The wasted potential of the steel path and difficult content

[Ordel]

7 hours ago, DemonStrikerX said:

I am sure DE hates it aswell and they dont want you to camp either but they haven't gone to do anything about it. Also the word viable in warframe holds barely any value. Anything is viable if you have the bare minimum understading of the game.

You're sure? How come? Do you work there/know anyone from DE that's held that opinion before publicly?

Anything is viable - including camping. Camping is based off the understanding that staying in a clustered group concentrates the spawns and makes the enemy count go quicker. What's the point of trying to destroy a viable and nonharmful style of play? :p

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

By that same token, though, I'd argue Steel Path has failed at that goal too -- ramping up enemy stats to start up 100 levels above isn't really what hardcore endurance runners want, because hardcore endurance runners will often stay for hours just to ramp enemy levels up to the thousands.

That's true. Although I'd argue that the health/shield/armour buffs were enough to replicate enemies in the level 200-ish range. I know that some endurance runners preferred enemies in the level 1000+, but I got the impression that those were the niche of the niche. Most seemed to talk about 1-2 hours, which if I recall gave enemies in the 200-300 level range, which Steel Path mostly replicates I think. And yeah, I know that DE marketed it as "Hard Mode," but "Hard Mode" itself is usually a niche audience in most video games.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as disappointed in Steel Path as anyone else. DE had the chance to implement proper difficulty settings, let us actually custom-tailor our difficulty to our preferences. Instead they half-assed it with a 100 level boost and some additional stats. Even just picking a fixed level across all missions would have been fine, but nope! Faux progression. Again. Because heaven forbid we get our choice of missions at our preferred level, instead of having to stick to whichever planet has missions of that level. Feh!

[(XBOX)Rez090]

On 2021-03-07 at 12:12 PM, DemonStrikerX said:

and most people accepted the gamemode to be as such, which really goes to show how low our expectations for what content is has become over the years.

Um, no. The playerbase didn't just "accept" this, it was specifically asked for by the playerbase. So, no, no expectations were lowered at all.

[OmegaVoid]

On 2021-03-08 at 10:30 AM, Ordel said:

camping is a viable playstyle

Camping is a strategy, but I'd dispute the description of camping as a playstyle.

Consider: if the squad...

• move en masse to one tile, set it up as their killing-zone spend a minute or two slaughtering anything that shows its face...
• then relocate together to a different tile and do the same again...
• and repeat...

are they doing anything different to what they would have been doing if they'd stayed on that first tile the whole time? I'd say no. The playstyle remains the same, even of a change if strategy has been necessitated.

If camping ceased to be a viable strategy, the only thing that would change is it would no longer be viable for any player to go completely AFK for an hour or more with a bot playing the game and not see the failure screen.

If roaming wasn't intended gameplay...

• why are Survival maps so large?
• why are Life Support Capsules dropped over so wide an area, if players aren't expected to go to most locations?

The Life Support Towers are clearly intended to encourage relocation. But if the enemies don't drop enough Life Support to sustain a camping player indefinitely, instead of engaging with the Tower mechanic, they simply complain about LS drop rates or enemy spawns.

Back when I went to Ophelia in public matchmaking I would -- not always, but often enough to be an inconvenience -- spawn into a dead-end corridor and find myself with two Nekros and a Hydroid who wanted me to stand there with them for the duration, because if I went roaming I would draw too many enemies away from their camping spot.

I would decline, leave and select the mission again. This was an inconvenience to me, necessitated because otherwise I would become an inconvenience to them.

In no other mission type was I ever compelled by politeness to leave because playing how I like to play would interfere with the other players' strategy. That's because camping is a strategy not for completing the mission, but for ensuring all the loot will drop in the same place, so nobody has to go more than a few metres to pick it up.

On 2021-03-08 at 10:30 AM, Ordel said:

it'd be a better idea to simply go the other way and incentivize the roaming playstyle

It's big map, which might contain Ayatan Sculptures, Ayatan Stars may fall out of the Storage Containers as well as Resources and Credits... these are incentives, albeit minor. What kind of incentive would be enough to get campers moving? Guaranteed Condition Overload for completing six laps of the map?

At almost every stage of progression any extrinsic incentive for moving around would either be too much for the devs to offer, or to little to motivate the players. The mission would have to intrinsically require relocation of at least one player before camping-inclined players would even consider budging from the spot.

[Ordel]

1 hour ago, OmegaVoid said:

Camping is a strategy, but I'd dispute the description of camping as a playstyle.

https://prnt.sc/10gfg0p

:L

 

e- intended gameplay =/= the only viable playstyle btw, and the entire point of my past posts is to point out that, like you said sans the extra verbiage, is that the gameplay would barely change and it'd just be an unnecessary nuisance to have gas flood tiles that would add literally nothing substantial to the gameplay

[OmegaVoid]

"Playstyle" is how the player does what they do, "strategy" is when and where in the mission they do it. Camping comes under "strategy", not "playstyle".

"The manner in which somebody plays" comprises things like:

• take a tanky 'frame and run headlong into the enemy swinging a big sword
• use mobility and cover to minimise damage taken while killing enemies from a distance with some dakka
• throw up a Strangledome and whip it repeatedly
• slot Primed Sure Footed and spam a Bramma in all directions

and each these is the same playstyle whether it's exercised on the same spot for the duration of the mission (like at Hydron Defence), or serially at different locations (like at Charybdis MD).

I consider the distinction important because if the game in general is reworked to render a playstyle globally non-viable, that impacts everyone who indulges in that playstyle in every mission they might use it in.

If a specific game mode is reworked to necessitate a change of strategy to complete it, the core combat experience of Warframe remains intact.

In any case, if the devs want to rework Survival to mandate mobility, they eventually will. If they don't, they won't.

[ganjou234]

On 2021-03-08 at 9:09 AM, OmegaVoid said:

• the Wardens have optics which can see invisible players
• the Wardens can start the Execution Sequence without needing to go to a console
• If any Warden spots a player, the cry goes out "Rarfram spotter! Khus kle grusoner!" -- the duration of this sentence is the Execution Timer
• If any Warden takes damage which they survive, the cry goes out "Someklhung attaf meh! Khus kle grusoner!" -- the duration of this sentence is the Execution Timer

The challenge now comes to excercising genuine stealth-gameplay skills to evade detection. If the player wishes to engage with the optional bonus objective of killing all Wardens, they must come prepared to one-tap every Warden -- without being seen by the other Wardens.

This sounds awesome....

[Famecans]

On 2021-03-07 at 4:09 PM, Battle.Mage said:

how where what....
why should warframe content be for small groups?
i often see mr9 ranks in sp and that's a good thing ...
that it is not at all WORTHY another!

warframe has increasingly become a role-playing game standardized solely on adding new stories to each update but never additional challenge content.

we will have a lot of story progressions and little playable level progression, little challenge progression, forcing developers to do a lot of reworks and nerf of each meta weapons at each update...

The game will be short of playable challenges but it will have a lot of history and mandatory collectibles for a novice to progress, this is not pleasant for those who start the game and it is not pleasant for those who finish collecting all the items in the game.