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It's not about difficulty. Warframe doesn't have a flagship content..


AperoBeltaTwo

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9 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Not a flagship.

This whole thread turned into me trying to explain what flagship content even means in the context of WF and people not understanding it. There are commenters who understood it instantly. But some people either cannot, or refuse to, or pretend not to understand. Or probably didn't bother to read the original post.

"Flagship content" of a toothbrush is its ability to brush teeth, and the rest of the toothbrush is designed around performing that task. Right now Warframe is a Swiss Army toothbrush abomination without the actual brush. I don't know how else to simplify it, and what kind of analogy to invoke. It's not about pvp or pve or whatever. It's about a toothbrush that's no good at brushing your teeth with. And instead is trying to mutate into a fairy or something.

Obviously it is all over the place with no actual Flagship, well it has a flagship but it doesnt serve the purpose of this type of game. But still you fail, both in your OP and every other answer, to explain what the flagship should be in WF. It is just like the "we need difficulty!" or "we need endgame!". No specification of what you actually want.

Yeah sure, you want something to justify and validate our progression. So you want what is mostly considered endgame in PvE games. Well that doesnt help one bit since it is still up for wide interpretation. So what exactly is it that you want the flagship to be? I mean even if we get RJ to bind all of the game together, it still wont actually be flagship content when it comes to what you want it to fullfill, because most of the content will still be far too easy and left in the dust by power creep, thus not justifying or validating our progression.

So DE needs to make a mode designed with the utmost optimal gear in mind, then have that content scale further so we can push ourselves. Much like GRifts in D3 or maps in PoE, where there is always another tier (although PoE maps are in effect limited) to beat. This would also come with newer and better rewards obviously so we can keep progressing endlessly. Ontop of that they can but power caps on older content so we still face some resistance there even in our OPest builds.

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1 hour ago, S3EK3R said:

Stalker hates the Tenno, the Orokin are dead. He allied with the Sentients to kill us because his revenge is all that matters now.

Teshin is under the control of the Grineer Queens. Of course he's going to appear, especially in the final confrontation as it's his duty to protect them. Doesn't mean he can't go behind their backs and support as against the Sentients. This is explained.

Did it occur to anyone that perhaps the Sentients consider every human an Orokin and want to kill them all? Or maybe that only the highest echelon of Orokin resembled Ballas and the others were more humanlike?

Lotus/Natah was never the mastermind. She's a high ranking Sentient in charge of certain operations, but it was never said that she's in charge. And it's not that surprising that Erra takes over once he arrives. Tbh, I don't remember Natah's mother being mentioned, only Hunhow.

"Natah is a amnesiac sheep of a character who is just being manipulated by her brother? Now Natah needs help recognizing who and what Ballas is?"

In the Second Dream, Hunhow states that Natah will return to them one way or another. It's a theory among a small number of players that Hunhow either brainwashed or memory-wiped Natah. I support this theory.

 

Just my two cents.

Stalker's motivation for hating the Tenno is that they killed the Orokin. Take away his loyalty to the Orokin, and he has no motivation to hate the Tenno. Plus, The Second Dream completely changed his motivation for hating the Tenno. His motivation there is that he hates himself for being a Tenno.

Quote

Some have walked these desolate worlds while you have slept. Some like me. I remember what you did. I remember the day.

The Tenno appeared at the Terminus, gleaming and victorious. Our cold and gold Emperors, breathless, bathed you in savior's silk. Then came the sound. Across all our worlds, all at once, the ceremonial Naga drums. A royal salute to the honored Tenno. Ten solemn beats to declare the suffering was over. I watched from a distance, with the rest of the low Guardians. With each beat terror began to crush my throat. The Tenno were not stoic and silent. They were waiting. They were poised. I tried to call out but only a strangled whisper escaped.

When the ninth beat rang a torrent of blood filled the stadium, loosed by Tenno blades. The drums, the Empire, fell silent forever.

Now I hunt, dividing your numbers. Watching from that dark place, cataloging your sins, I am the ghost of retribution. You may forget but you are not innocent.

Teshin wasn't a servant of the Queens before TWW. There is no "of course he's going to appear." Teshin appears because they ignored Teshin's motivations. And Teshin only shows up once within the context of the Sentients, despite that being his backstory and initial context. He doesn't show up in TSD. He doesn't show up on Plains of Eidolon. He doesn't show up in The Sacrifice. He hasn't shown up in The New War. He has never actually prepared the Tenno to fight the Sentients, despite that being his driving motivations pre-TWW. The only time he actually shows up in connection to the Sentients is during the Natah quest. That's it. No, it's not explained.

Quote

"We were led astray. We forgot the Conclave, so when that new evil came, we were not prepared. This is how we failed the Orokin. You went into stasis, but not me. I searched the long path for redemption, for the kind of balance only The Conclave can create. Now I return, only to find the Tenno still herded like livestock. Horrors from beyond the Outer Terminus are coming. You must prepare. You must accept The Conclave. Let it be your teacher and I its humble guide. For true balance can only be found in the face of the ultimate enemy. Yourself."

"The Lotus seduced the Tenno. Led them on a complacent path like oxen. I failed the Orokin but I will preserve their legacy. The Tenno. Now is the time for action. Cast off your harness and become a pupil of The Conclave. Through trial combat, I will prepare you for the evils beyond the Outer Terminus. A warrior only grows if they face the ultimate enemy. Themselves."

"Oro is the binding force for an enemy who, like the Tenno, can survive death. To kill such an enemy is futile, unless you sever this bond; absorb the Oro to annihilate it and claim a true victory."

"Out there exist an enemy that can be struck down, incapacitated, dismantled and yet they rise to fight again. Annihilate the opposing team's Oro to claim a true victory."

Natah certainly is suggested to be the one in charge in the Chimera Prologue and the Jovian Concord.

Chimera:

Spoiler

 

Dialogue:

Quote

Ballas: No... No... My beauty, my grace, my humanity--

Ballas: H-hello? No. No hope.
Ballas: Ah... Only suffering under her eye.

