What Warframe can learn from Destiny 2

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Just now, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Steel Path isn't "hard" but it at least spawns enemies that feel non-trivial to a geared late game player. Those other game modes do not. If Sorties and Arbys still feel somewhat challenging to you, appreciate that and enjoy it while it lasts. Soon, you too will be too strong. I hope we get Steel Path versions someday. Of course it would still be easily cheesed. Degenerate frames and weapons are still degenerate. It's at least fun to build creatively on Steel Path.

They're still trivial with the right weapons. And god no, Arbis, Sorties etc are a joke but for me, Steel Path is also a joke.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

2 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

They're still trivial with the right weapons. And god no, Arbis, Sorties etc are a joke but for me, Steel Path is also a joke.

Now who's bignoting... but you did just admit that your gear choices actually matter in Steel Path. It doesn't feel like a joke if you bring jank, or a bog standard Hydron AoE spam build. Maybe put down the passively immortal Inaros and the unga bunga gunblade for a few minutes, grab your favorite off meta frame and guns, and figure out a setup with them that feels good on Steel Path.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

8 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

Now who's bignoting... but you did just admit that your gear choices actually matter in Steel Path. It doesn't feel like a joke if you bring jank, or a bog standard Hydron AoE spam build. Maybe put down the passively immortal 2Inaros and the unga bunga gunblade for a few minutes, grab your favorite off meta frame and guns, and figure out a setup with them that feels good on Steel Path.

If I used Inaros I'd have to shoot myself, what a horrible frame. I did most of Steel Path with Speedva, bosses with Nyx. I also don't play Hydron so I don't use silly AoE builds.

[OniDax]

15 hours ago, PhiThagRaid said:

I hate this sentiment that the warframe community just doesn't want difficulty. If you could show me a source that shows this to be the case, I might be willing to believe it, but just throwing out a number that makes the people who want it seem insignificant does not help the case.

Ask DE for stats on how many players regularly play Steel Path. I would not expect the majority to care about difficulty, at least not the kind of difficulty Warframe has offered in the past (bullet sponges).

To be more on-topic:

I'm personally not a fan of D2's difficulty. It was frustrating to me and I don't want that in Warframe.

The main thing I want Warframe to learn from Destiny 2 is how to do lore better. D2 isn't perfect, and it's not a game I play anymore (only played it for a few months, really), because I'm not a big fan of the core gameplay experience (the gunplay and the grind). However, I was really impressed by how they handled lore. DE used to do more with written lore (Codex entries and Item Descriptions). I want them to do more of that, and to bring some of that lore into their main stories, like the Karyst Prime being a weapon of Orokin assassins (I want to see those assassins and have more content connected to them, maybe offered via the Red Veil).

I'd really like Warframe to learn from other games, and the things I want Warframe to borrow/learn from other games are really gameplay mechanics, and improved animations, and improved enemy behavior (not being ultra smart but just more aggressive, faster moving, and a change to how/where they spawn in tilesets).

[(PSN)Yes-Man-Kablaam]

17 hours ago, (XB1)InductiveBag46 said:

I fell in love with this game, but lately i realised destiny respects my time far more

Destiny is sunsetting every purple piece of gear in the game throwing any time farming for them in the trash. Of all things you can say destiny is doing better respecting your time is not one of them.

[Veridian]

9 hours ago, Krankbert said:

You never bothered to click things on your character screen or mouse-overed an item in your inventory? Sure. Here's another pro tip: To defeat the enemy, shoot at them until they die.

Wow, aren't we clever, am I supposed to just click with my mouse everywhere as if I just discovered minesweeper?

Absolutely nothing about the progression system is explined, nor can you tell how good a piece of gear is in order to justify upgrading it, there is no indication whether the mods you use are consumed on instalation or you can get them back. That's why I didn't upgrade untill way down the line, when I got gear, which I considered (because there's no clear way to tell what the cap is, other than a vague 1060/1360 number which explains nothing) adequate.

