The Steel Path: Feedback Megathread!

[(PSN)Pragmatic_2015]

On 2020-07-10 at 1:50 PM, Gentleman_Bird said:

This will definitely anger the conclave tryhards, which is why we should absolutely do that

It's a series of content islands. What I'm suggesting is a series of multiple optional bridges between each one. The player doesn't need to cross each bridge to get to each island but the players choice should always be respected.

[Shiva]

Dude, the leaderboards for this... I think they forgot that little detail, there is no separate list either, nothing. 

[Ewengrad]

Little thing, i think phobos decoration for ship should be more like the planet it represent? Like, look at it in game, its not perfectly shaped ball planet... but on decoration it is. Also picture on emote, it should not rotate, i mean yea its fun but that just look like lame jpg not like hologram. My opinion at least

[Orakan]

On 2020-07-09 at 4:03 AM, Aisu9 said:

oh yeah, because people have to play the meta for winning the steel path ?

you don't need any meta to finish steel path you just need to be a veteran player with enough mod player and knowledge of the game . Don't worry you will get there in time

[Orakan]

On 2020-07-09 at 4:48 AM, PresidentLegend said:

Enemy Lethality - Enemies, while a lot tankier, are not seeming to me that much more dangerous. And perhaps that's a good thing, but enemies don't really feel dangerous, like I could feasibly be killed by one. I would, instead of just increasing their overall damage, heavily increase their accuracy, bringing it closer to what it used to be, while not quite as high: 80-90% should be good. This would make it so that if you choose to bring a DPS Warframe that's not very tanky, you will have to know what you are doing in order to stay alive.

In addition, I personally want to see some enemies in the future that may be immune to Warframe crowd control, or, at least, less susceptible to it like Sentients to Limbo's Statis. Whether these would be a new enemy type like the Scrambus or Nuliffier, or just something added on to every enemy, IDK, but i really would like to see that. I also wouldn't mind seeing you guys add those Immunity nodes onto Eximus units like we saw you guys suggest back in 2017 on Devstream 87, or heavy DR unless you shoot them, like the Nox.

Planetary Rewards - Self explanatory. The statue in your ship rarely ever gets looked at anyways, and no one really does emotes. Don't remove them, but I'd add things like, perhaps a Sigil and Emblems for each planet as well. It could also be cool to have Glyphs for each planet too, eventually leading up to a Glyph of the Sun/Solar System. An Ephemera upon completion of the entire Star Chart could be great too. See below for more details.

 

Whole point of endless missions are getting enemeies much more toughter and twith more damage . So if you want more damage you can do endless missions and you will get the damage output trust me. But sadly rewards are insignificant like you have said and needs to be buffed at least 15 times, . 

Immune to warframe crowd control abilities is another bad thing cause if enemies keep getting immune to abilities it will turn warframe to other loother shooters in the market which is only shooting and in our case hitting with melees. In endurance runs abilities our crucial and abilties are the real powers of warframes not tenno weaponry. That is why warframe doesn't have ability cool downs like others , that is what makes warframe unique . So that immune to abilities is realy realy realy a very bad idea. 

[HansLuft778]

I would actually really like to be able to buy Forma Blueprints from Teshing with Steel essence.

[SordidDreams]

19 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

What part of the armor is sexualizing? It transforms the "minor" body into an adult, so it is technically no longer a minor.

That. Exactly that. Only in the mind of a deranged lunatic does putting fake boobs on a minor make her technically an adult.

[(PSN)Zer0-Rama]

Just did I post about rewards and y its needed. So I'll just add it here. Didn't know about this megathread 

[MasterQuibe]

So I think the resources drop bonus should be cumulative so we can make big farms, the logic is simple more difficult = more rewards

[Sasuga]

On 2020-07-09 at 9:05 AM, Sasuga said:

Dang 😕

And thanks!

You know, for defense, and survival, etc. I'm honestly not interested in 'smarter'. Though, any easy tricks anyone might come up with to make them seam so might be cool if noticed. It's more or less just the spy and other supposed to be sneaky ones.

For the record, though it should go in a different thread, I'd love it if more missions required stealth the whole way through.

[DealerOfAbsolutes]

The Steel Path sorta highlights how far the Damage system has regressed.

Viral/Slash/Hunter Munitions is just the old "Armor Piercing" element with extra steps, prayers to RNGesus and takes up more mod space.

