actually. it was just removed from the UI because it was meaningless to the end user unless they knew inside information about how the game works.
that indicator was telling you the 'Difficulty' Multiplier for that Mission. which is what is used to determine the aggressiveness of the Mission. it is a Decimal value from 0 to 1.
it controls primarily Enemy Spawn aggressiveness, and some other non Level Scaling features releated to Enemies.
it's still there.

some of your other mentioned features followed the Difficulty Stat by coincidence, not because that Variable itself controlled those things. most of those are manually set for the Mission.

Edited May 12, 2020 by taiiat

[(PSN)thegarada]

1 hour ago, Vespilan said:

For those of you unaware, in a recent devstream the devs have shown a work in progress of an upcoming hard mode for regular starchart nodes. This hard mode will raise the enemies starting level by 50 or by 100 for ultrahard mode respectively aswell as increasing the odds for some extra loot including exclusive cosmetic rewards. 

What remains completely unclear from this demonstration is, however, how hard mode will translate to non-vanilla-node gamemodes such as void fissures, arbitrations, sorties or invasions, if it will at all. Like fissures, invasions, etc. hard mode seems to run in a seperate instance of the node which becomes important for matchmaking.

There are several gleaming issues with the idea of hardmode

• Translation (see above)
• Content isle; Once you have the rewards you want and dont need the ressources from that specific planet /node, there is little reason in revisitng hardmode
  • Copy+paste; Hard mode seems like an inbetween of regular gameplay and arbitration, just without the fun arbitrations bring (this plays into the "content isle" point but the copying of another gamemode seemed important to me to mention)
• This is not difficulty; For years Warframe players have been complaining that simply scaling up enemy health, shields and armor does not equal difficulty. Every time enemies have been simply upscaled in an effort to create artificial difficulty players were all in DE's ears about it. What makes you think this changed? We want improvement to AI.
• And lastly, my biggest gripe with it; Matchmaking difficulties. Different instances of a node force players into different matchmaking to queue up for hard mode despite being on the same node as others. This will make nodes other than Hydron, the Index or Mot even more deserted than they already are especially on consoles. This is due to there being little reason for experienced players revisiting non-hard mode when farming for something particular, further amplified for even more experienced players sitting seperately in ultra hard mode.
  • It also greatly takes away form that awesome feeling when you are a new player, just running around on Earth and you see a MR 20+ player just showing it off and leaving you in complete awe. Or having an experienced player join into a boss fight and turn the tides. 

My suggestion:
Instead of node instancing, I suggest modifiers that are purely clientside, solving almost all of my concerns.

Fans of the critically aclaimed Borderlands 3 will know these as "Mayhem Modifiers". In Borderlands 3, players can pick their mayhem modifiers themsellves before they jump into any activites, for Warframe I would suggest to give players in hard mode random modifiers, changing between rotations as the variety of gear we have would allow you to just pick the tools to prevent impact of these modifiers entirely. Further, in Borderlands the amount of modifiers and their difficulty rating is affecting enemy health. This would not be possible in Warframe if we are to prevent node-instancing so I suggest instead adding downsides to modifiers.

Here are some examples of Mayhem modifiers similarly to how they function in Borderlands but appropriated for Warframe:

• Big Kick Energy: +25% gun damage, +100% recoil, +100% spread 
• Lootsplosion: +100% double loot chance on headshot, -20% loot on bodyshot.
• Speed Demon: -50% base movement speed, +50% movement speed per enemy killed, stacks up to five time
• Radioactive: Rad-procced enemies deal +1000% damage and die after 30s. -99% damage against rad-procced enemies.
• The floor is lava: Tenno and enemies are heat-rpocced when standing on the ground.

I could go on for hours thinking of funny little perks but I think you get the idea; Have them be impactful but not gamebreaking for others.

I dunno why people are trying to make a big deal out of HMs. It is extra affinity and mobs that do not die instantly when I look in their directions is more than enough. Yes, we need good reward structure for them. But honestly, if you can steam role level 120 mobs, you are not in it for the rewards. You are in it for something that is remotely challenge. I have most of what matters, and I have not been playing the game for that long. I just want to have fun by fighting mobs that could be remotely threatening.

Obliviously this will not be applicable to fissures and arbitrations, liches, invasions or sorties. If it is in the mission menu, there will be not HM of it. 

I want HMs yesterday. They can figure out the rewards later. 

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Vespilan said:

 

• The floor is lava: Tenno and enemies are heat-rpocced when standing on the ground.

You might as well write "Tenno instantly win the mission after 10 minutes" with how defenseless the enemies are against this

[Educated_Beast]

I am against any new rewards, other than those at the achievement level.  

If exclusive rewards are given and players can't reach it, they will complain and then this will be taken away or nerfed.  Playing hard is its own reward.  Either you like it, or you don't.  

Introducing anything exclusive is a bad idea and pointless.  I'd even argue the XP should stay same as base level so matchmaking doesn't get jacked up.  

Edited May 12, 2020 by Educated_Beast

[Methanoid]

6 hours ago, zehne said:

I recognize people starting over, switching platforms and the like.  They are the exception to the rule not the majority.

Also I stated nothing about MR = Noob.  If they are a new player with little experience, no effective weapons/mods, then 9/10 times they'd be classified as noob.  Such noobs shouldn't be in end-game content.

and unless they are complete morons, they wont bother constantly trying a hardmode if they die all the time, kinda how the original starchart worked, there were no junctions/gear check/quests or anything of the sort back then, you just progressed as long as you could manage, and if you couldnt manage you didnt just try forcing your way ahead like an idiot, you stepped back and carried on at a lower level until you could manage.

[zehne]

1 hour ago, Methanoid said:

and unless they are complete morons, they wont bother constantly trying a hardmode if they die all the time, kinda how the original starchart worked, there were no junctions/gear check/quests or anything of the sort back then, you just progressed as long as you could manage, and if you couldnt manage you didnt just try forcing your way ahead like an idiot, you stepped back and carried on at a lower level until you could manage.

OR

Kept queuing until you got a group that finished mission.

• Which, to be clear, is why alot of people are arguing for gating of said content.

Just because you would do something doesn't mean there shouldn't be a rule implemented.  i.e.  Just because you stop and look before going through an intersection, doesn't mean stop signs shouldn't exist.