State of the Game Warframe Feedback post Tennocon Feedback

[Klokwerkaos]

Player Credentials: 7.5k in mission hours. All MR Content complete.

Sisters of Parvos is a relatively good update, it was nice being that it's a breath of fresh air after so many really bad ones.  Yes it's just a reskin of a prior patch, but the tweaks and additions made it a much better launch than liches by far (I still have PTSD flashbacks from lich and RJ launches, joking but also not).

Sisters Update criticisms:

-Liches still take too long, sisters are just about right.

-Father on Deimos is one of the few folks in open world NPC's that doesn't have some kind of cosmetic reward. Please give him some.  Armor set for deimos pls.

-Vent Kids lab red zones are obnoxious, the room is super tiny and not good for decoration, and it literally builds 1 warframe. I'd have much rather had Yureli added to tenno lab. Experimenting with NPC's is cool, but really guys gotta get over walking this line between force feeding family friendly into an MA rated game. Simply put, tweens should not be on this game if they have good parents, or if the parents are good, they have raised their youngin to deal with adult content before letting them play an MA game.

-Gun arcanes are cool, some are useless though. The update did make guns actually viable and useful, but also knocked melee out of use except as a mobility tool, a better balance would have been to leave melee as it was and bring guns to the current level so there is an option of either or, not 1 thing is king for this cycle. Alternately, guns are way better, but a lot of guns which aren't low MR guns are still crap and non viable candidates for clear speed. Pretty much anything that is high fire crit based is auto garbage. If it has high fire rate it needs to stack status or it's useless in comparison to other options. In general single target weapons just should have massively more damage output to keep up with other weapons that have some kind of AoE effect (chaining, blast radius, etc.), and nerfing AoE won't solve that, they just don't compete as single target since the game is played via clear speed. Nothing you do will change the fact that clear speed is the most important metric besides what some would argue is "subjective fun" but that's an opinion not a fact, this is because clear speed is used to help bypass the grind wall impositions.

Unless you make grind not a thing at all anymore, which means redesigning the game from the ground up, clear speed will always be king. Please stop trying to pretend it's ever going to be anything else. While AoE is powerful I don't think it needs a nerf because even the most powerful AoE guns still can't clear at a better rate than a properly built Saryn, which is the overall clear speed cap DE has decided to implement in the game for years now. The current AoE doesn't keep up with that but allows a player to still feel useful in a saryn ESO squad rather than being completely unable to do jack. Overall though, good job on making guns viable again as well as adding build diversity to an extent, now the weapon's stats actually matter as to how you would choose to mod a gun. This sorta mattered in the past but making status a thing to care about has helped a lot here.

Melee is still strong, but not strong enough to be a viable option when compared to guns, speaking as the min/max guy with min/max rivens on all meta stuff.

-Yareli is trash and has no reason to exist.  She is objectively speaking, the absolute worst warframe in the game by far (way worse of a pick than any of the other frames that are ancient and could do with a healthy rework).  Her main ability is to reduce your mobility while reducing your weapon options to secondaries (the weakest type), which is literally he opposite of useful.  Did I mention she's also made of glass but also lacks the cannon part of glass canon...  The rest of her kit has no synergies and even her subsume is basically gloom without all the things that make gloom good.  In response to this I'd say:  Fix this frame with a full kit redesign, starting with giving her an exalted modded k drive, meaning you can still restrict mods for it (ie if you want to pull the k drive rolling guard equivalent, which you probably shouldn't since it can go on a normal k dive).  Also follow that with please for the love of god stop trying to shoehorn in K drive into anything ever again.  K drive is objectively inferior to all methods of transport available either outside or in.  It's not fun, it's not cool.  It was a cool idea in theory, but the execution is such that it's just garbage and is literally even as MR fodder, the worst MR to farm there is in game.  It sucks.  Sincerely, please stop.

The state of this warframe is really a shame since the cosmetic aspects of the frame do serve a specific fan service, which is great, but also for players that want that, they are stuck using the literal worst frame in the entire game.

-Corrupted Holokey farm is not fun, drops are split too many ways. I'd recommend pulling holokeys from the table all together and keeping sevagoth as is, upping relics, then add maybe a 30% chance to get a bonus holokey reward at present sums each run, that way i'm getting keys reliably at least once every 3-4 runs. That would make the grind far less obnoxious, and as it stands I refuse to buy more to infuse these unless I naturally accumulate holokeys to do so. As it stands it's easy to do 4 hours of holokeys at min/max rates and end up with like 3 total... it's not cool. The drops for the void storms are already viable without them, in that if you want to go positive on relics while opening them, this is the way to do it, so it's actually a good system, if you remove holokeys from the table and instead make them a separate drop chance. As it stands it's just too grindy and gives me PTSD flashbacks to Lich launch RNG.