I can't even imagine how salty players were back when this:

Got nerfed into this:

With the capped armor strip of Corrosive, Steel Path enemies (who have 2.5x the armor) still have 50% of the armor of their level 100+ Star Chart variant at 10 Corrosive procs which is still plenty of DR that Slash just outright ignores.

Aside from Warframe powers, Operators and brute force damage, Viral/Slash is the only sensible option to armor like "Armor Piercing" of old unless the enemy is status immune.

There probably needs to be an Armor 2.0.

From:

Damage Reduction = Net Armor / (Net Armor +300)

To something like:

Damage Reduction = Net Armor / (Net Armor + 300 + *Base Puncture of Weapon*(1+%Puncture mods))

The flat +50% damage and 50% armor ignore Puncture has against Ferrite right now doesn't scale very well. If Puncture Damage itself scaled with armor mitigation, it would allow slow firing precision weapons that can't stack status to scale a bit better. It also makes more sense that armor would resist small arms fire more than something like the Opticor. 

Could anyone imagine the Opticor was actually good against armor without Hunter Munitions RNGesus?

Slash>>>Puncture against armor for years, yet the UI still says Puncture is "most effective against armor". Puncture loses to Slash procs against Heavy Gunners as early as level 40s and in the Steel Path, Puncture Damage just tickles the Grineer. The disparity of balance between IPS should have been the first thing to look over before nerfing Corrosive and Gas.

[Silvertap]

Ok, i have played all steel path...  i can already make my opnions about it i guess.

Its is a fun mode, it allowed me to use my warframes to their full. Man, it brings back the memory when i had chanllenge in warframe... I mean, i'm MR29 and have 3k+ hour, its not like i don't know what to do when the challenge comes to me, so can defeat it without a headache, but i can feel that it is not a simple gameplay as it was before, and having to pay attention, and plan things is fun. Enemies aren't as hard nuts as Youtuber sounded (or maybe the changes that DE made really made an effect). Archwing is too easy, but i have no interest in that, so i won't complain about it (actully i prefer like that).

Actually there is only 2 down sides, one is what people have been talking a lot already - Rewards from Teshin store and Essence drop rate. I think store could have more rewards, but it isn't that big of problem IF! i can have a better essence drop, otherwise, i can't see myself trying to go for endless mission farming, or even doing the eidolong after i get my Teshin costume. I just want to stress it, essecen dorp is almost a mith, i spent almost 1h in Mot to drop only one essence.

Second is not of a real problem of the mode, is just a opnion of warframes in general, Some warframes has the power to kill this content pretty fast and almost effortlessly. I think this is a good time for some balancing in warframes. Baruuk 4 is too strong, Khora's kit is too efficient, Inaros keeps been the world confort zone, Nyx second skill is a boss killer, Wukong Smoke is freaking too good, i mean these are some exemples that a slight nerf should help... and other warframes can receive a slight boosts too, to be more useful...(just opnions, don't freak too much about it)

Well, overall, well done DE!    

[izhiari]

this is for the drop rate of steel essence.

 

1: at the final of a mision we gain one, like, for complete the mision

 

2: the first eximus killed drop 100% 1 essence, and the next eximus have -33% each time a essence is droped, so the 1 is 100%, 2 is 67% , 3 is 34% 4 is 5%, and after that the eximus not drop essence anymore. (only on normal missions)

 

3: for endless missions each time we complete a round we gain 1, like at 5, 10, 15 and 20 we gain 1, after that on 25 and 35, and the final one at 50, (on 30, 40 and 45 we have a 20% of chance to gain 1) after the round 50 there is a 5% of drop.

and the eximus after the 4 one, they still have the 5% of drop.

 

so, we play a normal mission like capture and if we are lucky we can gain a max. of 5 (maybe the average will be 3 per mission), if we are not, at least we can have 1, and for the endless mission for round 20 if we are lucky we can have 9.

another thing i was thinking was, what happend if we complete the steel path?, i like to say maybe a buff on the drop rate of resources,  we have 100% and with the steel path complete 50% plus, that is to make the veterans come to farm on steel path and gain the essense at the same time, so the RNG and the farm of the essence is not boring and frustrating.

so if DE upload more stuff on the steel path we already have some essence and this make, the rewards, the merch, the mode will work together.

if you have a issue with some of this, pls comment and tell me what is.

