What about the Grind?

[Loza03]

Well, lets ask why Grind exists in the first place?

Grind, simply put, exists for one of two reasons. 1: to divvy up the experience to try get people to experience more of the game (see: lower level spells in DnD, or Titanfall 2's progression system) and 2: to increase the amount of time a player engages with the playtime artificially, because the 'normal' amount won't provide the required amount of playtime. Warframe, being a 1000+ hour experience without gameplay-extending elements like PvP (I mean, Conclave, but it'd dead Jim), is inevitably going to have grind. There isn't a snowballs chance on the bloody sun for DE to make enough content for a curated, grind-free experience, so, yes, there's always gonna be grind. The sooner you make peace with that fact, the better.

 

The real question is, what makes the current grind so intolerable? If I had to guess, duration and repetition. Duration is something DE can do something about - simply reduce the number of required runs, like what they did with Dog Days this year. But repetition is the interesting part, because not only does it make it less tolerable, it also puts a floor on how low DE can make the grind. See, in Warframe, we're at this wonderful point where we basically have every possible gameplay scenario down pat, to the point where there aren't actually that many gameplay scenarios. We've overcome constraints of Terrain, with LoS ignoring AoE, even if the AI was competent it'd still get deleted or ignored by the unholy trinity (nukes, CC, perma- invisilibility), and we basically do not need to worry about energy, ammo or health whatsoever on the majority of frames.

Since we've hit the point where the steps DE can take to make an activity different over multiple runs are, at best, left to the mercy of the player not willingly sabotaging their experience, then naturally since most players will not take steps to try reduce repetition (double, since those steps are going to reduce efficiency to begin with, incentivising that they keep up repetitive play) then of course the game is going to seem grindier, because instead of being able to do bunch of different things in a bunch of distinct ways, you're doing the exact same thing in the exact same way ad infinitum. 

[Yamazuki]

26 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

My argument for F2P Games as always been leave the mechanics alone and make money with Cosmetics.

Unfortunately that will never happen in a pve setting. We are at a point where publishers/developers think single player games need to sell exp boosters (Ubisoft) or single player games are ruined as they're converted into "live services" for the purpose of collecting money (Rockstar).

DE's only consistent release schedule is Prime Access, everything else is tied entirely to what ever DE's "feelings" are, and even when it comes to PA, it's just 1 set of skins. Without Tennogen to fill the void, Warframe would hardly have much of a cosmetic release.

17 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

I'm still trying to find the massive grind people complain about and which supposedly DE was going to reduce. There are some unrewarding aspects in the game sure, but overall I dont feel much different in WF than I do in other games. If is pretty spot on for western standards even as a F2P game. Of course we have several different things to grind, but that is also after 7+ years. That is natural for games that do not rely on just resetting things for seasonal play, which in itself doesnt reduce the grind, it just makes you do the same grind another time around.

Warframe does have some areas that have pretty horrendous grind when you're not lucky, as some of the grind is more or less artificial due to the length of the grind being entirely left to luck and not a set time commitment. Fortuna/Vox for example took me multiple hundred runs for the last set of systems to rank up once. Although, I'm not sure when DE said they were planning on reducing grind years ago, I only remember them talking about it sometime end of last year. If you look at things from the last year, they're not all that bad.

Railjack had no daily limitations like Focus did, and it was easy to cap out even without the "exploits", and then they went and made it even easier. The resources were easy to get, then they made it even easier.

Scarlet Spear was this year's event, the new stuff was easy to get within 1 day, and the arcanes were cheap when you consider they were locked behind time gated content. Casually doing SS allowed you to max out all arcanes with little effort.

The currency associated with Sentient Anomaly was easy to get, and required so few compared to initially where it was all RNG and most people likely would have never seen any of the rewards without the currency addition, especially with the multiple layers of randomness associated with it.

Steel Essence, like Anomaly, requires so few for the one time rewards. They're also easy to get when you know how to get them, and the main issue with them isn't the "grind" but more so to do with how eximus units don't really spawn without waiting nearly an hour.