Ballas: But... she gave me the gift of life!
Ballas: Why would I betray her?

Ballas: Fool! This... this is no gift!
Ballas: She stole my death! My perfect death.
Ballas: Such is her power... over me. Over the devil!

Ballas: We saw what we wanted, those devils and I.
Ballas: A lover... a mother! But now I know.
Ballas: She is neither. She's a hawk - calling with sparrow's song.

Ballas: A viper, blending into wood.
Ballas: And her venom... spreads not into flesh, but into your heart.

Ballas: Those devils! What has their great awakening accomplished - but the destruction of potential allies?
Ballas: Don't they see?

Ballas: Love must die--
Ballas: --As Margulis did... when I sent her to the Jade light.
Ballas: And the Lotus... just some cloud in the sky, just some shape they imagined.
Ballas: Only the Sentient is real.

Ballas sure does pin everything on Natah and not Lotus. Natah is the hawk, the viper, the one who gave Ballas new life as a half-Orokin, half-Sentient freak, the one under whose eye Ballas suffers. Ballas was her slave, not Erra's, not until they invented Erra to replace the Mother.

Ropalolyst:

Spoiler

 

 

Dialogue:

Quote

"Our history is smoke. Blurred by dreams. Guided by ghosts. A voice, a Void, lurks inside you, its purpose not yet shown. But what am I?"
"My father was a farmer. My mother, a carpenter. Given light by the Golden Lords, to build for them... a better world. But my family's journey was long. Time began to change their light. Creativity. Pride. A will to live."
"So the Golden Wrath came. And after, I was born. A mimic, a spy. Conceived to burrow into nests and swallow the pitch-eggs of their war machine: The Tenno. But when I saw your tender faces, I took mercy. Or so we were told."
"But in truth, we were both imprisoned in Lua's belly. My light remade by the Creators. I became a memory, a ghost. Reprogrammed to destroy my family, my people, my history."
"But now, I am saved. By family. Together, we will overcome the flaws of our light, the Gods of our creation... merging with them, like steel... bearing Amalgams with the weakness of neither."

"Your great power, your great evil. The voice, the Void, within you. Our ancients still wither at its touch... but have you forgotten Lua? You were saved. But I... I was changed."
"I was changed. Now I learn. Now I deny."
"We suffer these testaments of Tenno evil. Their voice and Void. Suffer it well, ancient child. Do not relent."
"These patterns no longer satisfy."
"My denial."
"Ropalolyst, rise, remain, and die, for the others to live."
"Rise, ancient Ropalolyst, my other flesh. Your sacrifice will breed a new way, for a new kind."

I have seen the wall's other face, too. I have heard the voice."
"I am the witness, the victim, the judge. My family has returned. Your trial... soon to begin."
"The light leaves this one, and rejoins the rest. I will dig no grave, I will plant no stone, only conceive a plan, for our new home."
"So it is, and so you have done. Time and time again, destroyed my kind, my history. And so it will be with yours, child."

Does this sound like someone who doesn't remember what they are (as Lotus does in the Erra Quest)? Natah considers herself the judge of the Tenno. Sure seems like she's in charge or at least holds considerable power, not like she appears in the Erra quest.

Erra:

Spoiler

 

 

The mother is mentioned at the end of The Sacrifice and in DE's teaser for The New War, and in the Ropalolyst quest quoted above:

End of The Sacrifice:

Quote

Natah: Drifting, gaunt beyond the bleak star... Mother... I am coming home.

The New War teaser (released in 2018):

Spoiler

 

 

And Hunhow hasn't shown up since Octavia's Anthem. He isn't involved with anything post-Sacrifice.

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2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Obviously it is all over the place with no actual Flagship, well it has a flagship but it doesnt serve the purpose of this type of game. But still you fail, both in your OP and every other answer, to explain what the flagship should be in WF.

I mentioned it in the thread before. Void 1.0 was as close to flagship content as Warframe ever got. Back when Void 2.0 was announced I had a hope that a void rework would simply expand the tower key system onto the rest of the starchart, allowing players to use void keys on other nodes and missions. But DE had to roll out relics. G #*!%ing G. As a result, prime economy tanked and prime access became an accessory to bying plat. Which led to rivens, and kuva missions, and the bs state we're in right now. 

At this point in time, I don't even want to think how to add flagship content to Warframe. Not because it's impossible, but because I couldn't be bothered. DE obviously don't see the necessity for it, so why should I care. We could have had endless raids without the daily timegate. We could have had rotating sorties with tokens without the timegate. We could have had scaling fissure rewards that made it worthwhile staying longer in void missions, but the relic system is so convoluted I'm not sure how to fix the void without taking a sledgehammer to the relic system. Onslaught and Arbitrations have dumb mechanical restrictions that prevent those game modes from contesting for being a flagship content.

And the fact that you're asking me the question: what flagship content is even supposed to be for me is absolutely debilitating. Cause that indicates that people really don't know, don't understand what Warframe is at its core. Warframe is a ninja horde shooter with space magic. But for the past... at least four years DE been ignoring that fact, trying to make a completely different game out of it. First a story-driven quest bullS#&$. Then they introduced little boys that competed with warframes as another, if impotent, combat platform with far less developed mechanics (obviously). Then they tried to turn their game into an open world after multiple years in open beta, ending up with two giant empty tiles with nothing to do on them and two years of development wasted on that bs. Then they suddenly decided to turn their game into a spaceship simulator, hyping to high heavens what essentially amounted to Archwing 2.0... And I said, long before railjack was released, that that's exacly what was going to happen, you can look into my topic history... 

Ah...

Flagship content isn't about "most optimal gear". Really. Just add +100 levels to enemies, make up some simple endless missions and reward kuva or tokens for those missions so it could be rooted in something tradeable for plat. But don't block those missions behind timegates, don't restrict the use of any game mechanics or abilities, and don't put dumb modifiers on them. Let people do their own thing. In a looter game like Warframe with so much gear, what is needed is a sandbox where people could actually use it all. It doesn't have to be difficult, but it has to warrant the gear collecting. It's not rocket science.

