How do you actually make a "difficult fight" for end game players in this game?

[AzureScion]

Without damage reduction/limiting options/mods/arcanes what have you? With the most high end equipments and stuff players are able to survive LEVEL 9999 enemies with 200% modifiers while instakilling them with infinite scaling weapons and abilities.

Gimmick mechanics can only go on so far, people are already able to 6x3 eidolons on a daily basis, so that wouldn't be considered difficult either, at least for them.

Ropalolyst was also fun, but people got used to it fast anyway. 

Exploiter orb and profit taker fights are hated by many.

So how does one make an actual difficult fight to satisfy end game players? The newest content archon fights which were meant to be difficult got cheesed anyway in less than 5 minutes. I honestly can't really think of what would be engaging. 

The power we have in our hands is basically limitless.

 

The only thing I can think of is.. if you cannot make an enemy powerful enough to fight us, the only answer is to let us fight ourselves, aka PVP. Not Conclave either because that "restricts options", but a full blown PVP with all weapons, frames, and other gears maxed to oblivion plus arcane and stuff. I can't tell how many times I have to actively keep in mind and avoid other players whenever radiation proc comes in play because there's a high chance they wouldn't pay attention and starts barraging everyone with rad proc on. 

So yeah, the only thing powerful enough to fight a tenno is a fellow tenno.

[TheArmchairThinker]

The answer is

*Hands oversharpened nerf hammer

This

[AzureScion]

Just now, TheArmchairThinker said:

The answer is

*Hands oversharpened nerf hammer

This

Well they did drop a nerf hammer on arguably one of the biggest power we have in this game and look at the backlash they got lol.

[TheArmchairThinker]

1 minute ago, AzureScion said:

Well they did drop a nerf hammer on arguably one of the biggest power we have in this game and look at the backlash they got lol.

Just a bit of hammering though, that nerf hammer I have you? it's sharpened too much that it becomes an axe now

[Oggyswe]

To make a meaningfull endgame warframe needs either to lean in to puzzles and other objectives. Or rebalance the whole thing so you can construct challanges that isent impossible with half the arsenal and trivilased with the other half. 

[(XBOX)Lady Ukita]

I'd say a fight that rewards mechanical skill more than anything, something that makes us utilize parkour and aiming to win. Kinda like Nihil.

[PublikDomain]

10 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

So how does one make an actual difficult fight to satisfy end game players? The newest content archon fights which were meant to be difficult got cheesed anyway in less than 5 minutes. I honestly can't really think of what would be engaging. 

Look at the mechanics players use to cheese things and stop letting them use those mechanics to cheese things? The player can't cheese things if you don't let them cheese things.

The first part is simple: DE has given players some tools that are just too powerful. For example, an Operator sitting in Void Mode is completely invincible to all forms of damage, so there goes every fight like Kela or Ambulas or Jackal that relies on damage to move the player around. Why dodge Jackal's laser walls or Kela's missile barrage or Ambulas' ship lasers when you can AFK in the Void for minutes at a time? So stop letting players do that. This could stop being an issue if the Operator was only invisible in Void Mode, not invisible and fully invincible. If a tool is creating a problem, fix it.

The second part is also simple: if the player's power can be anywhere from 0 to ∞, what do you target the content to? Closer to 0 or closer to ∞? Well, you don't balance it to anything, because you can't. You will always pick the wrong answer. Whether it's picking the numbers for AotZ's initial quest or the Wolf's stats, DE has always picked numbers that have only worked for a scant few players and no one else. And of course they have, because no one can pick the right numbers because they don't exist. The only actionable option left is to make the player's power not matter. Then it doesn't matter how overpowered or broken the players are, because none of that makes a difference anyways. You can take their power away and give every player the same items (like in TWW, TNW, the Glassmaker fight, Break Narmer missions, and the upcoming Duviri Paradox) or take away their mods (like in Grendel missions) or make them use specific items (like any fight requiring an Operator or an Archgun) or make enemies that resist the player's tools (like proc resistances in Deimos or beefed up enemy stats in Railjack) or use gimmicks and mechanics (like weakpoints, invincibility phases, Overguard, and fight mechanics) or average the player's power away so the range of 0 to ∞ collapses to some specific value X (like damage attenuation).