I personally don't understand why complain about currencies given all this, at least they provide a guaranteed reward after a point unlike other areas of the game where you could either be done in a couple runs, or never.

[Magus_Tahir]

1 minute ago, SneakyErvin said:

I think alot of it comes down to what type of games people come from. I'm an old MMO geezer, so that is very possibly a reason why I dont see the grind here. Not that I'm numb to grinding, since I quit both ArcheAge and Black Desert since they were just too grindy, same reason I have a hard time for PoE, since it is just an RNG game if you dont wanna rely on trading.

And in all fairness, WF can very likely be overwhelming if you come here without a background in grind games.

There is that yes. Lets see my entire MMO experinces in no specific order.

Guild Wars, WoW, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars II, Tera, Archeage, Rift, DnD Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Forsaken World, Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, StarWars Galaxies, Star Wars The Old Republic, The Secret World, Skyforge, and Wildstar (so much potential wasted), and BDO. 

These games form the bedrock of my knowledge and experience when it comes to judging different aspects of MMO's ive played over the last twenty some odd years. 

From personal perspective Warframe grind is a walk in the park, but thats just me talkin about me. 

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Sorry to be the old man in the room, but a lot us came from literal 3 hour boss fights and camping enemies for drops that spawned on a real life 3 to 12 hour timer.

Online videogames are bad, they really are. They ruin people's lives. We're playing in a capitalistic businessman's paradise right now, and it sucks. Millions of people making a bunch of 5 to 150 dollar purchases for games.

Progress with changing a lot of this stuff is slow, just like real life progress. I honestly had no idea my state (or any state) was going to legalize marijuana in my lifetime. It made sense not to: it's easy tickets and an easy way to fill some jail cells, why get rid of such a money maker from an evil governments standpoint.

I've only been playing for a little over a year, but the veteran that "raised" me when I started warframe said "this is the best time to start playing now" because he said the game was way worse before: paying plat for revives, and things like arcanes and amps taking way more to craft/acquire.

When I make an amp, I can farm the items in like a couple days if needed. (Quills, not Vox, but you dont need the Certus to do Eidos)

You fish for like 10 minutes a day and you'll be good. Yea, mining sucks but it still doesnt take "forever".

My ultimate point is that yes this game is grindy, but MMOs always will be. They will continue to make changes, but they wont all be next week.

You have to have patience and understand that this is the business model. MMOs are "supposed" to be played for awhile, so expecting to play any game for 2 months then head off to another game isn't gonna work. You should want to play a game for like a year at least.

Warframe pulled me in after the 2nd Dream, and that's when I decided "Ok, I'm gonna end up playing this awhile, let's put the seatbelts on."

I've been doing this awhile, but I totally understand from a real outsiders perspective that many online games can be a turn off. 

Just learn to not want everything right away and instead learn to "chip away" at things. 

[SneakyErvin]

1 minute ago, Magus_Tahir said:

There is that yes. Lets see my entire MMO experinces in no specific order.

Guild Wars, WoW, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars II, Tera, Archeage, Rift, DnD Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Forsaken World, Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, StarWars Galaxies, Star Wars The Old Republic, The Secret World, Skyforge, and Wildstar (so much potential wasted), and BDO. 

These games form the bedrock of my knowledge and experience when it comes to judging different aspects of MMO's ive played over the last twenty some odd years. 

From personal perspective Warframe grind is a walk in the park, but thats just me talkin about me. 

 

Simlar experience here and I come to the same conclussion regarding the WF grind. Not to mention that people are often hung up on the "time gate" crafting in WF. I personally love it since I dont need to waste hours sitting there manually crafting things I need. I can let the game do what is needed then just do what I want while things craft.

6 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Steel Essence, like Anomaly, requires so few for the one time rewards. They're also easy to get when you know how to get them, and the main issue with them isn't the "grind" but more so to do with how eximus units don't really spawn without waiting nearly an hour.

I personally don't understand why complain about currencies given all this, at least they provide a guaranteed reward after a point unlike other areas of the game where you could either be done in a couple runs, or never.

