Warframe Enemies Survey + Results

[[DE]Purzzle]

Hiho everybody!

Last friday, I shared a survey about those guys that stand between us and our loot.

Today I want to show you the results!

But first up: If you haven't scrolled through the discussion or results yet (nor participated in the first survey), then why don't you do so now?

More data is more good. I'll start updating things as soon as I get some more responses.

Results

Spoiler

Imgur | Google Sheet

Stuff

Past Surveys | Discord | Twitter | FAQ

Cheers!
 

Spoiler

 

Link to the survey

Hiho everybody!

14 questions about those guys that stand between us and our loot. Which one do we dislike the most? Do we want more big ones? More smaller ones? Or do we just want more enemies?

Let's find out with this short survey! (~5 min)

Results, when?

I'll wait a few days for answers to come in before working on the visuals.

Giveaway

I'll randomly choose 70 participants (PC only) and gift them weapon slots. Big thanks to Stormcaster & June for helping with the giveaway!

Stuff

Past Surveys | Discord | Twitter | FAQ

Cheers!

 

 

[PhiThagRaid]

Let's hope for some more unique enemies going forward. Not in terms of their design, but how we interact with them. It's no use there are unique enemies but we kill them without even noticing the differences. Deimos was a step in the right direction.

[PublikDomain]

Quote

You get to improve enemy AI in Warframe - but you can only improve one aspect:

I want to reiterate, as often as I can, that the enemy AI in this game is pretty alright. The enemies are already cool and can already do cool things, but none of that matters if the enemy is dead instantly. For all the uniqueness of the Amalgam enemies, when they die just as fast as a Crewman none of that uniqueness can come through. As cool as it is to have the new Corpus Ship tileset enemies get their new guns and special Moas, none of that actually comes through in the gameplay because it can't when they're all dead. The enemies are fine, it's the player that's the problem. We're far too strong for the content available to us.

[Aldain]

Filled out, but to shorthand it, I think it is hard to say anything about enemies while the damage system makes them made of paper.

Also the only part of the A.I. that mostly needs fixing is their pathfinding, I see enemies far too often jumping up and down between levels and that makes enemies feel slow and stupid at times.

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

11 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

I want to reiterate, as often as I can, that the enemy AI in this game is pretty alright. The enemies are already cool and can already do cool things, but none of that matters if the enemy is dead instantly. For all the uniqueness of the Amalgam enemies, when they die just as fast as a Crewman none of that uniqueness can come through. As cool as it is to have the new Corpus Ship tileset enemies get their new guns and special Moas, none of that actually comes through in the gameplay because it can't when they're all dead. The enemies are fine, it's the player that's the problem. We're far too strong for the content available to us.

This is probably one of those “I want to have my cake and eat it too” situations, but I like that stuff dies fast in this game. I don’t care how brain dead it is to slice up a bunch of trash fodder enemies, it’s satisfying to me.

That being said I also wouldn’t mind the game being a little harder. I’ve always advocated for just one game mode that presents us a challenge, and the main core game can stay a farming simulator with missions we can’t fail.

[Aldain]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)Wil_Shatner_face said:

This is probably one of those “I want to have my cake and eat it too” situations, but I like that stuff dies fast in this game. I don’t care how brain dead it is to slice up a bunch of trash fodder enemies, it’s cathartic to me.

Don't get me wrong, cleaving trash fodder is fun, my only issue is that every enemy is trash fodder when you hit a certain point and that's a problem.

[nslay]

Some of the questions were really strange... kind of like this (this is exaggerated of course):

1. Which enemy do you hate the most?
2. Which faction could use more units?
3. <Other expected question here>
4. What percentage of units should feature a shade pink? [0-100%]
5. What ratio of units should have pyramidal vs spherical features in a squad of enemies? [0-100%]
6. Tall units should be added [0 disagree through to 6 agree]
7. Short units should be added [0 disagree through to 6 agree]
8. etc...
9. Aspect of AI to improve? [open-ended ... err?]

I answered these, but some of these questions were like... uhhh... what...?

In seriousness...

