The Steel Path: Feedback Megathread!

[Duality52]

My favorite part about the Steel Path so far is giving value to CC/debuffing abilities. Nyx and Banshee are particularly devastating, and I'm enjoying the value of grouping enemies up with Titania's Lanterns.

Few nitpicks:

• The 6th Plains and Orb Vallis Bounties have the same reward table as their 5th stage Bounties, while having a slightly increased standing gain. Increased the amount of rewards (for instance increase the individual Relic to a full 3 Relics instead)
• Defense feels too long now due to the increased enemies. Defense itself needs a rework to have consistent enemy flow like Interception/Survival.
• The Wolf, Stalker, and possibly the Juggernaut need some adjusting.
• The rotational rewards need to be reviewed in Hard Mode. A 2k Credit Cache is nothing.

Aside from the rotational rewards, I find it baffling how people were asking for a "Hard Mode" for this long, only to criticize and belittle you guys over what you exactly promised to bring to many of us. Hope there will be some healthy fixes later, but overall I'm pleased with the Steel Path so far.

[SoulPlease]

Quote

Fixed seeing "previous kick still in progress" for Clan or Alliance Chat moderation.

 
This has not been fixed, PLEASE fix it.

 

Spoiler

 Please?
Love,
Soul

[ESPTITO]

I would like the mission rewards to be better. In some way a want an incentive for doing the same mission. This could be double rewards, relics being radiant, endless missions starts on rotation B or C, percentages of rare rewards are higher or any other idea. 

An achievement would be nice for doing all the Star Chart in Steel Path mode.

[Borg1611]

Vey Hek is an example of everything that this mode shouldn't be. Spent 40 minutes before just aborting in disgust. Guess I'll have to use a more gimmicky build later. 

Nothing about it is hard or interesting, it's just the worst designed fight with the most god awful mechanics that likely limit the "correct" build to some extremely narrow set of things if you want to beat it in less than an hour. 

Repeated it on Octavia and did it in 8 minutes without even having to target the mechanic since it automatically does it for you with mallet. The balance is intense. 

[Akula_Rose]

1: Stance Forma should come built or add built forma to the store.

2: At no point should I suffer through a lvl 100 interception and get a vitality for a rotation reward.

3: 30+ eximus units in and I've only gotten 1 Steel Essence Drop.......

4: If you are not going to buff the drop chance of Steel Essence, you should probably make 1 a reward for every mission/rotation.

5: Reward for reading through my complaints.....Valkyr is happy to finally be able to have things to kill in solo.......TY >.<

[(PSN)kfrancis902]

Off rip 3 rewards kuva stance forma and 1 Armor set. Not good sry. You should have added radiant relics. And why does that pack only give 3 relics. Very little reason to play it.

[Flying_Scorpion]

I just finished doing the Venus junction. So far I'm finding that the enemies are dying quite fast when 4 players are together in a squad. Once I realized that the difference between level 100 enemies and 130 enemies is going to be pretty small...I realized how little they will increase in tankiness by the time I get to the higher levels on the star chart.

This has been a step in a good direction, but when I compare this to other "hard" stuff like Doom, Destiny 2 Nightfall Ordeals, or Path of Exile....it's not hard. 😞

I still think it's good that you guys are putting in effort to satisfy the players who are needing something more challenging to do. I intend to finish the steel path, and I'm sure there will be some very difficult stuff later on. I think a big difference will be dealing with enemies that are immune to status effects. By the way, do you still intend to make status effects apply to all enemies, including bosses? Or you do you still need to rebalance status effects? (*cough* viral/heat is still OP *cough*)

I might make a video later on with more thoughts on this. In the mean time, thanks for the effort. Glad to see you're nodding and acknowledging the veteran players who need to be challenged. Looking forward to seeing what's next from DE and Warframe.

[Tau.]

So one thing that came to mind immediately is: what happens once we get the star chart all filled out in Steel Path and have all the items from the Teshin Bux? Would be nice if it weren't just one-and-done content, because that's really what it's looking like right now past the nostalgic revisit tour of the chart.

What about the option to reset progress - 'prestige' it or whatever - for some substantial reward? 

 

Hell, just off the top of my head, prestige reward ideas include (most preferably either a choice or several of these at once):

- Umbral Forma 

- The ability to 'prestige' a chosen frame by one notch - up to 5 - raising their max rank by 2 each time. Opening up a path to rank 40 for frames, as ya'll have started to have with high-end weapons. 

- Riven fate-pull: select from 4 weapons in your arsenal, it'll be guaranteed for one of them. 