Steel Essence is pretty well done, as you say the problem is really how the eximus spawns work. It is however very consistant, if you spend 60-70 minutes with a loadout that kills quickly enough you will end up with 20 essence or so in that time. Currencies could definently be used elsewhere in the game to safeguard versus bad luck with getting new items. I've never ran into bad luck myself in WF, but many do when it comes to frame or weapon grinds.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

2 hours ago, Sovyul said:

Someone is typing a 4-6 long paragraph excuse as I'm posting this.

If everything that you oppose is an "excuse", good luck learning basically anything in life lol.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

The endo example is a bad one seeing as since arbitrations it's been absurdly easy to gather. How many of you remember farming fusion cores in Heiracon to upgrade mods? 

Vitus Essence isn't hard to grind.

Kuva, do people still do survival for this?

Void traces I agree with, why they randomise the amount given per fissure is beyond me. 

For void traces, any run longer than like 30min will give you a good amount. 

Some of us accidentally get too many void traces during small endurance runs and go over the limit, wasting gathered void traces. 

I have to remember to go make some radiants to make room for more void traces.

[Magus_Tahir]

13 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Simlar experience here and I come to the same conclussion regarding the WF grind. Not to mention that people are often hung up on the "time gate" crafting in WF. I personally love it since I dont need to waste hours sitting there manually crafting things I need. I can let the game do what is needed then just do what I want while things craft.

Yee, and I completely forgot Ultima. Nothing like losing powers on experience drop and all your gear from a PK. When we grinded lvls to just not have it hurt when we died and wore crap gear when going into dangerous territory due to the risk of losing it.

Ahh those were the days. 

[Magus_Tahir]

58 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Since we've hit the point where the steps DE can take to make an activity different over multiple runs are, at best, left to the mercy of the player not willingly sabotaging their experience, then naturally since most players will not take steps to try reduce repetition (double, since those steps are going to reduce efficiency to begin with, incentivising that they keep up repetitive play) then of course the game is going to seem grindier, because instead of being able to do bunch of different things in a bunch of distinct ways, you're doing the exact same thing in the exact same way ad infinitum.

This is one reason why I want to see the original Syndicates reworked to push you into normal nodes instead of specific syndicate only ones. In essence to bring life back to nodes people rarely do and push people working on Syndicate rep into the main flow of the Star Chart. 

Randomize it so there are still 3 Syndicate missions a day, remove the tokens from map placement to rewards from objectives, and have it so you it gives bonuses for say a specific planet thats seeing new player activity that day or low pop. If you do your Syndicate missions there you gain bonus Rep and Tokens while showing up to help new or low level players from just being in the mission itself.

It could break down. 

Spy Mission has an extra console you put a data mass in.

Defense Mission has a object you deploy on the Defense cryopod.

Exterminate has some extra mobs that you need to kill along the way. Etc etc.

Nothing that would impact the flow of the mission, but you get rewards for doing the planet assigned to you that day. Its a win win as far as I am concerned, and it brings life to the start chart.

 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

For void traces, any run longer than like 30min will give you a good amount. 

Some of us accidentally get too many void traces during small endurance runs and go over the limit, wasting gathered void traces. 

I have to remember to go make some radiants to make room for more void traces.

Oh I do too, I actually grind them doing 2 hour excavation fissures. But it's still silly how the amount is completely random, you can get between 15 and 30... 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 minute ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Oh I do too, I actually grind them doing 2 hour excavation fissures. But it's still silly how the amount is completely random, you can get between 15 and 30... 

Yea I agree, for the people that run captures and some defense here and there, it can take a week to get like 500 or something.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

3 hours ago, trst said:

Yes there is a lot of grind and a lot of it is grindy but it's a no-win situation for DE regardless. If they reduce all the grinding to a point where most players would call it reasonable then we instantly sink into "content drought" mode where people complain of having nothing to do and stop playing. While having the amount of grind we do have results in complaints of people not having fun doing the same things repeatedly.

