Pablo‘s Q&A for Chinese build

[DreisterDino]

vor 18 Stunden schrieb PublikDomain:

People just idling in their mechs spinning in circles murder-killing everything the second it spawns.

Offtopic, but i just love how people still mess up the "get more kills than the grineer" Bounty in Deimos with this because they fail to understand some basic mechanics, have no interest in learning them and then rage about how rigged and impossible that task is 😅 And what i like even more is when they start to blame the one single person who understands whats causing us to fail when that person leaves the spot (and after unsuccesful tries of explaining) because "dude! you are not helping! report!"

 

Edit: "Kill infested near the Pod (inside the circle)" Bounty in Deimos is comparable, but at least you can only make it last forever instead of failing it with that "playstyle" ^^

[Teridax68]

This Q&A was illuminating for me, though not necessarily due to the questions given. It seems DE is very clearly aware that Warframe's balance is wack, and making it impossible to design challenging content. More disappointingly, though, there appears to be this lingering notion that a "power fantasy" implies grossly imbalancing one's game in favor of the player, which isn't what power fantasies are actually about. It's good to get some degree of closure on Umbra and raids, though, as those were floating around for years with no resolution until now.

[Kontrollo]

Hey thanks for linking the video and the transcript. Also, I think posting the transcript is a good idea to get people interested in actually watching a video.

 

Although there's not much there I'd want to discuss, at least this bit was interesting:

On 2022-05-23 at 4:22 PM, jxtichi012 said:

... Generally like, in terms of rules there's not really rules. Mostly, I would say like there's some priorities and what things we care about, and you know...we want them to feel different. We don't want one Warframe to play very similar to another Warframe, we want them to feel distinct, in not only how they play but also how they feel, how they move, how they look, etc. So those are kind of the things that we value the most, you know, how unique is this warframe. ...

 

It's kind of funny he'd phrase it like that, because I'm pretty confident in saying that's not what made them drastically change Garuda's passive with the recent introduction of her Prime version.

[Mediloric]

Speaking of the whole Umbra thing, While it seems like we might not get more Umbras, (least for the time being, they always like to keep stuff open which is both nice and madding) I wouldn't be surprised if we see that "Echos of Umbra" appear later down the line, it was added in a while ago and removed for some reason! (was it added in though? I am not quite sure) It'd be a nice idea, least you could have your warframe be semi active while you're in Operator mode or Nercamech. 

As for Raids, I dunno, I was about when the first raid came out, the.. Vay Hek one I think? And it was a nightmare, messy, not clear focused, somewhat elitist but heck what isn't, you just ignore those kind of people and of course not to mention buggy as hell. 

But you know what, I think Raids or dungeons could work pretty damn well in Warframe, I think if it was fleshed out enough and hopefully interesting I think it could be exactly the endgame sort of content it needs. that said though, I can't help but feel like any iteration of Raids is going to be a disaster from launch, I can just see it panning out like... 

A Raid comes back and its either: A) so buggy due to being such a hard thing to test (I think Pablo said that when talking about Raids) and causes the same problems as before. Or B) It's completely not that interesting due to the first time they've done a Raid in such a long time and is lacking the substance that makes dungeons/raids compelling. 

I can also see the forum posts too: "Raids are too hard!", "Lemme solo Raids, people suck", "Raids are as Toxic as Eld Hunters", "plz put Raid rewards else where so I can get to them easier"  Just to name a few. And that's fine, people are going to want different things from Raids, and I don't think a solo option would be a totally bad thing if done right but for sure the priority should be co op.

I really don't want it to be a case of, Raids return, it flops bad or worse than Scarlet Spear and we never see it again, or just ends up in this weird limbo of what ifs or maybe like it is now and that would honestly suck!

But I can't help but see that as a likelihood unless this new raid (if there is any new one) doesn't just fly, it SOARS. It would have to, otherwise it wouldn't be worth it for them IMO. 

I wanna be wrong, I wanna see a Raid that is quite rewarding, interesting, and intelligent to play with, both in the gameplay and builds, but ahh... I don't know, I know it would totally take a few tries to get there, it always does and that's okay but again unless it booms soon as it comes out (or after bug fixes) I just can't see it. :( 

[NightmareT12]

1 hour ago, Mediloric said:

it was added in a while ago and removed for some reason! (was it added in though? I am not quite sure)

No, due to negative feedback due the implementation they initially presented it, from both lore and gameplay reasons. Invirgorations are what the system ended up becoming.

[Mediloric]

11 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

No, due to negative feedback due the implementation they initially presented it, from both lore and gameplay reasons. Invirgorations are what the system ended up becoming.