[Shyltar]

il y a 44 minutes, Silvertap a dit :

Actually there is only 2 down sides, one is what people have been talking a lot already - Rewards from Teshin store and Essence drop rate. I think store could have more rewards, but it isn't that big of problem IF! i can have a better essence drop, otherwise, i can't see myself trying to go for endless mission farming, or even doing the eidolong after i get my Teshin costume. I just want to stress it, essecen dorp is almost a mith, i spent almost 1h in Mot to drop only one essence.
 

I am afraid that if you got only one essence after 1h of survival, you have been especially unlucky ...or i am the one being lucky (but another player confirmed a drop rate similar to mine) since i get an average of a bit more than dozen of essences per hour with a ressource booster (so expect 5-6 without).
 

[JackHargreav]

Spaceship and Jupiter corpus really needs a take a look at because they deal waaaaay more damage than any other faction.

Which in itself wouldn't be terrible but Corpus wasn't designed for SteelPath. They have combas and nullifiers which was good because their weapons were really lacking damage and accuracy. But with new corpus units the Combas and Nullifiers are really overwhelming to deal with. I just had a mission where on every corner (I actually mean every corner) there was a comba unit or two and they were just spamming their abilities while there were about 20 other units around them in every single room. It was almost unplayable.

Also stagger doesn't seem to effect corpus as much as the other factions.

I also don't get why the enemies needed this boosts. Why not just give us vanilla lvl 150 enemies?

[kyori]

Since players think Steel Path is easy, I think DE made a mistake... enemy level should not be +100 but x100.

[Sasquatchias]

Aside from the often discussed lack of rewards for the mode (which I agree with because the novelty of hard mode wears off once you get a few levels in so there isn't really any incentive to play it anymore outside of finding it fun) I feel like the current biggest issue in the mode is armor and how overtuned it makes the Grineer.

Out of all three "Main" Factions the Grineer are once again the toughest on the block due to their armor, practically requiring players to use specific set-ups to beat them at a reasonable pace - whether those set ups be Warframes who are used to strip them of their armor entirely (Nyx, Ash, Hildryn as examples) or ignoring as much of their armor as possible (via Viral + Slash cheese, as per usual).

If the Grineer were to have their armor bonuses looked at toned down a notch I think it'd help a lot in bringing in more players (at least for the people who want to play this mode outside of incentives) and introducing more build diversity with more weapons and frames being open for use without being burdens.

[Andvarja]

So I've done a fair bit more of this since my last post and have determined that I pretty much hate this.  I think I'm going to put it down for now.

All I wanted was what they originally said it would be, a way to fight higher level enemies on the starchart, particularly for starting off on endless missions.  That would be perfect.  But they added these unnecessary scaling factors; the armor in particular is a bit out of hand.  Especially for solo players with less means to mitigate the armor/no squad synergy.

It's not "challenging" - that would be fun - this is merely tedious.  So. Very. Tedious.  It's not fun.  
 

And while, again, I understand why DE might want to start out a little conservative on the rewards with an eye to maybe adjust later, at the moment the rewards are drastically out of line with the amount of work this mode expects.  An intact lith relic and 2k credits for a 100+ mission with time-wasting modifiers is silly.

And then there's the droprate on Steel Essence, which is abysmal. And it feels like the Steel Essence rewards themselves were designed without the extra work created by the modifiers in mind. They'd feel at least a bit more appropriate for a flat +100 or so levels.

It even fails at being some of the things they so recently claimed it was intended to be, such as "A way to engage with some better scaling Affinity and Mod Rewards."  Not that anyone ready to do Steel Path is likely to still be missing starchart mods, but there is the mod droprate multiplier there, so points for that one.  And there's a resource drop chance booster, too, which also helps mitigate the extra time spent in terms of resource efficiency.

But Affinity?  Nope.  Objectives aren't worth any more and enemy affinity is based on their levels without accounting for the multipliers, so it's quite a bit less affinity/focus efficient.  And affinity's the most likely thing to still be useful to most who are engaging with Steel Path.

It also wasn't supposed to be "overly complicated in its goal to simply provide higher level content and some exclusive rewards."  The modifiers were an unnecessary addition, which just creates issues such as those mentioned above, as well as bringing armor scaling issues back when those were so recently well-addressed by DE.  Why the reversion here?  The rewards wouldn't be quite as badly out of line if it was just a flat level increase, either.  The scaling modifiers are an unecessary complication which adds complications.  It even kind of undermines "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."  That's all a lot of us really wanted.