But just think, if every player is consistently balanced and can be expected to deal around X damage right from the start, and not infinitely more or infinitely less, then you could skip all of those issues! If you know the player can do X and you make sure that they can't do too much more or too much less than X, then you can just balance the "hard" content to be able to stand up to 2X damage, or whatever it is that feels right, and be done with it. Then there's no need for gimmicks or gear limitations or attenuation, because the problem necessitating their use doesn't exist anymore. And then those things can be used as regular mechanics just to pepper in some variation, instead of being relied on as a crutch. But that means balancing the player, and that means more things like the AoE nerfs. So we get to pick: accept that game balance is necessary, or get attenuated anyways.

[RichardKam]

The answer is simple: you don't.

I won't go into the details on how it is mathematically impossible to find a common denominator for our endless combination of arsenal x 4 in full squad. And PvP will never work in this game.

The only way to do that is arsenal restriction, aka Kahl's mission, Nihil fight, TNW quest Archon fight, etc.

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, AzureScion said:

How do you actually make a "difficult fight" for end game players in this game?

You can't, because the game is not set up for it

Difficulty implies skill. But Warframe does not test skill, not the kind of moment-to-moment mechanical skills associated with difficult games. Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, Doom Eternal -- these are the games that test skill. Warframe does not, it tests knowledge, preparation, and grinding.

Once endgame players have the knowledge, have already prepared, and have finished the grind, the fights aren't difficult anymore

1 hour ago, AzureScion said:

The only thing I can think of is.. if you cannot make an enemy powerful enough to fight us, the only answer is to let us fight ourselves, aka PVP. Not Conclave either because that "restricts options", but a full blown PVP with all weapons, frames, and other gears maxed to oblivion plus arcane and stuff.

We used to have that (it went away in late 2015), and nobody liked it. Basically every single weapon was strong enough to one-shot every player. You could just sweep down sightlines with automatic rifles and anything that tried to approach was dead six times over

[(PSN)max141064]

To raise difficoulty you have to distance yourself from the shooting part of the gameplay, because the game is a power fantasy at the core, we have plenty of ways to make even the most bullet sponge boss a one/bi-shot enemy. 

Unless you bring up damage immunity, but we can all agree that this is not difficoulty, it's just...waiting. 

Honestly i don't think Warframe NEEDS difficoulty, nor an endgame. 

because as i already said, we have every card in hand to trivialize every enemy, every situation, every threat. And i really don't think that every game on the face of the earth needs to have something that "blocks" or "slows down" people. 

i think we could bring a resemblance of "endgame" by making things like mastery or quests really mean something.

Meaning that we should have game modes, places, open worlds that are not accessible to everyone but for people that are...this MR, have done this quest, that have lvld up to max said thing...

Kinda like how you can go and kill the big spider in Fortuna, you first have to have it at lvl 5 and then you can go and fight it. 

it's not "hard", it doesn't take "too much time or effort", it's just a division from people that have or haven't done specific things in game. 

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, AzureScion said:

profit taker fights are hated by many.

The Profit-Taker (sans the Zenith) is the best boss fight in the game, for numerous reasons.

1 hour ago, AzureScion said:

Without limiting options [...]/mods/arcanes what have you?

Otherwise, you'd have to do something like this. A rouge-like raid where you start out with almost nothing (akin to the Grendel missions) and you progressively get more and more of your power back.

That way, the frustration that comes with challenge (and with having your progression invalidated), is steady replaced with the overwhelmingly rewarding feeling of realizing how much power we truly have. Resulting in a net-positive. 

[trst]

I'd say by making the fight itself not the focus but use it as a distraction from objectives.

Literally just what release solo Railjack was where you have multiple objectives you need to progress. But working on one created more with hull breaches, boarding parties, and needing resources for Revolite. And the longer you take the tighter you are on breach timers and the more you'll need to fight ships for resources to craft more Revolite.

Each step itself is trivial to the player but forcing them to balance all of them, especially when they're objectives that aren't influenced by your stats, puts emphases on how fast and efficiently you can manage each objective.

And while that all is technically a pile of gimmicks it's not front loading them onto the enemies themselves. No ridiculous builds to avoid attenuation, no real need to be immune to damage/CC, and more dynamic than just running from point A to B. Just regular enemies serving as just enough of a road bump to cause your focus to need to be diverted elsewhere.

 

Or just go through and rebalance/rework everything with mods, damage, abilities, energy, and enemies.

[A5PECT]

As others have already said: you don't.

