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Warframe Should Be Challenging


(PSN)thefallenloser

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I'm not entirely fond of Warframe's challenge factor being centered around enemies and random obstacles becoming increasingly more durable and dealing increasingly more damage. It leaves something to be desired in terms of interactive gameplay systems, as everything can be gunned and meleed through, and abilities are easily spammable.

Maybe that was the intent, but I can't help but feel as though Warframe could be a power fantasy while also requiring a bit more skill on the players' part.

Let's take a look at the game modes.

Extermination, while as simple as a task as killing everything there, I feel like there could be some sort of dynamic system that'd spawn harder enemies the more you kill. The enemies are also usually spread extremely far apart, so the individual enemy is never a threat. The amount is also pretty low, and so more enemy density as well as enemies with interactive mechanics in order to disable and defeat them (along with more minibosses in the style of the Bursa and Nox) would be very welcome.

While on the topic of enemies, Nullifiers and Energy Leeches are terribly designed enemies. Having an enemy being able to just exist, walk relatively nearby and instantly cancel any ability you had running is annoying and makes frames like Limbo nearly obsolete on Corpus missions, as the main portion of their ability synergies comes from a large radial bubble that can can canceled out instantly. Energy Leeches, on the other hand insidiously drain your energy without any refund once they are killed. This promotes using Zenurik's Energizing Dash on way too many setups, because energy in this game is not reliable in drop form and can be taken away very quickly. These two enemies destroy Frames who rely on their abilities to survive, forcing players to take easy alternatives.

The rest of the enemies themselves don't really have any distinctive way to deal with them the most effectively while also being somewhat challenging other than by just shooting them in the face. I feel as though Snipers and basic grunts should have some distinction between how I deal with them. I feel like I should want to constantly dodge out of the way of Sniper aim lasers to avoid taking critical damage while also being weary of the fast approaching melee attackers.

Spy missions are very boring, as the vaults are extremely easy to break into (thanks ciphers for not helping the problem at all). Their set up is also very easy to understand, and the obstacles are extremely basic, while the enemies are sparse. You'd think the highly important, top secret data would have more than 5 basic Crewmen defending it with a couple of lasers. Spy missions should definitely not be easily completed with ciphers, and the lasers should be more strategically placed, with better enemy placements, who are also tougher and more numerous. The puzzles could also suffer to be a bit more challenging, akin to Lua's.

Sabotage consists of running into mission, shooting thing/hacking thing, maybe waiting, then leaving. A much more complex multi-step plan would be much more engaging, with increasingly difficult enemies as you fulfill more objectives.

Mobile defense should actually be mobile, and not defense points. Defend a target that moves throughout a mission.

Capture is definitely the most egregious of offenders, as it consists of running into a mission, one-shotting a random enemy, and leaving. Enemies should try to actively defend the target while they escape. perhaps leaving behind environmental hazards and locking down the doors to buy themselves extra time.

Pretty much all of the game modes are so extremely basic and antiquated, and they really feel like they came from 2013. The enemies aren't any better, with the catch-all solution being to just shoot it. Warframe can be a power fantasy, but I feel as though it should also have some dynamic and interesting gameplay, with better enemies that will encourage more skilled play and keep players more engaged. Antiquated enemy and mission design needs to go, and more challenging gameplay in. Steel Path just isn't cutting it.

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12 minutes ago, (PSN)thefallenloser said:

The enemies aren't any better, with the catch-all solution being to just shoot it. Warframe can be a power fantasy, but I feel as though it should also have some dynamic and interesting gameplay, with better enemies that will encourage more skilled play and keep players more engaged. Antiquated enemy and mission design needs to go, and more challenging gameplay in. Steel Path just isn't cutting it.