I'd be over the moon if this was a flat newgame+ increase to the starchart's levels. I mean, yeah, It still wouldn't be "challenging", which is fine for something which DE has said over and over is not intended to represent any kind of "endgame", but at least it wouldn't be a tedious waste of time.

[SneakyErvin]

4 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

That. Exactly that. Only in the mind of a deranged lunatic does putting fake boobs on a minor make her technically an adult.

How do you know they are fake? Maybe the person using them wants a more adult look and sees their operator as it has actually aged? This is afterall a game and there are no actual minors, so it isnt anything but a body customisation since we have access to no other/better option as a baseline. If this was an actual living minor we are talking about that doesnt change their physical traits and age it would be a different story, but these are pixel and some people prefer adult looking pixels.

I for instance hide my male operator in armor since I cannot relate to the look.

[Skye_Archer]

I've just gone through everything except the derelict...

I've not really found the steel path that challenging (there are one or two exceptions but that's it), it's literally just like doing the last stage of sortie, the drop rate increase is barely noticeable to me (neither do I care that it's increased due to the massive stockpile I have already)... The steel essence drop seems very very low, I cleared all of the star chart (minus the derelict) and only seen four of these things drop. I can't give a time frame over how long it took, the better part of two days maybe...

One of the most alarming things I saw whilst going through the steel path is how little diversity in warframes everyone else was using... Wukong (this guy was literally EVERYWHERE, I mean EVERYWHERE), Khora and Limbo were literally the only other frames I saw with a high level of frequency.. I saw the occasional Sarin, Mesa or Octivia (all three of these farmes usually in defense missions). I did see someone once attempt to use Equinox on a eliminate mission, but given the number of times I was reviving the person during that mission (we're talking over a dozen times), maybe why I hardly saw anyone else use her. I did drop into a interception mission where a single player was using Nyx and only had about 15% of the bar left to complete the mission by the time I joined in. Aside these frames I hardly saw any other other frame... Obviously the usual warframes trivializes a number of mission types...  I found myself from most frequent to least using Ivara, Loki, Khora, Octivia (defense only), Limbo (excavation only), Hildryn(escort only), Trinity (defection only), Rhino (Jordus Golem), WuKong (only used him to solo Kela Del Thaym)... I started to use Loki from Jupiter onwards as there seemed to be a spike in the damage the enemies were doing, and at that point if the enemies can't see Loki, they can't hit him!

Common problems still exist, why bring guns when it's so much faster to kill stuff with melee? And talking of bullet sponges, it took me over 25 minutes to defeat the Jordis Golem using an Aygana, probably not the most ideal weapon to take in there, but still 25 minutes for the last part of that mission seemed a little over the top! Elsewhere, fighting a lvl 130 stalker on my solo spy mission whilst on Ivara wasn't my idea of a fun time!

Right now with how poor the rewards are, and the very very low drop rate on steel essences... I see little point in going back and redoing any of these steel path nodes.. I feel the bosses should have a chance to drop the steel essences as well, given some of them can be a bit of a challenge to take down, otherwise I see even less reason to go back and fight these bosses after the initial completion! Heck given the increased number of Prime frames within game now, maybe these bosses should drop prime parts of their normal counter part frames

[Bashuul]

So for me, I was excited for the steel path for endless missions that took way more effort, which is what I got! I love that solo I get max spawns with enemies that live long enough to shoot at me. However, rewards are obviously lacking (steel essence drops are next to none), and some modes need a touch up.

 

For the modes, some are weird with the steel path changes. Survival Is kinda outta whack, as I think life support drops at the rate it does when 4 players are in a mission regardless of how many people, so for all my solo runs, if I wasn't corridor camping, my LS would just plumit. Even taking a mesa to the venus survival, at 15mins ish I was at 50% LS without touching a capsule, after spamming peacemaker most of the time. So I think the drop rate should be buffed for at least solo and duo groups. Then theirs defence, which has always been slow but man with beefy enemies and how slowly the enemies come out, its a drag. Maybe make them as fast as arbys? with shorter wait time between rounds, and make way more enemies spawn at the same time. I do like how excavation was actually possible solo. Interception was bassicly the same, but more emphasis on cc, which was nice. Havent tried out defection or infested salvage, but I assume defection is fine and salvage needs the same mission-specific-item drop rate buff survival needs.

