Sisters (and liches) remain a confusing, unfun and broken experience

[Smilomaniac]

I'm farming ephemeras and out of all the weapon farming and extra ones I've killed since, I've gotten two. Ultimatum requiems likewise.

Here's a short list of my issues with the experience:

1. Convoluted hyper specific way to spawn your candidate (just remove the granum void requirement and spawn the candidate like the lich larva. The Xoris soft "requirement" is dumb and counter to the rest of the game)

2. Dumb luck for stabs and resulting bullet sponge nightmares - Fun when you're lucky, unfun when you're not. We still have the whole stab, don't stab issue that wastes people's time. The stats on high/final level sisters are stupid high.

3. An overabundance of staggers and knockdowns - Maybe tone it down to keep it in line with the rest of the game.

4.  Being tied to half a day's playtime for nothing (since you can see whether they have the ephemera or not) - No one likes this and the valence fusion isn't worth it.

5. Still getting a bunch of bugs, from unkillable sisters to being stuck on the last level, the railjack not taking off despite launching for dojo and locking you out of screen (pressing P doesn't always fix it)

6. The overabundance of hounds, their weapons and blueprints. I'm not one to get upset with a reward of all things, but why spam us with this junk?

As soon as you stab your lich, there's no point in staying in the mission and not just hitting abort. I don't mind that it's like this, but you might want to think over how bad this experience is when you've got people taking any chance they can to stop playing the core part of the game to get through the grind asap.

This whole thing rests in the middle of being not hard enough to make it exclusive (especially when you can just buy the right sister off of someone) and too hard and random for it to be a non-frustrating grind. I have 863 missions quit for a long list of reasons.

Additionally, I still don't understand the logic of us creating a threat that takes over entire sectors at a time or how the parazon and requiems are connected. It's frankly a mess from beginning to end. At best we looks sadistic and greedy for doing it over and over again, it's not cohesive or in line with what we're supposed to do.

Make the ultimatum requiems skip the current adversary altogether and make them craftable so we have something to spend all the materials we've earned over time, on.
I wouldn't put a high credit cost on it, because frankly you've got enough money sinks for us already, but if that's what it takes then fine.

------------

Any replies offering "help", like explaining how armor stripping works or using banshee to kill a high level sister is a direct path on to my ignore list, I'm not interested.
It's not hard to understand that the stats of high level sisters and liches are out of line relative to the rest of the game.

[Kaichi16]

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

1. Convoluted hyper specific way to spawn your candidate (just remove the granum void requirement and spawn the candidate like the lich larva. The Xoris soft "requirement" is dumb and counter to the rest of the game)

i never undestood that. you can spawn liches in less than 1min but sisters have so much crap in it... why? because granum void was crappy and nobody cared about it 1month after it was released because there was nothing left there so you wanna make us play it forcefully, DE?

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

2. Dumb luck for stabs and resulting bullet sponge nightmares - Fun when you're lucky, unfun when you're not. We still have the whole stab, don't stab issue that wastes people's time. The stats on high/final level sisters are stupid high.

RNG. RNG everywhere. every single feature in this game has RNG. it makes even gacha game makers think DE's gone too far with RNG. 

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

3. An overabundance of staggers and knockdowns - Maybe tone it down to keep it in line with the rest of the game.

now a days, if you dont use Primed Sure Footed, you're dead. 

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

6. The overabundance of hounds, their weapons and blueprints. I'm not one to get upset with a reward of all things, but why spam us with this junk?

maybe some day, in 2050 when pets are actually good. 

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

As soon as you stab your lich, there's no point in staying in the mission and not just hitting abort. I don't mind that it's like this, but you might want to think over how bad this experience is when you've got people taking any chance they can to stop playing the core part of the game to get through the grind asap.

if they can make something to waste your time, they will. warframe doesn't respect the time you invest into it. 

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

Additionally, I still don't understand the logic of us creating a threat that takes over entire sectors at a time or how the parazon and requiems are connected. It's frankly a mess from beginning to end. At best we looks sadistic and greedy for doing it over and over again, it's not cohesive or in line with what we're supposed to do.

they're SUPPOSED to be your nemesis. the greatest enemy. one made to kill you. something that would take a lot of time to kill and that would be a great battle.

.... sadly, DE scrapped that idea in 2019 and just released a bullet sponge enemy with some stolen abilities and just gets killed in half a day. 