DE Scott did admit that they want to develop more interesting enemies, but they would lack any meaningful impact. Thing is, it's incredibly difficult for DE to design any "challenge" against us considering the fact that we're not ninjas, but actual gods. We're so overpowered that if Warframes are brought into any other shooters, they will completely smear away any "challenge" that gets thrown in their way due to:

  • Abilities and equipment that essentially prevents death/multiple consecutive lives with little downtime in between
  • Abilities and equipment that can wipe out a crowd equivalence of a large tileset
  • Abilities and equipment that can outright shut down the AI before they can do anything (neutralize or kill)
  • Insane mobility

While I can advocate more interesting objectives, it may dissatisfy the community if the time-to-reward ratio is too disproportional; the rewards don't justify playing this gamemode. Void Storms are currently suffering this, along with other gamemodes. Kuva Fortress Assault is one of the rarely properly done gamemodes, but many are simply looking towards the reward due to the repetition.

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Just give up. The large challenge phobia crowd isn't gonna let challenge to survive in this game. They only want to get the new shiny as fast as possible.

What DE needs to do is a massive balance pass on player power and enemies. Yes, huge nerfs and buffs included. No more immortality with stupid amount of EHP, No more turning off the AI, No more one press room wipe. Then, tune enemy EHP and Damage as needed.

Unfortunately, many players are not gonna be on board with these changes and WILL fight for it, even go as far as threatening by using their wallets.

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7 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

Just give up. The large challenge phobia crowd isn't gonna let challenge to survive in this game. They only want to get the new shiny as fast as possible.

So much this. It's always "but this isn't challenge, it's boring" at every single attempt to develop ineteresting enemies. High dmg? Weak spots? Invulnerability phases? Ability reistance? High eHP?

If that crowd was game designer, everything would be infested capture with 3 just different tiles to reach the exit faster.

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55 minutes ago, (PSN)thefallenloser said:

-

Remember Lua Spy was REMOVED from Sortie, because it was "too difficult". 
Deadlock protocol bossfight was made easier recently, because not enough people were able to finish it.
I don't mean this in a bad way, but a typical Warframe player just cannot / doesn't want to handle any challange.
Devs are very limited when they want to do a challange. The only ways to make a game challanging I can think of are:

- Enemies are too strong or you are weak and you die easily. That would break the core of this game.
- You put in place puzzles and demand higher intercation. Whenever that happens there is a big uproar in forums. (Lua spy, etc.)
- Or you can crank up the numbers for people that really want at least something.

The real challange of Warframe is to learn the systems and mechanics. Once you do that, you win the game.

I always imagine Warframe as this:

7b6c5792ca578b13a64815b8b614d492.jpg

And the game will never be able to change. Most people don't care, don't want to learn the game. That's why there is such a high demand for "how to build primary weapon number 169". People cannot be bothered to learn the game. There will always be a sizeable amount of players who see Sorties as the most difficult content, cannot complete Steel Path mission and are unable to finish a Lua spy. 

Once you accept it, you will find inner peace 😆

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They could very easily add challenge to the game. It just requires fixing only the entire game. 

seriously, we used to have challenge, t3 towers used to have level 60 enemies in there that before damage 2.0 actually meant you had to walk in with a proper loadout because weapon average damage was exponentially less than it currently is, and there was less multipliers for all stats. And less energy on top of that so you had to plan your casts sparingly. It was actually really fun to throw yourself or your team at that sort of thing and see how you'd go. 

What they'd have to do to create challenge besides adding interesting enemies is actually gut the entire game. They'd need to lower damage by probably 10x, they'd need to either give important spells cooldowns, or nerf energy costs/gains. and they'd need to limit crowd control effects with the strongest effects near the epicentre and getting weaker further out so enemies werent stopped for the entire map length. It'd be a lot of changes, itd make the game great, but theyd have to commit to the major stat squish they'd have to do which would annoy a lot of people who're just there for the memes. 

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The thing about 'challenge' in games is that it usually comes from an interplay between players and the game environment. It's usually more about encouraging player choices. So, a oneshot can be fairly challenging (I've played through Katana Zero and Celeste, I can certainly attest to this), provided that avoiding that oneshot is entirely down to player choices. Good telegraphing, projectile attacks, it serving as a timer of sorts - or on the RPG side of things, proper buildcraft where you sacrifice some aspect to guard against it.

