Hard Mode: Will this become another abandoned "content island?"

[Leyers_of_facade]

How about instead of 1 random modifier, hard mode have ALL of the modifier

 

think that will make it actually better? 🤔

[Galuf]

Until lvl120ish, Things die easily to spells. Dramatically increasing the level of enemies should help.

How to scale rewards is simple:

- scale up random or time gated events. For example 5x more stalkers, glass maker fissures every 5mn

- chances to get particular loots lik affinity injectors, endos, rare mods, specters, etc...

What would be awesome is random modifiers like Operator only missions or bamf primary is disabled.

[Lost_Cartographer]

6 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

If hard mode rewards you the exact same things as normal mode when playing it for the exact same amount of time, hard mode will be DoA. That's just the way it is. Players will only use it once in a blue moon after a forma instead of moving on from normal mode. We already have historical examples of this, like Anthem's strongholds. 

That is inevitable because if the reward vs. effort scale is tipped towards favoring normal mode by virtue of offering the same rewards for less effort  **ANTHEM**, at that moment hard mode is no different than playing normal mode using only your feet.

Boosters will have to be the bare minimum there.

If people need special bonuses and rewards to do hardmode, they're not looking for a challenge, they're fishing for better rewards and bragging rights.

Whatever hardmode gets will at best only amount to higher drop rates, which is kind of already a thing with higher level enemies?  DE can't keep relearning the same lesson in that placing new toys/mods behind harder content will result in backlash from people that don't want to META build just to complete said content.  On that note, I guarantee if they take away pizzas, zenurik dash, and other miscellaneous outside methods of generating energy out the wazoo, players banking on energy the energy intensive strategies to wallop everything up to level 300+ will start screaming bloody murder, and I can lay the near complete elimination of all challenge in the game squarely at the feet of ability spam.

[XzWasPzX]

Use the Hard Mode to make dungeons, thats it. And dont just throw the player some usual challenges, make something completely new, never seen, in Warframe before. And of course, connect the mode to the rest of the game. That would be something that players could enjoy.

 

If you just give them missions with higher numbers... they will bore of it again. Dude no, do something nice and new, Warframe has not done anything new since Eidolon, gonna this happen again?

[XzWasPzX]

hace 6 horas, Leyers_of_facade dijo:

How about instead of 1 random modifier, hard mode have ALL of the modifier

 

think that will make it actually better? 🤔

Nope. We already have that in disruption missions.

New things, modes, is what we need. Gameplay needs to be fun and engaging again.

[vegetosayajin]

It all depends on the unique rewards.If not it will be just for lulz once in a full moon and for the content creators.

[Sekiberius]

Personally, i hope they add some new dual stat mods or more upgraded versions of mods that don't have one yet for hard mode rewards.
 

[Jarriaga]

3 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

If people need special bonuses and rewards to do hardmode, they're not looking for a challenge, they're fishing for better rewards and bragging rights.

Some people? For sure.

But it is not an unreasonable expectation for hard mode to result in better/more rewards than normal mode when playing for the same amount of time. Hard mode will be competing with normal mode. People will compare engagement levels to effort effort levels to reward levels, and if normal mode is favored on anything other than having a more relaxed experienced, it will hurt hard mode.

As pointed out before, we already have Anthem's strongholds as a clear example of this. And Anthem was a new game, so its community had not been trained to expect to get all the rewards with little to no effort. They noticed they were putting more effort in the hardest stronghold to get the same rewards as the easiest one and asked themselves "Why bother with the harder one?". No one had to tell them that.

3 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Whatever hardmode gets will at best only amount to higher drop rates, which is kind of already a thing with higher level enemies? 

Kinda but not really. I am strictly referring to the result of playing the same node for the same amount of time in both normal and hard, and the yield results from each. Obviously the enemies of hard mode earth will not yield as many resources as those of Sedna hard mode, but that point you're comparing hard mode to hard mode while I'm referring to 30 wave NORMAL Hydron defense results vs 30 wave HARD Hydron defense results.

3 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

DE can't keep relearning the same lesson in that placing new toys/mods behind harder content will result in backlash from people that don't want to META build just to complete said content. 

Then again, I can only hope DE stick to their guns against those people's opinions because wanting an easy hard mode is not a reasonable expectation. Hard mode is more restrictive by design. It's intentional. Not everything can compete. Plus, thus players can still farm plat in normal mode and bypass entire game modes altogether because DE allows you to buy progress with money. Exergis and Baruuk are examples of this.

3 hours ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

On that note, I guarantee if they take away pizzas, zenurik dash, and other miscellaneous outside methods of generating energy out the wazoo, players banking on energy the energy intensive strategies to wallop everything up to level 300+ will start screaming bloody murder, and I can lay the near complete elimination of all challenge in the game squarely at the feet of ability spam.