[SpicyDinosaur]

People that play MMOs that complain about RNG confuse me.

 

I actually want to see just a flat MR requirement to spawn a lich or sister. At some point while planning them there had to be something, I mean the weapons have MRs. I also wonder how hard it would be to MR lock any killed larvaling/candidate to allow only weapons the person involved has the MR for,

 

But even with a MR req (as in no one below that MR if you want to spawn one, this already happens if someone hasn't done the Protea quest if you are trying to summon a candidate in the same group, anyway,) people are silly and would still get stuck with unwanted liches/sisters. The only real issue is them not having the requiem mods, in my opinion. For the first few weapons, this makes the candidate prerequisite seem reasonable, until you need one more weapon and you have to go through the tasks over and over and over. 

 

Maybe there needs to be a brief quest for larvalings that explains things (Do candidates require the sevagoth quest? Maybe that just needs more crunch details ultimately, or a short quest after with them.)

 

Either way, things need to be easier for people who want to play with this feature, and harder to access for people that are ignorant of it.

 

Oh! Some advice. If you don't have a word to test on your lich yet and it spawns but you don't want to hold things up for your group, you only need to drop the lich three times. When it gets up the third time it will despawn without ranking up or moving planets.

[Lutesque]

1 minute ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

People that play MMOs that complain about RNG confuse me.

How ?

RNG is always Designed To Screw You more often and Reward You Once Every Blue Moon....

There's nothing Complicated About it.... RNG sucks regardless of where it Crops up... And lately it's Cropping up in every game... Not just MMOs...

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

 

2. Dumb luck for stabs and resulting bullet sponge nightmares - Fun when you're lucky, unfun when you're not. We still have the whole stab, don't stab issue that wastes people's time. The stats on high/final level sisters are stupid high.

Ah Yes... Damage Attenuation.... Also known as Hidden Immortality... 👀

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

 

3. An overabundance of staggers and knockdowns - Maybe tone it down to keep it in line with the rest of the game.

Haven't you done an Infested Survival Mission... Its already In line with The Rest Of The Game..... And That's What's Sad... 😭

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

 

5. Still getting a bunch of bugs, from unkillable sisters to being stuck on the last level, the railjack not taking off despite launching for dojo and locking you out of screen (pressing P doesn't always fix it)

And The Recent Update Added Even More.... Right Now Adverseries are Currently Bugged and the Details on the Adversary Page are not Accurate....

Will hold Off on Doing Liches until it gets Fixed....

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

 

6. The overabundance of hounds, their weapons and blueprints. I'm not one to get upset with a reward of all things, but why spam us with this junk?

It's Because People Complained.... At first You didn't Get Fully Built Hounds... You only got Parts and the Resource Grind was so bad that DE couldn't ignore The Complaints anymore... So then now they give you Fully Built Hounds....

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

As soon as you stab your lich, there's no point in staying in the mission and not just hitting abort. I don't mind that it's like this, but you might want to think over how bad this experience is when you've got people taking any chance they can to stop playing the core part of the game to get through the grind asap.

This Issue is actually Larger than most people Realise I think... 👀

 

[Smilomaniac]

Just now, Lutesque said:

Haven't you done an Infested Survival Mission... Its already In line with The Rest Of The Game..... And That's What's Sad... 😭

It reminds me of 'One Thousand Cuts' where you'd get perma stun locked by Bailiffs, scorpions, rollers and whatever else was in there.
It's a result of you having to stand there and pump ammo into them that leaves you vulnerable occasionally and set up for a chain stunlock between the sister, her dumb dog and whatever else happens to wade in to make your bulletsponge farming more miserable.
Obviously you can just play better, take out the dog first and clear the area occasionally, still, the amount of CC feels disproportional and it's especially annoying with the weapon disarms and chain knockbacks.

6 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

This Issue is actually Larger than most people Realise I think... 👀

I've ditched at least a dozen people today, leaving them to finish by themselves.
The "co-op" aspect of lich/sister hunting isn't very good, barely functional, even if it's better than it used to be.

It's not that I want to be punished for doing it, but if I had to do half or a quarter of the missions that are needed now then I wouldn't feel the need to skip as much pointless content as possible towards the goal.

I know it sounds like whining, especially since the number of missions have been cut, but it's still so soul crushingly punishing to finish off a sister when there's nothing in it for you.