I've started to feel like Warframe lacks those meaningful choices, which might lead into at least some of what @DrivaMain has pointed out. Railjack ground units were 'challenging' at release, because they had massive health bars, were resistant to armour-stripping or armour-avoidance weapons, and had hitscan weapons that could oneshot squishier frames. Sure, they were difficult. Maybe even challenging. But these mechanics didn't encourage making interesting choices, they encouraged following the restrictive meta. You'd need to bring a powerful Hybrid weapon in order to deal with the huge health bars of the Grineer units, built for Corrosive because the other option (viral/slash) didn't work, and you'd either need to play a tanky frame or a squishy frame that could lock down the whole environment and keep it locked down 24/7 because hitscan can't be dodged, it's just an RNG roll to hit.

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I can very much empathize with the OP, I think gameplay in Warframe could be more stimulating than it is sometimes, though there are many systemic reasons why that's currently impossible:

  • Given enough mods, we end up having essentially unlimited access to abilities that completely shut down all interaction with enemies, i.e. perma-invisibility, mass hard crowd control, invulnerability, and enough damage to kill enemies at virtually all level ranges we encounter instantly.
  • Enemies themselves are full of really old units that have the same, simplistic fighting style across factions, few of which really encourage the player to switch up their play. DE has tried to introduce more interesting units over time, though their usual means of making them more difficult have been to a) make them deny the player's agency via ability nullification, immunity, or Energy drains, b) turn them into tedious bullet sponges by dramatically ramping up their hit points, or c) give them AoE, hard crowd control, or AoE hard crowd control, many instances of which can't really be dodged, and which are designed to try to get the player killed pretty much regardless of what they do. None of these tactics make enemies that much more challenging, especially as we're often too strong to care, but they certainly do make them less enjoyable to fight.
  • Several key core mechanics to our combat our broken: we're meant to use our movement to dodge enemy hits, but this is impossible when enemies have hitscan weaponry and end up having pinpoint accuracy. Our core means of replenishing our Energy is through orbs, but they're far too weak and unreliable on their own, which is why we have so many other options to facilitate our casting.
  • Our balance is all over the place because there's no consistent benchmark for how much damage a weapon or ability should deal, or how durable a warframe should be. It's not just that we're often too tanky or deal too much damage (though both are problems), but that the difference between our strongest and weakest options is such that it's impossible to balance for both extremes of the scale at the same time.
  • As mentioned in the OP, the design of many missions does not lend itself to challenge. Capture especially is a relic of the past that could use some sprucing up, and while newer Spy vaults can be quite fun to run (when one isn't simply floating effortlessly through them with Wukong), I can agree that the older ones are dead simple.

TL;DR: Warframe can't be challenging at the moment because our abilities are out of control and let us eliminate all remaining interaction from combat, in a game that already doesn't do a great job of baking interactivity into its enemies and core combat mechanics. Fixing all of these would likely require massive overhauls to complex game systems, and include a bunch of nerfs to our power, which is likely why DE have been reluctant to address the issue of challenge at its root, but I personally think it would still be worth it, despite the short-term backlash it would induce from a vocal minority of players.

My very general thoughts on how to address the above:

  • Curb our abilities: the solution most often proposed here is to simply nerf our Energy economy, but I would be more in favor of changing abilities themselves so that they're inherently interactive, even when spammed non-stop. Harrow and Garuda both achieve this to some extent, as their abilities require a bit of gameplay to provide their power. Ideally, I'd like an ability system where abilities could be used at-will (we may not even need Energy!), but those abilities would only benefit us if we used them right, with "using them right" requiring interaction with enemies and the environment.
  • Change enemy hitscan weapons to fire projectiles, and rework the targeting algorithm of enemies so that they have perfect accuracy, but only when we're standing still or walking in extremely predictable patterns (e.g. flying in a straight line from one end of the room to the other). Using our parkour and other sources of mobility properly to rapidly move around a tile should allow us to dodge and evade incoming attacks.
  • Overhaul several classes of enemy units so that a) every faction feels different, and b) different units encourage different approaches to play, without trying to remove our agency through cheap difficulty. The Corpus, for example, I think should have fewer, but much tougher units, and these units should come with a host of different gadgets that the player would have to respond to, e.g. shield projectors, slowing tethers, telegraphed blinds, etc.
  • Perform another balance pass across all of our weapons with the express intent of equalizing their damage when fully modded, and so by setting a benchmark for what kind of power a weapon should have. Our weapons shouldn't all deal the same DPS, but the difference between our strongest and weakest options shouldn't be as huge as it is now.
  • Perform a balance pass across our warframes' stats and defensive abilities so that the difference between the most and least survivable frame is also not as massive as it is now. Some frames should for sure be tankier than others, but that shouldn't translate to some warframes being functionally immortal while others die to a stiff breeze in a high-level mission.
  • Update older mission types to properly feature some sort of challenge. This should mean stuff like revamping Capture, updating older Spy vaults, and so on.

