Acolytes ruin any fun in Steel Path and enforce even an even stricter meta

[Neurohax]

I thought I'd run a few new builds on Steel Path for farming and it was simply lacking any and all fun I experienced when I cleared the SP starchart prior to the acolytes being added. There's no room for experimental or fun builds and the fact that they're on every map means no matter what, you MUST have an acolyte 1-2 shotting weapon. It isn't 'hard', but man is it boooooring.

I don't know if it's a particular acolyte or all of them, but if they can teleport you to them, the game's effectively over. Shield gating drops and the actual map enemy crossfire, even for cced enemies, finishes the job. And the kicker is that even if you survive, your pet is dead and there's no point in continuing the mission without vacuum.

On top of all that... what's the point? I mean, in the lore. There's zero reason for any of these mechanics.

Also, I don't need another couple hundred Primary Merciless arcanes or vastly overpriced steel essence rewards. Hrm, 2 hours of farming SP or 15 minutes in fissures to get the equivalent plat. Tough choice.

If you want people to branch out from the 3-5 meta guns, 1-2 meta pets, 5-6 meta melee weapons, and 5-8 meta frames, then you can't have a common boss element in every mission. The Eximus changes just exacerbate the problem. CC frames aren't worth the frustration, so every mission devolves into aoe, 1-shot, repetitive play. In fact, it makes the mission TYPE itself almost not matter. Can't do a cc or defense frame with the eximus and acolyte changes, so back to the 1-shot as many enemies as possible meta for defense-type missions. 

I mean, you could use the operator to kill everything... hahaha I know, I know. Yes, it was a joke. But, even the operator changes make regular play worse. All the lagginess, missed keystrokes, and cooldowns have turned that aspect of the game into an unreliable mess. Before, you could use the operator as a last gasp/emergency retreat. Now, you're delaying the inevitable by a couple seconds while the game ignores your input in favor of animations.

I started thinking about how the game has changed after I got my 1000th login reward today. The game had rough patches in the past, but it feels like it's fully headed in the wrong direction. I hope that changes.

[taiiat]

whatever Equipment you're thinking is required, well, it isn't.

[Leqesai]

I completely disagree. IMO Steel Path is the Acolyte Farming Mode. There's really no reason I'd do Steel Path if it weren't for Steel Essence farming. Excessively tanky enemies =/= fun challenge. It was a chore from its inception and the only reason for doing Steel Path is Essence IMO.

Edit: Also, Acolytes are hardly a threat. The real threat are the eximus units and their overguard. Acolytes are barely a speed bump if you're just clearing missions.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Here we go:

An event brings the masses to a game mode and they want it changed because they have 400 hours and 1 forma weapons and frames. 

[SpicyDinosaur]

Steel Path is meant to be tough and if there is going to be a meta that's the best place for it because you need the right tools for the job when you are dealing with more challenging content. If you want to to use random stuff without putting thought into your effectiveness at cc and/or killing, etc., play the regular star chart.

[Leqesai]

11 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

Steel Path is meant to be tough and if there is going to be a meta that's the best place for it because you need the right tools for the job when you are dealing with more challenging content. If you want to to use random stuff without putting thought into your effectiveness at cc and/or killing, etc., play the regular star chart.

Exactly this. This is why I cleared Steel Path and only ever play Steel Path survival for essence farming. Not worth playing any other mission type IMO because Steel Path is just the same old thing but more cumbersome.

[SpicyDinosaur]

35 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

Exactly this. This is why I cleared Steel Path and only ever play Steel Path survival for essence farming. Not worth playing any other mission type IMO because Steel Path is just the same old thing but more cumbersome.

I enjoy the challenge personally. And I expect off meta builds/configs to make things much harder.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

What?

Fighting Acolytes is the Only Reason I even play Steel Path missions.

I want the Steel Essence and Arcanes they drop.

take them out and now you've just got a hard mode, with no worthwhile rewards

-no, the increased drop chance in SP does not offset the increased time to kill. if you're farming stuff its better to do it in normal mode.

[SpicyDinosaur]

48 minutes ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

-no, the increased drop chance in SP does not offset the increased time to kill. if you're farming stuff its better to do it in normal mode.

I heavily disagree with this. It's not too hard, once you have the supplies in your possession, to build to wreck stuff in SP.

[Leqesai]

4 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

I heavily disagree with this. It's not too hard, once you have the supplies in your possession, to build to wreck stuff in SP.

Pretty much this.

Steel path is harder but imo the biggest issue is grineer in steel path because of the horribly asinine armor scaling to damage reduction formulas. But if you strip the armor they are easypeasy

[Pakaku]

Every game mode has its own meta or optimal setups. Spy has frames like Ivara/Loki/Ash for stealth, defense missions have Limbo/Frost/Gara/Khora for protection, and Steel Path favours power. So... what's the issue here?

