The Difficulty problem.

[(XBOX)NoTownGhost]

So, Ive noticed a LOT of people (admittedly, mostly tryhards that think 2 hour survival is a valid metric against which to judge the game, but still...) Complaining that WF needs more difficult content. These same people however, also complain about boss fight mechanics (invulnerability phases, weak-spots, invulnerability to status) and armor scaling. Yet I'm confused. What do these people expect? IMHO a major part of the problem are also the very things that people claim to love about WF: Mobility, nuke frames and customization.

 

In a game where everyone can hop around like a coked-up murder bunny (which often serves to negate the difficulty in dealing with hoards of enemies) and mod their weapons to a point where they can one-shot anything not specifically immune to the weapon and damage type they're using and use certain frames and abilities to nuke whole sections of a map, exactly what are they supposed to do to make certain content more difficult?

 

The way I see it, there's only a few options here for increasing difficulty that doesn't involve the things the whiners already complain about:

1) Reduce mobility so you actually have tonight your way through all the enemies. The problem: players would revolt.

2) Eliminate rivens (or seriously nerf them) and nerf some of the more "meta" mods. The problem: Players would revolt.

3) Eliminate (or drastically nerf) nuke abilities. The problem: Players would revolt.

 

It's the same problem with all three "solutions".

 

Now personally, I don't think WF needs any.more difficult content. Steel Path, Sorties and Arbitrations are quite enough for me. I play WF to relax and enjoy slaughtering hordes, I don't want to be stressed out and break controllers because of frustrating losses...but for the people who do want that more difficult content, exactly how do you expect it to be accomplished except in the ways so many people complain about, or the ways I suggested? And please spare me the "make the AI Smarter" nonsense because most of the reasons the game is so "easy" for people have nothing to do with enemy AI. Doesn't matter how smart the AI is if you can nuke them from 90 meters out with abilities or AOE weapons, or snipe them down, or slash-dash/spin-to-win at speeds that rival Barry Allen on a keg of red bull.

[BRZZAFK]

Better use the word "skill rewarding" here since people think difficult=dark soul style game play.

Skill rewarding game play design. That's what i think can get us away from repeatability experience and bring us meaningful game play .

Personally all i ask for ai is dont stuck in the map.

[(XBOX)NoTownGhost]

7 minutes ago, BRZZAFK said:

Better use the word "skill rewarding" here since people think difficult=dark soul style game play.

Skill rewarding game play design. That's what i think can get us away from repeatability experience and bring us meaningful game play .

Personally all i ask for ai is dont stuck in the map.

Ok, but exactly what do you mean by skill rewarding? Weak spots reward skill by requiring you to aim instead of just drop nukes or spray-and-pray as well as utilizing mobility. Immunity phases, especially those that reflect damage, promote skill by requiring you to properly time your attacks. Armor scaling rewards skill by requiring you to set up a balanced load out and properly mod for armor stripping...

 

So I'm curious, what do YOU mean when you suggest "skill rewarding gameplay"?

 

[trst]

Yeah I don't get how people think the game can be made more difficult without directly nerfing the players. So long as he have (literally) infinite damage, crowd control, and survivability there is nothing that can be done regarding difficulty. Even the forced immunities and other gimmicks can still be partially bypassed with other mechanics, doesn't matter if an enemy is invulnerable if it can't attack or damage you.

People just want to have their cake and eat it too it seems.

[Caobie]

36 minutes ago, (XB1)NoTownGhost said:

personally, I don't think WF needs any.more difficult content. Steel Path, Sorties and Arbitrations are quite enough for me.

my issue with "hard content" in regards to specifically steel path is that it isnt hard. its not. what it is is long compared to the normal star chart on non-timer missions. they made no improvement to anything beyond making the enemies take significantly longer to kill in unfun ways. Arbitrations are fine "difficult" content. the enemies arent too easy to kill while also not being massive bullet sponges and the addition of the drones means you cant just brain off and press-4-to-win through it all so its also engaging content.