Agreed. I even pointed out this inconsistency when DE added the cooldown to Arcane Energize without addressing the energy pizza problem. It's a loophole.

[kgabor]

1 hour ago, Sekiberius said:

Personally, i hope they add some new dual stat mods or more upgraded versions of mods that don't have one yet for hard mode rewards.
 

Like dual stat IPS mods?

Primed/Umbral Stretch?

Primed 90% Elemental mods? (Like Primed Cryo rounds that we already have)

[fatpig84]

13 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

What you are describing is a symptom of WF not having a tier-based progression, but rather a strict RNG progression in order to prolong the process as much as possible. 

DE can't do much about it without introducing a new tier of weapons or arcanes exclusive to hard mode.

Thus, I believe they'll resort to XP and resource boosters so you still get more than in normal mode even if it's more of the same. An illusion, yes, but a very effective one for the purpose of not making you feel like you're handicapping yourself with little to no benefit.

Kuva and void traces will benefit from this in particular.

That is what ESO tried to do... And it is mostly untouched once you reach your desired foci (the most level headed ones just unlock the bound nodes and use their school of choice). 
Except for leveling weapons of course.

[Jarriaga]

11 minutes ago, fatpig84 said:

That is what ESO tried to do... And it is mostly untouched once you reach your desired foci (the most level headed ones just unlock the bound nodes and use their school of choice). 
Except for leveling weapons of course.

I dropped it before I even could. I maxed-out all 5 focus trees (With way-bounds!) and stockpiled an excess of 20 million unused focused and still didn't get the Blazing Step Ephemera.

Had to drop it and gave up on it because it was souring the game as a whole for me. I even got 3 full Braton Vandal sets, so no one can say I didn't try hard enough.

[DOOMPATRIOT]

Of course it will, everything in the last 3 years have been content islands, I don't think DE knows how to not do content islands anymore...

Also, as to rewards, I agree, if there are not good/ unique enough rewards, it will be just be a simulacrum simulation, rewards are the "good" thing about Warframe, (even though this past couple years have been underwhelming in that departament)

This is a looter shooter after all...

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

I’m kind of on the side of the challenge being the reward.
 

Trying to break your personal record in a survival is super fun but I almost never do it because I have a job and a life and rarely have the time to dump multiple hours into a single mission. Being able to start MOT at 100+ the base level is going to significantly cut down on that time sink.

I obviously can’t speak for everyone but I don’t even need rewards to enjoy this.

[HelmetTooTight]

At the end of the day, I think the challenge should be weighed more than just rewards; I play Kuva Floods not for the actual Kuva (I have millions now) but just for fun, because it is short, diverse, and higher level (but not challenging). I think most of the rewards should be mostly cosmetic, such as ephemeras. Want to wear the heads of your enemies (that epic shoulder armor that has a Corpus head with a Redeemer stuck through with it)? Trade in your elite tokens for that as a reward.

As for people cheesing the modifiers by picking the "easiest ones," the modifiers should be weighted so that the inherently difficult ones give increased multipliers. For example, energy drain would probably be weighted at a 5 times multiplier, while something trivial like low gravity would be weighted at like 0.5 times multiplier. In general, you could have the easy modifiers only be additive multipliers, while the difficult ones are multiplicative on top of that.

Also the base token reward should also be weighted based on game mode (e.g. Capture and Rescue give less base elite tokens than a long mission like defense or survival).

Something like: (Base elite token reward) * [1 + (Easy modifier multiplier 1) + (Easy modifier multiplier 2)] * (Difficult modifier multiplier 1) * (Difficult modifier multiplier 2)

 

For example:

• Augmented Enemy Armor (1.5x multiplicative)
• Augmented Enemy Shields (1.5x multiplicative)
• Cryogenic Leakage (Half shields) (1.5x multiplicative) (mutually exclusive with no shields)
• No shields (2x multiplicative)
• Fog (0.25x additive)
• Electromagnetic Anomalies/Low gravity (0.5x additive)
• Enemy Physical Enhancement (They take less physical damage and deal more of it) (1.5x multiplicative)
• Enemy Elemental Enhancement (They take less elemental damage and deal more of it) (1.5x multiplicative)
• Energy Reduction (Reduced energy pool and energy regen) (4x multiplicative)
• Energy Drain (5x multiplicative)
• Eximus Stronghold (More eximus units) (2x multiplicative)
• Extreme Cold (Slower movement e.g. bullet jumps, sprinting, rolling, reloading etc.) (0.5x additive)
• Fire (Half health/reduced health regen) (2x multiplicative)
• Vampire mode (health drain, killing restores) (1.25x multiplicative)
• One weapon only (e.g. rifle, melee, secondary, etc.) (0.5x additive)
• Death detonation (0.5x additive)
• Timer (kills add time) (0.25x additive)

