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

[Toa_Ignika]

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I can dig it, although people would probably then just save their big damage for when the shield is gone.

Honestly, I'm pretty curious if we'd be quite so triggered by the attenuation if it wasn't possible to cheese it. Simply removing the ability to cheese it would, I think, be healthier than leaving it as is - could simply introduce a burst cap in addition. Like I don't know that attenuation is completely evil. It makes your weapons feel kinda bad, but we all kinda expect that out of bosses anyway. They always have some major DR of some kind. It's like, do you want a boss with no DR and 10 trillion hp, or do you want a boss with 10 million hp and DR...

You see, even if they do that, they still would have the slower Shield break phase !

So it'll still have some kind of fight against the Boss and imo that could be interesting to see being tried out. But as I'm not a dev myself, I dont know how hard it would be to implement or balance (I really feel that adding more mechanics to the fight is easier than the double phase idea I had).

 

The Archon cheese of 1 tapping with a high damaging weapon with a ton of multishot (as seen with multiple videos already), make the fight quite trivial. And without doing it the damage we do feels quite low, so I understand why some people do use these method.

I didn't solo the Archon yet, mostly because I prefer playing in multiplayer,  it's a coop game after all (and I'm fairly casual on WF). But between Boreal where the damage felt really low, the fight was a bit sluggish (for some reason his AI barely used his moveset, which felt underwhelming), and Amar where his 2nd half of HP melted in 1 hit, barely seeing his stuff (still have to fight Nira).

The balance right now is in a weird state, at least we know that we'll get some tweaks to the fight for the next rotation, so let's hope it'll be some middle-ground between.
 

[CrownOfShadows]

20 minutes ago, Toa_Ignika said:

You see, even if they do that, they still would have the slower Shield break phase !

So it'll still have some kind of fight against the Boss and imo that could be interesting to see being tried out. But as I'm not a dev myself, I dont know how hard it would be to implement or balance (I really feel that adding more mechanics to the fight is easier than the double phase idea I had).

 

The Archon cheese of 1 tapping with a high damaging weapon with a ton of multishot (as seen with multiple videos already), make the fight quite trivial. And without doing it the damage we do feels quite low, so I understand why some people do use these method.

I didn't solo the Archon yet, mostly because I prefer playing in multiplayer,  it's a coop game after all (and I'm fairly casual on WF). But between Boreal where the damage felt really low, the fight was a bit sluggish (for some reason his AI barely used his moveset, which felt underwhelming), and Amar where his 2nd half of HP melted in 1 hit, barely seeing his stuff (still have to fight Nira).

The balance right now is in a weird state, at least we know that we'll get some tweaks to the fight for the next rotation, so let's hope it'll be some middle-ground between.
 

Ahhhh I see what you're saying now - if there's some attenuation on the shield (or first hp bar, or whatever) then if they hold their main burst power in reserve, then the shield will take a long time instead. Really clever actually. Then if they do burst dmg the shield, then we have a solid average (basically a new, more robust attenuation) to apply to the main hp bar (or hp bars below that phase). You could even keep it rolling, like if the boss had a shield and 5 hp bars, each section could inform the next, building up an ever more refined damage profile, and if you wanted you could use that across thousands of fights to inform future bosses.

Smart, 10/10

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

6 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

I guess I should clarify: it's not that I think it can't be done, I think that it can't be done well without relying on additional systems like attenuation or phases (or "think outside of the box"). You can't create a boss fight in Warframe that's just a blob of health with some special abilities, or it's going to get trivialized. That's been as true for the new Angels as it has been for bosses like the Sargent and Phorid and Raptor. You can't make a boss/enemy sturdy enough that the players on top can't trivialize it without creating an unenjoyable damage sponge fight for everyone else. Instead you need to redirect the player into other things like shooting weakpoints or pressing the button at the right time or solving the puzzle or whatever, and this is the direction the game's big fights have been going for years.

But if the player is balanced and consistent you can make fights that don't require thinking outside of the box or getting away from shooting the big bad. You can still use other mechanics, obviously, and that just makes things more interesting and varied which is a good thing, but if every interaction the player has needs to be redirected away from their immense, girthy power then maybe that immense, girthy power is causing a problem. And I very much think that solving the problem of the player's immense, girthy power is an attainable thing without too much trouble, and can be done in ways that enrich much more than just our interactions with enemies.

I think the eidolons and the orbs prove your point very well. As I said before, DE has done a great job with their bosses since PoE. Each new boss has offered pretty nice gameplay:

- The Eidolons, who had weak spots and required cooperation and operators to defeat. I still see older players getting wrecked by them.

- The Wolf, who had devastating power and tankiness that required scanning and studying and was, unfortunately, nerfed too hard.

