Warframe isn't meant to be "challenging".

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

First of all, nobody seems to ever agree on what "challenging" is. But there seems to be *some* agreement that a "challenging" game should have real risk of failure, but at the same time the challenge should be fair. When you lose you should feel like its your fault, or that you could have done something differently. 

Getting killed or losing a mission and thinking "welp. Theres nothing I could have done about that" isnt fun. Its just annoying.

I dont think warframe will *ever* be "challenging" the way some people on this forum want it to be and I think certain groups of people don't get it.

In no particular order:

1) most maps have enemies spawning in all directions making strategic use of cover, a staple in virtually every "challenging" shooter game, pretty much impossible. 

 

2) there is an enormous difference in survivability between the squishiest frames and the tankiest frames. What constitutes "this enemy is dangerous enough that i have to actually pay attention" to a frame like inaros is near instant death to someone else. *

3) there is an enormous difference in dps between some frame abilities and others. What constitutes "not immediately get evaporated" for one frame can be "bullet spongey as #*!%" to someone else. *

4) there is an enormous difference in DPS between the best weapons and the lower/middle end. Again* 

5) like Pablo said, crowd control abilities can lock enemies completely down and practically turn their ai off, but imagine the "friction", and by friction I mean rage, if every crowd control ability in the game got nerfed. 

6) I feel like its worth noting that even "challenging" games like dark souls or the new DOOM games or halo on legendary or whatever other game you want to throw down are meant to be fair and winnable... meaning that guess what, if you actually know how to play the game, they aren't that difficult anymore. 

 

If you want more than stat tweaks like the steel path mode, if you want this game to be "balanced" and "challenging" but you don't want cheese tactics to be viable or enemies to just be bullet sponges DE would have to rework practically the whole game to make that happen.

 

It takes them months if not years to rework ONE FRAME. But reworking weapon balance, survivability, abilities, ai, map design, without just nerfing half the game into the ground, is a monumental ask. You think mesa shouldn't exist the way she does? What are you gonna replace her current state with? Because if the answer is just NERF THE S#&$ OUT OF HER you.might as well just delete her from the game. And that monumental ask gets silly when you consider that 1) it isn't something everyone wants and 2) a lot of people would rage if their investment in everything that would have tk be nerfed into the ground for the sake of "challenge" was invalidated. 

 

And its amazing how many people want to act like DE should treat their players like the time and money they've invested into their gear shouldnt matter at all.

 

[(XBOX)ONI Prowess]

its an ARPG like diablo or path of exile, the point IS to clear massive amounts of mobs of mobs in the blink of an eye.

if you want to spend 15 minutes clearing a room play destiny, if you want to spend half an hour clearing a room play the division. 

[Xaero]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)ONI Prowess said:

the point IS to clear massive amounts of mobs of mobs in the blink of an eye

If that's the whole point, why is it only achievable with few certain loadouts? Why isn't every frame a nuker, for example?

[(NSW)Matt-S]

ARPGs like Diablo have infinite scaling rounds though, where at some point you will get your ass kicked and have to figure out how to kill the enemies, either by farming better gear or learning strategies to deal with them.

It's not necessarily about the game being "too fast" or should be "slower", rather right now, you just look at enemies and they die and it gets boring after a while. There's no real reason to push in Warframe, and that is what people want.

[SneakyErvin]

If DE implemented the things needed it could be challenging, adding more health, armor and shields is not it though. They already have a unit available that they could tweak a little to make missions more challenging and less spam friendly. A rework of the eximus idea is all it takes while also increasing how common they are. They could easily interact with allies to prohibit us from spamming based on what auras they provide. Add weakspots to them so we actually need to focus on taking them down and not just farting in their general direction with an ability or landing some AoE on them.

It would give us reasons to use our full arsenal, with different damage type setups and so on.

[Voltage]

On 2020-07-03 at 1:12 PM, (NSW)Matt-S said:

There's no real reason to push in Warframe, and that is what people want.

Nah, I don't believe for an instant that the target audience wants to push themself. Any time we get a new update, the grind needs to be reduced. Any time we get something that takes a bit of gear progression, it needs to be watered down (see: how Shield Gating affects survivability, 6 revives per mission, Arbitration revives system, Railjack enemy scaling nerfs, the "gear gets too restrictive" argument for Steel Path, and my favorite one: "Bullet sponges aren't real difficulty!!!"). Any time enemies have a way to survive longer or react to our attacks, there's an excuse. "It's cheap/cheesy/annoying/etc.!" News flash: Enemies need to have a chance to hurt you and force you to deal with targets differently rather than face-rolling a mission in order to provide any meaningful combat feedback.