[Ke0mA]

6 минут назад, Pakaku сказал:

Spy has frames like Ivara/Loki/Ash for stealth

Vukong.

7 минут назад, Pakaku сказал:

defense missions have Limbo/Frost/Gara/Khora for protection

Nova into speed-build. Mesa and Regulators.

[PollexMessier]

The issue here isn't the acolytes. The acolytes are fun.
The issue is imbalanced weapons.
You wanna deal sufficient damage to acolytes you only have a handful of weapons to choose form, and are locked out of hundreds of fun, totally unique, and equally difficult/time consuming to obtain weapons. That's what needs to change.

[SpicyDinosaur]

1 hour ago, PollexMessier said:

The issue here isn't the acolytes. The acolytes are fun.
The issue is imbalanced weapons.
You wanna deal sufficient damage to acolytes you only have a handful of weapons to choose form, and are locked out of hundreds of fun, totally unique, and equally difficult/time consuming to obtain weapons. That's what needs to change.

Does it though? And I'm not convinced that the usable weapons is a handful once you properly forma and potato them. And again, if a build is just "fun" then it can be fun on the starchart where you can go to just chill and have all that fun you've been missing out on in SP.

[(PSN)IdoThea]

2 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

The issue here isn't the acolytes. The acolytes are fun.
The issue is imbalanced weapons.
You wanna deal sufficient damage to acolytes you only have a handful of weapons to choose form, and are locked out of hundreds of fun, totally unique, and equally difficult/time consuming to obtain weapons. That's what needs to change.

Meta weapons made it more fluid to get through, but even weapons with worse base stats can perform well if pitatoe'd and formae'd. I used Alternox on steel path and it performed well when I formae'd it like 5 times and potated and exilus, arcane and whatnot. still wish they'd buff it though. 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

I disagree with a few points in this thread. 

First off though, Warframe gives us a lot of different tools, so its very natural that a lot of our experiences will differ. So I am not attempting to invalidate anyone elses individual experience or challenges, but we all need to be a bit more considerate of our respective experiences versus what is possible and how effective others can be, and how much more effective we can be. Then how that interacts with fun, whats ideal, etc then the claims we make, subjective or objective. 

I can and do use the Operator to kill Steel Path enemies. The different Warframes I regular use is over 20, Primary Weapons, over 30, Secondary over 10, Melee, over 20. I can name them, but I don't want type that much. The amount of combinations between though... additionally new schools, especially Unairu make even more weapons viable, especially against Acolytes because of the Armour strip. 

Radiation is also really good against Acolytes. Only really need one decent weapon to handle them, and I personally find them nice/great, mid map mini bosses. Game gives you a lot of tools to make a lot work, not just the meta. Enough tools, you can actually go off "meta" and be more effective than some people without the knowledge, understanding of mechanics using the meta will be. 

 

 

[BR31]

I like acolytes and mini-bosses in general,
what i don't like-hard status caps and immunities.

Same problem as a release wolf of saturn 6 had- just raw damage and crits,
status was useless. 

Acolytes are almost like that - raw damage, crits and status slow hitters/heavy attack.
Quick status melee and status guns are useless.

If you don't like full status damage- let first 20 procs do full damage, 50-50% and after it 80-90 % less,
but the current situation is too absurd and indeed restrictive.

If someone is gonna say that status guns are too strong- with on hit weapons it's already almost an instant kill,
ramping stacks would take more time- but it has some charm to it. 

[Pizzarugi]

Acolytes are the only reason to keep players invested in Steel Path. It's not because they're tough or fun, but because they drop Steel Essence. Without it, there'd be no reason to do Steel Path beyond starchart completion and abandoning it. The mediocre boosted rewards you get in otherwise normal mission types isn't worth the boosted enemy scaling. For me, Steel Essence lets me farm a significant amount of kuva to try and create god-roll rivens, so I have incentive to do Grineer disruptions until enemies reach level cap. Without it, I'd just be stuck doing sorties and then quitting for the rest of the day once it's done.

On 2022-07-15 at 9:56 PM, Neurohax said:

And the kicker is that even if you survive, your pet is dead and there's no point in continuing the mission without vacuum.

May I recommend you pick up a Djinn or Vulpaphyla? They can die, but they always resurrect after some time.

[Neurohax]

On 2022-07-17 at 10:26 AM, Pizzarugi said:

Acolytes are the only reason to keep players invested in Steel Path. It's not because they're tough or fun, but because they drop Steel Essence. Without it, there'd be no reason to do Steel Path beyond starchart completion and abandoning it. The mediocre boosted rewards you get in otherwise normal mission types isn't worth the boosted enemy scaling. For me, Steel Essence lets me farm a significant amount of kuva to try and create god-roll rivens, so I have incentive to do Grineer disruptions until enemies reach level cap. Without it, I'd just be stuck doing sorties and then quitting for the rest of the day once it's done.