Also, hovering over the class icon at some point before unlocking anything and it providing 0 information doesn't exactly scream "come back later". 

Because ofc, even when you finally do, the game gives you 0 indication that you've unlocked anything.

Go be a condescending jackass somewhere else.

[Krankbert]

vor 52 Minuten schrieb Ver1dian:

Absolutely nothing about the progression system is explined, nor can you tell how good a piece of gear is in order to justify upgrading it, there is no indication whether the mods you use are consumed on instalation or you can get them back. That's why I didn't upgrade untill way down the line, when I got gear, which I considered (because there's no clear way to tell what the cap is, other than a vague 1060/1360 number which explains nothing) adequate.

Oh, that's why you didn't upgrade until way down the line. Not because you didn't know that you could but because you didn't exactly know how it worked and didn't bother to find out.

Did you tell us not to ask "when you found out that gear was upgradable" because your argument works better when people don't know that it was actually pretty early on?

That's not the game mechanics being obscure, that's just mental laziness. You've actually wasted more time here whining about how the game didn't spoon-feed you how upgrading gear worked than it would have cost you to upgrade an item and find out.

[Loza03]

19 hours ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

It's always destiny with the comparisons, why not plants vs zombies bring some fresh comparisons

Because Destiny is in the same genre, and almost-inexplicably approaches the same kind of thing in an almost opposite way?

It's a 'grass is always greener' situation IMO. Destiny gets a lot of very polished content, but it's incredibly repetitive. It gets comparitively good balancing and the devs are willing to make the tough 'we're taking this OP toy away' calls, but it somehow succeeds on being even less creative than Warframe's design-intolerant balancing. It has a ton of lore and a good plot but lord they can't tell it. 

Warframe, meanwhile, gets a ton of content with extremely variable quality and polishing, but the one thing you can't accuse it is being same-y (even the open worlds, the closest to that, still have unique activities). We have overwhelmingly, game-breakingly OP stuff, but awesome creative loadouts exist. The devs are trying to tell a story like its lore, but whenever they do sit down and write a damn story, it's incredibly well-executed.

[(PSN)grayscale358]

21 hours ago, (PS4)thowed said:

This topic again.  I quit D2 a while ago.  Can always tell the honeymoon phase of the posters and the people that follow.  Just go to bungie.net and click on forums.  Go read how the people that been playing feel.  Also the "respect your time" argument is laughable.  Go look up what sunsetting is and the grinds for the events.  They also don't waste content, they just delete it and alot of it was paid for (go look at what is being deleted).  I loved D1 and D2 was ok at first but now it's just a dumpster fire most of you would've never played when it was a paid game.  Also I almost forgot, the pvp lol.  Just go read the forums.

The bungie forums are... bad. Like, absolute trashfire bad. Full of people who think they know how to make a game, when all their suggestions led to.. D2 year 1. One of the worst points in the 6 years the games have been running.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

having played both, Destiny had it's strong points but it also lacked in some areas which makes it very different from warframe.

- for one, the power curve is totally different. in Destiny, you have regular movement (minus double jump), a static melee, and take  only a few direct hits before you're in danger of death. in Warframe, we have incredibly fast movement, more focus on melee, and most frames can take quite a beating before going down (even before shield-gating was added.). Tenno are a completely different caliber of warrior altogether (and I still say in a straight up fight, a team of Guardians wouldn't last 5 mins against a single Tenno). making content that's difficult for us while also keeping what makes us unique (namely parkour and crazy abilities). we also have more abilities than guardians and can use them more often: trying to make something difficult without taking this away from us is 1: nearly impossible, and 2: even if it were accomplished, it would come at the cost of a piece of warframe's identity. if we ended up having frames with just a couple of abilities with cooldowns, would we really be that much different from Destiny?

- Dedicated Servers aren't gonna happen, because they are more cost and time-intensive to run than P2P, otherwise literally everyone would be using them. there's also no point having dedicated servers just for PvP without first reworking PvP. personally though, I wish they would just kill off the conclave and move the rewards to Steel Path. Conclave is an abject failure, and just because it's a benign tumor on the game doesn't make it any less ugly to look at. 