What I have noticed is that people want more and more rewards, but they don't want to earn it, and they don't want it to be testing their builds. Warframe is extremely casual. Warframe promotes variety over progression. "Everything is viable" is why Warframe Revised and Melee 3.0 has made the game extremely shallow in combat. You point, you smash E or click, and the enemy is demolished without any feedback. People who acquire a few core basic DPS mods will obliterate almost all content DE puts out. And when they don't? Like Scarlet Spear, it needs to be toned down so that bad builds can compete with good ones.

The Steel Path's chance to actually spice up Archwing combat and use some weapon + ability combos is out the window with the changes coming to make them boring level 50 enemies so a poorly modded Imperator can chew through them.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

29 minutes ago, Xaero said:

If that's the whole point, why is it only achievable with few certain loadouts? Why isn't every frame a nuker, for example?

Because there's no point in having multiple warframes be too similar to eachother. Even the nuke frames or tanks, for example, behave pretty differently.

34 minutes ago, (XB1)ONI Prowess said:

its an ARPG like diablo or path of exile, the point IS to clear massive amounts of mobs of mobs in the blink of an eye.

if you want to spend 15 minutes clearing a room play destiny, if you want to spend half an hour clearing a room play the division. 

This. Ive played the division and bullet sponges are not what I want to deal with.

4 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Nah, I don't believe for an instant that the target audience wants to push themself. Any time we get a new update, the grind needs to be reduced. Any time we get something that takes a bit of gear progression, it needs to be watered down (see: Railjack and the "gear gets too restrictive" argument for Steel Path). What I have noticed is that people want more and more rewards, but they don't want to earn it, and they don't want it to be testing their builds. Warframe is extremely casual. Warframe promotes variety over progression. "Everything is viable" is why Warframe Revised and Melee 3.0 has made the game extremely shallow in combat. You point, you smash E or click, and the enemy is demolished without any feedback. People who acquire a few core basic DPS mods will obliterate almost all content DE puts out. And when they don't? Like Scarlet Spear, it needs to be toned down so that bad builds can compete with good ones.

I think you hit it with "target audience". 

[(XBOX)ONI Prowess]

41 minutes ago, Xaero said:

If that's the whole point, why is it only achievable with few certain loadouts? Why isn't every frame a nuker, for example?

because diversity and playstyle is a thing, even if not optimal.

i sometimes run just the braton prime because i want to use a classic assault rifle, i also really like playing as Garuda even though she is subjectively bad compared to other frames.

i could only use the bramma or only use octavia, but i dont want to, nor is it required.

 

 

i pushed rifts in D3 (trag'oul necro, was so happy when i got the matching wings) but the builds required to push that content were far excessive to what was needed for the majority of the game, but that was fine, is it allowed many players to play with all kinds of setups and still play the game, and i was able to breeze through the content with a build and setup i felt i had earned through all the time and effort i had put into the game.

 

 

the only "difficulty increase" i want is to have the extreme mob spawns we see in hard mode in all game modes.  

[0_The_F00l]

I put this purely on DEs shoulders,

They have dug themselves into a ditch on one side with game mechanics that do not allow for diversity and allowed a snowball to roll down the slope on the other by continous power creep.

I personally feel it is possible to balance , but the task is gonna be unsavoury for a lot of the players that have gotten used to it and also be extremely resource consuming for the devs.

The only thing they can do now is keep digging until they run out of ground and wait for the snowball to hit to bury them in it.

 

You could just choose NOT to go down in that ditch yourself if you dont mind staying stagnant.

[TARINunit9]

56 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

6) I feel like its worth noting that even "challenging" games like dark souls or the new DOOM games or halo on legendary or whatever other game you want to throw down are meant to be fair and winnable... meaning that guess what, if you actually know how to play the game, they aren't that difficult anymore. 

This. You can't win Warframe with skill, only preparation. After all,

56 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

1) most maps have enemies spawning in all directions making strategic use of cover, a staple in virtually every "challenging" shooter game, pretty much impossible. 

It's kill them before they kill you, for every single encounter

[Hypernaut1]

Warframe can be challenging. Problem is some people love using buzzwords as excuses for the difficulty they experience. If an enemy hits hard, its cheap. If it survives, it's too tanky. If it CCs it's cheese. Players that don't want challenge will always find a way to call any potential challenge a cheese tactic. 

I know Warframe can be challenging because anytime an enemy that's challenging is released, there's tons of crying on forums and subsequent nerfing of enemies. 

Warframe enemies can hit hard, CC, survive damage and give us a hard time. Anyone arguing against this is just scared of actually needing to change their tactics up a bit. 

I can go back and recall many enemies that gave players trouble. I always say this, but it's to highlight how far things have been nerfed- Even ROLLERS were problem at a time. 

 

[Corvid]

2 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

If an enemy hits hard without warning, its cheap.

 

[Silvertap]

IDK...