TL;DR: In order to challenge us, we need to be forced to interact with our opponents, rather than remove said interaction at the press of a button. However, enemies also ought to give us more ways of interacting with them, and reward us for playing in more interesting ways. In order for this challenge to be calibrated to our power, we also need to make sure that our power is more consistent, so that the game doesn't have to attempt the impossible task of balancing for two opposite extremes of damage, EHP, etc. at the same time.

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9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Once you accept it, you will find inner peace 😆

It's hard to find peace though. There's immense potential in Warframe. Unlimited 3D movements. A vast array of tools to survive and deal damage. 3 weapon slots, Warframe abilities, operators, consumables and more. The game should be designed around making you use these tools to overcome challenges. Yet the devs and the playerbase settle for a dumb power fantasy. And not even the good kind of power fantasy.  

A lot of people, as you already can see in this thread, will say that "If you want a challenge in Warframe, just dont mod and go shoot things with a Braton". I'm sorry, but this is goddamn stupid. Handicapping yourself is never the solution. It feels terrible. It is no way to play the game. The players shouldn't have to deprive themselves of the tools available to them to feel challenged. They should be able to use all the tools available to them, and in return the game will have to match those tools with the appropriate level of challenge.  

Warframe will always draw comparison to Destiny 2. But I really think, in deeper levels of gameplay, they are not as similar as people think they are. Destiny give you a more limited set of tools and is more focused on gunplay. Warframe is more about having the right tool for the right job.  

The best comparison to Warframe would be Doom Eternal. Look at what they give you in Doom Eternal. A wide array of weapons, each with 2 mods to further specialize them.   Multi-dashes. Chaingun shield. Super shotgun hooks. Flamethrower. Frag and Ice Grenade. Blood Punch. Chainsaw. Crucible. Hammer. BFG. So many tools to use, so many ways to use them. No tools is completely useless, nor any of them far better than others that they make using anything else unecessary. And id Software makes you use all of them to succeed in higher difficulties. They gave you a lot of tools, and give you a challenging game to match it. This is the good kind of power fantasy.  

The Warframe power fantasy is like mowing the lawn. Whenever I hear someone talk about Warframe being a power fantasy, I think this: "LOOK AT HOW MANY BLADES OF GRASS I CAN CUT A SECOND WITH A LAWNMOWER. THATS POWER FANTASY GUYS".  No it's not. It's a chore. You are performing a chore to get the shiny. Steel Essence, Kuva, plat, whatever. Warframes enemies are like grass, and the Tenno is the lawnmower. Unceremoniously cut down droves, with virtually no interaction.  

 

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For more challenging content there's has to be one core thing changed. Reward/time has to be changed into Reward=time*difficulty. Otherwise their will always be the problem that the easier content will be favoured, because it's much quicker to do than the more difficult content. Especially in a farming game like warframe where's normal that someone runs a mission multiple times to get the wanted reward. 

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Teridax68:

Change enemy hitscan weapons to fire projectiles, and rework the targeting algorithm of enemies so that they have perfect accuracy, but only when we're standing still or walking in extremely predictable patterns (e.g. flying in a straight line from one end of the room to the other). Using our parkour and other sources of mobility properly to rapidly move around a tile should allow us to dodge and evade incoming attacks.