- one thing that always annoyed me about Destiny's combat is that despite ranged weapons being projectile-only, 99% of enemies have explosive AoEs on their weapons, so dodging fire becomes totally redundant after a certain point, and there isn't always something to take cover behind. sometimes enemies have both AoE AND seeking projectiles, which just makes it so that if your character is underlevelled even slightly, you're basically dead in a couple of shots. at least in warframe he have a variety of enemies to encounter, rather than every fight being an AOE DPS fest where the side that wins is the side that hits the most targets first. 

people can compare the two games all they want, but Warframe will never be Destiny 2 and vice versa, they are two totally different games. I don't think there's much at all that DE could learn from Destiny 2 that they don't already know, or haven't considered. they might learn stuff about what NOT to do though, the light level system, forced PvP for Exotic Weapon bounties, etc.

 

[LoriSei]

On 2020-10-25 at 10:59 AM, RazerXPrime said:

You forget that people don't play warframe for the challenge. I mean don't listen to the 0.0001% of the playerbase that wanted a "hard mode". Players want to mow stuff down and get stronger and mow stronger stuff down.

I like challenge but not too hard. Like for example TIME TRIAL modes. Was playing Genshin Impact and it was  good content (Spiral Abyss) . Instead of people watching grind in Warframe from Twitch. From there people share usefull builds in order to finish floor bosses.

[Krankbert]

Gerade eben schrieb (PS4)grayscale358:

The bungie forums are... bad. Like, absolute trashfire bad. Full of people who think they know how to make a game, when all their suggestions led to.. D2 year 1. One of the worst points in the 6 years the games have been running.

The official forum is generally the first point of contact for everyone with an axe to grind. The bigger the game, the more people show up on the official forum to complain. After a certain point, the user base is big enough that the crazy guy with mental issues who keeps obsessing over a game he stopped having fun in months ago becomes ten or twenty crazy guys with mental issues.

Sooner than later, people don't want to deal with this and leave the forum. As the toxic whiners stay around and drive other people away, the forums slowly get more toxic, causing more people to leave. Eventually, there's so much whining that the only ones who still visit the forum are people who want to whine about the game, because there's really no other reason to go there.

This isn't even about Destiny, it applies to almost any game with mass appeal. I've seen it happen a dozen times - the official forum an epic whinefest where everyone agrees that the game is terrible, punctuated by complete bafflement over how the game shipped another million copies. In the old days, before it would have caused a massive S#&$storm, developers used to just shut the forum down when they became more trouble than they were worth, and nothing of value was lost.

[Nailclipper]

16 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

people can compare the two games all they want, but Warframe will never be Destiny 2 and vice versa, they are two totally different games. 

No host migration system (so we could have more open areas like in "traditional" MMOs), good gameplay difficulty, and no wasted content in Warframe 2.

That's like asking Destiny 3 should have great music and story presentation as Warframe. I don't get where this "Warframe will never be Destiny" is coming from.

[AlexMercer]

No to all those suggestions i like the power fantasy that warframe offers i do not play warframe for difficulty or challenge and would like it to be kept that way and not copy another game i do not mind tho if they add extra difficult/challenging content as an option.

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, AlexMercer said:

No to all those suggestions i like the power fantasy that warframe offers i do not play warframe for difficulty or challenge and would like it to be kept that way and not copy another game i do not mind tho if they add extra difficult/challenging content as an option.

I'm afraid the definition this forum likes to attach to 'power fantasy' would be more accurately described as 'casual game'. Most action games are a power fantasy, including those that are difficult. I mean, are you really going to suggest the game where you play as a pissed off space marine who carries around half a dozen guns half his size or bigger and punches literal demons in the face so hard that literally everyone in the universe is scared of him isn't a power fantasy, because it asks a lot from the player?