Oh sweet, thanks for clarifying.

[Kontrollo]

2 hours ago, Mediloric said:

... I wouldn't be surprised if we see that "Echos of Umbra" appear later down the line, it was added in a while ago and removed for some reason! (was it added in though? I am not quite sure) It'd be a nice idea, least you could have your warframe be semi active while you're in Operator mode or Nercamech. ...

As mentioned, it was because of backlash. At the time they replaced it with Universal Medallions.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

On 2022-05-23 at 11:28 AM, (PSN)ErydisTheLucario said:

Ah so my assumption was correct, they aren't thinking about more umbra frames despite saying that would be a line we would see. They should have come out way sooner, because this strung along quite a few players for a little too long.

Is it really THAT big of a deal though? Because I think that is assumption was made obvious when they introduced Umbral Forma. I mean why add more when you can Literally make any Warframe an Umbra frame with the Umbral Forma? 

We don't need a 3rd line of Warframes, the games becoming more and more convoluted as it is. 

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

2 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

Is it really THAT big of a deal though? Because I think that is assumption was made obvious when they introduced Umbral Forma. I mean why add more when you can Literally make any Warframe an Umbra frame with the Umbral Forma? 

We don't need a 3rd line of Warframes, the games becoming more and more convoluted as it is. 

It wasn't a big deal to me, I'm just tossing it out there that I saw exactly this happening. 

[rhoenix]

Even if we don't get more Umbra frames directly yet, it would still be possible to have some more story missions for our frames, right? 

A followup to the Sacrifice could be helping Old Man Umbra get his unfinished affairs in order, and it would be very likely that the other warframes have "unfinished business" as well, if they're not too far gone. 

That's a potential goldmine of content right there - and, if later on DE decided Umbra frames are going to become a thing, those quests could be the perfect lead-in for that.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

Just now, rhoenix said:

Even if we don't get more Umbra frames directly yet, it would still be possible to have some more story missions for our frames, right? 

A followup to the Sacrifice could be helping Old Man Umbra get his unfinished affairs in order, and it would be very likely that the other warframes have "unfinished business" as well, if they're not too far gone. 

That's a potential goldmine of content right there - and, if later on DE decided Umbra frames are going to become a thing, those quests could be the perfect lead-in for that.

Just use Umbra Excal in The New War......I mean that's a simple solution considering the fate of Ballas. And we still are getting quests tied to Warframes but theyre still few and far between. They should absolutely do more quests about Warframes. 

[rhoenix]

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

Just use Umbra Excal in The New War......I mean that's a simple solution considering the fate of Ballas. And we still are getting quests tied to Warframes but theyre still few and far between. They should absolutely do more quests about Warframes. 

I didn't use Umbra during the New War quest, though in retrospect I really should have.  I may do so again just for that.

But The Sacrifice quest for me opens up many, many questions about Warframes, and what may be possible for them - storyline quests for them are the most obvious followup to that, in my mind.

[vanaukas]

1 hour ago, rhoenix said:

I didn't use Umbra during the New War quest, though in retrospect I really should have.  I may do so again just for that.

But The Sacrifice quest for me opens up many, many questions about Warframes, and what may be possible for them - storyline quests for them are the most obvious followup to that, in my mind.

using umbra in TNW doesn't change anything besides (spoilers)

Spoiler

killing sentients for you in the unum tower.

Every warframe is scripted to behave the same.

[rhoenix]

1 minute ago, vanaukas said:

using umbra in TNW doesn't change anything besides (spoilers)

  Hide contents

killing sentients for you in the unum tower.

Every warframe is scripted to behave the same.

I'm fully aware of that.  I'd be doing it for the malicious glee of ensuring that Old Man Umbra could be involved in the shenanigans of the New War.

[ShogunGunshow]

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This Q&A was illuminating for me, though not necessarily due to the questions given. It seems DE is very clearly aware that Warframe's balance is wack, and making it impossible to design challenging content. More disappointingly, though, there appears to be this lingering notion that a "power fantasy" implies grossly imbalancing one's game in favor of the player, which isn't what power fantasies are actually about. It's good to get some degree of closure on Umbra and raids, though, as those were floating around for years with no resolution until now.

I mean, the community S#&$s bricks and screams like children at even the most modest of nerfs, furiously pounding out novella-length responses about how dare DE do such-and-such and take away their power fantasy. Some of this is on DE for caving too much and indulging that behavior, but if we must be truthful, as much is on us.

[Teridax68]

2 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

I mean, the community S#&$s bricks and screams like children at even the most modest of nerfs, furiously pounding out novella-length responses about how dare DE do such-and-such and take away their power fantasy. Some of this is on DE for caving too much and indulging that behavior, but if we must be truthful, as much is on us.

