The Helminth: Dev Workshop

[Borg1611]

Only 5 days out and you already killed all excitement for the update, lol.

You should have buffed the dozens of boring useless abilities instead of nerfing the few people cared about. 

[DeadlySurgeon]

Just gonna leave this here and walk away from the forums for a while.

[Klokwerkaos]

7 hours ago, SpentCasings said:

YOU TELLING ME. I FREAKING FARMED HIM THE HARD WAY. I am absolutely LIVID right now....

I forma'd my Exergis because i was going to do some Tentacle/Mag bubble/Exergis  combos that would have been absolutely HILAROUS and they just freaking Ruin my fun. 

DE STEVE:  "We need to respect player investment"

"... wait... No, not like that"

[Sitchrea]

23 hours ago, [DE]Megan said:

To offer further clarification on why we changed the Mastery Rank Prerequisite to MR 8:

There's many factors that come into play in order to engage with the Helminth system, such as:

• Having an ongoing supply of Resources that you don't need elsewhere to feed your Helminth
• Working your way up the Helminth rankings to unlock more features
• Having Warframes your ready/willing to Subsume

Looking at the above, we can see that higher rank players will be more equipped to offer these things to Helminth out the gate, where a MR 8 player will start with more accessible/cheaper Helminth Abilities first before diving deeper. Thus allowing MR 8 players to participate in Helminth and grow as they go.

This directly contradicts what was said about the system at Tennocon.

Changing the Helminth to be accessible to MR8 players makes this no longer a veteran player system.

Make our time be worth something besides a number on a screen.

[brilhantine]

21 minutes ago, 9Drade said:

As I have said at least a dozen times now: Then why did they choose roar? They're acting surprised that this ability was "overwhelmingly chosen" and that is a complete joke. Do they, I dunno, play this game? Anyone with a brain could see that miles away. It seems idiotic to give that ability up. Nerfing it will not reduce how frequently it is chosen -- which is their stated goal. The only way to actually make that happen is to remove the offending abilities or buff everything else. Which of those is easier?

 

it was like xoris with the infinite combo counter, they knew it, but they didn't even care and then came talking about how op was with some synergies and etc.

[Aiden85]

I'm sorry but why do you guys always move to Nerf good abilities instead of buffing bad ones?

Honestly it's like your trying to kill this mechanic before you even launch it. I was really excited for this and I wasn't even thinking of the any of the abilities that your already planning to screw up but I can see it coming now you'll start screwing with things the moment people start settling on ones they like.

Also this system was supposed to be for experienced players. Why the sudden change to mastery 8? Mastery should mean something beyond meager increases to how much standing you can have or how many free load out slots you get.   

Keep the mastery requirement at 15, buff the bad abilities and don't screw up the good ones

[Klokwerkaos]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Hadrien2111 said:

I like how they Say that Mr 8 is """"""""""ExPeRiEnCeD""""""""""" yet at Mr 8 pretty much all of the good weapons ever are locked (and don't even get me started about rivens) which means they just can't easily farm the bosses to acquire the bp for the frames to subsume like seriously you just can't get a whole lot of damage at Mr 8. And also I mean if Mr 8 is ExPeRiEnCeD than what is Mr 20 like fing god and what about 30 ? Is it liké this multidimentionnal being like wtf ? And finally if once again Mr 8 means ExPeRiEnCeD players than they should be able to ace Steel path am I right. Yet I really can't imagine them killing 100+ ennemies without good rivens or almost mandatory weapons such as Redeemer or kronen or tigris and all of those Mr 12+ weapons. Wtf were they thinking ? I get that mr 8 and under players is most of the players base but still don't make the game easier just to please players that won't even stay in the game very long anyways.

It's the same thing as the medallion thing.

Some players cried that they couldn't access it because they want to be MR 8 Forever... Well, gotta feed those three people and ignore what this does to game progression because that makes sense, right?

Such bad decisions it hurts.

This is going to screw them just as bad as RJ and Liches, possibly worse because people were pretty universally genuinely excited for this.