 

As for the rewards, I think the best thing to do is just make it so eximus spawns start at 10% for all missions, and then rise to their max or 20% or so within the first 20 minutes or so of any endless, mimicking how arbtrations get to the endless C rotation at 25 mins, and then make the rotations for all endless something along the lines of endo/credits/essence. In my opinoin, If your going to stick kuva in the store, I'd like to be able to farm it from steel path missions as much as I farm it from every other place you get it. Also, it just feels wrong doing any endless and still getting 1 time rewards like mods, or incredibly small amounts of credits and endo

 

In general, I think survival (and probobly infested salvage) life support drop rates should be buffed for groups less then 4, and that rewards (kuva farming atleast) from steel path should be on par with rewards elsewhere

[Pendragon1951]

Well I thought to myself I really should play at least one planet before giving a true account of what I think of it. Well I finished Earth today and to put it as simply as I can it's like working overtime then looking at your check and finding out you didn't get paid for the overtime. Rewards for doing the Steel Path are so underwhelming actually they are pretty much what you get if you did the normal star chart. In my opinion they would have done better to simply pick a few nodes as steel path nodes pretty much like Nightmare mode but with way better rewards such as maybe Arcanes, but to be rewarded with ship decor and emotes seems, IMHO, like a slap in the face for doing something that is harder. If your going to make something that is suppose to be harder then make it worth it to me to use my time.

[Borg1611]

Another random thought I had while doing a mission after my pet randomly got one shot was one way you could improve pet survival without doing a big overview would be to release a primed version of every link mod and put them on the steel essence vendor. It would make sense since it's only in high level content that you really need the extra survival. Or perhaps just more powerful gold survival mods.

Maybe a golden link adaptation where when you or the pet take damage, the pet gains DR for that damage type stacking to 90% like the frame adaptation mod with a pet link twist. Of course that by itself wouldn't stop a one-shot if it hadn't already taken damage so I wouldn't do that by itself. 

[Damocles]

Why play Steel Path:

1. One time rewards (weak reason to continue playing)
2. Resource DROP CHANCE booster (basically no booster)
3. Mod drop chance booster (more duplicates unless you want... you probably already have it)
4. Steel essence credits *
5. Adaro exploit **
6. Enemy exp is higher by way of increased level 2.425 times more exp **

Why you shouldn't play Steel Path

1. Guns don't work on armor (feels like you only equipped 1 mod)
2. The only thing viable against corpus is toxin and rapid fire (very diverse play style, except some corpus have armor)
3. Corrosive is dead (less effective than viral against armor, also expires like corrosion does in real life... right?)
4. Most abilities won't kill (even mesa struggles quite a bit)
5. Enemies are tankier by way of increased level and arbitrary 2.5 times health/defenses
6. Status immune enemies (sentients, treasurer, juggernaught etc) are nearly impossible to kill unless you use meta weapons that will get nerfed or riven nerfed
7. Lua sentients almost instantly kills the defense objective in mobile defense if you give it literally 3 seconds of disco laser

* The store sucks. 1 big problem with store is that there are no good rewards. That said, the only rewards at the moment are too expensive to purchase, and they're not even that good. Stance forma at 15 steel essence, it's actually far more economical to just make 2 of the same melee weapon and forma them differently. You can probably make this duplicate melee in less time than farming steel essence. 10k kuva is 100 times less than what we can get from just farming kuva directly for the same amount of time invested. You can get 1000 relics in the time it takes you to get the 15 essences (mostly because everything gives relics). Overall the rewards are really bad and really overpriced. I've only gotten 11 essence credits in my tour through the star chart, so... I'll get everything in the store in 2035.

* The armor set looks nice. Too bad it's 85 for the set, and I can't preview what I'm getting hustled into.

** In terms of farming exp, you're taking around 3-5+ times times longer to get that 2.425 times exp thanks to how unreasonably tanky some of these enemies are.

What I think would be great is:

• Either remove the arbitrary health and defense bonus, or give us the affinity bonus that matches 2.5 times health and 2.5 times defenses
• Remove status immunity on non-bosses.
• Teshin credits needs a higher drop rate than current. And I mean roughly 5+ times the drop rate
• Relic pack should be at most 3 credits, 1 relic per credit
• 10k kuva should be 5 credits
• We need to completely replace drop chance booster, with the clearly superior resource booster

[SordidDreams]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

How do you know they are fake?

Because... they're part of the suit? I'm not sure what that needs to be spelled out.