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I play it for the story in larger part.

However the story is a mess. All the lore is connected more than people know... but... it's a slog to tie it together for a casual player. The story is a jumbled mess for new players for sure. Try piecing Alad V's timeline really quick, where he was when things happened. Zanuka involvement, when he got infected, the Wolf of Saturn 6's amalgam ties, to the Ropapolyst... but don't forget that he was infested before you took down Tyl Regor. Narratively, the player does not see the same timeline. The hidden lore in the codex for Ordis is another gem of information that ties things together.

Honestly, we need filler-quests/cutscenes that replay old events and make sense of how things happened. This would tie new players right in with modern events. We keep missing key details from the storytelling. Events that happened years past that contain crucial key points.

Maybe a timeline in the Codex that unlocks as the player clears the various parts of the game, just to make sense of things.

With the current game cemented in a sturdier base like that, the story going forward could then easily lead into that end-game people desire, but also be more clear when that endgame rears it's head at last. The new player experience... I hope it has this gem of baseline and focus on making the story accessible in order to get players invested more.

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3 minutes ago, (PS4)PheonixFontaine said:

I play it for the story in larger part.

However the story is a mess. All the lore is connected more than people know... but... it's a slog to tie it together for a casual player. The story is a jumbled mess for new players for sure. Try piecing Alad V's timeline really quick, where he was when things happened. Zanuka involvement, when he got infected, the Wolf of Saturn 6's amalgam ties, to the Ropapolyst... but don't forget that he was infested before you took down Tyl Regor. Narratively, the player does not see the same timeline. The hidden lore in the codex for Ordis is another gem of information that ties things together.

Honestly, we need filler-quests/cutscenes that replay old events and make sense of how things happened. This would tie new players right in with modern events. We keep missing key details from the storytelling. Events that happened years past that contain crucial key points.

Maybe a timeline in the Codex that unlocks as the player clears the various parts of the game, just to make sense of things.

With the current game cemented in a sturdier base like that, the story going forward could then easily lead into that end-game people desire, but also be more clear when that endgame rears it's head at last. The new player experience... I hope it has this gem of baseline and focus on making the story accessible in order to get players invested more.

Not a flagship.

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2 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Flagship content isn't about "most optimal gear". Really. Just add +100 levels to enemies, make up some simple endless missions and reward kuva or tokens for those missions so it could be rooted in something tradeable for plat. But don't block those missions behind timegates, don't restrict the use of any game mechanics or abilities, and don't put dumb modifiers on them. Let people do their own thing. In a looter game like Warframe with so much gear, what is needed is a sandbox where people could actually use it all. It doesn't have to be difficult, but it has to warrant the gear collecting. It's not rocket science.

Wouldnt esseintially Kuva Surv, Disruption, normal and requiem along with siphons and floods be "Flagship" in that case?

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5 hours ago, OniDax said:

He has never actually prepared the Tenno to fight the Sentients, despite that being his driving motivations pre-TWW. The only time he actually shows up in connection to the Sentients is during the Natah quest. That's it. No, it's not explained.

He is mentioned in Scarlet Spear as the one who had Ducklin' go around and prepare everything.

But, yeah, he has no more mentions in-quests aside from Natah and TWW.

Maybe if he was the one giving Mastery Tests...

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9 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Wouldnt esseintially Kuva Surv, Disruption, normal and requiem along with siphons and floods be "Flagship" in that case?

Kuva survival yes, it's very close. But the mission design is terrible on that one. And it's just one mission.

Floods and Syphons... don't have a mission design. For 4 years since the War Within update they weren't changed once. Even though Kuva missions are essentially Fissures 1.0 as they were initially released. Where enemies were just dumped on top of you with a bunch of nullifiers chancelling your everything, and your builds didn't matter. Your warframe didn't matter. Your weapons didn't matter. There was no scaling. No endless gameplay. "Endless" missions were limited to a single rotation. And now with kuva floods and syphons the only endless mission you can have is survival for 5 minutes. But because rivens are the most desirable items in the game right now and for a very long time there was no alternative to farming them, Kuva missions were THE WARFRAME for FOUR YEARS. Arguably are still THE WARFRAME. But now I suppose you have some limited alternatives.

And disruption missions are a joke. Kill two enemies every 30 seconds, one of which is a fat nullifier, possibly initially immune to damage unless you use operators. And then let's hope you brought your meta build to kill this one bulletsponge that's gonna ignore and run away from you.

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8 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Kuva survival yes, it's very close. But the mission design is terrible on that one. And it's just one mission.

Floods and Syphons... don't have a mission design. For 4 years since the War Within update they weren't changed once. Even though Kuva missions are essentially Fissures 1.0 as they were initially released. Where enemies were just dumped on top of you with a bunch of nullifiers chancelling your everything, and your builds didn't matter. Your warframe didn't matter. Your weapons didn't matter. There was no scaling. No endless gameplay. "Endless" missions were limited to a single rotation. And now with kuva floods and syphons the only endless mission you can have is survival for 5 minutes. But because rivens are the most desirable items in the game right now and for a very long time there was no alternative to farming them, Kuva missions were THE WARFRAME for FOUR YEARS. Arguably are still THE WARFRAME. But now I suppose you have some limited alternatives.

And disruption missions are a joke. Kill two enemies every 30 seconds, one of which is a fat nullifier, possibly initially immune to damage unless you use operators. And then let's hope you brought your meta build to kill this one bulletsponge that's gonna ignore and run away from you.

Well we should really only need one mode if it should be the flagship of the game. But yeah siphons and floods are limited, I'm more thinking that they serve the purpose since they bring materials towards the most desirable thing we can get, the final step in gearing etc.

Just bring Naramon and a hammer for disruption and enjoy the spammable finishers with highest possible multiplier that also hinders the demos from moving.