thats been my main complaint for all of steel path...more health and DR is not what makes a "hard mode" hard. yes improved AI can make it better but better AI isnt always feasible but some more interesting and thought-requiring mechanics could be implemented to make a more difficult mode without making enemies take 500% the damage to kill which just feeds the problem (which you also pointed out) that the base game has even further. what exactly would i suggest? i have no idea, im not a game designer nor have i ever claimed to be but as a long time player i can at least understand where improvements could be made even if i couldnt say exactly what could or should be done

[BRZZAFK]

1分钟前 , (XB1)NoTownGhost 说:

So I'm curious, what do YOU mean when you suggest "skill rewarding gameplay"?

 

It's easy "insert skill activity here" and get "insert reward worthwhile"

For example : kill three Eidolon in 10min and get more Arcane

bad example : afk in survival for 5min and get same reward no matter what.

[killerJoke66]

I remember fortuna enemies and arbies being hard-esq and then they were both nerfed  , i dont remember other half of the community liking it in fact they were demanding nerfs , thus the answer on who the culprit might be . 🙃

[Voltage]

I don't think the players asking for hard content are always the same that complain about boss phases or weak spots.

Personally, the elephant in the room on this discussion is the fact that "fun" has been substituted for "unbalanced gameplay". Khora is "fun", Xoris was "fun", Riven stat sticks are "fun", Marked for Death was "fun" etc. What happens is that players spin a situation to make DE look like the bad guy when not every time this is the case. DE is correct when identifying problems, it's just that sometimes they miss the mark on the solution and end up overlooking something or overkilling a mechanic. 

The game has never been challenging, but it would be good if DE expanded on the Steel Path. Steel Path isn't super hard, but it is a mode that gives a bit of feedback as you kill as the enemies are bit beefier. There will honestly never be a true "challenge mode" with Warframes like Khora, Chroma, Gara, etc. and good weapons like Kronen Prime or Kuva Nukor.

[killerJoke66]

Also regarding the o.post , you think enemies are too easy ? its only because you can cc them and kill them relatively fast before energy leech drains all your energy(in high levels) . The same enemies you say that are 'weak' have aimbots and have better actual scaling damage than you do . 
This might come as contrary for what i said before but what im trying to say is ; as long as there is aimbots on enemy hooks and bullets , with posion and magnetic auras attached to them(as an example to promoting stat-check gear/meta within the players , because especially  in high levels you have to kill them before they can even see you just becasue of aimbots , there is no playground) , this game wont be balanced , ever. 

So when people say ai is boring , what they mean outside of 'bleh we kill them too fast' is that even if we were not to kill them by sneezing , their ways of fighting is (especially old designed enemies) extremely cheap . 

Yes , yes , believe it or not , this is another fake difficulty posts . From my perspective game is neither easy or hard , from what i get theres no difficulty ... like at all , its all a glorious stat-check with operator dashes in between . 

And going back to my main point ; we can have balance if we start by getig rid of unnecessary aimbots and multiple aura stacking + a visiual indicator for energy leeches (maybe) .
if DE does change ai this way im all for nerfs , if that means we can have a meaningful and fullfilling gameplay , that is , would be the only condition nerfs can be made sensical.

[Loza03]

I don't want more difficulty -  I want more depth. Meaningful depth. Which I define as the number of meaningful choices available to the player. Difficulty is a means to an end for that, and as a result, I don't like a lot of the 'difficult' content that DE puts out because it doesn't foster depth.

Simply put, Warframe doesn't use a great deal of the depth, and Steel Path doesn't help that in any way. What Steel Path does is take the existing mechanics, and apply straight, statistical multipliers to everything. This doesn't encourage players to experiment with with new solutions - it encourages them to stick with the ones that were powerful before, because more interesting options can't keep up with 'disable enemy AI w/ infinite range'. There's a number of reasons for this, yes. Part of that is mobility, but if Titanfall 2's PvE and DOOM's recent games have taught me anything, there's ways to deal with that. Namely, rewarding speed through the AI and projectile-based enemies being bad at hitting a mobile player, and punishing immobility with a rapid death. More pressingly, however, is the aforementioned 'turn off AI w/ infinite range', combined with a secondary concern. Resource management in Warframe is heavily outdated.