So if you picked all of the easy ones and no difficult ones, you would have (Base elite token reward) * [1+ 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.25] = 2.5 * Base Elite Token Reward

Now if you just pick two of the more difficult ones, say  Augmented Enemy Armor (2x multiplicative) and Enemy Physical Enhancement (2x multiplicative), then you would have (Base elite token reward) * 2 * 2 = 4 * Base Elite Token Reward

If you stuck all of them on like a big pp gamer, you would have (Base elite token reward) * [1+ 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.25] * 1.5 * 1.5 * 2 * 1.5 * 1.5  * 4 * 5 * 2 * 1.25 = ~1263 * Base Elite Token Reward

 

Obviously, people are going to find a way to min-max this, which is why I think the reward should mostly be the challenge, and some additives of cosmetic rewards.Someone who is actually looking for a challenge will throw on all the multipliers and just have some fun. I just picked some random numbers as multipliers for each modifiers so they're not optimized to combat min-maxers

[Midas]

Yes

[-BG-MagicalAbyss]

For new player not really, but to vet, yes. What are the reasons to play this hard mode beside checking it out when we already have what we wanted? This just another stat-based challenge with potentially similar modifier that exist in sortie and nightmare mode..........

Yea sure more reward with the scaling and stuff for future contents, that more like QoL update than an actual contents for me anyways. How about going back and revisits all the potential end game contents they removed?

[Ham_Grenabe]

1 hour ago, -BG-MagicalAbyss said:

For new player not really, but to vet, yes. What are the reasons to play this hard mode beside checking it out when we already have what we wanted? This just another stat-based challenge with potentially similar modifier that exist in sortie and nightmare mode..........

Yea sure more reward with the scaling and stuff for future contents, that more like QoL update than an actual contents for me anyways. How about going back and revisits all the potential end game contents they removed?

Yeah, hard mode addresses no real audience: neither new players nor vets need it for anything, and it’s not sufficiently interesting on its own for anyone but a few players.

Kinda like weapon exilus mods, it seems like it’s mostly something for DE to point at when people say they don’t listen to feedback. 

[xcrimsonlegendx]

If anything I'll consistently use it for leveling purposes. Being able to start on high level enemies sounds incredibly useful.

[HelmetTooTight]

Well, looks like DE took the liberty to force upon everyone the "Augmented Enemy Armor" and "Augmented Enemy Shields" modifiers. There doesn't seem to be that many rewards at all besides orbiter decorations and it does seem to be a one and done completionist thing (if players decide to embark on the Steel Path at all). So I guess "challenge of bullet sponges will be the reward" in the end.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

Just let players select what extra conditions and levels of the ai. If the hardcores want to make it difficult just because that's up to them.

To the average person that has most everything the present rewards are meaningless dribble not worth anything at all.

I personally have no logical interest in hardmode.

Unless it gives me good cosmetics, 10k kuva, 10k endo, forma, or potatoes i do not care.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

On 2020-05-20 at 8:38 PM, ty91 said:

I dont see how they can ever add any rewards that can be "rewarding". more mods that we wont use? weapons that are fodder except one gem? will they continually add more new cosmetics?

Fashionframe is end game. People will collect cosmetics constantly. Things like kuva and endo are always useful. Forma as well.

Have hardmode reward badges to be used on a vendor for stuff.

Have cool skins themed around the planets and frames for clearing hard modes.

Example clear the jupiter hard mode nodes recieve a boss posion gas themed saryn skin. Clear ultra hard mode get a sky high zephyr skin. Clear ultra super duper mega hell mode get a spiffy ephemera, syandana, armor set, and wisp skin.

See what I'm saying.

[(PSN)Unstar]

Honestly, Hard Mode doesn't need to be sustainable, nor does it need to be anything but an island.  All it needs to be is a ride at the amusement park.  It's there for people who want that experience, when they want that experience.  The kind of people who want Hard Mode haven't been spending 2 hours in Survival for the rewards.

[kevoisvevo]

Hardmode is gonna die out just like frame fighter. No rewards no effort. Implying using meta cheese is even challenge on the first place with the brain dead AI and pathing.

 

[kyori]

Yes it is another content island. Next year there will be a new 'increased difficulty' game mode, just like every year before.

[Hayrack]

They will lock buch of content behind hard mode, like they did to force players into open worlds, mark my words...