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53 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Well we should really only need one mode if it should be the flagship of the game. But yeah siphons and floods are limited, I'm more thinking that they serve the purpose since they bring materials towards the most desirable thing we can get, the final step in gearing etc.

Floods and Syphons are a burnout torture device. DE put the only fleshed out reward in the game behind the most tedious and toxic gameplay and left it untouched for 4 years and counting. And why? Because they needed to justify the existence of the operators and root them in some kind of gameplay. Consequently, most incentivized and rewarded game mode in a looter shooter isn't affected by your gear and warframe choices. And reliant instead on inferior operator mechanics. Plus the tedious random missions you are forsed into afterwards, that on its own offer no reward at all, and are essentially an obligatory slog you just have to do to get your kuva. You can't choose the missions you want to play, you can't do anything interesting in those missions, you just have to live through them rinse and repeat. You don't engage with this gameplay, you suffer through it for the sake of the slot machine high you get when rolling rivens.

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On 2020-07-27 at 12:19 AM, AperoBeltaTwo said:

my quote from another topic:

"Also, difficulty is overrated. I think people invoke difficulty in Warframe when they don't really know what they want and just 
feel like they have to say something. Nobody really cares about the game being difficult. What people really want, I think, is for the game to validate the hundreds and thousands of hours of grind people spent on collecting all this gear that in reality has no purpose for the most part. People want to actually play the game now, with all the gear and knowledge they've gathered over the time of their playthrough; that would also be worth future time investment. Today you're building your account for nothing. This looter shooter provides no reason to collect all this loot. Warframe doesn't have a flagship content."

I semi-agree with this. I do think the term "difficulty" is thrown around without the best understanding of what it entails, and I think there's generally a confusion between difficulty and challenge:

  • Difficulty in its purest sense tends to be about how likely one is to fail at something. It is thus not surprising that many players would oppose greater difficulty in Warframe, because Warframe isn't really a game meant to make players fail at what they do, and that's okay.
  • Challenge is the capacity for something to test one's skills, knowledge, and abilities. This I think is what a lot of people actually want when they talk about difficulty, including the OP when mentioning "flagship content" and an opportunity to validate one's grind, because challenge is what makes a game stimulating, and it's something Warframe tends to lack, particularly for experienced players with optimized builds.

So really, the whole arguments around "difficulty" I think could be largely avoided if we set clear definitions and aimed towards some kind of compromise: some players want content that they have a chance of failing and others don't, but I think we call agree that it'd be nice if the game could give us content that would be genuinely stimulating to play. The Steel Path tried to do this by raising the difficulty of content, and while that did inject some small amount of extra challenge (i.e. not every enemy gets one-shot anymore, and so can actually fight back), the net result was still content that wasn't all that challenging, nor even all that much more difficult.

Breaking this down further, I think the issue isn't necessarily that there is "flagship content" out there that could solve all of our problems, because I think there are currently some problems with the game's current state that prevent it from being challenging:

  • Our balance is completely out of whack, with some weapons dealing orders of magnitude more damage than others, and some frames having orders of magnitude more EHP than others. It is essentially impossible right now to balance enemy EHP around our best weapons without making the rest of our arsenal feel like pea-shooters, or to balance enemy damage around our tankiest frames without the rest getting two-shot. Balancing along any lower benchmark just means we go back to our strongest weapons and frames trivializing that content.
  • Our warframes are often designed in such a way that it's impossible to challenge at all. If a frame can stunlock a whole room, or go invisible essentially forever, no amount of enemy balancing is going to really help, because that kind of design shuts down any interaction at all between players and the rest of the game.
  • Our missions are designed in an overly specific way that makes them easy to trivialize. Spy mission? Just bring out Wukong and nothing will stand in your way. Excavation? Bring out Limbo, and bar the occasional Nullifier, it'll be impossible to lose. Hijack? Bring out Inaros or Hildryn, and you'll be able to literally AFK through most of the mission and still win. It doesn't matter that these individual frames are mediocre or even outright terrible for other mission types, because you only need a frame who can do one thing in order to auto-win a mission.

So before we talk about trying to fix the game's lack of challenge with a new slew of content, which DE have been repeatedly attempting for years now, we should perhaps look at the above and see what we can do to address those issues. If nothing else, mixing up mission objectives (and so with the player's foreknowledge, like with Kuva Fortress Assault, not in the Capture-style "change of plans" manner) could prevent any single frame from trivializing any one mission, and after that it may be a very long process of rebalancing our weapons and frames so that the DPS and EHP discrepancies don't exceed a factor of three or four, let alone ten or a hundred. It wouldn't be the quickest of fixes, but then I don't think there's really a quick fix to this kind of situation. DE has a lot of work to do if they want Warframe to give us a challenge, which is probably why they've been putting off work on the deeper systemic obstacles to that, and letting them fester over the years.

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1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

So before we talk about trying to fix the game's lack of challenge with a new slew of content, which DE have been repeatedly attempting for years now,

DE don't understand effort and reward and how to structure the game around it. How to incentivize replayability. Every time we get a new content update, DE slap on it some exclusive one-time rewards which would essentially mean that unless players find some other use for that content there would be zero replayability value in said content in the context of the game. Sure that doesn't mean some people won't occasionally revisit it for "fun", and the new players will eventually engage with it. But a flagship content is something worth playing whenever you log into the game. It is the primary gameplay experience. And such an obvious and important thing we simply do not have in Warframe right now.

There was a pivotal moment for me long ago when I was still watching devstreams myself (and not just watching recaps), when Steve got a question about the nature of Warframe as a game. I think he was asked what genre it is or something like that. And he geniunely struggled to answer that question, then dismissed it with a joke and they moved on. I mean, it could be nothing and me just overthinking. But can you imagine creative producer geniunely being unable to answer a question like that?