Fixed

-I am particularly impressed that this launch wasn't a bug ridden catastrophe given the last couple of years of updates.

Tennocon Live: The new war looks pretty neat, I actually think playing as non tenno is the most interesting thing you could have done. For those of us that have god tier meta build everything, getting that fresh MR 3 feel is gonna be really cool, you know, where stuff in standard has a chance to damage you or even kill you if you aren't paying attention.

Crossplay concerns: I'm super excited to have our console and soon to be mobile tenno join us. We're gonna need a lot of details far in advance to make this transition smooth, for example, how is tennogen handled with plat vs cash? What about platform specific skins? These are things that are covered in general exhaustively by others.

One thing I haven't seen covered though is my strong concerns about mission lag and unstable host connections. This has always been a problem even for us PC master race folk. I can't imagine using inferior hardware like a switch or mobile device is going to help that any. I'm not saying this to hate on console players, I am happy they are joining us. I am however, concerned about the hardware compatibility. So I need to expect that 3000+ ping is going to be the norm now? If so that's not acceptable because the game will become unplayable at that rate. Please make sure this is addressed.

Last bit on Nora's choice: Thank you for removing story/lore from this, and just making it a battle pass. Story/Lore belongs in quests. Focus on making at least one beastly quest per year and quarterly major events. The driving force behind doing Nora should be that there are standard evergreen rewards and a new cosmetic thinger as well as a few locked thingies like vauban.

Mandatory "When is X?"

-Fixing energy effects so they work (color properly) in all areas (articula, load screens, etc.). This is particularly a problem with older tennogen and deluxe skins. it's been a problem for as long as I can remember. Someone needs to make this their job, the cosmetic aspect is not only premium content sold to us for plat or cash, but it's also double charged for when it fails on articula, simply put you're selling broken products and premium items.

- Ghoul Saw.

-RAIDS. PLEASE. DO IT. For Real. You guys have done a whole lot to fix the fact that a lot of the game now has enough content to keep even hardcore veteran players interested in doing at least a few hours of daily tasks that are reasonably worthwhile. This last piece is literally a necessity to make the game actually feel complete in content (that and fixing conclave/lunaro). New war looks cool, but a quest is a quest, it's a one and done. RAIDS have the potential to be excellent content if implemented well and given a decent loot pool. There literally needs to be a game mode that takes skill based challenge and makes it so a coordinated group must work together to do it. I've already outlined how to do this several times and make it satisfactory.

Other requests:

-Make conclave/lunaro not poop. dedicated servers yo, then more maps and team objectives as well as a giant azz battle royalle (like 50 man coliseum or something).

-Add alternate PVP mode: Grineer vs Corpus, you can also add in infested as a mutual antagonist for both. You're already adding some play functionality to these 2 types of character. Give us a balanced ish PVP mode where everyone is a grunt and we compete for rewards of some kind.

-Add more cosmetics. I was recently thrilled to see a bunch more added to various vendors such as armor sets, ayatans, etc. Do more of that. Collecting digital garbage in various forms is literally what the game is about. More please.

-add relay buff and arsenal to dojo, dojos shouldn't be graveyards only used for trade.  It's fine to have requirements for this as well, even if they are steep (IE clan xp 10+ or something, new room, etc.).

-Please be sure to add regular new cosmetics to Nora's Choice stuff. I would feel satisfied if high end players can earn at least 1 new cosmetic thing per month. I say cosmetic because the vast majority of mods added through this system are kinda trash and feel like non rewards.

-Make exalted weapons not be trash. These not only prevent the use of other weapons while used, but take a power slot that could literally be anything else to be better, their own forma, have meaningless stances, limited mod choice, and in general are just crap to use. I think one viable way to make these worthwhile is give them each an augment mod or two that can be placed on the weapon itself in an added exilus slot that adds a measure of utility. This way there is at least a reason to cast an exalted weapon sometimes for niche scenarios. These are supposed to be the mythic weapons of lore, they are instead a mediocre choice of weapon at best.

-More unique orbiter decorations for the store an as rewards please, and make sure they work as donatable to dojo.