- The blueprint and components of a chosen Prime or two (some incentive for non-vet players that might not have everything yet, to get in on this) 

 

[Hypernaut1]

3 minutes ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

I just finished doing the Venus junction. So far I'm finding that the enemies are dying quite fast when 4 players are together in a squad. Once I realized that the difference between level 100 enemies and 130 enemies is going to be pretty small...I realized how little they will increase in tankiness by the time I get to the higher levels on the star chart.

This has been a step in a good direction, but when I compare this to other "hard" stuff like Doom, Destiny 2 Nightfall Ordeals, or Path of Exile....it's not hard. 😞

I still think it's good that you guys are putting in effort to satisfy the players who are needing something more challenging to do. I intend to finish the steel path, and I'm sure there will be some very difficult stuff later on. I think a big difference will be dealing with enemies that are immune to status effects. By the way, do you still intend to make status effects apply to all enemies, including bosses? Or you do you still need to rebalance status effects? (*cough* viral/heat is still OP *cough*)

I might make a video later on with more thoughts on this. In the mean time, thanks for the effort. Glad to see you're nodding and acknowledging the veteran players who need to be challenged. Looking forward to seeing what's next from DE and Warframe.

when they said they nerfed enemies, i was expecting what we have to be on the edge of sponginess. I had to solo to feel any major difference. I'm still enjoying myself though, I had to run from a thumper because i went in unprepared and under-leveled. That was a welcome change of pace

[Ceadeus]

Fix the Bishamo armor.  Make gender variants for both sets that actually look similar.  Stop this weird idea of either gender getting a completely different set.

[Flying_Scorpion]

1 minute ago, Hypernaut1 said:

when they said they nerfed enemies, i was expecting what we have to be on the edge of sponginess. I had to solo to feel any major difference. I'm still enjoying myself though, I had to run from a thumper because i went in unprepared and under-leveled. That was a welcome change of pace

We are of like mindset. I appreciate moments where I either fail a mission or have a chance of failure. Lately I've been playing more Destiny 2 lately and that game actually has difficult content. The problem with warframe is that the power curve for the player is extreme - to the point of trivializing the content with busted overpowered immunity or damage. Anyway I love Warframe and want the game to succeed. I'm glad DE has put in this work, but I'm beginning to think that Warframe is not monetized well enough for DE to hire enough staff to address all of Warframes problems. I hope they are making enough money to fulfill their own needs, but this game is huge and needs a lot of people working on it. They might need to do something like a season pass or something. Or maybe do what Bungie is doing and just straight up kill off certain parts of the game that nobody touches in order to reduce their workload.

[Traumtulpe]

After quickly completing the Kuva fortress and Earth solo (since those two are available from the start) my feedback is as follows:

Too easy. The reduced armor/health values are so low, that I didn't even bother to cast buffs in many cases.

The increased amount of enemies is very pleasant (though unusual to the point of feeling slightly weird) in Survival missions, Interception seemed appropriate, though some mission types were apparently unchanged - Defense, Exterminate, and Spy missions for example. These could do with additional foes as well.

Rewards are entirely uninteresting. After completing said planets, I had a grand total of 5 Steel Essence (4 from completion, 1 drop). Casually playing these missions after completion is completely undesirable. It might be worth specifically farming very long endurance runs utilizing multiple loot abilities, Smeeta, and both boosters, for the Kuva. Not something I am interested in at all.

To summarize: No challenge, no reward. I am disappointed.

[Flying_Scorpion]

1 minute ago, Traumtulpe said:

Too easy. The reduced armor/health values are so low, that I didn't even bother to cast buffs in many cases.

The increased amount of enemies is very pleasant (though unusual to the point of feeling slightly weird) in Survival missions, Interception seemed appropriate, though some mission types were apparently unchanged - Defense, Exterminate, and Spy missions for example. These could do with additional foes as well.

Rewards are entirely uninteresting. After completing said planets, I had a grand total of 5 Steel Essence (4 from completion, 1 drop). Casually playing these missions after completion is completely undesirable. It might be worth specifically farming very long endurance runs utilizing multiple loot abilities, Smeeta, and both boosters, for the Kuva. Not something I am interested in at all.

I agree it's too easy and I also agree that the increase amount of enemies is very pleasant.

In regards to the rewards, I agree that there isn't much extrinsically rewarding to continue playing the steel path repeatedly; however, there is the intrinsic satisfaction of simply enjoying playing against large groups of higher level enemies. I think this is being overlooked by a lot of people. 

[phoenix1992]

22 minutes ago, Borg1611 said:

Vey Hek is an example of everything that this mode shouldn't be. Spent 40 minutes before just aborting in disgust. Guess I'll have to use a more gimmicky build later. 

Did all the early parts fast so I thought it would be fine, then spent 99% of the time in his last area shooting the thing over and over and over and over and over and over and it never went into the next part of the fight so I finally had enough and left. 