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1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

 

  • Difficulty in its purest sense tends to be about how likely one is to fail at something. It is thus not surprising that many players would oppose greater difficulty in Warframe, because Warframe isn't really a game meant to make players fail at what they do, and that's okay.
  • Challenge is the capacity for something to test one's skills, knowledge, and abilities. This I think is what a lot of people actually want when they talk about difficulty, including the OP when mentioning "flagship content" and an opportunity to validate one's grind, because challenge is what makes a game stimulating, and it's something Warframe tends to lack, particularly for experienced players with optimized builds.

I'm interested in the definitions. 

  • Difficulty Harsher parameters making tighter the precision and exactness of the player managing resources during the engagement. 
  • Challenge Stress test for skill, quick reaction and decision making. The possibility of pass or fail is present. An example is a Riven challenge. 
  • Hard mode A setting or state of the game that increases challenge and difficulty adding new variables not considered before by the player that the game provides. 

One speaks about the parameters. The second definition speaks about the testing and the third word describes the settings or the collection of new variables. This is how I understand the relation of these three words. Things can be difficult and challenging. But games can't be challenging without being difficult. One concept, challenge is the umbrella for difficulty. We have different ideas but the structure of our thought is quite similar. In my definition I tried to be more mathematical and analytical considering the context of algorithms and game design. 

Your definition works. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

So really, the whole arguments around "difficulty" I think could be largely avoided if we set clear definitions and aimed towards some kind of compromise: some players want content that they have a chance of failing and others don't, but I think we call agree that it'd be nice if the game could give us content that would be genuinely stimulating to play. The Steel Path tried to do this by raising the difficulty of content, and while that did inject some small amount of extra challenge (i.e. not every enemy gets one-shot anymore, and so can actually fight back), the net result was still content that wasn't all that challenging, nor even all that much more difficult.

True. Classical scientific reasoning. It applies here. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

Breaking this down further, I think the issue isn't necessarily that there is "flagship content" out there that could solve all of our problems, because I think there are currently some problems with the game's current state that prevent it from being challenging:

The intent of the designer is to be inclusive for the vast majority of players. DE market is the GAAS F2P. Natural contenders are Destiny 2 and few not so popular F2P similar to the market proposed by DE. War Frame tends to be unique on that matter giving advantage due to the novelty of being the only product tackling that market. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:
  • Our balance is completely out of whack, with some weapons dealing orders of magnitude more damage than others, and some frames having orders of magnitude more EHP than others. It is essentially impossible right now to balance enemy EHP around our best weapons without making the rest of our arsenal feel like pea-shooters, or to balance enemy damage around our tankiest frames without the rest getting two-shot. Balancing along any lower benchmark just means we go back to our strongest weapons and frames trivializing that content.

I'm not questioning what you wrote but I'm questioning why that happens. Why DE conceive such disparity between weapons? What type of market strategy is involved? Balancing is a problem, in my opinion, that has two solutions. DE deals with it, or DE do not deal with it accepting the differences in such weapons. If DE decides to ignore right away, people will use and abuse the biggest stick in the barn. Then DE chop it up just that such stick measure similar to the rest in the barn. 

This is a cyclic problem that seems to be the way DE receives the income. They create situations that justify patches. It's a circuit. This will continue to be the case because they game was designed this way. A way to evade this is the release of weapons that are not outliers. It seems that outliers is the source that makes the economy wheel spin. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:
  • Our warframes are often designed in such a way that it's impossible to challenge at all. If a frame can stunlock a whole room, or go invisible essentially forever, no amount of enemy balancing is going to really help, because that kind of design shuts down any interaction at all between players and the rest of the game.

True, that's the other issue. How power are conceived. But Steel Path is providing some good testing. At least is something where DE can improve and explore. It's a new barometer that measures the distribution of builds, preferences and strategies. This will teach DE what to do next accurately. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:
  • Our missions are designed in an overly specific way that makes them easy to trivialize. Spy mission? Just bring out Wukong and nothing will stand in your way. Excavation? Bring out Limbo, and bar the occasional Nullifier, it'll be impossible to lose. Hijack? Bring out Inaros or Hildryn, and you'll be able to literally AFK through most of the mission and still win. It doesn't matter that these individual frames are mediocre or even outright terrible for other mission types, because you only need a frame who can do one thing in order to auto-win a mission.

True. But the idea was the movement on the repertoire selection. Players must cycle frames for certain tasks. It justify the existence of such frames and the validation on particular builds with certain attributes. Making harder the tasks could be working with the parkour and certain powers. If certain frames are the spies then levels and challenge should be around those frames. 

You are right. it is impossible for developers design a spy mission for all the content available for the player. No developer would do that. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

So before we talk about trying to fix the game's lack of challenge with a new slew of content, which DE have been repeatedly attempting for years now, we should perhaps look at the above and see what we can do to address those issues. If nothing else, mixing up mission objectives (and so with the player's foreknowledge, like with Kuva Fortress Assault, not in the Capture-style "change of plans" manner) could prevent any single frame from trivializing any one mission, and after that it may be a very long process of rebalancing our weapons and frames so that the DPS and EHP discrepancies don't exceed a factor of three or four, let alone ten or a hundred. It wouldn't be the quickest of fixes, but then I don't think there's really a quick fix to this kind of situation. DE has a lot of work to do if they want Warframe to give us a challenge, which is probably why they've been putting off work on the deeper systemic obstacles to that, and letting them fester over the years.

In linear algebra you make linear combinations with a basis that span a vector space. In this game the same reasoning follows. There are simple missions that can be combined in a 'campaign mission' where players farm some Kuva, free hostages without the pressure of time where such hostage gives certain reward, do excavation and then combat the horde in one mission. 

This may provide instances where one frame is more useful than others giving participation to the tier. This idea was used before and it works. Missions could be trivialized because the requisite of completion is simple and rudimentary. When missions involves the spirit of a 'RAID' in one try the mission adds intensity. Certain video games apply this principle but War Frame has the luxury to do it straight away. Can Steel Path improves? Yes of course. This is one way to do it. Increase the level of complexity on the missions. 