When i first played Warframe 3 years ago, i didn't know a thing about warframe, i got to MR11 with much effort and was very challenging and fun, specially because i was trying to play mainly solo. I remember Uranos been the planet that i had the most dificulty, man enemies where hard to kill and hited like a truck, i had to remake my builds and try to look for more knowledge. I enjoyed this memory very much and really would like that "Hard Mode" could bring me that back.

Also since Inaros Prime is comming, maybe that is the time to kill the bullet sponge, and remake him, in a effort to remove the cheese (IMO). 

[Hypernaut1]

14 minutes ago, Corvid said:

 

No it's not. The warning is "this enemy is going to spawn, be prepared" the fact that you know that enemies are going to spawn has been warning plenty enough in WARFRAME. 

Snipers used to be deadly. After encountering them the first few times, a skilled player should understand..."if I enter this room, there's a good chance a sniper is there. Maybe I shouldn't just waltz in there to deal with the fodder. Maybe I should parkour into room and find the sniper and take them out". IMO, the red dot and sniper cue noise was more than enough warning. What we have now is practically 0 damage and very slow reaction time for snipers. They're pointless now. 

At a certain difficulty level, a player should be ANTICIPATING what the enemy will do. I don't buy into the idea that every enemy needs a 5 second long warning that they're going to attack. Not at high level play. 

Also, sometimes difficulty should be about getting knocked over and just regaining the advantage. The idea that enemy should NEVER catch you off guard is lame. A player seeking difficulty should be ok with the occasional blindsided. A player with skill will know how to recover. 

The old scrambas changed the scenario in an instant. Yes, maybe it wasn't fair that you lost your abilities without warning, but a skilled player found a way to compensate and eventually regained the advantage.  That's challenge. "How do you recovery from losing your abilities". That's not cheese. 

Same with other enemies. An ancient hooks you unexpectedly? Ok, recover as fast as you can, escape and destroy them. So what if you didn't see it coming, overcome. That's challenge. Next time, enter the room and seek high ground. Use your knowledge of enemy capabilities to strategize how you approach them. 

Corpus drones used to drop deadly blue orbs. You simply needed to kill them before they dropped the orbs or escape if you got overwhelmed. That's challenge. And it existed in Warframe. 

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

4 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

 

The old scrambas changed the scenario in an instant. Yes, maybe it wasn't fair that you lost your abilities without warning, but a skilled player found a way to compensate and eventually regained the advantage.  That's challenge. "How do you recovery from losing your abilities". That's not cheese. 

I didnt think the old scrambas were designed well. I dont think it was a bad thing, necessarily  that they could drain energy or disable certain abilities but they had a habit of doing that shiz through walls when you had no way of knowing they were even there. Some frames like Inaros wouldn't care but for frames like Rhino it would result in instant death because oh hey my iron skin just popped without warning.

[Hypernaut1]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

I didnt think the old scrambas were designed well. I dont think it was a bad thing, necessarily  that they could drain energy or disable certain abilities but they had a habit of doing that shiz through walls when you had no way of knowing they were even there. Some frames like Inaros wouldn't care but for frames like Rhino it would result in instant death because oh hey my iron skin just popped without warning.

Ok, well we don't see eye to eye on that. I don't think it matters if you knew they were there. All that matters is that with all the tools we have now, you can still hunt them down kill them and then continue being OP. If you died, then maybe you just weren't skilled enough. You can use operator to escape, you can mod differently to provide survivability, you can retreat. Maybe you can carry a secondary for CC. We have tools BESIDES ironskin. I used Mag, and I dealt with them fine. 

For all the complaints about scrambas, I don't remember failing many missions because of them. So really all it was were people whining that they were briefly interrupted waltzing around with ironskin in braindead mode killing hordes of targets. 

[Corvid]

14 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

"this enemy is going to spawn, be prepared"

Last I checked, game balance wasn't based around the player having future vision.

[Xaero]

40 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Because there's no point in having multiple warframes be too similar to eachother.

So, in a game where you only need to kill fast there's no need to have every tool kill fast? That's like saying "there's no point in having only planes and helicopters in aviasimulator, let's have a boat".

[ikkabotz]

Well something needs to change to pull myself back into the game, I've grown super bored steam rolling everything. It doesn't matter how many new content drops or game modes are dropped if I can continually defeat enemies so easily that I don't even get to appreciate said effort to develop the game. I'm not saying this to be spiteful, it's just my honest impression that when I use the things I spent the time to acquire in game, the mobs die so quickly. I'd like to still use that which I acquired and enjoy the combat too. I feel that's a reasonable ask. When the time to kill is too fast, it starts feeling too much a "push button to immediately resolve situation" kind of thing. I don't necessarily need more challenge, just want to have fun at the end of the day. I really like some of the format of games like diablo where you encounter a "boss" with combat modifiers between the easier mobs to melt.   