[MoondustStar]

Here's a thought (had some time to rest and rethink things concerning the update and the reactions here):

If DE is worried about things (or wants to listen to the vocal minority instead of veterans who have played the game longer, why not just have some sort of toggle for the Helminth System that toggles between what nerfs DE wants to do for some abilities and the non-nerfed abilities, at least for the first week or so of the update being out. That way, it lets us players try out the abilities before and after the nerfs to see how we'd like them... A sort of "testing phase" as it were, but still getting the update out on time. In addition to that toggle to swap between things, you could also have a feedback forum where those of us who tried it can then give the "proper" feedback about what we think should and shouldn't be nerfed and THEN hotfix it accordingly, just like you do usually within in the first few days of a new update dropping as the players find bugs and exploits that would need to be fixed...

See? Problem solved!

Oh, and concerning the MR minimum for the Helminth System, I would say those who have at least gotten past The Sacrifice at least and have completed at least one Sortie would be a good gateway for players. Sure, people CAN be at least MR 8, but if those other two requirements haven't been met, once they DO get the segment, they could get some sort of note from Ordis or the new Syndicate telling them that "once they have proven their worth" that something new will unlock for them... Or as someone said before, they get the chance to play with the beginning Helminth abilities and a few select subsumed abilities that are at their MR Rank with others unlocking around the same time they're able to obtain and use other Warframes as they grow in MR and in experience.

...But, those are my two cents in all of this.

[Markk_01]

hace 23 horas, [DE]Megan dijo:

To offer further clarification on why we changed the Mastery Rank Prerequisite to MR 8:

There's many factors that come into play in order to engage with the Helminth system, such as:

• Having an ongoing supply of Resources that you don't need elsewhere to feed your Helminth
• Working your way up the Helminth rankings to unlock more features
• Having Warframes your ready/willing to Subsume

Looking at the above, we can see that higher rank players will be more equipped to offer these things to Helminth out the gate, where a MR 8 player will start with more accessible/cheaper Helminth Abilities first before diving deeper. Thus allowing MR 8 players to participate in Helminth and grow as they go.

My main concern with this is that a lot of players will feel even more overwhelmed than usual. MR 8 is not that hard to achieve, but what IS hard is understanding abilities and synergies and all that. Dropping another system to understand will mostly make people confused and it might cause them to lose interest. If you had dropped this on me while I was trying to wrap my head around the Lore, getting ready for the index, how to open a relic, trading, Equinox, Eidolons, Primes and Focus I would have said "this is too much homework, I'm leaving."

[grimSagely]

On 2020-08-19 at 7:03 PM, [DE]Megan said:

AUGUST 19TH UPDATE:

Greetings, Tenno!

The launch of Heart of Deimos grows near, and we have some Helminth updates since we last posted! Below are 2 parts of updated/clarifying information that touches both Infused Warframe Abilities and the Helminth Segment acquisition.  

PART 1 - Changes to select Infused Warframe Abilities

Please keep in mind we’re still testing/playing around with the values for each, hence why the values are not present below:

The following only apply to Infused Warframe Abilities:

Rhino - Roar
Diminished Damage increase

Mirage - Eclipse
Diminished Damage increase and cap Damage Reduction 

Valkyr - Warcry
Attack speed increase reduced

Protea - Dispenser
Duration reduced

Nidus - Larva
Radius reduced

Wukong - Defy
Armor capped

Why do these Infused Warframe Abilities have these rules?
It was apparent in player feedback and play testing that these Infused Warframe Abilities had the potential to be the overwhelming choice; which is not ideal. Instead of changing the Ability outright due to those concerns, we decided to give them slight rules when Infused.

PART 2 - Helminth Segment Acquisition

As already indicated in this Dev Workshops original post, the Helminth Segment is acquired in the Heart of Deimos in the Entrati Syndicate. To expand on that, this means you’ll need to progress within the Entrati Syndicate located within the Necralisk to obtain the Helminth Segment before you can start experimenting with everything Helminth. 

Without spoiling too much, the Helminth Segment is currently obtained in Rank 3 of the Entrati Syndicate. This reminder is simply to set expectations on what you’ll have access to upon logging into the Heart of Deimos. 

That’s all for now!