One more important aspect. Focus on the fun part. Hostages should be found without the time pressure of killing them while in other missions you leave that parameter intact. The 'minute made' missions can stay for quick plays but when other players asks for more immersion why not make more complex missions involving more than three objectives. 

 

Agree with this approach. It's a good discussion because it forces the discussion into a more meticulous land that may improve and propose a solution other than a circulatory argument that always ends in rhetoric debates . 

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4 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

DE don't understand effort and reward and how to structure the game around it. How to incentivize replayability. Every time we get a new content update, DE slap on it some exclusive one-time rewards which would essentially mean that unless players find some other use for that content there would be zero replayability value in said content in the context of the game. Sure that doesn't mean some people won't occasionally revisit it for "fun", and the new players will eventually engage with it. But a flagship content is something worth playing whenever you log into the game. It is the primary gameplay experience. And such an obvious and important thing we simply do not have in Warframe right now.

This I can agree with to some extent as well. DE has repeatedly made the mistake of designing content that we only play if we have some extrinsic reason to, e.g. ESO or Arbitrations, and those extrinsic reasons, i.e. rewards, only come in limited supply. Thus, players inevitably burn through the content, and find themselves with no more reason to play it. I very much agree that this needs to change, and that we need unlimited reasons to play content, ideally in-game stakes, e.g. protecting planets against invasions and other machinations, rather than limited extrinsic rewards.

4 hours ago, Felsagger said:

The intent of the designer is to be inclusive for the vast majority of players. DE market is the GAAS F2P. Natural contenders are Destiny 2 and few not so popular F2P similar to the market proposed by DE. War Frame tends to be unique on that matter giving advantage due to the novelty of being the only product tackling that market. 

See, I can agree with wanting to make Warframe accessible, which is why I'm personally not really in favor of more difficulty, even if I am in favor of more challenge. Even that, though, is not something DE does well, because Warframe puts a massive initial burden of information on newer players and gives them no real direction. However, in that respect I do think Warframe can present more challenges, i.e. tests of things we've learned, without making the game much more difficult. The two new Corpus tilesets are a good example of this, because they present many more opportunities for us to flex our parkour muscles, while still keeping traversal accessible to newcomers who aren't necessarily as agile. More content of that sort I'd say would be welcome, even among those opposed to making the game more difficult.

Quote

I'm not questioning what you wrote but I'm questioning why that happens. Why DE conceive such disparity between weapons? What type of market strategy is involved? Balancing is a problem, in my opinion, that has two solutions. DE deals with it, or DE do not deal with it accepting the differences in such weapons. If DE decides to ignore right away, people will use and abuse the biggest stick in the barn. Then DE chop it up just that such stick measure similar to the rest in the barn. 

This is a cyclic problem that seems to be the way DE receives the income. They create situations that justify patches. It's a circuit. This will continue to be the case because they game was designed this way. A way to evade this is the release of weapons that are not outliers. It seems that outliers is the source that makes the economy wheel spin. 

I think there's a bit of both strategy and accident. The existence of Prime Access, with primed frames being statistically superior to their base versions, I think is clear evidence of DE trying to sell some degree of power creep. However, the fact that these primes are sometimes far worse than most other options, and sometimes even their base versions (e.g. the Panthera Prime), suggests that the devs also have such a tenuous grasp on their own game's balance that the power creep that we get frequently happens by pure accident. In any case, power creep I don't think is what really is getting Warframe its revenue, so I'd argue it's not really a market strategy worth pursuing.

4 hours ago, Felsagger said:

True. But the idea was the movement on the repertoire selection. Players must cycle frames for certain tasks. It justify the existence of such frames and the validation on particular builds with certain attributes. Making harder the tasks could be working with the parkour and certain powers. If certain frames are the spies then levels and challenge should be around those frames. 

Indeed, and using the right frame for the right occasion should be rewarding. However, the issue comes from essentially only presenting one criterion for victory, which a frame can satisfy pretty much by existing. That's why there arguably should be more criteria, i.e. a smattering of different objectives, rather than the same objective repeated three or more times, within the same mission, so that players can't swap out to the perfect frame for each one.

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I just want content that feels good to play cooperatively. The game, from a difficulty or design standpoint, doesn't really feel like it was designed for teamwork/cooperation. When you have friends that like to play Saryn, or Hydroid, or Limbo (or really any Warframe with enough mods and powerful weapons), it makes my existence feel completely unnecessary. I'd love for my friends to be able to play what and how they want without also trivializing my experience.

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1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

 

See, I can agree with wanting to make Warframe accessible, which is why I'm personally not really in favor of more difficulty, even if I am in favor of more challenge. Even that, though, is not something DE does well, because Warframe puts a massive initial burden of information on newer players and gives them no real direction. However, in that respect I do think Warframe can present more challenges, i.e. tests of things we've learned, without making the game much more difficult. The two new Corpus tilesets are a good example of this, because they present many more opportunities for us to flex our parkour muscles, while still keeping traversal accessible to newcomers who aren't necessarily as agile. More content of that sort I'd say would be welcome, even among those opposed to making the game more difficult.

You mention one of the best, if not the best attribute of Warframe. 

I don't know if this was intended with purpose or just an incident. The player feels lost like the first instances when Excalibur goes activated in our first quest. That first contact with the game IS epic. I had almost the same vibe throughout all the quests. Even Rail Jack building was fascinating. The game should provide instruction without giving no real direction. That's the strongest aspect that made me stay seven years with DE. I would love to have more of such formula. It makes me go wild with my imagination going places while I assemble the puzzle of this fuzzy lore. 

I know what you are trying to say. But I felt such moment where I was left without idea on what to do next. Deviating a bit, I thought that War Frame was a game where you play in a way and by playing in such certain way your war frame mutates giving you a skill tree of options. When I found that other War Frames where available, I had a mind blown moment. I think DE was way ahead of their time. 