I agree that it's both, though the anti-nerf culture in Warframe I think isn't that special, at least not on the players' side: on every game forum, you have players throwing tantrums whenever there's even the suggestion of nerfing something. How much voice the developers give to those people, and which parts of the community the developers choose to cultivate, though, is up to the developers themselves. The fear of community backlash is one that plagues every game in continuous development, but that hasn't stopped every developer from making the changes the game has needed. One of the most successful example of this is Hades, a game developed with a very close relationship between players and developers during its lengthy early access: there were several stages where an unhealthy metagame had developed, and each time a lot of players got attached to it. In the end though, Supergiant still did the necessary changes to improve the game, and mitigated that backlash by fostering a culture of healthy communication. DE once did this, and it's not too late to try that even now.

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

I mean, the community S#&$s bricks and screams like children at even the most modest of nerfs, furiously pounding out novella-length responses about how dare DE do such-and-such and take away their power fantasy. Some of this is on DE for caving too much and indulging that behavior, but if we must be truthful, as much is on us.

You can just see it with the content creators spreading that filth aswell. I wont name who, but recently one of them did a YT video straight up claiming melee is bad because it isnt AoE shooty bang bang guns. Even though melee was the approach prior to galv mods and arcanes were introduced for AoE guns. And since it comes from a content creator it must be true, so it echoes among the sheep of these neon-age revelators.

[(PSN)Claudija]

On 2022-05-23 at 5:17 PM, (XBOX)Shodian said:

Honestly I feel Excalibur Umbra was really just a way of giving non-founders an "Excalibur Prime" without it being a prime if that makes sense.

I wasn't expecting any others.

Yup. Excalibur Prime can't be added to Prime Vault otherwise every PC Founder will kick off and demand their refund and so on. China PC Founders had their exclusives including Excalibur Umbra Prime. Now that's where DE seem to double-standard things. Western PC Founders have seen none of their exclusives ever return yet; Zhuge Prime, Guandao Prime and Excalibur Umbra are in the Global build; which is kinda unfair as that means Chinese Founders have really nothing exclusively theirs.

On top of that, knowing they were planning on Rhino, Mag and Loki to have Prime variants in development; there had to be an Excalibur Prime too yet; promises.. so having snookered themselves behind the 8-Ball, DE released The Sacrifice; gifting Excalibur Umbra to everyone as a middle ground between both Founder programmes.

That's why I never really expected more Umbra Warframes. Lorewise, Excal Umbra is seen as a dangerous failure by Ballas and so the Prime Warframes after Umbra are created mindless to prevent repeats as any experiment would be; it then was our freak accident the Zariman Ten Zero event that turned things to where we are- both real life and lore reasons why Excal Umbra should remain a literal one-off

[(PSN)Claudija]

On 2022-05-23 at 8:48 PM, ShogunGunshow said:

One of those moments where you wonder... if DE had treated the Conclave seriously and balanced the game with it in mind, Destiny-style, would that have put some design shackles on them that would have prevented too much number bloat on the buffs? Maybe. 

hello from WoW; for the longest time Blizzard balanced due to PvP crybabies whining that Rhino is OP!! soo he got nerfed, now you can't do Star Chart Earth as they only used one line of code per skill. So let's take Wukong the Forum's Poster Boy here. Wukong is OP in Conclave, too many complain, Wu gets nerfed; Wu mains now complain he gets buffed, PvP'ers complain he's OP - every Hotfix is just him getting buffed/ nerfed in a cycle- never let PvP dictate anything in any game if you have any sense as it will kill the game totally. WoW is still going but nothing like it was in it's glory days and Warframe has enough troubles without encouraging PvP control 'balancing'

[PublikDomain]

1 minute ago, (PSN)Claudija said:

That's why I never really expected more Umbra Warframes. Lorewise, Excal Umbra is seen as a dangerous failure by Ballas and so the Prime Warframes after Umbra are created mindless to prevent repeats as any experiment would be; it then was our freak accident the Zariman Ten Zero event that turned things to where we are- both real life and lore reasons why Excal Umbra should remain a literal one-off

... huh? Ballas created Umbra to punish him. He left his mind partially intact on purpose. Lorewise, the Tenno and the Warframes - both the early versions that couldn't be controlled and the ones later made for the Tenno - existed long before Ballas turned Umbra.

Quote

Your transformation has begun, reshaping you into a sacred surrogate of the unholy Tenno... A Warframe with but a Single. Burning. Memory. It is... a miracle!