Nothing about it is hard or interesting, it's just the worst designed fight with the most god awful mechanics that likely limit the "correct" build to some extremely narrow set of things if you want to beat it in less than an hour. Complete garbage fight that shouldn't have made it through the test center without changes. 

Hey dude, I see you were frustrated.

While I can't tell you "play meta" or whatever I can give you couple of tips from my experience with the fight :

a) If you are solo bring any specter, they act like a hard target for the boss and they won't target you.
b) Use rapid fire weapons, snipers and other gimmicks just don't do enough for his initial phases.

[Six.6]

It's a bit of a waste of time.  i think i  wouldnt finish it.

[DrivaMain]

I tried Steel Path Teralyst recently. I gotta say level 130 Vomvalyst is ridiculously too tanky, my best amp + maxed out focus school barely scratches them. The Eidolon itself.. well it’s okay in terms of tankiness and doable with the right build but the Vomvalysts? Yeah.. No.

[PresidentLegend]

In addition to what I've stated earlier, I would also like to see certain mission types be added to the Steel Path, but with higher enemies, but simultaneously better rewards.

Index - Insane Risk

Index Enemies now start at a higher level and deal more damage, but now feature a random glowing enemy of a certain type that is immune to WF abilities, including exalted weapons. The Credits required also goes up from 30/40/50k to 75k, but the return itself also goes up from 105/175/250k to 400/500k. Or the return could simply go up to 325k, but enemies there could have a small chance (3-5%) of dropping Steel Essence.

Granum Void - Discordant Granum Void

This new Granum Void only can be accessed by killing a Treasurer within Steel Path, who will drop an Optimum Granum Crown. Enemies within this Granum Void are much higher level and deal more damage, but also have a higher chance to drop Errant Specter Pyramids (the pyramids that increase your time), and it requires a base of 50 Enemies scaling up to 100. Rotational drops could be purely credit and cosmetic based. I'd love to see those pyramids as a cosmetic reward, so they could be there, however this Crown would look could be there as well, and the credit caches could be 15k, 30k, and 50k.

Junctions - Objectives

I would definitely add objectives to Junctions, just not super annoying ones like the first rendition. For example, Earth could have, "Complete a Teralyst hunt while in Steel Path mode." Neptune could have, "Complete an Insane Risk Index mission." Jupiter could have, "Complete a Discordant Granum Void while in a mission." etc., while also increasing the tankiness of Junction bosses and making them use their abilities a lot more. To offset this, add additional Mastery or maybe Steel Essence to each Junction, or other rewards of that nature.

Sanctuary Onslaught - Potent Sanctuary Onslaught

Enemy level jumps to 100-130, and remove all captura scenes and replace them with Synthetic Eidolon Shards, Universal Medallions, and perhaps a new Peculiar Mod? Also increase the Convergence bonus as well.

Void - Prime Part Drops

As a call back to the old Orokin Void, the Void could, like it used to before Specters of the Rail, drop Prime Parts in addition to their normal rewards. So when you complete a Void mission, you get a regular reward, as well as a completely random Prime part.

Sorties - Raids

Sorties, but at a +100 level increase, as well as 4 missions to complete rather than 3. Incorporate a bunch of the old objectives we had to do in older Raids, like the bomb carrying, the screen to platform matching, and boss fight from LOR, and some from JV as well. Make these missions drop better versions of the Sortie rewards: for example, instead of an Anasa Sculpture, make it drop 2 fully completed Anasa Sculptures, or drop 10,000 Kuva instead of 6,000, or 7,000 Endo instead of 4,000. A Forma Bundle instead of a singular forma, a fully built Orokin Catalyst, etc.

Arbitrations - Ungodly Arbitrations

Arbitrations, but after completing the entire Star Chart in Steel Path. Doing this mission type removes sculptures from the drop tables entirely, in favor of increased drops of the Arcanes, Mods, and a lot more Endo.

Kuva Missions - Kuva Tsunami/Hurricane

Increased enemy level, but the braids you need to destroy is increased by maybe 2 or 4, as well as enemies, once you start the Siphon, will start attacking the siphon, attempting to destroy it. Kuva drop goes up from 550-700/1,100-1,400 to 1,650-2,100 and guarantees a Radiant Requiem Relic.

And as a universal change, while on Steel Path, missions that would normally result in a Warframe part should be replaced with Steel Essence, with perhaps a lower drop chance. Except bosses, for obvious reasons.

idk, these are all just ideas.

[I.V.A.R.A]

The Steel Essence drop rate is horrific. Literally the worst. Completed Earth and Mars, and half of Ceres.... have 8 total essence and 4 of those are from completing planets. I also have a booster so that means in 2.5 planets I have received 2 drops. Two. 