- The Orbs, that each required completely different strategies from each other, required the full arsenal to defeat and even had a time limit.

- Ropadude, that had puzzles to solve and trickery needed to win.

- Arlo's guy, who had an absolutely fantastic set of gimmicks to overcome and required thinking to win.

- The Archons, pre and post New War. These guys had the attenuation puzzle, the invulnerability traps to figure out, the side puzzles against the deacons, the eximus units and team coordination needs. 

- The reworked robot fight (can't remember the name right now). This fight has the puzzles the cut scenes, the business and the excitement. 

So, I just wonder what more could be done to give credit where credit is due. Unless....people are just talking out of their arses as usual.

[PublikDomain]

41 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think the eidolons and the orbs prove your point very well. As I said before, DE has done a great job with their bosses since PoE. Each new boss has offered pretty nice gameplay:

- The Eidolons, who had weak spots and required cooperation and operators to defeat. I still see older players getting wrecked by them.

- The Wolf, who had devastating power and tankiness that required scanning and studying and was, unfortunately, nerfed too hard.

- The Orbs, that each required completely different strategies from each other, required the full arsenal to defeat and even had a time limit.

- Ropadude, that had puzzles to solve and trickery needed to win.

- Arlo's guy, who had an absolutely fantastic set of gimmicks to overcome and required thinking to win.

- The Archons, pre and post New War. These guys had the attenuation puzzle, the invulnerability traps to figure out, the side puzzles against the deacons, the eximus units and team coordination needs. 

- The reworked robot fight (can't remember the name right now). This fight has the puzzles the cut scenes, the business and the excitement. 

So, I just wonder what more could be done to give credit where credit is due. Unless....people are just talking out of their arses as usual.

Some of those highlight the problems I'm talking about, though:

• Eidolons are great! Until they're being one-shot and their mechanics stop mattering...
• The Wolf was a blob of EHP that didn't work for everyone, because everyone is different. So much so that DE had to adjust him over and over again and still didn't get it right (because it's impossible to).
• The attenuation "puzzle" seems to be the main thing people don't like about the Archons, and just like with Eidolons there are strategies that can one-shot through their attenuation anyways. DE is already having to address this.
• If you mean Jackal, any player with an Operator can essentially throw away the gridwall mechanic that's so central to the fight and idle through it.

Of course DE can create good fights, and some of the fights in the game are great. Like recently in Veilbreaker when you get the Grattler that actually feels like a weighty, powerful weapon. Or TNW's Teshin segment and the Drifter Archon fights. In that content every player has identical equipment and stats and the fights can be tuned to exactly what DE wants them to be every time. But throw in the extreme variations that can exist between unrestricted players and there are no guarantees anymore, and we get stuff like the third Archon in TNW where the big bad boss fight folds like wet tissue.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

You can't really. Not in a generally agreed upon, fun, satisfying way for a majority of players. Its how Warframe is structured, with positives and negatives, and differences/similarities with other games. One strength of Warframe, is that there is so much to chose from, weapon types, weapons, classes, sub classes, weapon classes, characters, builds, tools... the amount of selection/choice is greater than a lot of games, as is your ability to customise a lot of that, with skins, modding etc. A lot of these are balanced compared to each other directly, but also, as far as not being balanced (which to be clear, isn't inherently negative, many games do have imbalance with gear, and some its a positive), but the degrees of different, especially in context/activity can be massive. Since as implied, some games do have some options that are better than others, but within a certain amount, they can balance for. Which also helps if you have limited weapon class/weapons and attributes to wield such weapons (some of which may even be locked behind attributes/builds, to help with balance). Warframe can't really lock out players from gear, because an aspect of the game is trying out as much gear, and having choices, like letting any Warframe use any melee, but then there are also so many different weapons... just balancing them, even in a way with some being good, and some being starter... like some weapons are entire leagues better than others. Its usually okay though, because the way a lot of the enemies work/content works,

End game meta builds make a lot of content near effortless, in a literal sense. I mean, for many, the early game isn't really hard either, but difficulty/challenge isn't necessarily whats appealing for many. Its some resistance/difficulty, and everything is new, so its figuring out stuff, and there is a lot to figure out, and also collecting and also learning... So you can end up attracting a lot of different people whose idea of what the game is best at, will differ. This isn't necessarily true for certain other games, which can be more punishing/harder barrier to entry, and beginning starts to refine players for later difficulty. Less about collecting, and choice, and options, and more honing and refining and occasional new gear, usually after difficult challenges/time, so the path of progression is clearer. 