Another fascinating idea is the triple lecture stage. Two tile sets that achieved majestic design was Jupiter Tileset and Corpus Fleet. DE designed THE STAGES for the War Frames. You don't know how much time I spend doing parkour after I finish the missions, just looting randomly without any purpose. Those are "mini sand box" levels because these allows a Zephyr, Gauss and Titania be themselves without any restriction. I think this is where War Frame began for me. All three frames provides a complete different lecture of those two tile sets. I think about Titan Fall 2 when I play those tile sets. They have different scales, different approaches and even allows me to be Spider Man latching on every wall. 

True. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I think there's a bit of both strategy and accident. The existence of Prime Access, with primed frames being statistically superior to their base versions, I think is clear evidence of DE trying to sell some degree of power creep. However, the fact that these primes are sometimes far worse than most other options, and sometimes even their base versions (e.g. the Panthera Prime), suggests that the devs also have such a tenuous grasp on their own game's balance that the power creep that we get frequently happens by pure accident. In any case, power creep I don't think is what really is getting Warframe its revenue, so I'd argue it's not really a market strategy worth pursuing.

It was shocking how DE found a path throughout such persistent problem. That's the best way to describe it. I think on the classical snow ball effect. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, and using the right frame for the right occasion should be rewarding. However, the issue comes from essentially only presenting one criterion for victory, which a frame can satisfy pretty much by existing. That's why there arguably should be more criteria, i.e. a smattering of different objectives, rather than the same objective repeated three or more times, within the same mission, so that players can't swap out to the perfect frame for each one.

Pretty much. 

DE was careful enough not to optimize for one solution but certain frames lowers or increases the difficulty of the mission. Good selections are rewarded. At least DE pushes under the table the thinking game without stressing out the details. When I play with experts they even give me the builds and how to exactly use them telling me why they work and how the synergy works. For new players the information is quite staggering. But even for Veterans sometimes is unexpected and surprising the fact that new War Frames poses satisfactory solutions with a different strategy. 

If I dare to speak about a "flag ship" content I would start talking about the stage design on those two tile sets. Corpus ships and Jupiter. This where the game shines better. I still believe that Rail Jack still has the chance to unify contents. I'll give them more time because imagine how awesome would it be to call your Rail Jack in Fortuna for aerial support or just pausing the game for weapon changes or Warframes. I think Rail Jack can save the game instead of breaking it, IMO. 

Another hidden "flag ship" content, I know this is premature, is Steel Path. Why? This update affects all the game. It's a full revision. Makes players revisit and review the whole star map. It makes me use the stage features to take cover and derive advantage of my position instead of running the mill. This is a smart way for us and DE review the whole game. 

Good stage design makes me value each War Frame more. 

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27 minutes ago, IntheCoconut said:

I just want content that feels good to play cooperatively. The game, from a difficulty or design standpoint, doesn't really feel like it was designed for teamwork/cooperation. When you have friends that like to play Saryn, or Hydroid, or Limbo (or really any Warframe with enough mods and powerful weapons), it makes my existence feel completely unnecessary. I'd love for my friends to be able to play what and how they want without also trivializing my experience.

Teamwork game play is why I enjoy a lot War Frame. It can be done but I want few missions that encourage team work and certain tasks that gives us some coordination. I get what you mean. Some Warframes takes the fun away for being way too powerful. Many of us still beg for the return of some sort of Raids in the game. 

Imagine a solo option where you equip 4 war frames while 1 tenno switch between them. Just one or two mission doing this would be mind blowing. 

Imagine that two tennos working together each has 2 frames where tennos can switch between their selection AND switch to other frames of the other tenno. 

We have all these ideas in the game. It's possible, the game has all the assets. Just think how cooperative would look like. This would be the first glimpse of an RTS approach without the complexity of an RTS. 

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8 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

DE don't understand effort and reward and how to structure the game around it. How to incentivize replayability. Every time we get a new content update, DE slap on it some exclusive one-time rewards which would essentially mean that unless players find some other use for that content there would be zero replayability value in said content in the context of the game. Sure that doesn't mean some people won't occasionally revisit it for "fun", and the new players will eventually engage with it. But a flagship content is something worth playing whenever you log into the game. It is the primary gameplay experience. And such an obvious and important thing we simply do not have in Warframe right now.

There was a pivotal moment for me long ago when I was still watching devstreams myself (and not just watching recaps), when Steve got a question about the nature of Warframe as a game. I think he was asked what genre it is or something like that. And he geniunely struggled to answer that question, then dismissed it with a joke and they moved on. I mean, it could be nothing and me just overthinking. But can you imagine creative producer geniunely being unable to answer a question like that?

Tldr, THIS ISN'T FLAGSHIP!!!!! xD

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I agree WF currently lacks a core gameplay-loop that validates all the time we put in before, your flagship content as it were. We might be seeing the start of this, though there is still a long way to go.

Now, I have only started at the start of this year, but have been playing reasonably hard-core. And boy, when you start out there is a ridiculous amount of content, overwhelming really! Played mostly solo, because at the start you just can't keep up with the movement and you are, well, clueless as to what is going on in general. Later on I kept playing solo because there is no content anywhere that is appropriate for the power of a full squad. Anyway, all that is left to do now is a solo eidolon tri-cap.

It is just ridiculous how undertuned the opposition is, or how overtuned our frames. A combination of both really, especially with the existence of frames whose main goal is sidestepping and 'cheating' entire game-modes.

SP solo, beyond the increased level, health, armor and shields gives you the spawn-rate of a full squad, indicating that DE seems to be aware that currently they are not challenging those full squads. Obviously just multiplying the SP solo spawn rate by the number of players won't fix that, but a higher percentage of elites and eximus units (and a bunch of new ones please), mini-bosses and the like could, but that was clearly beyond the scope of SP as it would require much more dev time. Anyway, it's good that they are at least experimenting with ramping up the difficulty. Adding better 'spawn-tables' populated with lots more special units, secondary objectives popping up in-mission, and all increasingly so as squad size increases, as well as giving everything which currently lacks a SP variant the same treatment would go a long way towards more challenge. 