Warframe's 'power fantasy' is based on doing great things with no effort from the player, and without much understanding of the mechanics, which is pretty much the definition of casual play And that's alright - I enjoy a lot of games that are primarily designed for a casual audience. But the trick is that many of these games also provide things for a more hardcore audience for when members of that casual audience want to take things further, or to keep them engaged once they've experienced everything the surface level has to offer.

A game designed to offer layers of depth can still be appealing to a casual audience (even it being the main audience), but one only designed to appeal to them will struggle to cultivate a strong core that can take it through hard times, and it also gives the designers more room to develop content and expand the scope of the game, since they can use the depth the game has to develop more interesting content without needing to add new systems, because the old systems are strong enough to support it. Minecraft is a perfect example - its building and logic mechanics are simple enough to appeal to anyone, but they offer enough depth to appeal to a core playerbase willing to take those mechanics to and far beyond their limitations Platinum also tends to design their games with this in mind, as do both TF2's: Team Fortress and Titanfall (alongside the latter's quasi-sequel, Apex Legends) - this is a core truth of game design that transcends boundaries of genre and even broad game categories. One Warframe is presently neglecting.

Warframe needs to re-examine its core systems to both enable and encourage more depth. It doesn't need to be hard by any stretch - Minecraft is not a hard game, and Platinum's games approach this problem by designing for the easy mode first. The TF2's are of course, PvP games, so 'difficulty' to them is an irrelevant concept but you get the picture.

 

If there's one thing Warframe can learn from Destiny 2, it's this: when Bungie noticed that the meta was defined by some of the most powerful weapons and exotics, despite all the arguments that it was achieving the power fantasy people wanted from the game, they got rid of it, because it was overly limiting the depth of the experience, and in turn, the content Bungie could release.

[killerJoke66]

3 hours ago, AlexMercer said:

No to all those suggestions i like the power fantasy that warframe offers i do not play warframe for difficulty or challenge and would like it to be kept that way and not copy another game i do not mind tho if they add extra difficult/challenging content as an option.

i understand you but they dont even add that as an option , like as a 'real real' option , just for 1 island amongst 10+ islands currently existing , none.

[Tricky5hift]

On 2020-10-25 at 8:09 AM, (XB1)InductiveBag46 said:

I fell in love with this game, but lately i realised destiny respects my time far more

I find this rather funny considering I discovered Warframe after being totally let down by Destiny 1 and its complete lack of respect for the time I put into it.

As for the original topic. I agree there is a lot that Warframe needs to improve on. Recently I took a pretty long break from the game and decided to try out Genshin Impact since all of my friends were playing it and to be honest, not a fan but I will say that the exploration of its open world was far more enjoyable than all three of the open worlds Warframe has combined.

I was already pretty surprised when Heart of Deimos came out as I was pretty sure DE was going to commit to straightening out Railjack before they got to work on another open world. But no, its another open world that feels only slightly more intriguing to explore than the other two.

DE can definitely nail the atmosphere for these places but there just isn't much to explore. In Genshin the game always rewarded you for going around places you've never been before but here there's next to nothing.

[Galuf]

Le 25/10/2020 à 11:53, Nailclipper a dit :

Dedicated servers and no "host migration" system for the P2P instances

• This allows the gameworld/maps to be more open, vibrant, and feel a lot less like a cramped corridor shooter. However, this has a drawback that you can't really become attached to random players and make friends with them because you never stick with any of them for long.

It was making sense early on because of the wow effect of a beautifull randomly generated universe(well different tiles assembled), also there is a budget situation, warframe did not had the budget for that at all so it took another approach wich also has merrits, everything is done in a kind of solo player style with some kind of host connexion features that are probably due to a framework so DE barely or never touches itm(it is an assumption, at least it feels like it ^^'). DE has a lot of issues with server and api oriented things. They are very good a scafolding engaging and modular things, they have really smart/inovative developpers but on the server and web developpement side of things it's not there.

