THE STEEL PATH! Upcoming 'Hard Mode'.

[IEtherI]

So its nice to see  " Hard Mode " finally coming out. But I honestly have to say that this is what you consider better rewards? When will you get it? yeah cosmetics are nice but honestly what are you thinking. in what world is this considered good or normal high teir rewards? What you should be offering are things like fair amounts of Kuva, High chance at Rare mods like Condition overload, Weeping wounds, Blood rush and Growing Power ( or maybe some new rare powerful mods ), Some Unique Powerful weapons that you wont nerf 10 days after launch when people have put 5 forma on it, Rivens and yes UMBRAL FORMA! 

 

I dont mean to be rude but your concepts of rewards, balance and end game progression are just seriously flawed. You came close to the right idea with scarlet spear which was great content btw, however the rewards were very cheap and the weapons were very weak. If you had scarlet spear come back every 2-3 months like formian and razerback as repeating persistant event but each time added new weapons and rewards with umbral forma being the highest teir reward item available each time that would be great. if ya made it so anomaly shards dropped and made a vendor that we could trade those shards for Kuva, rivens or riven slivers. This would not only give rewards worth the grind but also offer a consistent progression tward mastery rank 30.

[Dovinjun]

"if you reject the conclave, I will kill you" ~Teshin Dax

[(XBOX)WafflyLearner89]

This is a great start. However, I believe that more can be done to allow for more challenge. Potentially, steel path could have a second mode that applies unique enemy mechanics that up the ante along with significant warframe ability adjustments (to make them more strategic if that makes any sense) to allow for more skill based gameplay difficulty.

Will probably make a post going more in-depth with this idea sometime in the future. 

[Flying_Scorpion]

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

What it is:
✅ Higher Difficulty Series of content that rewards exclusive cosmetic decorations, emotes, and mastery.

Makes sense. Tying exclusive mods, arcanes, weapons, warframes, etc to the Steel Path could potentially create balance issues and also make players feel compelled to play hard mode ("you *have* to play it kind of mindset) which could create friction in the community and lead to people whining that it's too hard and for DE to either nerf the difficulty or for DE to buff the rewards.

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

✅An extra layer of opportunity for players to use their powerful gear to take on threats at a higher level without having to wait in missions for long periods of time.

This is core to the issue. Thank you for acknowledging this.

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

✅ A way to engage with some better scaling Affinity and Mod Rewards.

This seems like a fair extrinsic reward that can work in the long run, but the question comes down to balance... Once people have finished collecting cosmetic items, they will probably need some other form of extrinsic motivation to play the steel path. Tying regular rewards accessible to everyone - but with better time efficiency, seems fair to me. The question is what's the right balance? 10 minutes of Steel Path = 11 minutes of normal? 10 Minutes of Steel Path = 15 minutes of normal? I wish you guys the best of luck with balancing this.

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

❌ - intended to be associated with the nebulous ‘end game’ topic.

I don't understand, why does it matter whether or not it's associated with the 'end game'? Is it because if it was considered 'end game' that people would feel compelled to do it, even if they didn't like it? How do you plan to make sure it's disassociated with the end game?

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

❌ - overly complicated in its goal to simply provide higher level content and some exclusive rewards.

Seems fair, considering you guys have so much else on your plate, like the new player experience, modular archwings, Corpus Railjack enemies/levels, .... balancing status effects...

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

❌ - tiered. We are providing one 100+ level pass to be cognizant of matchmaking for our first iteration. 

This also makes sense since two extra difficulty levels would contribute a lot towards dividing the playerbase between different game modes and could lead to a lack of matchmaking. Honestly matchmaking in and of itself could be problematic if the playerbase doesn't grow at the same rate that new game modes, nodes, difficulty levels, etc are added to the game. Maybe it's worth considering making a more flexible matchmaking system that allows people to be matched based on whatever activity they are interested in, like Railjack, Kuva Liches, Orokin Derelict, etc. Then again, you guys have a lot on your plate. Just some food for thought, thanks for all the work you guys are doing though!

 

I put my thoughts into a video here too if you'd like to see: 

 

[SunsetChaos]

How to make it even harder:

• Public matchmaking only.
• 8 players squad.
• Self damage on.
• Friendly fire on.
• Friendship doors are back.

[-LauFeyson-]

waiting for at least for decoration.

[-LauFeyson-]

5 minutes ago, SunsetChaos said:

How to make it even harder:

• Public matchmaking only.
• 8 players squad.
• Self damage on.
• Friendly fire on.
• Friendship doors are back.

8 player squad against 8 players--> it will be battle royale. i dont mind it, but you have to consider that it will be hard to optimize the game for such type of mod and for so many players

[xRufus7x]

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

Teshin is after you being able to face Sentient, and other nasties which conclave doesn't prepare you for in anyway of value.

Not in real life due to the gameplay differences between conclave and standard gameplay but in lore Teshin sets up the conclave so Tenno can practice against each other to hone their combat skills for when the sentient arrive. As I said, he is about honing your skills against difficult enemies. In the case of Conclave, that means other Tenno. For the new update that will mean new enemies. So yah he makes lore sense for this.

 

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

If your setting says you are powerful, there should be a good mechanical reason that meshed with setting as to why you are not. That hasn't really been addressed in any of the lazy calls for just having higher leveled enemies.