I used to do mount farming in WoW back in the day, doing hundreds, THOUSANDS, of dungeon runs to get that sub 1% chance of a mount (and later 1%). It didn't ever feel so bad, probably because you rolled your dice at the end of the run. This lock-in gameplay is so bad.

It's also on top of a bunch of other things, because there's not a lot of variety in the gameplay, other than what you make of it. I could be efficiently grinding through the thousands of relics I have and just sell things for plat, but at some point I want to play the game too. After doing a bunch of sisters in a row it's dawned on me that all DE has in their bag of tricks is to be as annoying as possible with no real challenge. At that point you might as well mainstream the experience - People like the average salsa.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

You're not meant to spam them. 

Completionists put themselves in a position where they can always complain about something, because their only goal is to consume content as fast as possible.

It's not meant to be consumed as fast as possible.

[XAN3MK]

1 hour ago, Lutesque said:

It's Because People Complained.... At first You didn't Get Fully Built Hounds... You only got Parts and the Resource Grind was so bad that DE couldn't ignore The Complaints anymore... So then now they give you Fully Built Hounds....

Factually incorrect. You got the randomized, fully built, hounds from Day 1, along a random blueprint if you wanted to put together a hound with your own specs.

[Lutesque]

3 hours ago, XAN3MK said:

Factually incorrect. You got the randomized, fully built, hounds from Day 1, along a random blueprint if you wanted to put together a hound with your own specs.

That means Someone Lied To me.... 🤔

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

7 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

Dumb luck for stabs and resulting bullet sponge nightmares - Fun when you're lucky, unfun when you're not. We still have the whole stab, don't stab issue that wastes people's time. The stats on high/final level sisters are stupid high.

I think it's a fair resistance mechanic. The grind is supposed to be long and the lich is supposed to be a hard level 5 lich made for endgame players, but you can get lucky and speed things up

Some people want the game to be quick and easy, others want it to be harder and content to not finished in an seconds

DE cant please everybody

7 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

An overabundance of staggers and knockdowns - Maybe tone it down to keep it in line with the rest of the game.

They aren't to predictable is my only issue with it. As long as one can dodge them it'd be fine with me. Would help make it feel like a fight

And since we can mod out the challenge with just 1 mod to trivialize it, I think it's fine. Like said before, some people want something to challenge them

7 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

.  Being tied to half a day's playtime for nothing (since you can see whether they have the ephemera or not) - No one likes this and the valence fusion isn't worth it.

I feel this. The idea is nice but having to participate in it for so long in combination with it being so rare is quite problematic 

I hope they consider the idea of adding Wandering Liches that you can just occasionally bump into, like an alert mission. The lich would be a random level with a random weapon, and Unlike normal liches, you can't Steal their weapon but you will be able to upgrade your current kuva weapon with theirs, and instantly be able to kill the lich instead of finding the right parazon sequence and what not. Just go straight to their ship

Also can drop ephemeras

7 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

The overabundance of hounds, their weapons and blueprints. I'm not one to get upset with a reward of all things, but why spam us with this junk?

Can't you sell excess hounds for some sort of reward?

 

[SenorClipClop]

On 2022-02-11 at 3:30 AM, Smilomaniac said:

bullet sponge nightmares... The stats on high/final level sisters are stupid high.

While a bullet sponge isn't fun, it's not like we don't have a ton of tools to deal with them. Enemies we actually need to prep for are few and far between these days, and I'd be disappointed if the devs casualized yet another element of the game, down to a point where the player is able to stomp their nemesis in a few seconds with whatever loadout they happened to be running, like we currently do with Shadow Stalker.

[SpicyDinosaur]

2 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

While a bullet sponge isn't fun, it's not like we don't have a ton of tools to deal with them. Enemies we actually need to prep for are few and far between these days, and I'd be disappointed if the devs casualized yet another element of the game, down to a point where the player is able to stomp their nemesis in a few seconds with whatever loadout they happened to be running, like we currently do with Shadow Stalker.

besides all that, I have yet to encounter a bullet sponge sister or lich. I mean you can treat them like that, ignore their weaknesses, or any sort of defense stripping that would help, stuff like that, then you are effectively making them mimic bullet sponges, but even just stripping their defenses and using a half decent frame/weapon makes them easy enough to handle.