I never though about this (ash main, I never get hit), but I agree with you. Changing hitscan weapons into weapons with bullet flight time, would definitely remove the rng aspect of it it. Until now is the dogding solved with damage reduction on different maneuvers, but seeing the passing projectiles fly away like in matrix would be epic. 🤤🤤🤤

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vor 10 Stunden schrieb Cerikus:

- Just the aspect about that many players don't want to learn -

This sounds extremly toxic but I refuse to call this peoples gamers. Mobile-, flash-, virtual reality- even if someone just play hentai games I will accept this person a a gamer (if they do it with fun/ their hearth). But if someone call himself a gamer, even though that he refuse to learn the basics of a game I disagree. I can agree if someone says he doesn't have the time to study a game, but core thing like how to move and how to do mission x or y is actually more a learning by doing process and not learning by studying (warframe damage system is a great negative exampe).

The only "gamers" I dislike more are the one who just want to win by doing nothing. They could just watch a movie insteaad. Better animations, higher graphic and they cost less...

vor 42 Minuten schrieb Bakaguya-sama:

Warframe will always draw comparison to Destiny 2. But I really think, in deeper levels of gameplay, they are not as similar as people think they are. Destiny give you a more limited set of tools and is more focused on gunplay. Warframe is more about having the right tool for the right job.  

Comparisons between warframe and destiny are as much worth as a comparison between pokemon and digimon. Both games requires to train monsters, but the child friendly one gives you a monster team and a partly complicated training system, while the other one gives you just one monster which you train trough 100 or even more different evolutions until you finally get your perfect monster.

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Building challenge is challenging so long as DE insists on

  • making all content accessible and achievable by low ranked/casual/non-meta players.  Current content IS challenging - to newer players. 
  • having abysmal drop chances like Turret Velocity that require huge numbers of enemies and mindless repetition of the same nodes to have a slim-none-chance of getting it.
  • having often insane build/resource rquirements requiring huge numbers of enemies and mindless repetition of the same nodes to craft/research/whatever something.
  • players demanding and getting infinitely scaling abilities/weapons/dmg

IMHO the easiest challenge to add would be increased demands on stealth for sneaky type missions where tripping an alarm means failure (not a countdown to failure that can be reset) - thats simple level/trap design without a need to attempt to balance the DPS, fix enemy AI, etc.  - Doesn't need to be spy - could be sabotage, could be a stage in a larger objective...  Even the existing spy missions could be made a touch harder by having enemies/cameras spawn in random places instead of the exact same spot every time.

 

 

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vor 3 Stunden schrieb (XBOX)GearsMatrix301:

The problem is creating a challenge that doesn’t just feel like a slog.

This is probably the hardest part. If it's to easy will it feel unsatisfying, but if it's to difficult it will chase away the players. The to difficult part can be solved with better rewards (it worked on eidolons), but how to prevent if it's to easy. Like the others already told are we literally gods and negating all the ability aspect will lead to a tank meta, but without negation are many CC frames to strong. Maybe a "stair" system for CC abilities? Something like that enemies has different CC-immunizations levels and depending on their level has the ability a different affect. As an example does Vaubans bastile just slow an enemy down instead of completly stopping it?

 

 

hmmm, seems like I have skipped a comment. Nah, it probably wasn't important.

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I'm with @Teridax68 here, broadly speaking. We've discussed this thread quite a bit on the forums lately, so here's my own list of soundbites:

  • Split enemies into three general "classes" - Common, Uncommon, Miniboss. Common enemies would be dumb, simple and straightforward - shoot them in the head, don't let them shoot you. Specials would be tough enemies with unique mechanics, telegraphed attacks, weak points and more complex behaviour. Minibosses would be rare exceptionally tough enemies who require your full attention.
  • Do a major balance pass on pretty much everything. Enemies should always be dangerous to the player regardless of build and Warframe, such that players actually need to defend themselves. Players should always be dangerous to the enemy regardless of level, such that we don't end up absent-mindedly mag-dumping into them. This would require a MASSIVE rebalance replete with a litany of nerfs, but the end justifies this.
  • Compress stats dramatically. Don't leave some Warframes with 1000 EHP, some with 20 000 EHP and some with 100 000 EHP. Don't let some weapons deal 20 damage per shot and some weapons deal 10 million damage per shot. Similarly, enemies of the same level shouldn't vary between 60K EHP and 700K EHP. Yes, this also means redesigning armour, which is well outside the scope of this discussion.
  • Actually reduce enemy variety. We don't need 10 different "dude with gun" enemies who all behave the same way and are killed the same way. Split factions into small Corps with a few units each - 2 Commons, 3-4 Specials, 1 Miniboss. Make players actually observe their enemies, piece together what kinds of units they're fighting and adapt accordingly.