However D2 did everything wrong, I tryed it like a lot of players, and it felt really bad. The game felt horribly wrong to me, maybe it has some value for some kind of pvp players. It runs wells, everything is clean, but oh boy how much everything sucks in this... They really should have put more budget into content than they did on advertising.

[Hypernaut1]

both cool games in their own right, but if i had to choose one dev to takeover the Avengers game, its DE without a doubt. 

[DebrisFlow]

On 2020-10-25 at 12:55 PM, RazerXPrime said:

3K hours and you say it wasn't worth it. The only one to blame here is yourself.

Warframe provides an environment which is a good example of a mental trap called Sunk Cost Fallacy: it's a behavior in which player's (or investor's) mind refuses to aknowledge that the time (or money) investment is not worth anymore because of some trust that things will eventually get better. The problem is, that trust is only motivated by the huge amount previously spent, and not by an objective evaluation of the trend evolution.

In this case it is not only a fault of the player, DE is exploiting this mechanism for the retention of old players, using void promises and falsely advertising, over-ambitious tech demos. 

No, the blame is not only on the player.

On 2020-10-25 at 11:59 AM, RazerXPrime said:

You forget that people don't play warframe for the challenge. I mean don't listen to the 0.0001% of the playerbase that wanted a "hard mode". Players want to mow stuff down and get stronger and mow stronger stuff down.

Really curious on the source about your numbers and "people don't play warframe for the challenge" claims.

[S1mplyFresh]

I suppose I can give my opinion here, for what it's worth.

I personally want to see Warframe develop a more challenging side to itself; a side that requires critical thinking, micro-play mechanics, and theory-crafting. The Eidolon fights are the closest thing that DE has done to an MMO style Raid boss. Right now, I have 6 different Warframes (6 different loadouts and playstyles) that have been optimized and are capable for up to level 500 Steel Path (I haven't tried going any further; it gets incredibly tiresome). It was a very fun challenge that I created for myself even though it's not really practical or necessary. But it actually kept me playing the game, as there would not have been anything else to do if not for that.

But I can also understand the negative side-effects of implementing more challenging and high level content, even harder than Steel Path. This would definitely lock out more than 90% of the player-base (it's already impossible to matchmake with a squad in Steel Path), as the majority much prefer to just play fashion frame, collect in-game cosmetics and decorations, and destroy low level mobs with a push of a button.

Warframe is a perfect example of handing out medals for participation (which is not inherently wrong in the context of video games). It's also another reason why a concept like Raids (MMO style) or a true endgame have not been implemented yet, even after 7+ years.

So I don't think having true endgame content is a detriment to the game itself (design wise) as I believe it would heavily benefit from it, but it's the extremely polarizing and lop-sided community that's the issue. And since they consist of the vast majority of the player-base, they dictate the overall direction of the game as DE will more-so cater to them.

Bottom line:

Warframe has a decently high skill-ceiling with the amount of theory-crafting, micro-play, and min-maxing of builds that you can do. The game offers quite a bit of depth for those who want to take it that far, but with no true endgame or challenging content, there's nothing to use all of this knowledge and skill on (this is what makes it impractical and unnecessary).

Warframe also has a very shallow skill-floor, where the vast majority of players are. Everything in the game can be acquired without having to deal with super high level or difficult enemies, so "gating" is very limited, if at all. There is also very little theory-crafting and micro-play required to play the game.

EDIT: just to add another point... there's nothing wrong with having a shallow skill-floor. Making it easy for new players to get started is fine as it will allow for healthy player growth, but the issue is that content remains stagnant at that shallow floor. Even though there is an actual ceiling that players can CHOOSE to pursue and climb (key word is choose; not necessary in any way), the content of Warframe does not also move towards that high ceiling in a linear fashion. It all just stays at the floor, which is why you often hear of "no real endgame in Warframe" or "there's nothing to use all of my knowledge and skill on" because there is ZERO content at that high-ceiling... it's empty.