If you go through games famed for their combat systems, with a few exceptions, you'll find resource management in every facet of their design. DOOM and other Boomer-shooters of its ilk make use of mixed and highly limited ammo types. Halo and those it inspired makes the weapons themselves a limited resource. Devil May Cry features that as the cornerstone of its advanced play - you can go through mashing buttons, sure, but not only is that ineffective and boring, you're also not getting rewarded with the extra Red Orbs from SSS ranks, as well as the intrinic ego-boost of it (helped in DMC5 as the music kicks into overdrive once you hit S-rank or above). Titanfall or Destiny force you to juggle Cooldowns, Monster Hunter makes great use of its limited resources both in items and in many of the weapons themselves, Rougelike games are practically defined by limiting what you have available to you, and other RPGS from Elder Scrolls to Kingdom Hearts put great emphasis on Mana being the limiting factor for Magic.

 

So, what about Warframe? Lets look at the default energy restoration system - energy orbs. You get them completely at random, and they restore a flat 25 energy. For reference, that is a tenth of the energy pool of a frame like Limbo, and can be used to cast his weakest ability. The drop rate is an estimated 10%, but nobody knows for sure. Your other options, however, grant you gluts of energy for basically no cost outside the resources required to unlock them - they require no mid-mission investment to use. Once you have them, there is functionally no cost to using them. This fundamentally removes resource management, since you don't have to manage that resource. That would be a problem either way, but it's amplified by the fact that the game's main resource management failure is tied to god-like power. Player's having access to super-powerful abilities can be fine, but we have near unlimited access to them. There's no reason to use anything but, and there's no room for interestingly designed enemies within that ethos.

It's also tied to 'run fast', however. And that's where the second part of this problem arises. Depth is hampered because abilities are so cheap that the costs are homogenous. Energy is restored so quickly and easily that, in a lot of cases, abilities might as well have the exact same cost. And that leads to a different issue - why should you use a weaker ability? A lot of games get around this problem using resource management and a cost/benefit analysis of some description. Some games do expect you to abandon the weaker power, to be sure, other games never bother giving you an upgrade, but others have the weaker power cost less - sometimes being better value overall - or the counterpart of not regenerating a resource  as effectively. Others have the resources not be mutually exclusive - you pack both kinds of Potion in Monster Hunter, especially in the classic games, because running out of one doesn't stop you from using the other, and that's a saving grace in a pinch. Warframe's energy problems homogenising the costs eliminates this. So what if, say, fireball is more cost-effective? You can nuke the room with Inferno and make up the difference in a second. So what's fireball's purpose? Nothing.

 

Health and Ammo have similar issues, with their own complications and details. But I think I've made my point. Warframe's problem is that we're never given any incentive or reason to deviate from the meta, except for 'fun'. And that's all very well and good, but most higher difficulty game modes are design for the Meta (otherwise they're not hard) and that means those game modes further discourage those 'fun' playstyles. It should be the Opposite. Resource management exists to lead you towards the fun playstyles - towards quick thinking and clever plays, or interesting builds, since the straightforward path is not always available. That's true no matter how many enemies you kill in one button press.

 

And yes, players would revolt. It would lead to a great deal of outrage. But, in my opinion, it'd be the healthy choice in the long run. People would adjust.

[BDMblue]

You have a few problems. 1 you think the people who want x are also they people who don’t want x. Not everyone on the forum is the same person. Why a lot of people try to group everyone into a single person with a single mind is disturbing.

So that throws out most of what you said.

2ed if sorties and  Steel path is your limit maybe your not really at the point of gilding through the game yet?

 

I got an idea from “Risk of Rain 2” in that you can have the enemies get items. So we could have it so mobs got random mods. 1 mod point for each level. Some don’t do anything some do a lot. Would spice things up.