And if there is some "goldilocks" zone where gameplay is padded out just enough while not feeling grindy good luck finding it without people throwing a fit in both directions anyways. As mind you even with something like the current state of Steel Essence there are people perfectly fine with the system because they know/found out how to farm it efficiency and are already using it as a Kuva farm with all the rewards already obtained.

When was the last time DE released something that wasn't half-assed? I think they are way too afraid of the "content drought".

[(PSN)Silverback73]

3 hours ago, Aldain said:

My only distaste for grind is sub-10% drop rates on a long C rotation (E/SO) and having to farm tokens to farm for another thing, making this double layer of nonsense.

It is the primary reason why I decided against going into farming Protea, you need to farm access tokens to even try to farm an 11% drop rate for each part.

Also things like Systems and Toroids on Fortuna were the DEFINITION of a bad grind, RNG to even proceed down a syndicate is the single dumbest thing that DE has ever done imo.

Resource-loot retreading is easiest to implement to keep the game going but I agree completely that it was the first time it truly disrupted gameplay and rewards (for me, anyway).

So many of the requirements for Hildryn, weapons, syndicates on Fortuna...it was a retread of PoE (which I loved) but doubling down on requirements and even compounding them.

I still don’t have Hildryn.  And I refuse to buy her on principle.

[trst]

39 minutes ago, (PS4)Yggranya said:

When was the last time DE released something that wasn't half-assed? I think they are way too afraid of the "content drought".

Steel Path? Despite the opinions some people have on the update it did deliver on what it was meant to and the concerns over its grind are completely alleviated with smart farming. The only thing that could be considered half-assed about it is the rewards which are entirely subjective and are held up by the communities own problems. But nonetheless the mode is as complete as it ever needs to be in it's current state given its intentions.

Really the last half-assed updates I can think of would be Liches on release for its obtuse mechanics and the entirety of Railjack due to it still being incomplete and having been thoroughly dumbed-down with enemy nerfs. But also given how aggressive the entire community gets over content droughts it isn't surprising for them to be afraid of it happening again.

[Hypernaut1]

A person that doesn't like grinding really shouldn't be playing a game like Warframe.

The grinding IS the game. If there wasn't any grind, what exactly are you expecting to do? I'm confused. 

 

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, Magus_Tahir said:

This is one reason why I want to see the original Syndicates reworked to push you into normal nodes instead of specific syndicate only ones. In essence to bring life back to nodes people rarely do and push people working on Syndicate rep into the main flow of the Star Chart. 

Randomize it so there are still 3 Syndicate missions a day, remove the tokens from map placement to rewards from objectives, and have it so you it gives bonuses for say a specific planet thats seeing new player activity that day or low pop. If you do your Syndicate missions there you gain bonus Rep and Tokens while showing up to help new or low level players from just being in the mission itself.

It could break down. 

Spy Mission has an extra console you put a data mass in.

Defense Mission has a object you deploy on the Defense cryopod.

Exterminate has some extra mobs that you need to kill along the way. Etc etc.

Nothing that would impact the flow of the mission, but you get rewards for doing the planet assigned to you that day. Its a win win as far as I am concerned, and it brings life to the start chart.

 

Good ideas. For exterminate it would be as simple as if someone has a simaris target, though you wouldnt get screwed if someone else is trigger or chop happy. If someone else wipes those targets you get credit.

[844448]

25 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

The grinding IS the game. If there wasn't any grind, what exactly are you expecting to do? I'm confused. 

Taking a stroll enjoying the tileset. Say what you want but I love the Uranus tileset and I would spend a day swimming around if not walking at other tilesets

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

9 minutes ago, 844448 said:

Taking a stroll enjoying the tileset. Say what you want but I love the Uranus tileset and I would spend a day swimming around if not walking at other tilesets

You can do that. You can even take pics in it.

[vegetosayajin]

I'll just point the ones that are horrible from a my perspective.The others are hard at the start, but so as many other resourses/systems and after you max out most things they just gather dust.