Basically, the long and short of it is "move power away from stats and into gameplay." Let most enemies be dirt simple, but introduce more special enemies who pose actual danger to the player and require more focused attention to take down. Improve the distinction between enemy units, both visually and in terms of gameplay. Make enemy units more interactive. Combat doesn't need to be "harder" in order to be "more challenging." As long as it can either require or at least encourage us to use a larger portion of toolkit regularly, it'll be "challenging enough." For that to happen, however, both enemies and players need to rely less on negating game mechanics through stats and more on solving problems in real time.

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I agree with @Teridax68's above suggestions, and their points on why the Warframes' powers should be curbed to an extent.

I still remember that stream with Quite Shallow, where they had Pablo on there to take part in their discussion about the game. During which he mentioned the fact that even if they give the enemies high-tier AI, the players' Warframes will shut them down with ease, either with crowd control, or wiping them out from sheer damage.

While he didn't say Warframes should be nerfed, in fact he said he himself was against it, I think he made a good point on why they should be nerfed. Which I don't think anyone else in that stream picked up on, or mentioned it.
 

I adjusted it, so the video starts at the part where they talk about enemy AI.

On this forum, every time I read these players' posts about wanting more of a challenge in gameplay, I wonder how many of them would agree that their Warframes are just so overpowered, that nerfing them is a necessity for a challenge?

Very likely, they would rage and roar at the very idea of it, even though it's the only real option to create the challenge they claim they want in the game. They refuse to acknowledge that we the players are just that overtly powerful, and there's too many of them that either lack that realization, or just don't care how hypocritical they are, when they claim to want a challenge, yet still want to easily disable or kill large swaths of enemies, at the push of a single button.

I do believe DE should rip the bandaid and make changes to the gameplay, that while it nerfs certain powers of Warframes, it makes the experience better overall in terms of fun. I mean, sure nuking a whole room of enemies, with a single button, is fun. But only for the short term. Then it gets boring after a while. So the idea of redesigning these abilities to require more thought in how they're used in gameplay, how they can solve certain situations the player finds themselves in, how they can be applied for the right effect, and how other powers interact with each other, is something I believe would help the game, long term.

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Hard disagree.

Plus, DE's idea of challenging is just inflating numbers and making things immune to fundamental game mechanics, which is horrid game design.

DE already ruins much of the game and many playstyles by introducing their idea of "Difficulty" in the form of nuisances like Nullifiers and energy leeches, and energy drain game modes / modifiers that reinforce the idea that DE hates ability users and wants you to just spam M1 or E. 

 

I advocate the opposite.  Delete Nullifiers and Energy Drain.   Energy Drain is bullS#&$ and equivalent to, but even more severe, than "Ammo Drain" or "Combo Drain / Attack Speed Drain".  

 

From there you have a stable base gameplay anyone can enjoy with their chosen playstyle, and from that position you introduce challenging derivatives without ruining that baseline.

DE constantly undermines the aesthetic and the fantasy of the space ninja wizard demigods that the Tenno are supposed to be by having random A******s with a magnet cripple you and every other enemy evidently knows how to disable warframes.  You'd think the geniuses would figure out they could just slap magnets everywhere or contain their ships within magnetic fields.

 

The baseline gameplay should be more like Dynasty Warriors than Dark Souls.  All "Muh Challenge" does is force people to use specific weapons and cheese, invalidating a lot of frames and rendering most weapons unviable. 

