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Lore Explaining Why Enemies are Suicidal


Sevek7

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In recent years players have complained that the game content is too easy. The game's lore is at odds with the player experience because enemies are shown as aggressive and dangerous while the player observes that they are, well, kind of useless. In fact, the enemies are basically suicidal.

Of course, there is no shortage of feedback on how to make the enemies more challenging. This feedback has been building up for years and ranges from good to bad. While the devs have made some good additions (Nox), generally they haven't really shown an interest in adding technical (i.e.: skill-based) challenge for players. (Of course, there are plenty of gear-check challenges)

So, with that in mind, I'd like to propose some background lore explaining just why all these enemies are so terrible at putting up any kind of meaningful resistance against the Tenno.

Grineer: The Grineer are clone troops bred in a process that includes both careful genetic enhancement and mental stimulation. Genetic enhancement improves with each iteration, and the mental stimulation is designed to provoke an intense loyalty to the Queens. This mental state necessitates a religiosity about death: those who die in service of the Queens are the ultimate warriors, to be honored and respected. Therefore, each generation of Grineer are stronger than the last, but they crave death, especially at the hands of a "worthy" opponent. Therefore, they charge headfirst towards the Tenno with no discernable goals and hope to die. This helps to explain the player experience.

Corpus: The Corpus are greedy lenders with a penchant for high interest rates. Of course, their executives are kept well out of harm's way. Their underlings, however, are deep in debt but with a very tempting crewman life insurance policy that would free their family from the effective slavery they currently endure under the executives. Therefore, corpus soldiers are always looking for ways to die in which the insurance policy is guaranteed to pay. One of the most secure ways of ensuring this is to die to a Tenno incursion. This explains why corpus troops charge at the Tenno with no regard for their own safety, knowing they have no chance of survival.

Infested: The organic beings who become infested have so much genetic material altered that their neurons become frayed, the sensory information goes everywhere. This means that any sense of touch gets translated into an unbearable pain. The only way to end this unendurable suffering is to stop living. To die. Unfortunately, the infested are controlled by a hive mind which does not allow suicide. So when an infested sees a Tenno, they see an opportunity. This explains why the infested charge at the Tenno and attack, even though there's no possibility that they can ever actually harm the Tenno, they simply hope to die in order to end the suffering.

I think this kind of interpretation will help to explain why the enemies are so terrible at posing a threat, while remaining very consistent with the game's overall theme.

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Before the Tenno started awakening, the factions have basically been fighting each other and other normal people.  Warframe is a bit weird in terms of timeline, so it's possible that the factions haven't adapted to the possibility of a Tenno showing up and murdering everyone.

I always got the impression that when you fight the Grineer, they really weren't expecting you to show up, thus they don't have time to prepare strategies.  Everything about their tactics screams "thrown together hastily" to me.  As the battle goes on, the more advanced, prepared units start arriving with heavier weapons.  But even then, only the Assassination Targets like Kela De Thaym, Vay Hek Captain Vor, Lech Krill, Tyl Regor, and Sargas Ruk, are actually expecting the Tenno to arrive, thus they are prepared with advanced tactics and weapons.

We know that the Corpus indoctrinate their soldiers from an early age to fight in the name of profit.  Bagging a Tenno kill would increase their personal profit and standing among their fellow Corpus, which is why they charge in, trying to beat their comrades to the big prize.  You actually see that in the case of John Prodman, who took on a Phorid with nothing but a Prova and came out on top.  He went from a lowly Crewman to Employee of the Month.

The main goal of the Infestation is to consume and spread.  It has no need for tactics when it just needs to rush victims with masses of infested meat.  This would also explain why the Boilers and Broodmothers, the more advanced Infested, only come out regularly after you've been fighting the hordes off for a while.  This represents the Infested realizing that normal tactics are no longer as effective, so it begins generating new evolutions in response to your actions.  As the story progresses, we see more advanced forms of the Infestation using advanced tactics and tricks, such as the Jordas Golem and Arlo, in response to our actions.

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