May I recommend you pick up a Djinn or Vulpaphyla? They can die, but they always resurrect after some time.

I agree, but that speaks to the deeper problem with the reward schedule for the "content islands" mentality. Rewards are a major problem in WF already, which SP just adds a layer to. Each island has a single rare lynch-pin resource (toroids, scintillant, entrati lathorn, etc.), a desired uncommon bp that requires the rare resource, and then basically nothing else. I don't know about you, but when I get an Amber Ayatan Star for completing a Zariman bounty, I stop and ask myself why I even bother. The problems with rewards go deep - nonsensical 'rotations' for infinite missions, bounty vs sigil wearing vs mission source rep grinds, the common/uncommon/rare levels poorly represented in the mission dialogues, uncoordinated daily/weekly/floating timer resets, the forgotten vendors and their time-limited offerings, etc. And they never get revisited or reworked.

For example, is there any reason that acolytes continue to drop weapon arcanes? DE wanted to give them as rewards for the content they were meant to improve playability on. Then the community pointed out that it made zero sense, so DE scrambled to add the acolytes. Did they think people would never kill >40 of them? I don't even really farm SP and I have hundreds. They never revisit stuff like this for rebalancing, but god forbid someone finds a way to use a smeeta buff to make the grind easier and there a patch out within 2 days, tops.

I'm getting off track, but my point is that Steel Essence doesn't HAVE to come from Acolytes, and it was much more fun to find surprising builds that worked on the original non-Acolyte SP missions. DE could even revert to the old setup, since eximus are now buffed and spawn less frequently.

As for companions - there are 36 in the game and only 2 that are SP viable, and really, who uses Djinn anymore? I know the wiki says it has great synergy with everyone's favorite melee, Gazal Machete of course, but 90s respawn vs 30s for vulps is pretty meh. And who ISN'T using the Gazal Machete? Riven dispo 1.4 - unpopular enough to have a good dispo, but not good enough to be a first choice. And I could rant about how I never knew about that synergy until I read about it in the wiki just now, but that's way OT.

[Neurohax]

On 2022-07-15 at 10:11 PM, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Here we go:

An event brings the masses to a game mode and they want it changed because they have 400 hours and 1 forma weapons and frames. 

Oooo so close! 6000 hours LR2. But, the snark definitely makes up for intelligence and fact checking.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

2 minutes ago, Neurohax said:

Oooo so close! 6000 hours LR2. But, the snark definitely makes up for intelligence and fact checking.

There are MR 30s that can't even do Hydrolyst. It doesn't mean that much, except how much stuff you leveled in Adaro/ESO/Hydron.

[Neurohax]

On 2022-07-16 at 1:48 AM, Pakaku said:

Every game mode has its own meta or optimal setups. Spy has frames like Ivara/Loki/Ash for stealth, defense missions have Limbo/Frost/Gara/Khora for protection, and Steel Path favours power. So... what's the issue here?

Yes, my point is that adding a common threat reduces the meta further. You can't just use a spy frame for spy missions. It has to be a spy frame with acolyte killing weapons or helminthed abilities. So, want an invisible finisher build or just mess around with a bow build? Nope. Violence spans and pulls your invisi-shorts down to your ankles. So, now you are locked into, for example, and Ivara build with Ensnare and a corrosive focused weapon (regardless of faction).

Acolytes take away choices. They're not particularly hard, just annoying and nonsensical.

[Neurohax]

5 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

There are MR 30s that can't even do Hydrolyst. It doesn't mean that much, except how much stuff you leveled in Adaro/ESO/Hydron.

True, but I still had to grind to get those items. Does it help that I have at least 1 copy of every mod at every level of upgrade (yes, including RJ, Mechs, and Pets)? Or every drop from every mission type (except a few Zariman ones)? Or every arcane at max? Every frame subsumed? A copy of every weapon, frame, primed weapon/frame, vehicle, companion, archwing and its weapons, mech, railjack component and gun, Kuva and Tenet weapon, every Kuva and Tenet Ephemora (though only in 1 element), etc. and all available (not deleted)? Every syndicate mod, arbitration reward, vitus essence purchased item, steel essence purchased item, zaw/kitgun, captura scene and ~95% of the codex scans completed?

Did any of those make the cut off, because I have them allllllll? I'm sure the 200,000,000 creds isn't a big deal, but all adds up to something, right?

(Okay, I exaggerated a little. There are a couple dozen mods I'm missing the lower upgrade levels for and I only get 2-3 of the primed mods. Plus, what's with the Theorem Infection rewards? That might be the first one I actually trade for.)

(Also, I hate Eidolon hunting since they added the stagger to amps, so I probably suck at it now.)

[Mag_Gaming]

???

Prolly another troll post.