 

I cannot fathom who decides these things, and even moreso, who thinks that it's acceptable. As usual, like every single update in the 3 years I have played the game... you need to increase the drops and lower the cost of the items. Also, as politely as possible, you should be ashamed of yourselves for artificially trying to extend playtime by forcing burnout on people who would like to have something new. 

 

Also, since it's apparently never coming back to RJ, how about another way to earn Umbral forma except for once every 6 months? That'd be cool. Imagine how many people would choose to play if they could earn something awesome like that opposed to something 99.9% useless like Stance Forma (for the one and only weapon in the game you'd consider using it on... but not by much because you can throw a few V's in and not need to spend your yearly Steel Essence on it Stance Forma).

 

I seriously tried being as nice as possible. TLDR: increase drop rates, lower cost to purchase/craft items.Then apply this to everything you release. Forever. 

[Borg1611]

26 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

While I can't tell you "play meta" or whatever I can give you couple of tips from my experience with the fight :

I just did it with Octavia in 8 minutes so I didn't even have to do the mechanics since Mallet just auto ends that phase. 

Still awful mechanics IMO that just weren't designed for that level of enemy. 

[phoenix1992]

Just now, Borg1611 said:

I just did it with Octavia in 8 minutes so I didn't even have to do the mechanics since Mallet just auto ends that phase. 

Still awful designed mechanics IMO that just weren't designed for that level of enemy. 

Whatever works for you.

It may sound like flexing (it is not), but when I did Oro the first time it was on the old star chart and... I did in nightmare mode for weeks accidentally. The fight was gruesome, however I do not think it is nearly as bad as Lephantis or Ambulas.

[Jarriaga]

5 hours ago, Jaysus41 said:

After playing through most of Earth I'm wondering why I haven't seen a single one of the Steel Essences yet. It says on the patch notes that they drop from Eximus enemies and I'm sure I've killed at least 15 - 20 of them so far so in theory I'd have seen a few by now, right? Or is the drop rate just abysmally low?

Abysmally low. From Earth to Mercury only got 2 from Eximus.

The likely reason is DE deciding on a drop chance that considers the drop chance booster that is active, which means half of what they would have set for normal so it becomes the intended value with the booster.

If so, then that's not good in my opinion.

[Hixlysss]

So far the rewards are...lackluster?Like...I get it's not endgame, it's harder enemies to fight, but there should be some kind of...better rewards? 10k kuva? Relics? Stance forma? Like were these also part of the test server cause I don't see people flying with these kinds of rewards. How about void traces, built exilus/reactor/catalyst/forma? Universal medallions perhaps? Slots perhaps even?

Like...the resources...I really don't need...I really do not need at all...except railjack resources which aren't a part of this. I doubt anyone who is doing the Steel Path has a need for increased resources or mods even. I mean, sure we can smelt the mods for endo or credits I guess? But if I need endo or credits i'll just do sortie/index.

Does the steel path have a separate mod drop list? Or am I going to get another 5k ammo drums? Like...really? Mod drop chance increase? It's neat and all but very niche, like it would be good for farming the elemental jaw mods for companions, or other 'difficult' to get mods, but it's only like a handful of mods that would require that.

And before people are all "You don't have to play it." The people who want it for the challenge it bring aren't going to stop playing it just because it gives better rewards, there is literally no reason, besides balancing, as to why Steel Path couldn't have some better and more universally useful rewards like slots(warframe/weapon/companion/riven) or another way to get orokin catalyst/reactors besides nightwave, or some other way to get weapon/warframe exilus or the various types of forma(we have what...4 types of forma now?) they could even be limited to X amount a day/week.

[phoenix1992]

3 minutes ago, Hixlysss said:

.I get it's not endgame,

It is pretty much end game.

[I.V.A.R.A]

12 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Abysmally low. From Earth to Mercury only got 2 from Eximus.

The likely reason is DE deciding on a drop chance that considers the drop chance booster that is active, which means half of what they would have set for normal so it becomes the intended value with the booster.

If so, then that's not good in my opinion.

I have all boosters active, and got 2 drops from earth, mars, and half of ceres. It's just horrifically low. 

[MechaKnight]

Durability is not difficulty or engagement. After Steel Path released we continued playing with the same tactics against the same dumb enemies who lack options. If you can kill an enemy, you can kill 10. If you can kill 10 enemies, you can kill 1 that's 10 times tougher. If you can kill 1 of those enemies, you can kill 10 more no problem. EHP isn't sufficient engagement to break the monotony. I did made a thread with suggestions for how to implement challenge and engagement into general gameplay, intended for the Steel Path. These suggestions could still be added to the Steel Path with extra reward incentive, or added to a higher tier of difficulty beyond Steel Path.