-Dojo deco has seen a lot of cool stuff recently. It's still not where it needs to be but it's much improved. Some things to make happen: The autofund feature only works if you're building 1 thing at a time... doesn't work for multiple decorators working on multiple rooms (you might not be ready to fund yet because of placement issues), or for a single decorator bouncing between a couple of long term projects. Please make "fund all" available on the room console per room so we can just fund everything when ready. Also capacity discrepancies still exist, between objects and rooms. I was also told to expect object prices would drop... I haven't noticed this. If it has, it didn't do so noticeably.

-Please bring back all out of rotation cosmetics.

-Ideal Content flow:
keep all standardized content flow (ie new frames, prime acces, vaults, daily quests, baro, nora, dev stream gift of lotus, weekly quests, etc.).

Please add:  
     1) Monthly Tactical Alert with some kind of reward (consider the out of rotation cosmetics especially, or put those in new nora)  Do this on the 2 weeks opposite a dev stream/gift of lotus per month, preferably with both opposite baro, that way every week there is a worthwhile event to focus on.
     2) Quarterly Event:  runs for 1 week, something substantial like plaguestar.  I would say dog days but honestly the reward pool is too small and the gameplay is too repetitive.  You need 4 of these, they can even be the same 4, just something that is worthwhile for players to want to log in if they already completed the NW cycle.
     3) 1 Yearly substantial cinematic quest, ideally 2 but I'm trying to be realistic.
     4) 1 Yearly raid released opposite cinematic quest, raids should focus on skill as well as DPS checks and be ramped up to about Steel path at 1 hour MOT at a minimum.  Each RAID MUST HAVE: unique, new, useful rewards that are worth slotting.  Grind should be on par with arcane grinds while taking into consideration a RAID should take more time to complete than a tri-cap or orphix run.
     5) Add new game modes as they are invented, we have plenty but more is always good.
     6) Add new dojo decoration packs at least once annually, twice preferred.  even if it's just adding some stuff already in game and a dozen of such pieces, that's cool, we'd be down.
     7) Hourly Rotation Steel Path arbitrations, each gets a random nightmare modifier. pull out regular steel path mods from drop tables, add in new mods respective to power level.  Remove drop for steel essence, add refined steel essence, these mods aren't tradeable and have some kind of special set modifier that is useful.  Add rewards to arbiter shop for refined steel essence, both cosmetic and game enhancing.  Add in blueprint for refined steel essence that costs refined steel essence, converts regular steel essence over at 3:1 and costs 50k creds.   For both arbitration currencies add in a quarterly rotating cosmetic (be sure to put countdown timer on UI).
     8) Quarterly riven pass adjusting dispos in direct correlation to player usage MR 16+
   

Combine that with bug fixing and you'll likely have a much happier player base with much better player retention. 



 

[xcrimsonlegendx]

Liches take longer than sisters because there are significantly less players hunting liches, whereas everyone is hunting sisters. You can go up a whole requiem level in one game if all of the sister's spawn and get stabbed. You don't get that massive boost of murmur progress when its two people in a game hunting liches. Sure the balance isn't the same but when you have a full team farming kuva liches it goes pretty fast.

[DarkSkysz]

13 minutes ago, xcrimsonlegendx said:

Liches take longer than sisters because there are significantly less players hunting liches

One survival + exter is enough to unlock a requiem. Lichs are no where near that fast.

 

And I am talking about solo. In group, don't even need two missions.

[Klokwerkaos]

41 minutes ago, xcrimsonlegendx said:

Liches take longer than sisters because there are significantly less players hunting liches, whereas everyone is hunting sisters. You can go up a whole requiem level in one game if all of the sister's spawn and get stabbed. You don't get that massive boost of murmur progress when its two people in a game hunting liches. Sure the balance isn't the same but when you have a full team farming kuva liches it goes pretty fast.

What @DarkSkysz said.  

Point being if your gear is right, you should need to spend more than an hour in total to grind out +10% for a weapon you already have ;) 

An hour feels good, 2+ hours doesn't.  Again, assuming gear is correct.  

Your concern about the group activity, well it's only sorta relevant, meaning the content shouldn't need full squads 24/7 because it won't stay that way regardless, just like liches the content for sisters will be more or less dead in 2 months.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

35 minutes ago, Klokwerkaos said:

What @DarkSkysz said.  

Helpful quote. lol

 

1 hour ago, DarkSkysz said:

And I am talking about solo. In group, don't even need two missions.

Ah, hadn't specified that, but you're right liches do take longer and that should probably be adjusted.