Explicitly say "this system is for veteran players" which makes sense for messing around with your warframes' kits as much as this system does, then walk that back to MR8. At that MR I could realistically still be ranking up every day without a ridiculous amount of grind, I could get there in just over a week. This makes the system only gated by your devotion to Erati/Deimos syndicates. That's not veteran, that's just daily rep time gating. I don't mind this change but its very much not "veteran".

Tell us "some of these abilties will be buffed in accordance with their usage for this system" and then nerf the "overwhelming choices"... which are exactly that because they're already good. Have you considered making the other options actually compelling? Because to me this just means these options will still get the pick because they're still the good ones, just with worse values.

The lack of hesitation to go in with a stick to fix these systems, regardless of carrot... disgusts me. It's something DE has done for years now- look at what's being used the most in something, and use that to justify nerfing those things. To take a tabletop rpg example, it's bad DMing- you're playing against the party, instead of with it. Your game is already a power fantasy, make it a compelling one instead of trying to win, because winning in this case means killing interest. More than lack of content, the devs vs players mindset is what's made me almost leave warframe (and plenty others completely leave) several times over.

[Todd.Howard]

Here's an idea: bump the mastery requirement up to 20 (because MR8 is nowhere near the 'veteran' status you said this system was meant for), and make the less popular warframes and their abilities actually worth using before resorting to nerfs.

Also, the Blazing Pillage augment is going to be completely useless on other warframes.

[SelfishNeko]

Please stop with the annoying frustrating discouraging nerfs,

if you fear the obvious, that people will only use those 6 abilities you nerfed,

then how about making the other options more interesting and effective?

why nerf, you always get backlash for the DE signature nerfs you always pull.

Why not take the opposite approach of making other skills more viable of a choice.

The conversation started with "we are taking existing abilities and improving them such as Zephyr 1st and Trinity 1st  "BUT then that's all you tweaked the rest is either a nerf or remained the same as the original skill with nothing to incentivise people use this skill on other frames example Limbo Banish , Nekros Terrify, Mag Pull, Nyx Mind Control, Hydroid Tempest Barrage, Gara Spectrorage, Frost Ice Wave, Atlas Petrify, Vauban Tesla Nervos, Oberon Smite, Loki Decoy and many more.

People will still place abilities like Roar, Eclipse, Warcry, Larva  on most warframes because they are still much much better then most of the useless subsumed abilities.

instead of incentivising an interesting choice of abilities we pretty much end up having about 10 viable options out of the 43 warframes, and all you did is poke the beehive with this nerf...

Just when I get my hopes up with this new system you go ahead and introduce those nerfs.

[Borg1611]

I just want to mention that when Diablo 3 was first released the developers bragged about the millions of combinations of abilities and runes and the kind of potential build diversity there was. 

In practice, there was very little build diversity because most combinations were terrible or so similar that it really wasn't a different build. 

That is basically what the helminth system is. The illusion of build diversity and choice. In practice, most of the options are so useless and terrible nobody will care and nobody will use them. It doesn't create an interesting system to explore because you refuse to actually give numerous interesting options. If you want people to have a big system to explore, give people A LOT OF INTERESTING OPTIONS. Make it hard to choose which one you like better. 

Roar as an example wasn't even an interesting choice, it was a really boring buff, but it was a straight damage buff to weapons or abilities vs. abilities that were useless and simply offered nothing interesting to play with. People were only picking roar on everything because it had a positive benefit where most other abilities served literally no useful purpose whatsoever. Larva is fun and useful because we're playing a game where you're often killing large groups of enemies. It's also just better than the only other pulls you offered. It's just straight up better than ensare, so why would you ever pick ensare? Zephyr's pull is clunky and tosses enemies all over so why would you ever pick it over larva?

suggestion: make the system give multiple choices per frame where appropriate (not every frame has to give just 1 or 2, it can be different per frame depending on if you think there are multiple good options on a single frame) to try to add more interesting options and buff the weakest abilities

[(XBOX)Cash Prime]

Am 19.8.2020 um 21:17 schrieb vFlitz:

You realize the only reason why overwhelming majority of players looking for a survivability increase would pick Defy only because the other options are simply godawful? Defy isn't even that stellar, it's rather annoying to use with the long cast time forced on you by having to soak enemy damage, and relying on enemy damage to get the buff to begin in. But let's see what else we have.