[Aldain]

My time spent with Destiny 2 could be summed up as thus:

"Wow look at all the loot that I immediately dismantle because it is useless"

It isn't like I didn't enjoy the time I spent, but I dunno, something about Destiny feels...archaic, like it hasn't evolved in any meaningful way since when I was playing Destiny 1 on the PS3. That and the ever constant attempt to shoehorn in PvP for progression/events just grated on my nerves far more than it should, the only thing that Destiny 2 did PvP related that I enjoyed was Gambit, but that's because it wasn't like other PvP messes of getting damn near spawnkilled on terrible maps.

I also just don't have the time/desire to even bother with the raids and nightfalls, which they also put a ton of emphasis on. Maybe it is just the older I get the less I care about the "social" aspects of games like that, having to network, use third party platforms to find groups that aren't demanding 20+ clears of things and requiring the use of microphones, only to loudly berate people who do poorly even on their first attempt with them.

I just don't care for those old style MMO foibles, stand in x spot or die, kill x enemy with dps check or wipe the raid etc., but like I said, maybe I'm just getting old. 

[SneakyErvin]

One thing WF could learn from Destiny 2 is not calling itself free-to-play when you need to pay for all new content... oh wait, that would be the other way around.

[Surbusken]

Destiny 2?

The guys with the throttled exp scam?

"What not to do as a game developer", "how to be a rotten humanbeing", "what corporatism does to a video game". etc etc etc.

[(XBOX)KamikaZSquirrel]

On 2020-10-25 at 9:53 PM, Nailclipper said:

So I finally tried Destiny (2: New Light) and have been playing it for like a month or so (Warlock, around 1030 power level). There are a number of things that Warframe does (much) better like the music, voice acting, or writing, but here I want to focus on the positives of Destiny 2 so DE could perhaps apply them to Warframe 2 when we get it in 2035.

 

Dedicated servers and no "host migration" system for the P2P instances

• This allows the gameworld/maps to be more open, vibrant, and feel a lot less like a cramped corridor shooter. However, this has a drawback that you can't really become attached to random players and make friends with them because you never stick with any of them for long.

Difficulty

• I feel that Destiny 2 nails this perfectly. First there's level scaling which solves a lot of gameplay balance problems and ensures that players with different levels can play with each other on the same content. I used to hate level scaling in my single player RPGs (hello Oblivion) where a sewer rat is as strong as an ancient red dragon but it could be appropriate for MMOs (the enemies also need to be suitable for level scaling in order to not break immersion). Secondly, I feel that Destiny 2 has an excellent mob AI, e.g. enemies use cover often and effectively and can flank you. The enemies also posses much more varied attacks and moves. Most bosses are just big bullet sponges though, at least that's what I've come across so far. Oh and apparently Bungie doesn't shy away from making really tough missions like Zero Hour or Whisper of the Worm (I gave up because they are too damn hard).

No wasted content

• This is mainly achieved with the help of level scaling and seamless transition between areas. 

 

There could be more but for now those 3 are the big ones that I can remember. Minor things I prefer are Destiny's clean and minimalist UI and that you can travel from anywhere to any place or mission you like seamlessly because there's no orbiter/personal hub system.

Sorry mate but no... 

Recently you played Destiny, I played it religiously until last year and I'll tell you that I hated the difficulty scaling! For all my grinding I never once felt like it mattered, everything could still kill you as easily as though you never even increased your Light level (it's not power by the way, it's your Guardians Light.) 

Bungie have literally "milked" money off people since it's release, made some great decisions and designs only to stuff it completely the next patch! 

They don't listen at all to their players, every request for pve content was met with "we hear you, so here's some pvp". Every top exotic is nerfed into the ground for pvp and funnily enough no disparity from pve so it's garbage there too... 

Speaking of guns, notice how many are utter trash? Warframe allows EVERY weapon to be viable when modded and Forma'd up. 

Sorry to say it mate but this game has NOTHING to learn from that game, Destiny can learn more from this.. BTW when Railjack dropped Christmas last year I had just bought season pass 2, 2 days later instantly regretted the purchase.