You can't give any enemy a fixed value of health that isn't either trivial for a sufficiently progressed player or impossible for a newer player. The numbers Warframe has built its gameplay on are too chaotic and unsynchronized.

Gear-based PvP isn't a solution, as it would only highlight the absurd discrepancy between the unreasonably high damage players are capable of putting out and the hopelessly insufficient damage mitigation we're capable of.

The only thing that could hope to bring back a semblance of balance and meaningful difficulty would be completely uprooting and rewriting the fundamental damage and scaling models of the game. At that point, you may as well develop Warframe 2.

...which is what a part of DE has begun doing.

[AzureScion]

32 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

Otherwise, you'd have to do something like this. A rouge-like raid where you start out with almost nothing (akin to the Grendel missions) and you progressively get more and more of your power back.

That way, the frustration that comes with challenge (and with having your progression invalidated), is steady replaced with the overwhelmingly rewarding feeling of realizing how much power we truly have. Resulting in a net-positive. 

See, this is what I originally thought as "challenging" is just by simply taking the infinite power away - and I personally loved TNW, Kahl missions and the like (not Grendel mission though, he can go to hell) but this would breed more complaints about how "Warframe bosses shouldn't limit options" or "This mission is NOT what I play Warframe for" and the likes. Which what made me ask this question in the first place. How does one make a challenging fight for all to enjoy WITHOUT having to take the infinite power away? 

[(PSN)max141064]

3 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

See, this is what I originally thought as "challenging" is just by simply taking the infinite power away - and I personally loved TNW, Kahl missions and the like (not Grendel mission though, he can go to hell) but this would breed more complaints about how "Warframe bosses shouldn't limit options" or "This mission is NOT what I play Warframe for" and the likes. Which what made me ask this question in the first place. How does one make a challenging fight for all to enjoy WITHOUT having to take the infinite power away? 

Yeah but even with this idea of this "roguelike mode" it will not change anything in game. 

Unless we just decide to just live our gaming lives in only this game mode the game will always be a power fantasy...

Do we change the core gameplay of the game? or do we accept that the majority of players play warframe especially because it is a power fantasy and you don't have to put ""too much mind into it""? 

[MqToasty]

2 hours ago, AzureScion said:

So how does one make an actual difficult fight to satisfy end game players? The newest content archon fights which were meant to be difficult got cheesed anyway in less than 5 minutes. I honestly can't really think of what would be engaging. 

The devs already know and have deployed the solution multiple times, scattered across different modes: jammers.  They have units that take your primary weapon, they have units that force you out of your Warframe, they have units that nullify your abilities.  What they need to do now is to dynamically deploy pairs of units like these, to make sure players are tested in every single loadout slot.  As always, specific counters before nerfs.

PvP, especially Clan vs Clan PvP with game-changing rewards and PvP boosters that can be bought with cash, will be an absolute cashcow for DE.  But that will also turn Warframe into P2W.  Don't think I want to see that, to be honest.

[Hayrack]

You play another game.

[(NSW)fonglis]

I think DE should aiming for a mechanic/placement boss , not a S#&$ like damage attenuation .

In the way of vay hek who open his helmet for 10s , the boss should have an health bar that you can damage for a % (like 10%) that % is cap and you cn't bypass it, follow a invunerable phase where you need to do something for cut off the invunerability , each time tume the boss enter in invunerability he enter in a new phase with new mechanic to increase the difficulty.

For exemple :

the first time you must kill an ennemy

The second time there is obstacle and laser

The third time there is AOE

The 4th time invincible mob you must destroy with thr boss aoe...etc

In ttheend the fight is more axed in the mobility, tactic and the situation reading than pure firepower and optimization.

Sure the level of the fight need optimization to a certain extent , but I think it's better than damage attenuation and invunerability phase that just prolong the boss fight without adding anything.

[KitMeHarder]

18 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

See, this is what I originally thought as "challenging" is just by simply taking the infinite power away - and I personally loved TNW, Kahl missions and the like (not Grendel mission though, he can go to hell) but this would breed more complaints about how "Warframe bosses shouldn't limit options" or "This mission is NOT what I play Warframe for" and the likes.

Oh I personally "hate" the New War, and I wish gameplay like that stayed exclusively in story-centric quest. But for the other part, people can't complain about the lack of challenging (engaging) content and then complain when mechanics like attenuation are introduced to make the game more challenging (engaging). But I think my example does a good job of giving the game more engaging content, while it still being Warframe/frame centric gameplay (where as people, rightfully, callout Veilbreaker for not).