Null Star - practically no value unless it completely dictates how you mod your frame, and even then it also needs an augment slot. Very few frames, if any, would be able to use the rest of their kit effectively under those conditions.

Eclipse - far too unreliable. It's something you'd take when you don't really need anything, but might as well take something extra. Absolutely not the right choice when you really need one of the things it offers.

Elemental Ward, Warcry armor buff - those work off of the frame's base stats so again, no value at all for frames that need survivability to begin with.

But I guess hitting Defy and bringing it to the same level is easier than examining why no one cares for the other defensive abilities, eh?

And you know, you picked Defy as subsumable ability and created the entire problem yourself to begin with, even though Celestial Twin would have been a 100% fine and consequence-free option. The damage we deal is already beyond overkill for pretty much all content that people do without going outside the intended gameplay loop, so who cares if everyone gets a clone, big whoop. Not every frame would even be able to make good use of it because it needs some base survivability unless you want to spend your life recasting it constantly.

So what's next? Ability disposition? Exceptions to exceptions to exceptions? Having to read an entire wiki article to know the difference between an ability in it's natural state and the helminth version? Currently it's exaggeration of course, but the way signs are starting to align, it doesn't seem that unlikely anymore.

Word! 

[Claric]

7 hours ago, Sahansral said:

1) Some things just can't be buffed to a competitive state.

2) The sheer amount of work to buff all (including enemies) would bind resources and developement of new things would come to a stop.  

1. This is entirely the fault of DE for designing the abilities and frames as such. If a power cannot be buffed to a competitive state with others, then it is, by design, poorly made. The only acceptable solution should be to rework those powers that cannot be buffed by simply fiddling with the numbers alone.

2. The sheer amount of work is, again, entirely the fault of DE. What is even more damning is that DE is exposing themselves to all this scrutiny through this new Helminth system. The fact that there are just so many useless/undesirable abilities proves that a lot of frames need a rework or at the very least a touch-up.

Flavor and themes are cool, but so are plain and simple numbers. DE needs to think long and hard about why people are gravitating towards Roar and Larva over Decoy, Dessication, Mind Control, etc. Surprisingly enough, the answer may seem almost too obvious.

[Kingsmount]

12 hours ago, Sahansral said:

Come on, share your wisdom, how would you buff things like decoy or air burst to be preferable to curent roar?
I'm very excited to see you trying.

 

People like you would slander anyone offering suggestions as just "armchair devs". 

You don't care about the answer(s),  you just have to worship DE's every move.   Not true? Well you sure like to jump to presumptions about my opinions and position, fairs fair. 

[Klokwerkaos]

23 hours ago, --N0X-- said:

Terrible management of expectations, contradicting your own reasoning and killing all hype.

100%

Also, I feel like everyone should already know this is the MO by now:  Show something:  Release something else that is nowhere near as good as what is promised (see RJ, Liches, Primary kit guns, etc).

I am so sick of this mismanagement.  I was just starting to trust them after tennocon 2019, and now this.  I had a bad feeling with the Xoris nerf that it was going to start of this trend of poor decision making again... and here we are.

Finally DE releases something that makes players want to return... instantly kills the system before it's even added.  It's like they are their own worst enemy and they just keep doing this in cycles over and over and over... UGHHHHH!!!! So much frustration with this bad decision making.

And for what?  Because 3 memers complained that they can't stay MR 8 forever?

Their tired meme that was funny once in 2015 is not more important than meaningful progression that this game desperately needs.

[MoondustStar]

3 minutes ago, MarrikBroom said:

In this instance I disagree.

 

They should have opened the test cluster up to test these thihs out snd get actual feedback rather than people half testing what they can.

 

Frankly I feel they are mostly cribbig from brozime and going 'oh he says this is great so we gotta nerf it'

 

Test cluster DE. You have it WHY WAS IT NOT USED?!

Eh, well, we KNOW the reason that they're not going to do the Test Cluster, and they said it themselves during the TennonCon 2020... They want this thing out for ALL SYSTEMS simultaneously, no matter what... Besides, IF they were going to do a Test Cluster, they'd have do do one for each and every system, and sad to say, I don't know if DE would do that... After all, the last time a Test Cluster was used, wasn't it only done on PC? I mean, how would you get Test Clusters going for EVERY SINGLE PLATFORM at once for a new update?!