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

2 hours ago, (XB1)NoTownGhost said:

So, Ive noticed a LOT of people (admittedly, mostly tryhards that think 2 hour survival is a valid metric against which to judge the game, but still...) Complaining that WF needs more difficult content. These same people however, also complain about boss fight mechanics (invulnerability phases, weak-spots, invulnerability to status) and armor scaling. Yet I'm confused. What do these people expect? IMHO a major part of the problem are also the very things that people claim to love about WF: Mobility, nuke frames and customization.

 

In a game where everyone can hop around like a coked-up murder bunny (which often serves to negate the difficulty in dealing with hoards of enemies) and mod their weapons to a point where they can one-shot anything not specifically immune to the weapon and damage type they're using and use certain frames and abilities to nuke whole sections of a map, exactly what are they supposed to do to make certain content more difficult?

 

The way I see it, there's only a few options here for increasing difficulty that doesn't involve the things the whiners already complain about:

1) Reduce mobility so you actually have tonight your way through all the enemies. The problem: players would revolt.

2) Eliminate rivens (or seriously nerf them) and nerf some of the more "meta" mods. The problem: Players would revolt.

3) Eliminate (or drastically nerf) nuke abilities. The problem: Players would revolt.

 

It's the same problem with all three "solutions".

 

Now personally, I don't think WF needs any.more difficult content. Steel Path, Sorties and Arbitrations are quite enough for me. I play WF to relax and enjoy slaughtering hordes, I don't want to be stressed out and break controllers because of frustrating losses...but for the people who do want that more difficult content, exactly how do you expect it to be accomplished except in the ways so many people complain about, or the ways I suggested? And please spare me the "make the AI Smarter" nonsense because most of the reasons the game is so "easy" for people have nothing to do with enemy AI. Doesn't matter how smart the AI is if you can nuke them from 90 meters out with abilities or AOE weapons, or snipe them down, or slash-dash/spin-to-win at speeds that rival Barry Allen on a keg of red bull.

Non-solvable imo. 

Too many layers that magnify power, creating any new 'difficulty window' needing to be a super narrow has / has not scaling.

Target the top of the has, lock out 99% of players.

Target top 10%, still too easy for the top 5%.

Best chance is new game mode, but then obsoletes all the progress we've made.

As I said, Non-solvable. 

I have accepted that there are other games that will hit my challenge bar, warframes is a fun hack'n'slash pass time for me.

[(PSN)thegarada]

I think level 150 is a good point for decent difficulty for veteran players. What I do not want is status immune enemies, invulnerability phases and requiring hitting a specific tiny spot. 

As for 2 hours in survival that is not difficult, when people play one of the early planets Graineer survival missions, and just bring a map wide CC. 20 minutes solo in MoT is far more difficult, and way more fun.

[0_The_F00l]

The community is not a hive mind ,

There are different factions that want different things.

Some people say they want "difficulty" and a completely other set of people say "its too tough"

 

I am of the opinion that difficulty is subject to gear check in warframe,

if you have the right weapon with the right mods on the right frame everything is easy as its a "meta" setup,

if you have the wrong weapon with wrong mods with wrong frame it can be difficult as its a "leta" setup,

anything in between can result is various levels of challenge and difficulty,

when i started the game , i thought level 10 enemies were tough cause i had weak gear, that changed overtime and now after nearly 5 years anything less than level 100 is pretty much the same.

 

Notice that i have not mentioned skill,

outside of the ability to move, aim (sometimes) and mash the melee button you don't need skill to clear missions.

Players are so gotten used to not playing the game , through mechanics that DE themselves implemented, that any sort of check that is not just a gear check is considered difficult, while the truth is that its not difficult in most cases its just needing some actual game play and activity.

DE also has the bad habit of confusing high enemy HP with difficulty which is simply not the case after a certain point.

 

[Tinderox]

Maybe change normal flat mods like vitality redirection, intensify etc, for a diferent variants of mods that give you that effect by doing X, or when something occur similar to certain mods sets like proton or arcanes,

This will not make the gameplay in a direct way more dificult, but the player will care more about the things he do.