5 hours ago, VanFanel1980mx said:

• Kuva (only made a bit less painful with Kuva survival.)
• Focus

These are ...just the worse. Kuva's time to farm compared to how fast it runs out is just enormous. And I'm not one of those people who want the god roll and do 1k rolls on a single riven(there was one dude a few months back that showed such riven), I usually roll a riven until something usable comes up, because I use them, I don't resell.
Focus is the other time grind in the game, I don't know if it takes the first spot or the second.If you are not willing to do 10-ish 5x3 eidos a day for example it could take half a year or even more to max out all of your focus trees and unbound all the nodes.And considering you can get to the focus system pretty early in your mr the limitations of the daily cap are horrible as well.

 

5 hours ago, VanFanel1980mx said:

• Riven Slivers (which you can't use more than once per day because reasons.)

Once a week and it's enough time to gather another 10.

[Skaleek]

"we want to reduce grind" is not conducive with their real goal, "we want you online more". So when they say "we want to reduce grind" they are giving you lip service. Because in reality, they want to increase grind, and make you think they reduced the grind.

[Lutesque]

2 hours ago, trst said:

Steel Path? Despite the opinions some people have on the update it did deliver on what it was meant to and the concerns over its grind are completely alleviated with smart farming. The only thing that could be considered half-assed about it is the rewards which are entirely subjective and are held up by the communities own problems. But nonetheless the mode is as complete as it ever needs to be in it's current state given its intentions.

I think the real half assing of Steel Path is how the Steel Path Modifiers just apply equally to everysingle enemy... including the Status/Ability immune ones and the Bosses with Invulnerabilty Phases.

Those enemies already have those things in place to stop you from cheesing them and yet DE buffed them as if they didnt.

Sounds like Half Assing to me.

1 hour ago, Hypernaut1 said:

A person that doesn't like grinding really shouldn't be playing a game like Warframe.

The grinding IS the game. If there wasn't any grind, what exactly are you expecting to do? I'm confused. 

 

Its easy to claim you like Grinding... until you get nothing for it.

 

[Hypernaut1]

13 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

I think the real half assing of Steel Path is how the Steel Path Modifiers just apply equally to everysingle enemy... including the Status/Ability immune ones and the Bosses with Invulnerabilty Phases.

Those enemies already have those things in place to stop you from cheesing them and yet DE buffed them as if they didnt.

Sounds like Half Assing to me.

Its easy to claim you like Grinding... until you get nothing for it.

 

It's easy to claim I like grinding because I've stuck with this game for 100+ hours. 

This game has maybe about 20 hours worth of unique content. Anything after that is 95% repeating the same thing over and over and over. Grinding. There is no end game. Grinding is all there is to it

Warframe has improved the grind greatly from where it was at. I don't know how this can even be debated. I started playing when they're was literally nothing left to do but play void towers for hours on end to get 1 part. It took me an entire prime access to get Ash prime systems. That would be UNHEARD of today. 

[Lutesque]

1 minute ago, Hypernaut1 said:

It's easy to claim I like grinding because I've stuck with this game he for 100+ hours. 

This game has maybe about 20 hours worth of unique content. Anything after that is 95% repeating the same thing over and over and over. Grinding.

Warframe has improved the grind greatly from where it was at. I don't know how this can even be debated. I started playing when they're was literally nothing left to do but play void towers for hours on end to get 1 part. It took me an entire prime access to get Ash prime systems. That would be UNHEARD of today. 

You just proved my Point... you only like Grinding when theres something to get out of it.

Would you be grinding if there was no reward ?

[Hypernaut1]

1 minute ago, Lutesque said:

You just proved my Point... you only like Grinding when theres something to get out of it.

Would you be grinding if there was no reward ?

There has to be a goal and context to the grind. I don't get your point. 

[Lutesque]

Just now, Hypernaut1 said:

There has to be a goal and context to the grind. I don't get your point. 

Warframe's Grind is RNG based.... meaning most of the time when people are grinding they arent getting rewarded with anything useful...

Do you now see why people dont like Grinding ?