[Hypernaut1]

30 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Last I checked, game balance wasn't based around the player having future vision.

Future vision? You mean strategy? The idea that a player should just blindly waltz into every room annihilating everything is why enemies are constantly nerfed. 

If you like that, fine. I'm hoping Warframe Steel Path provides a challenge for players that have the skill and strategy to overcome enemies that are more than just waking bullet sponges. 

 

 

[kevoisvevo]

1 hour ago, Xaero said:

If that's the whole point, why is it only achievable with few certain loadouts? Why isn't every frame a nuker, for example?

You have a good point. Remove mesa's auto-aim and give it more manual feed like ash and she would still be an amazing dps frame. Remove her shatter shield and she would still be an amazing glass canon dps. But since she has amazing dps, amazing tanking ability and autoaim to boot. She becomes the meta is almost all the squads.

[General-Pacman]

Nonsense. Adding challenging content makes the game cater to a wider amount of players; and the development of steel path was probably rather simple, since DE didn't have to make any radical or complex new feature (they simply added +100 to base level of all the existing missions). So, now we have a new game system that is more attractive to an almost ignored subset of players, and that was super cheap to implement. If you ask me,  it's a win-win situation.

[Loza03]

I believe you're conflating challenge with difficulty.

All games are meant to be challenging. That is, arguably, a part of the very definition of a game - in order for something to be a 'game', there must be a fail state, even one as arbitrary as simply being unable to progress. You must be able to 'lose'. Most 'games' without one are usually something like an interactive movie, or a social space - almost always having significant value in their own right, of course, but aren't 'games'. This is why kicking a ball around is distinct from a game of football. In video games, this usually means a series of challenges, generally all using the same, or a number of consistent rulesets.

Difficulty, meanwhile, is simply how easy an activity is to complete. A hard game, therefore, is a series of challenges that are very difficult to complete. There are a number of forms of engagement that are related to the difficulty and the player's skill level: namely relaxation, arousal (In this case excitement, as arousal has... other meanings) and flow. Consider this chart:

Spoiler

For the purposes of this, it'd be reasonable to consider the 'challenge level' as 'difficulty level', since I'm fairly sure this chart wasn't designed for a situation where the distinction was important.

When designing a game, it is good to know which forms of engagement are desirable and which are not. Flow is often held up as the ideal - it's that zen-like state of total concentration you sometimes get into when playing a game you're really good at. However, excitement can have its own benefits - this is often where the player is when they are learning something new and more difficult. This allows for the satisfaction of getting better at something. Control and Relaxation, likewise, have their own benefits - they are calming and cathartic. And there is absolutely no problem with Warframe generally aiming towards that end of the spectrum. Warframe does not need to be Dark Souls - it does not need to be difficult.

 

However.

 

You can also see from this chart that there are just as many undesirable states you can put your players into. Of course, we don't want the game to induce anxiety, because that's not fun for anyone, but we equally do not want to induce boredom or apathy. In my opinion, there is nothing worse than a game you just feel nothing for. And so we must consider how to ensure that players stay in the control and relaxation zones as much as possible - what Hugo Martin, creative director of the recent DOOM games calls their 'fun zone'.

As can be seen from this chart, something that is both easy and unskilled is what induces apathy and boredom. And that is the problem presented by Warframe's current state - there is very, very minimal skill involved, neither cognitively or mechanically. We do not need to make interesting loadouts, nor make interesting moment-to-moment gameplay decisions. Since the player rarely needs to either develop or use skills, Warframe can rapidly go from the initial arousal and flow states, where the player is roughly on par with content and hasn't unlocked or discovered the abilities which borderline automate the gameplay down to the boredom and apathy states.

To once again cite Hugo Martin, very few players will actively make decisions that benefit their entry into the 'fun zone', because humans are fickle, stubborn beings. And so the game designer must. For DOOM Eternal, where that zone is flow (perhaps fluctuating with Control), this inspired many of the design differences between 2016's DOOM and Eternal - the move towards lower ammo counts, more resource management. For Warframe, I'm not 100% sure what changes would be needed, but considering the state we are in, I am sure that those changes do need to be made.

[NekroArts]

13 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Last I checked, game balance wasn't based around the player having future vision.

It's not about "having future vision", it's about "after knowing and understanding the mechanics". First time experiencing something, yeah, you're gonna get your butt kicked, but after some exposure and understanding players by then should have full understanding of it. I disagree with Hypernaut1 about the old Scrambus with their old effect of invisible aura, but things like Ancients hooks can be foreseen after understanding.

[Xaero]

1 hour ago, (XB1)ONI Prowess said:

i could only use the bramma or only use octavia, but i dont want to, nor is it required.

How can it not be required if

1 hour ago, (XB1)ONI Prowess said:

the point IS to clear massive amounts of mobs of mobs in the blink of an eye

?