[Lutesque]

On 2022-02-12 at 1:30 PM, SenorClipClop said:

While a bullet sponge isn't fun, it's not like we don't have a ton of tools to deal with them. Enemies we actually need to prep for are few and far between these days, and I'd be disappointed if the devs casualized yet another element of the game, down to a point where the player is able to stomp their nemesis in a few seconds with whatever loadout they happened to be running, like we currently do with Shadow Stalker.

Effectively what you're saying is you like it when the Game Forces you to use things you don't like rather than just letting you play with what you want ? 🤨

On 2022-02-12 at 3:56 PM, SpicyDinosaur said:

besides all that, I have yet to encounter a bullet sponge sister or lich. I mean you can treat them like that, ignore their weaknesses, or any sort of defense stripping that would help, stuff like that, then you are effectively making them mimic bullet sponges, but even just stripping their defenses and using a half decent frame/weapon makes them easy enough to handle.

They have No Weaknesses.... You can and probably should kill All Of Them using Corrosive.... The only exception to this is if they are Resistant to Corrosive....

Beyond that those Weaknesses have made no Difference to Liches/Sisters.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[SenorClipClop]

On 2022-02-13 at 10:57 PM, Lutesque said:

Effectively what you're saying is you like it when the Game Forces you to use things you don't like rather than just letting you play with what you want ? 🤨

If you really want to read it that way, ignore the points I made and put words in my mouth, sure.

• things you don't like -- I never claimed I disliked... effective, high-damage setups? Like that's the thing that deals with bullet sponges. Point me in the direction of players who hate those high damage numbers and wish they were lower.
• play with what you want -- if you're assuming what I want doesn't include health-shredding builds, you would be wrong. I understand "play with what you want" comes from criticism of a game having a tight, controlling meta. That's a fine standpoint to have in some other game, but Warframe doesn't have a tight, controlling meta, at least not anywhere near as low as the level of Nemeses. I don't have to play the toppest damage loadouts even with a Level 5 Nemesis. I can and have been getting through them easily with a new frame each time and off-meta weapons. It's still easy, imo, as long as you have some game knowledge and a good Mod library.
• game forces you to... -- is a weird way of critiquing a game when it has any expectations on the player. It's a little like criticizing a Mario game for "forcing me to platform and jump". We already have missions where you can bring whatever you want and succeed (see all Relic missions), and I get bored playing them because there are no risks or stakes, and because in those missions my ability to play and understand the game doesn't matter a whit. For a mini-boss like a Lich or Sister, I want the game to demand more of me than "just play whatever, you'll win no matter what". Like bruh, Nemeses are such a low bar for the player to clear, is it somehow a problem that there's a bar there at all?

When I say:

On 2022-02-12 at 7:30 PM, SenorClipClop said:

While a bullet sponge isn't fun, it's not like we don't have a ton of tools to deal with them. Enemies we actually need to prep for are few and far between these days, and I'd be disappointed if the devs casualized yet another element of the game, down to a point where the player is able to stomp their nemesis in a few seconds with whatever loadout they happened to be running, like we currently do with Shadow Stalker.

What I effectively mean is this:

• a bullet sponge is not fun in and of itself, but an inflated health pool doesn't immediately qualify the Nemesis as bad. It is an in-game response to the player's inflated damage capability, a rare occurrence where the player can't vaporize a foe in half a second, so we have to properly engage with it and respond to what it does.
• Nemeses are bullet sponges, but we have a large and diverse list of tools to deal with that effectively. All the player needs to do is evaluate the obstacle and use one of the many tools that will overcome it. It's like being a mechanic and someone comes in with an actual issue with their car instead of just some dirt on it. It makes the toolbox feel important again, as spraying it with a garden hose doesn't work this time.
• I remember back in the day when, if you were going into a mission, you had to think (at least a little bit) about your frame and mod choices based on mission type and enemy Faction. I rarely ever feel the need to do that nowadays. Nemeses have, at least a little bit, brought that back. It's refreshing.
• Warframe has an odious pattern of players are bored --> players want challenge --> devs make challenge --> players whinge about how unfair it is --> devs backslide the challenge, usually overdoing it and sanding it down to casual levels --> players do it easily --> players are bored again. Two big examples for me are Excavations and Arbitrations. The Excavator hp buff was needed, but not to the extent at early levels as it was given because until the Lvl100+ range you barely need to defend them anymore. And Arbitrations have been nerfed so hard the thing they test most is patience as you watch the timer / wave counter tick up. Point being, this game has a problem of casualization, which I don't want to see spread to yet more aspects of it.
• Overall point, I would rather have my occasional, opt-in enemies come with some bullet sponginess -- which is completely manageable even without hardlining a damage meta -- than see them reduced to something I could kill accidentally with Redline's passive damage or something similar.