With respect to AI, the right solution, IMO, is to hold a Kaggle competition with a modest cash reward. You define a performance metric, leaderboard, and require all code to be open source and to run in real time (60 fps) on CPU and/or certain lower end GPU specs. You expose a limited Warframe AI API and open up a special segregated section of Warframe where AI developers can develop and test their enemy AI solution and you allow players to opt-in and provide some kind of feedback on AI performance in one of their missions.

EDIT: What does DE get out of this?

Something like this:

• A top tier AI publication (probably Nature or NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc..) that shows top performance... probably press coverage too!
• Future research papers that use the same data set and cite/acknowledge DE.
• Attract genuine AI talent to DE.
• Already-implemented real time AI code using Warframe's API already (at least the limited version) that DE exclusively owns through small text in competition rules.

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

10 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Don't get me wrong, cleaving trash fodder is fun, my only issue is that every enemy is trash fodder when you hit a certain point and that's a problem.

Agreed. Game needs real priority targets, would actually give single target weapons a purpose too, but that convo has been had a million times.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

I was pretty happy when they showed new infested enemies and then they're exclusive to Deimos... So infestation still needs more enemy types Grineer too

[ReddyDisco]

enemies that can parry your melee swings would be nice, ranged enemies who smack you with butt of their gun should actually do more damage to players, maybe even stun them

[PublikDomain]

45 minutes ago, (PSN)Wil_Shatner_face said:

This is probably one of those “I want to have my cake and eat it too” situations, but I like that stuff dies fast in this game. I don’t care how brain dead it is to slice up a bunch of trash fodder enemies, it’s satisfying to me.

There's certainly a place for fodder enemies, but when everything is fodder it can get pretty boring. The satisfaction kind of wanes when you realize that you're not actually achieving much, and that a wet fart is more than good enough to match any amount of effort or skill you can put in. The enemies we fight are about as consequential as the color of the plants or the paint on the wall...

[[DE]Purzzle]

vor 30 Minuten schrieb nslay:

some of these questions were like... uhhh... what...?

It might some months till I return with another enemy-focused survey so I wanted to go as wide as possible.
It's always a bit difficult to balance how questions are presented. Either there's not enough context and things are confusing or I share too much and people figure out what I might want to hear. Sorry if I didn't get it right this time around.

And as some might have noticed:

Spoiler

 

[nslay]

Just now, Purzzle said:

It might some months till I return with another enemy-focused survey so I wanted to go as wide as possible.
It's always a bit difficult to balance how questions are presented. Either there's not enough context and things are confusing or I share too much and people figure out what I might want to hear. Sorry if I didn't get it right this time around.

And as some might have noticed:

  Hide contents

 

No problem at all! I answered as best as I could and I intended no offense in my example.

I appreciate you conducting these surveys!

[[DE]Purzzle]

Updated with results!

[mrEkli]

Saw the results. Do people really like more fire rate and lower accuracy? That just makes it more random to get hit. It's just spammy and that's why there's no difficulty to be added. Isn't challenge the issue with this game? With so much going on could it ever be anything more than Nuke and DR skills? Am I missing something?

[Aldain]

So many people just want more enemy density...which just seems to mean more trash mobs that die in one hit.

That explains far too much.

[mrEkli]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

So many people just want more enemy density...which just seems to mean more trash mobs that die in one hit.

That explains far too much.

Yeah that goes hand in hand with what I had issue with. It's like Dynasty Warriors without officers or named Characters on the other team.

[PhiThagRaid]

24 minutes ago, Aldain said:

So many people just want more enemy density...which just seems to mean more trash mobs that die in one hit.

That explains far too much.

Personally don't like people's obsession with slaughtering masses of enemies, but the way the game is set up it encourages it too much. Mod/resource drop chances from enemies make people want more enemies faster since it's an increase in the amount of chances you have to get the mod/resources you want. There are multiple gamemodes that also encourage mass slaughter.

• Survival without a high KPS won't last as long,
• ESO and SO is 100% just KPS,
• Exterminate with faster spawns means the mission is over faster(if they don't increase the amount of kills needed),
• Defence would be over faster if enemies spawned faster,
• Openworld area capture requires you to kill things to gain control,
• Excavation allows faster spawning of energy cells,
• Infested Salvage allows faster spawning of the serum
• Disruption allows faster spawning of conduit keys,

All other missions enemy spawns are basically irrelevant perhaps with the exception of Interception where enemies might make it slightly more difficult.