Challenge should be reserved for bosses, puzzles, and "elite" enemies that should be few and far between, say every couple minutes or with scripted spawns at certain objectives.  Elites being proper minibosses, not larger grunts with poorly designed game mechanics such as the bullS#&$ Energy Leeches and Parasites that look  functionally identical to every other enemy in the crowd, and  provide no feedback what so ever that they're guzzling your energy harder than Chrome guzzles RAM, which they could be doing from behind walls, under the floor, or above the ceiling, and automatically with nothing you can do to avoid it (As opposed to for example, a line of sight tether projectile that physically latches onto you). 

Enemies in general could stand to be overhauled so there are few if any Hit Scan attacks, all being Projectile,  and special effects and AoEs get properly projected.

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Singling out Warframe players misses the point that videogames, or at least the commercially successful ones, becoming easier has long been an industry-wide phenomenon. We could speculate as to whether that is the result of, or the catalyst behind, gaming becoming the most popular mainstream diversion since the reproductive act. I suspect it's a little of both.

Look at the Dark Souls games. Despite their reputation, finding an old-school challenge in these virtually requires a self-imposed cap on leveling (perhaps all the way to zero), and eschewing certain weapons and items that greatly outperform their peers. Yet how many people actually play it that way? Probably not enough to move 27 million copies over the lifetime of the series.

It's far more likely that we'll see DE continue adding new challenges to the game than it is that we'll see the core product become more unforgiving in general. Steel Path was a big win, here, and if that still feels super easy, then toning down one's own builds may be the answer.

Some other options, which could be incentivized with unique emblems, ephemera, and skins:

  • A boss rush mode which must be completed using the same loadout from beginning to end
  • An ironman toggle for Steel Path mode
  • A toggle to disable one's own Forma, Reactors, and Catalysts
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On 2021-04-23 at 3:50 PM, A-keras said:

I agree with @Teridax68's above suggestions, and their points on why the Warframes' powers should be curbed to an extent.

I still remember that stream with Quite Shallow, where they had Pablo on there to take part in their discussion about the game. During which he mentioned the fact that even if they give the enemies high-tier AI, the players' Warframes will shut them down with ease, either with crowd control, or wiping them out from sheer damage.

While he didn't say Warframes should be nerfed, in fact he said he himself was against it, I think he made a good point on why they should be nerfed. Which I don't think anyone else in that stream picked up on, or mentioned it.
 

I adjusted it, so the video starts at the part where they talk about enemy AI.

On this forum, every time I read these players' posts about wanting more of a challenge in gameplay, I wonder how many of them would agree that their Warframes are just so overpowered, that nerfing them is a necessity for a challenge?

Very likely, they would rage and roar at the very idea of it, even though it's the only real option to create the challenge they claim they want in the game. They refuse to acknowledge that we the players are just that overtly powerful, and there's too many of them that either lack that realization, or just don't care how hypocritical they are, when they claim to want a challenge, yet still want to easily disable or kill large swaths of enemies, at the push of a single button.

I do believe DE should rip the bandaid and make changes to the gameplay, that while it nerfs certain powers of Warframes, it makes the experience better overall in terms of fun. I mean, sure nuking a whole room of enemies, with a single button, is fun. But only for the short term. Then it gets boring after a while. So the idea of redesigning these abilities to require more thought in how they're used in gameplay, how they can solve certain situations the player finds themselves in, how they can be applied for the right effect, and how other powers interact with each other, is something I believe would help the game, long term.

Watched this video quite a while ago and I quite loved hearing more "inside" dev talks.

While I would definitely be super open to the idea of nerfing everything for the sake of making the game more fun, I can see many not liking that approach. Hopefully, though, DE could one day maybe build up the courage to even give it a test drive.

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On 2021-04-23 at 3:54 PM, Kingsmount said:

Hard disagree.

Plus, DE's idea of challenging is just inflating numbers and making things immune to fundamental game mechanics, which is horrid game design.

DE already ruins much of the game and many playstyles by introducing their idea of "Difficulty" in the form of nuisances like Nullifiers and energy leeches, and energy drain game modes / modifiers that reinforce the idea that DE hates ability users and wants you to just spam M1 or E. 