[Flannoit]

 

On 2022-02-10 at 1:30 PM, Kaichi16 said:

On 2022-02-10 at 11:30 AM, Smilomaniac said:

1. Convoluted hyper specific way to spawn your candidate (just remove the granum void requirement and spawn the candidate like the lich larva. The Xoris soft "requirement" is dumb and counter to the rest of the game)

e rest of the game.

i never undestood that. you can spawn liches in less than 1min but sisters have so much crap in it... why? because granum void was crappy and nobody cared about it 1month after it was released because there was nothing left there so you wanna make us play it forcefully, DE?

I am literally unable to clear the void on any of my frames except for Revenant. I'm not a bad player by any means, but the fact that I'm only able to CONSISTENTLY clear it with Revenant is a clear sign that Sisters being locked behind the granum void sucks. Especially since in my experiences, the weapons are either not that good or rely hard of a decent riven to be worthwhile.

They should just spawn similar to how liches do, because at least Liches you can consistently spawn with any frame...

[Lutesque]

10 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

If you really want to read it that way, ignore the points I made and put words in my mouth, sure.

• things you don't like -- I never claimed I disliked... effective, high-damage setups? Like that's the thing that deals with bullet sponges. Point me in the direction of players who hate those high damage numbers and wish they were lower.
• play with what you want -- if you're assuming what I want doesn't include health-shredding builds, you would be wrong. I understand "play with what you want" comes from criticism of a game having a tight, controlling meta. That's a fine standpoint to have in some other game, but Warframe doesn't have a tight, controlling meta, at least not anywhere near as low as the level of Nemeses. I don't have to play the toppest damage loadouts even with a Level 5 Nemesis. I can and have been getting through them easily with a new frame each time and off-meta weapons. It's still easy, imo, as long as you have some game knowledge and a good Mod library.
• game forces you to... -- is a weird way of critiquing a game when it has any expectations on the player. It's a little like criticizing a Mario game for "forcing me to platform and jump". We already have missions where you can bring whatever you want and succeed (see all Relic missions), and I get bored playing them because there are no risks or stakes, and because in those missions my ability to play and understand the game doesn't matter a whit. For a mini-boss like a Lich or Sister, I want the game to demand more of me than "just play whatever, you'll win no matter what". Like bruh, Nemeses are such a low bar for the player to clear, is it somehow a problem that there's a bar there at all?

When I say:

What I effectively mean is this:

• a bullet sponge is not fun in and of itself, but an inflated health pool doesn't immediately qualify the Nemesis as bad. It is an in-game response to the player's inflated damage capability, a rare occurrence where the player can't vaporize a foe in half a second, so we have to properly engage with it and respond to what it does.
• Nemeses are bullet sponges, but we have a large and diverse list of tools to deal with that effectively. All the player needs to do is evaluate the obstacle and use one of the many tools that will overcome it. It's like being a mechanic and someone comes in with an actual issue with their car instead of just some dirt on it. It makes the toolbox feel important again, as spraying it with a garden hose doesn't work this time.
• I remember back in the day when, if you were going into a mission, you had to think (at least a little bit) about your frame and mod choices based on mission type and enemy Faction. I rarely ever feel the need to do that nowadays. Nemeses have, at least a little bit, brought that back. It's refreshing.
• Warframe has an odious pattern of players are bored --> players want challenge --> devs make challenge --> players whinge about how unfair it is --> devs backslide the challenge, usually overdoing it and sanding it down to casual levels --> players do it easily --> players are bored again. Two big examples for me are Excavations and Arbitrations. The Excavator hp buff was needed, but not to the extent at early levels as it was given because until the Lvl100+ range you barely need to defend them anymore. And Arbitrations have been nerfed so hard the thing they test most is patience as you watch the timer / wave counter tick up. Point being, this game has a problem of casualization, which I don't want to see spread to yet more aspects of it.
• Overall point, I would rather have my occasional, opt-in enemies come with some bullet sponginess -- which is completely manageable even without hardlining a damage meta -- than see them reduced to something I could kill accidentally with Redline's passive damage or something similar.

That's Pretty much What I said is it Not ?