The gameplay itself will have to be updated to encourage players to spend more time per enemy while at the same time making enemies not die as quickly. The reward loop will also need to be adjusted to encourage players to spend time playing a mission thoroughly rather than just rushing through them.

These changes might be too large for the developers and/or the community that many times seem obsessed with a skewed perception of "Power Fantasy".

[TARINunit9]

Surprised that Nullifiers are still the kings of rage mountain. I honestly don't hate them ever since that QoL nerf they got about three years ago

[Aldain]

2 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Surprised that Nullifiers are still the kings of rage mountain. I honestly don't hate them ever since that QoL nerf they got about three years ago

I'd wager that the hate for them comes from how they stop a handful of Warframes from killing the tileset every couple of seconds.

[PhiThagRaid]

3 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

Surprised that Nullifiers are still the kings of rage mountain. I honestly don't hate them ever since that QoL nerf they got about three years ago

Never hated them either, but there are a few things that can make them a bit janky.

1. Their bubble is not always displaying the correct size. Sometimes it is impossible to know whether the bubble is up or not until you walk into or shoot at it. Many times I would shoot at the bubble and the Nully would instantly die, this leads to distrusting the existence of the bubble in other situations and thus running in for melee uncertain of the current size of the bubble.

2. Sometimes the bubble just instantly pops up to full with no indication that it would happen.

3. In multilayered maps Nullies jumping up or down happens at an unexpected speed, making it impossible to dodge out of the way.

11 minutes ago, Aldain said:

I'd wager that the hate for them comes from how they stop a handful of Warframes from killing the tileset every couple of seconds.

This might be a source, never really think about them in that way.

[TARINunit9]

2 minutes ago, PhiThagRaid said:

 

2. Sometimes the bubble just instantly pops up to full with no indication that it would happen.

Just in hallways, or out in the open too? 

If they go from a low ceiling to a high ceiling they're allowed to grow their bubble. But if they're doing it everywhere that's quite the annoying bug

[PhiThagRaid]

1 minute ago, TARINunit9 said:

Just in hallways, or out in the open too? 

If they go from a low ceiling to a high ceiling they're allowed to grow their bubble. But if they're doing it everywhere that's quite the annoying bug

Oh, no I mean it goes from non-existance to completely full instantly without warning. I'm not too sure about the location of these events, but it would seem like both, although I'm thinking that nullies themselves are mostly found in more open tilesets. Ice planet, Jupiter, Corpus ships and the Void are quite open areas lately. 

[(PSN)thowed]

Ospreys not even in the top 5?  These results are skewed lol.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, PhiThagRaid said:

Personally don't like people's obsession with slaughtering masses of enemies, but the way the game is set up it encourages it too much. Mod/resource drop chances from enemies make people want more enemies faster since it's an increase in the amount of chances you have to get the mod/resources you want. There are multiple gamemodes that also encourage mass slaughter.

• Survival without a high KPS won't last as long,
• ESO and SO is 100% just KPS,
• Exterminate with faster spawns means the mission is over faster(if they don't increase the amount of kills needed),
• Defence would be over faster if enemies spawned faster,
• Openworld area capture requires you to kill things to gain control,
• Excavation allows faster spawning of energy cells,
• Infested Salvage allows faster spawning of the serum
• Disruption allows faster spawning of conduit keys,

All other missions enemy spawns are basically irrelevant perhaps with the exception of Interception where enemies might make it slightly more difficult.

The gameplay itself will have to be updated to encourage players to spend more time per enemy while at the same time making enemies not die as quickly. The reward loop will also need to be adjusted to encourage players to spend time playing a mission thoroughly rather than just rushing through them.

These changes might be too large for the developers and/or the community that many times seem obsessed with a skewed perception of "Power Fantasy".

Yea, it's too late to enact these changes. I don't really want to be encouraged to spend more time per enemy. You have many ways to utilize this playstyle yourself or with friends, though.