Though, if anyone knows of how any Beta Testing did for a game that released for multiple platforms, I'd love to know how they did it to be proven wrong here... ^^;

[tobiparty]

What's the #*!%ing point then? Why nerf everything into trash level, just do you can part yourselves on the back for bringing this hallow balancing that you guys so much love? Warframe is a broken mess, a beautiful one, leave it like that, embrace the broken.

[EonCode]

hace 1 minuto, tobiparty dijo:

What's the #*!%ing point then? Why nerf everything into trash level, just do you can part yourselves on the back for bringing this hallow balancing that you guys so much love? Warframe is a broken mess, a beautiful one, leave it like that, embrace the broken.

Well, the problem here is that they should not nerf anything, but buff the garbage skills that have the utility of a roten potato chip, to a level which creates competitivity with those TOP tier skills, at least in some aspects, for example Eclipse should not be nerfed because the effects are not always controlable, so is not always dmg or always def. But nerfing without buffing other skills has no point.

[2ndPersonPlural]

6 minutes ago, Claric said:

1. This is entirely the fault of DE for designing the abilities and frames as such. If a power cannot be buffed to a competitive state with others, then it is, by design, poorly made. The only acceptable solution should be to rework those powers that cannot be buffed by simply fiddling with the numbers alone.

There's no reason for every power, or even every frame, to be competitive with each other.  This is a PvE game.

----

I think MR 8 is too soon for subsuming.  Maybe 12-14.

[Amen-san]

So y'all know that auto install has an MR requirement higher than this new system, right? 

[Evanescent]

7 hours ago, PhoenixParadox said:

Uhh.. then they won't be able to do it. What MR 8 player that didn't get carried or is a veteran starting over has enough resources for Helminth? None. They'll unlock it, they'll look at the requirements and they won't be able to do much. If they sink all their resources without reading, then they shouldn't be playing Warframe.

Then don't dangle a system players at that level can't frustratingly participate in. Then don't confuse them.

 

[Faulcun]

On 2020-08-19 at 2:03 PM, [DE]Megan said:

Why do these Infused Warframe Abilities have these rules?
It was apparent in player feedback and play testing that these Infused Warframe Abilities had the potential to be the overwhelming choice; which is not ideal. Instead of changing the Ability outright due to those concerns, we decided to give them slight rules when Infused.

First of all, you guys knew allowing the swapping of abilities to begin with would create new meta builds that gain massive popularity overshadowing others. The whole concept of swapping powers should NEVER have made it off paper. If the ability is too OP or too popular to swap.... then you need to address it to the frame as it exists.... but you said you werent going to do that, therefore you should have picked a different ability to begin with.

However, the concept of adding damage boosting abilities on frames that dont have it isnt really a novel idea. What did you guys think was going to happen here? Isnt that the whole point?

You've already put limitations on damage buffs being doubled up, now you are nerfing abilities for potentially overshadowing others. The snowball of ridiculousness has already started to roll.  My advice is to scrap this whole project or convert it to a different purpose. Nerfing abilities and all this stuff is only going to start the salt flowing. You cant win this situation.... there is no path to balance here.

[Evanescent]

On 2020-08-20 at 1:24 AM, [DE]Megan said:

To offer further clarification on why we changed the Mastery Rank Prerequisite to MR 8:

There's many factors that come into play in order to engage with the Helminth system, such as:

• Having an ongoing supply of Resources that you don't need elsewhere to feed your Helminth
• Working your way up the Helminth rankings to unlock more features
• Having Warframes your ready/willing to Subsume

Looking at the above, we can see that higher rank players will be more equipped to offer these things to Helminth out the gate, where a MR 8 player will start with more accessible/cheaper Helminth Abilities first before diving deeper. Thus allowing MR 8 players to participate in Helminth and grow as they go.

I'm very confused by this message. Is this an endgame system for experienced players or not?

You cannot unfortunately have it both ways.

Either more information is there in how it's paced that casts it in a more favorable light, or this is falling into the familiar traps of pushing new players into progression paths too early.