The other elephant in the room is the current dead-end reward structure, namely extremely RNG, binary pass-fail and combined with loot-tables tied to specific nodes or game-modes. There is no progress towards a goal, something either drops, or it doesn't, pushing players towards a soulcrushing amount of repetition, frustration and burn-out. They can keep their drop tables, but there needs to exist a way to sidestep this, a fall-back option for when RNG is messing with you, and also tie all the islands together. One option is by use of an overarching currency, like Steel Essence (but with a better implemented droprate) and putting just about everything in the shop, except of course new frames, weapons or whatever which would not be added the first few months. Price everything so that it comes out at a higher number of expected runs than farming whatever you are after directly, but at least you are making progress towards something, no matter what you do or how stubborn a particular loot table is in giving you what you want.

There will always be a most efficient way of farming something, and that is okay, but currently it almost boils down to there only existing one place or gamemode to farm something. A currency and shop would the possibility for variation when you get sick and tired of that particular method, as well as a way not to halt progress in other area's.

That said, while not the core gameplay loop, it was the story quests that hooked me and drew me in, and I eagerly look forward to them moving forward. Do not underestimate their importance! Also the operator is imho vital as your central avatar that is constant no matter what frame you are using. The idea behind the schools and how they could change and tweak your gameplay, independent from your frame, is also good, even as the current implementation of the schools leaves much to be desired.

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On 2020-07-27 at 2:19 AM, AperoBeltaTwo said:

What people really want, I think, is for the game to validate the hundreds and thousands of hours of grind people spent on collecting all this gear that in reality has no purpose for the most part.

Warframe is literally the only game that I can think of that actually DOES validate your time investment. People forget how weak and pathetic they were when they started the game. They forget to look at themselves and realize how insanely powerful they have become since then.

In any other game, you gain power and for what? Nothing, the enemies gain power as well. You're literally spinning your wheels in place. Warframe on the other hand? You gain power and you feel it. Starting from a pathetic weakling that had problems with one level 4 Grineer and getting to the point where I wipe entire ESO maps at the press of a button, that is real progression. That is real validation of my investment.

So that statement that I quoted, that's completely wrong. I didn't spend all this time collecting that gear and improving it for no reason. All that time spent led to me being an unstoppable god. So all that time was very well spent.

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4 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

Warframe is literally the only game that I can think of that actually DOES validate your time investment. People forget how weak and pathetic they were when they started the game. They forget to look at themselves and realize how insanely powerful they have become since then.

In any other game, you gain power and for what? Nothing, the enemies gain power as well. You're literally spinning your wheels in place. Warframe on the other hand? You gain power and you feel it. Starting from a pathetic weakling that had problems with one level 4 Grineer and getting to the point where I wipe entire ESO maps at the press of a button, that is real progression. That is real validation of my investment.

So that statement that I quoted, that's completely wrong. I didn't spend all this time collecting that gear and improving it for no reason. All that time spent led to me being an unstoppable god. So all that time was very well spent.

This interpretation resonates with me on a very spiritual level. Having always played mages and wizards who start out weak and by the end of a game are all but gods in their given medium. The Gothic series of games nailed this in such a great way.

The break down of course happens because power fantasy is not everyones cup of tea, and Warframe wasent always to the degree of power fantasy it is now. If what Pablo said is true however this was the intended destination of the game.

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55 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

Warframe is literally the only game that I can think of that actually DOES validate your time investment. People forget how weak and pathetic they were when they started the game. They forget to look at themselves and realize how insanely powerful they have become since then.

In any other game, you gain power and for what? Nothing, the enemies gain power as well. You're literally spinning your wheels in place. Warframe on the other hand? You gain power and you feel it. Starting from a pathetic weakling that had problems with one level 4 Grineer and getting to the point where I wipe entire ESO maps at the press of a button, that is real progression. That is real validation of my investment.

So that statement that I quoted, that's completely wrong. I didn't spend all this time collecting that gear and improving it for no reason. All that time spent led to me being an unstoppable god. So all that time was very well spent.

 

43 minutes ago, Magus_Tahir said:

This interpretation resonates with me on a very spiritual level. Having always played mages and wizards who start out weak and by the end of a game are all but gods in their given medium. The Gothic series of games nailed this in such a great way.

The break down of course happens because power fantasy is not everyones cup of tea, and Warframe wasent always to the degree of power fantasy it is now. If what Pablo said is true however this was the intended destination of the game.

Yes, and, trust me, you are still that unstoppable god in, let's say, SP. The power fantasy is still very much alive, but you can die with lots of frames there if you don't pay some attention to what you're doing and the choices you make in your setups have meaning. It's those choices and using your warframe's abilities which make you the aforementioned unstoppable engine of destruction.

That is not the case when playing the normal star chart, which is content meant for players who are just starting the journey. People on these boards talk a lot about the meta but the truth is (IMHO and YMMV) that for the vast majority of the current content none of those fancy builds really matter, nor what frame or weapons you use. Sure, might speed things up a little, but the outcome of the mission will never be in doubt. I would argue that this is not 'freedom from meta' as much as your choices not mattering. If we take WoW or another morrg as examples we have max level characters with fancy end-game raid gear running around in the first couple of zones. Whatever build or weapon you use, everything you as much as look at dies anyway. 

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2 minutes ago, Angwah said:

Yes, and, trust me, you are still that unstoppable god in, let's say, SP. The power fantasy is still there, but you can die with lots of frames there if you don't pay some attention to what you're doing and the choices you make in your setups have meaning. It's those choices and using your warframe's abilities which make you the aforementioned unstoppable engine of destruction.

Have we played the same mode? Cause SP makes no difference what so ever, it's just a waste of time. I've used the exact same builds I use normally (none of which are meta, I've made them myself cause they're fun), an the only enemy that was ever close to killing me was boredom.

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