And let's be honest, even these linear non-Warframe missions DE gives us don't have an iota of challenge. Other game companies do linear-style games waaay better.

23 minutes ago, AzureScion said:

Which what made me ask this question in the first place. How does one make a challenging fight for all to enjoy WITHOUT having to take the infinite power away?

That's like asking "how can I make everyone in the world happy at the same time?".

So... my take was that you take away the infinite power at the start of the raid, and then slowly add it back in a rewarding way, until it's back to current day levels for the raid finale.

[--END--Rikutatis]

Just gonna add my voice to the chorus here: you don't. WF's power creep and bloated math is hopelessly out of control and beyond redemption. That's why Steve dropped the hot potato in Rebb's hands and ran off to design Soulframe from scratch. WF can't be salvaged. What you see is what you get. But it can still be pretty fun for what it is. 

[(PSN)max141064]

1 minute ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

WF's power creep and bloated math is hopelessly out of control and beyond redemption. That's why Steve dropped the hot potato in Rebb's hands and ran off to design Soulframe from scratch. WF can't be salvaged.

it was always their intent to make warframe a power fantasy game....

even when Steve was still in the team. lol 

it's not an error, it's how they want Warframe to be. 

[AzureScion]

1 minute ago, KitMeHarder said:

So... my take was that you take away the infinite power at the start of the raid, and then slowly add it back in a rewarding way, until it's back to current day levels for the raid finale.

Really like this idea ngl. I think TNW had a good concept leading to this but in the end it did felt kind of anticlimatic. At least the warframe part. The sneaky sneaky bit was pretty challenging, and while I do think it's fun, it is not Warframe-centric so... yeah, this is like artificial challenge at best.

 

But if we somehow have a mode where our Warframe was stolen or had its power cut in half and we have to work slowly around to get it back and then face off vs the boss in full power it would make for a neat gameplay. 

3 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

That's like asking "how can I make everyone in the world happy at the same time?".

wait are you saying this is not possible? awww but I like everyone in the world being happy at the same time :(

[AzureScion]

4 minutes ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

Just gonna add my voice to the chorus here: you don't. WF's power creep and bloated math is hopelessly out of control and beyond redemption. That's why Steve dropped the hot potato in Rebb's hands and ran off to design Soulframe from scratch. WF can't be salvaged. What you see is what you get. But it can still be pretty fun for what it is. 

Honestly this is why I play Warframe and not mind bogglingly difficult games like Souls games. I play games to have fun and relieve stress not to add more to it lol. Warframe does a perfectly fine job at that. Though it does get overblown at times.

[--END--Rikutatis]

9 minutes ago, (PSN)max141064 said:

it was always their intent to make warframe a power fantasy game....

even when Steve was still in the team. lol 

it's not an error, it's how they want Warframe to be. 

That's not true at all. I mean sure, WF was designed as a power fantasy but it was NOT their intent and desire for the game's state, balance, and level of challenge to end up like this. They have said this multiple times in the past. Steve tried hard to create meaningful challenge and didn't hide his frustration each time it failed. 

[RichardKam]

54分钟前 , (NSW)fonglis 说:

I think DE should aiming for a mechanic/placement boss , not a S#&$ like damage attenuation .

In the way of vay hek who open his helmet for 10s , the boss should have an health bar that you can damage for a % (like 10%) that % is cap and you cn't bypass it, follow a invunerable phase where you need to do something for cut off the invunerability , each time tume the boss enter in invunerability he enter in a new phase with new mechanic to increase the difficulty.

For exemple :

the first time you must kill an ennemy

The second time there is obstacle and laser

The third time there is AOE

The 4th time invincible mob you must destroy with thr boss aoe...etc

In ttheend the fight is more axed in the mobility, tactic and the situation reading than pure firepower and optimization.

Sure the level of the fight need optimization to a certain extent , but I think it's better than damage attenuation and invunerability phase that just prolong the boss fight without adding anything.

The cheesy solution to your tactic and mobility difficulty: Solo titania with subsumed thermal sunder and an AoE weapon, with a secondary slot and melee, AND exalted secondary and melee (4 slots) to spare - not counting operator school. 

I have been asking the community to make theoretical challenges that cannot be cheesed without resorting to arsenal restriction, and see how fast the collective wisdom of the community can think of possible ways of cheesing them. Shall we try again in this thread?