 

I advocate the opposite.  Delete Nullifiers and Energy Drain.   Energy Drain is bullS#&$ and equivalent to, but even more severe, than "Ammo Drain" or "Combo Drain / Attack Speed Drain".  

 

From there you have a stable base gameplay anyone can enjoy with their chosen playstyle, and from that position you introduce challenging derivatives without ruining that baseline.

DE constantly undermines the aesthetic and the fantasy of the space ninja wizard demigods that the Tenno are supposed to be by having random A******s with a magnet cripple you and every other enemy evidently knows how to disable warframes.  You'd think the geniuses would figure out they could just slap magnets everywhere or contain their ships within magnetic fields.

 

The baseline gameplay should be more like Dynasty Warriors than Dark Souls.  All "Muh Challenge" does is force people to use specific weapons and cheese, invalidating a lot of frames and rendering most weapons unviable. 

Challenge should be reserved for bosses, puzzles, and "elite" enemies that should be few and far between, say every couple minutes or with scripted spawns at certain objectives.  Elites being proper minibosses, not larger grunts with poorly designed game mechanics such as the bullS#&$ Energy Leeches and Parasites that look  functionally identical to every other enemy in the crowd, and  provide no feedback what so ever that they're guzzling your energy harder than Chrome guzzles RAM, which they could be doing from behind walls, under the floor, or above the ceiling, and automatically with nothing you can do to avoid it (As opposed to for example, a line of sight tether projectile that physically latches onto you). 

Enemies in general could stand to be overhauled so there are few if any Hit Scan attacks, all being Projectile,  and special effects and AoEs get properly projected.

No one said just increase the numbers of everything and add in random enemies that just completely remove anything you've worked for. The post said literally the exact opposite. I'm not saying it needs to be Dark Souls ass-blasting difficulty either, I just want to use my brain. Dynasty Warriors is so brain dead easy that having 8+ years of that is boring. I want to be able to actually have to use my brain while playing Warframe.

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About "challenge" :

I don't like "puzzle / parcours" but there are some challenges of these types in Lua.

Also rotation C spy and sortie spy can be "challenging" if you don't take a warframe that allow you to cheese them (remember your first Ivara farming ?). Btw having to replay the whole mission when you fail at the last part... is meh.

Capture ain't challenging, even in steel path, but if you want an equivalent you can try to kill a steel path treasurer in corpus ships.

Extermination ain't challenging, even in steel path or sortie, because there are no penalty if you die or trigger the alarm.

Then take a look at the enemy factions and "endless", even if you have "OP" frames, past the first rotation C corpus and infested start spamming nullifiers / parasitic eximus that prevents you from using your abilities.

What makes it easy in normal starchart is that they are easy to kill. In steelpath it becomes a bit harder, and past 40min in survival corpus or infested in steel path you may find some difficulty.

I agree that steel path could/should be more challenging, and the game mutator already in the game could help (riven, nightmare, sortie, the dev could use some of these modifiers to make challenging missions) but it also would require different way to gain steel essence or acolyte spawn tuning to avoid making them auto-fail the mission. For survival a simple "mobs lvl 250+ and spawn as past 40min" would make it

Also rewards should be modified accordingly.

Btw : steel path disruption is already good as it is.

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On 2021-04-23 at 3:12 PM, ES-Flinter said:

The only "gamers" I dislike more are the one who just want to win by doing nothing. They could just watch a movie insteaad. Better animations, higher graphic and they cost less...

I hate to say it but to me that sums up the average Warframe player I encounter. Why else would frames like Saryn and Mesa be so prevalent? Bare minimum player skill/input required for as much damage as possible.

I think the closest thing I've come to genuine risk vs reward type gameplay in Warframe is playing Garuda. Corrupted mods were kind of a cool idea but their drawbacks are easily negated.

The game's a superficial looter shooter, albeit a very stylish one with a lot of replay value. Adding in-depth game mechanics and punishing player mistakes, as much as I'd like to see more of it, will go down like a lead balloon with the playerbase.

What's that quote, about if given the chance, players will optimise all the fun out of a game...

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