Not everything needs it though. Some things are just gameplay mechanics. Also, you literally have no idea what the lore implications of this are but the fact that Teshin is involved means there is some sort of lore tied into it.

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

Arbitration missions are restrictive only in the avenue that endless missions are the most played missions anyway and the ones that most care about enemy level in the first place.

Arbitration missions are restrictive because there is only one available at a time, they are on a cooldown and you can't control the mission type, along with the previously mentioned only endless mission criteria.

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

What practical restriction do we have again, but like many missions no one likes doing a mission they don't like, this doesn't change that.

It does give them more options. High level rewards will now be available on low level nodes as drop tables are influenced by level ranges which effect enemy spawns potentially reward rotations.

 

9 hours ago, Urlan said:

Also, to make those lvl 90-110 or higher lich nodes more 'interesting' thralls are immune to many powers and status while Liches have their own, what do you gain fighting them at that point versus at their starting levels again?

The higher level enemies are the purpose. If you want to stress test your builds you want to have a variety of different options to do it in and right now our access to that conterent is heavily restricted to only a few nodes at a time unless you use liches to spread their red juice around. It is also just more fun then the simulcrum IMO.

[xRufus7x]

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

i certainly hope that this does infact adjust those Reward Pools to filter out the non-rewards, though.
in addition to Cosmetics and Et Cetera.

Matchmaking is very important to a lot of game types, while Diablo works as a Solo with Leaderboards game, Warframe is definitely more suited to having functional Matchmaking.
having 2802685 Tiers of the game would mean Warframe would just be a Solo game.

It already is on the vast majority of nodes and Warframe and Diablo both have a combination of cooperative and solo play. The used nodes will stay populated because thewy are used for efficiency reasons or because they have something exclusive. The rest of the nodes will still be dead so nothing would really change.

[Crazy_Stalker]

Yes, we waited for a more complex mode. Teshin?

[Nirau]

Excited to take another full Star Chart trip. It's kinda like return in your old town.

 

[--RV--Cola]

12 hours ago, .OwOkin. said:

THE  C O N C L A V E   2

Now you can PvP with players in actual missions! Kappa.

[Aadi880]

If smug dancing is the final emote reward, this is definatly worth it then 😉

[IGN_Maverick]

If rewards are not appealing, I won't be interested to play it more than 1-2 times. Simple as that.

[Jorak_Falconstar]

do not tie mastery to this..  

There are enough sources of mastery and a few that are missing (certain non-founder weapons etc) that are still needing to be reintroduced that this mode should have no bearing on mastery

[taiiat]

2 hours ago, xRufus7x said:

It already is on the vast majority of nodes

yeah, and that fragmenting remains a problem that the game has generally just made worse over the years. having 2, 3, 4 versions of the same Mission node is not the way to go about things, it makes everything feel like an island.
and adding Tiers on top of that? man i hope you like playing Solo, because that's what that would mean.

[bkmzli]

Very interesting!!!

[Youqi]

I would really like to see an Ultimate/Legendary Sanctuary Onslaught, which also has these modifiers for higher levels on them

[MPonder]

@[DE]Rebecca

❌ - intended to be associated with the nebulous ‘end game’ topic.

Like everything in the game. LOL.

❌ - overly complicated in its goal to simply provide higher level content and some exclusive rewards.

Like everything in the game. LOL.

❌ - tiered. We are providing one 100+ level pass to be cognizant of matchmaking for our first iteration. 

Like everything in the game. LOL.

 

Nothing new, just the same missions with higher level enemies.

[GreyDeath789]

The Steel Path...a new game mode where you can use your best weapon builds with rivens for at most three months until DE changes your rivens and requires you to come up with new builds to continue on The Steel Path...

This is true 'end game' content for Warframe...chasing the never ending 'ultimate' build...

Can Not Wait!

Simply The Ultimate Player Idea Developed for Warframe...

 

[(NSW)WesFX]

Well, as someone that plays mostly solo (I welcome the teammates when they are there, though) matchmaking is simply not a concern.

I was looking forward to a more tiered approach, to have a space to use the game's unique, yet lower Mastery Rank weapons, which intentionally offer lower damage output. Warframes can enhance weapon damage, of course, but not all frames do this and I appreciate a freedom to not be hard stuck to that archetype. As well, I'd rather not play the Riven market to experience if all of these kinds of weapons are up to snuff.

I don't have a lot of experience against 100-150 range enemies. Scarlet Spear is pretty much it. So it's mostly just a theory that some of your game's weapons won't keep up. I suppose I'm mostly concerned with running out of ammo if my time in the Simulacrum is any indication.

Honestly, Affinity and Credit gains from higher levels is enough for me. I just want a playground to try all my gear in.

[kyori]

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

❌ - intended to be associated with the nebulous ‘end game’ topic.

Maybe you should clear the air once and for all by saying there will never be 'end game' stuff.

[Sudzaky]

Teshin, i wanna to taste new blood of my enemy!!!

[lavsan]

Finally, Teshin has resurfaced.

[Koga.]

Ah yes, thank you for the Unique rewards I can finally add more new decoration to my Orbiter! now i can flex hard on my clan Mates truly what i needed thank you.