Umbra comes along pretty late in the timeline, after the Tenno and the modern Warframes and Ballas' plotting with Hunhow. There's no lore reason more Warframes couldn't be "woken up" like Umbra. In fact, there's lore to say that they could be! The Warframe moves all on its own all the way back in TSD to break War after it's been stabbed. That and DE was already going to add the ability to wake up other Warframes using "Echoes of Umbra" anyways - at least until players told them that a 24hr consumable you had to grind to upkeep was a dumb idea. DE can add more Umbral frames whenever they want, they just don't seem to want to bother with making the models even though they know that this is something a lot of players want. Pablo says it himself that he sees the desire for it.

[rhoenix]

6 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

There's no lore reason more Warframes couldn't be "woken up" like Umbra. In fact, there's lore to say that they could be! The Warframe moves all on its own all the way back in TSD to break War after it's been stabbed.

Exactly.  This is a canon example of a non-Umbra Warframe moving without input from the Operator, in addition to what happened during The Sacrifice with Old Man Dax before he became Umbra - which he still clearly remembers.

The process by which he became Umbra, together with the Prime trailers' hints of similar things happening to other people, all this does raise the very uncomfortable question... what about the rest?  Are they too far gone to respond?

[(PSN)Claudija]

5 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

... huh? Ballas created Umbra to punish him. He left his mind partially intact on purpose. Lorewise, the Tenno and the Warframes - both the early versions that couldn't be controlled and the ones later made for the Tenno - existed long before Ballas turned Umbra.

Umbra comes along pretty late in the timeline, after the Tenno and the modern Warframes and Ballas' plotting with Hunhow. There's no lore reason more Warframes couldn't be "woken up" like Umbra. In fact, there's lore to say that they could be! The Warframe moves all on its own all the way back in TSD to break War after it's been stabbed. That and DE was already going to add the ability to wake up other Warframes using "Echoes of Umbra" anyways - at least until players told them that a 24hr consumable you had to grind to upkeep was a dumb idea. DE can add more Umbral frames whenever they want, they just don't seem to want to bother with making the models even though they know that this is something a lot of players want. Pablo says it himself that he sees the desire for it.

Follow it logically though. 49 Warframes, 48 potential Primes (excluding Western Founder PC), 48 Umbras. That's first thing. An Umbra is a Prime essentially so if you know people buy Prime Access, introducing an Umbra Access is seen as money-grabbing orr bankruptcy as why pay for Primes if the Umbra version is 'better' just because it has sentience if you Transference out?

If they add more stealth as with TNW, isn't your Umbra bar Ivara or Loki ideally due to silenced weapons leaving them cloaked; actually going to fail your mission? As it goes wandering off, triggering alarms etc. and you're stuck trying to sneak around....

I just think Umbra Warframes is a very very bad idea for more reasons than it would be good

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Claudija said:

introducing an Umbra Access is seen as money-grabbing

I don't see anything any more "money-grabbing" than Prime Access? They've been doing those for almost the entire history of the game.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Claudija said:

why pay for Primes if the Umbra version is 'better' just because it has sentience if you Transference out?

I was thinking you'd take a built Prime frame and awaken it into an Umbral form, so you'd still need the Prime. It's not Umbral or Prime, it's Prime being turned into Umbral.

Just spitballing how this process could work:

• Umbral Access adds Umbral Relics which are cracked in, say, Requiem Fissures.
• You can alternatively pay to buy the contents outright like you can in any PA.
• Each Umbral Relic has the parts for one Umbral weapon, like Skiajati, and an Umbral Echo as the rare drop.
• Each Umbral Echo is bound to a specific frame. Feed the Umbral Echo and the built Prime Warframe to Helminth to wake the frame up.
• Optionally, the frame can break free of the Orbiter and you have to reclaim it in a short gameplay segment a-la the Sacrifice. There you can get a short bit of lore while you tame the frame. DE could cheap out and not to this, but it'd be cool.
• Now you have an Umbral Prime Warframe, which will fight alongside you when you enter Operator mode.

Ta-da! Now DE can monetize this and make a bunch of money from what are essentially skins and a new weapon.

1 hour ago, (PSN)Claudija said:

If they add more stealth as with TNW, isn't your Umbra bar Ivara or Loki ideally due to silenced weapons leaving them cloaked; actually going to fail your mission? As it goes wandering off, triggering alarms etc. and you're stuck trying to sneak around....

Sounds like a good place to add a toggle, people have already asked for that for Umbra as it stands. Regarding stealth sections (as if the game has many of those to begin with), pets already run around in stealth sections without setting off alarms so they could just copy that? Maybe Umbral frames crouch behind you when they're supposed to be stealthy and don't attack unalerted enemies? Sounds pretty solvable.