Sierra example: only get the benefits if you use an ability. 10 sec duration

                         only get the benefits if you recharge your weapon doing a wall-latch. all charger duration

                         only get the benefits if you kill whit your secondary weapon. All charger duration

                         only get the benefits if you kill an enemy whit your melee weapon. All charger duration.

The point is if you want to do your top damage, you want to make things always, and the combos whitin your mods in your setup will be important, similar to the charged arcanes

[Aadi880]

Why not just give enemies nuking abilities too?

Except, just telegraph it.

Telegraphing attacks is by far the best way to validate overpowered enemy attacks.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

13 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

I think level 150 is a good point for decent difficulty for veteran players. What I do not want is status immune enemies, invulnerability phases and requiring hitting a specific tiny spot. 

As for 2 hours in survival that is not difficult, when people play one of the early planets Graineer survival missions, and just bring a map wide CC. 20 minutes solo in MoT is far more difficult, and way more fun.

I disagree, level 150 is far too easy and quite frankly boring. The only way Warframe would ever be difficult is if the enemies had the ability to kill you in a way that cannot be nullified completely but CAN BE AVOIDED.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

18 hours ago, (XB1)NoTownGhost said:

So, Ive noticed a LOT of people (admittedly, mostly tryhards that think 2 hour survival is a valid metric against which to judge the game, but still...)

 

Off to a terrible start there, insulting your target audience.

[(XBOX)CaptainSeth5423]

9 hours ago, Voltage said:

Xoris was "fun"

Honestly xoris was fun with wukong gave him his true potential until DE is like OverWheLmInG ChoIcE. I mean what else was there to do for it. You thinkn swapping out weapons and getting them back is fun?

 

6 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

I think level 150 is a good point for decent difficulty for veteran players. What I do not want is status immune enemies, invulnerability phases and requiring hitting a specific tiny spot. 

As for 2 hours in survival that is not difficult, when people play one of the early planets Graineer survival missions, and just bring a map wide CC. 20 minutes solo in MoT is far more difficult, and way more fun.

I think Critical chance immune enemies with decent speed and mobility could somehow change the difficulty. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

the eternal struggle rages on, to make difficulty or not, that is the question. we can keep going back and forth, but there won't be any level of  difficulty change because DE is too afraid to make that change, or to even think of what that change might be. casual players don't want difficulty, and they are the ones that get catered to most of the time, so the chance of anything meaningful happening to change this discussion from anything other than a stalemate is next to none.

[Teljaxx]

Warframe can't be properly challenging or engaging because its a F2P game. And F2P games make most of their money from literal children that don't understand game design.

There are far too many children in this community that don't understand why they can't have their cake and eat it too. They claim they want to be challenged, but they also don't want to lose all the "fun" overpowered toys that they spend thousands of hours grinding for (or spent platinum on), despite the fact that these two things are diametrically opposed to each other.

If you want actual challenging, or engaging, gameplay at all, you need to have balance. That means both buffing AND weakening things as necessary. You can't only do one and expect things to balance out. But, since far too many people see any sort of loss of power as a horrible NERF, and therefore completely unacceptable, DE can't do that without causing riots. So instead, they just kept adding more and more weight to the same side of the scale, and now its so completely broken that making things challenging or engaging is impossible.

Another part of the problem is the massive grind for everything in the game. If you are going to spend hours and hours slogging through all the boring, repetitive crap you have to to get new gear, it better be worth it. And the only way its worth it to most people is if its the most crazy overpowered thing in the game. But then, if DE dares to take away even a tiny bit of that power later, then what was the point of all that time they wasted getting it?

Though, in the end, the real problem is that this is exactly what DE wants if they want Warframe to be profitable. The main people that will buy things like Prime Access, and spend all their platinum on forma, potatoes, and new gear are the same ones that throw a tantrum over nerfs. So, of course, DE is going to pander to them over anyone else. Because if simply buying the best gear in the game can't carry you through everything without trying, then whats the point of buying it in the first place?