Anyway, there is often a sweet spot for many people, around difficulty, because many people just aren't good at processing or articulating what their "perfect" degree of challenge or difficulty is, aside from giving examples, and even then, they might not be able to tell you why it was good, other than just telling you, that it was good, just based on how it made them feel. Which can be very subjective. Except a variable, that can be important to replicating such experiences, is well, overlapping experiences. So if you channel players down a certain road, with relatively limited resources, chart progression, etc and roughly know their builds, weapons, gear, time played etc you can take that and use that to balance a challenge. However... if you have a massive discrepancy with those players, if their weapons, modding, time hours, experiences, skill level etc are wildly different, and even their expectations are different... then balancing that is going to be much much more challenging. Challenging in ways people may not even understand or acknowledge, especially if they can't understand the basic principle that not everyone might play the same way they do, or want what they want, which is even more of an issue in a game like Warframe, than say some others, because of what I explained about how the game is structured. 

Since there are ways Warframe can introduce difficulty, but just not in a way, a single player/player limited Triple A title with a expected life time, around 200 hours, with a much smaller amount of weapons, builds etc and a definitive end point, with only a few DLC to be added (with their own balancing). Warframe will experience power creep more, more balancing issues, incentives to care about other features than necessarily address balance issue (do you really need to care about 700 individual weapons? What if you just have a lot of favourites and potentially new ones?) So then Warframe can add in ways to challenge people, but if its only a challenge to min/max people, well... but if its for the end game player who doesn't min/max... well... So if you add in stages, phases, other ways to prolong... well then for different groups of people "its not Warframe anymore!" and for some people, they just want Warframe to give them a similar "difficulty/challenge as XYZ game" not really considering the issues it would have. Not all of course, there are some players who do enjoy some of Warframes attempts at difficulty. I personally think the recent Archons are a decent attempt. Though, I used my Sister/Lich killing loadouts, and am used to damage attenuation. Many Warframe players have preferred load outs they don't like optimising and thats fair, but again, clash/conflict. Its also worth mentioning, that because I recognise the challenge involved in creating difficult end game, considering the issues I outlined... I don't really have high expectations or assumptions for Warframe. Relatively speaking, I think they do fine, so also enjoyed Nihil, I enjoy PT and Exploiter and doing Tridolons, etc solo or group. Not over and over mind you, they can wear thin fast... I also go into such encounters laid back, ready to die, suffer, learn etc A lot of players just want to get their rewards easy, the first time, and if they die or take 10 minutes its "bullet sponge, artificial difficulty, not "Warframe" enough, too many steps involved, annoying on purpose to make people use Play to bypass, etc etc.

 

[CrownOfShadows]

5 minutes ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

You can't really. Not in a generally agreed upon, fun, satisfying way for a majority of players.

You make a lot of good points, but I'm forced to disagree with your first sentences here.

That's like saying it's impossible to make a new warframe or a new weapon that the majority love. Same for new game modes, same for new levels. Will there always be a mixed response? Absolutely. Is it still possible to please more than 50% of the population with something? Definitely. Is it hard? For sure. Is it IMPOSSIBLE?!?! no.

Unfortunately, difficulty and enjoyment are both critical elements in a boss fight, and they can very easily contradict each other.

Is the arsenal divide a big issue? Yes. But when you really think about it, we really only need to balance around the top shelf of weapons and the top shelf of warframes, because the rest can't compete. So in that sense the arsenal divide kinda works in our favor for balancing high end content.

[bobojoeho]

Add content similar to Veilbreaker and New War.  Y'know, stuff that requires us to play as not a tenno.  Operators still get very op with right arcanes and focus trees, so I feel the only way to make universally challenging content is to give everyone who does the mission the same stuff.

[Szeron]

My 2 credits:

Opt-in challenge modes with extra rewards. Some great examples would be things like the Dragon Keys and Steel Essence rewards.

 

--==Example case for Archon Hunts==--

Archon Key 1:  Disables all mods on equipped warframe/companion(s).

Archon Key 2:  Disables all mods on equipped weapons.

Archon Key 3:  Prevents the use of your Operator/Drifter.

Archon Key 4:  Adds Attenuation and Steel Path modifiers to all enemies.

Archon Key 5:  Disables the ability to join/host a squad.

 

Each equipped key gives 1x"Archon Essence" upon Hunt completion per week. Completing a Hunt with all 5 keys equipped at the same time rewards 1x"Tauforged Essence".

A special vendor deals with these currencies:

3x Archon Essence can be traded for a normal shard of choice(once per week), along with a selection of special cosmetics for bragging rights - voidshell companion skins, Operator cosmetics, etc.

3xTauforged Essence can be traded for a Tauforged shard of choice and a selection of even more prestigeous cosmetics - ephemeras based on the Archons, a Veiled/Archon Landing Craft skin, etc.

 

 

This method does not exclude people who just want to run around blasting out their power fantasy from the content; it also gives the "hardcore players" something to challenge themselves and chase virtual clout with.

[KitMeHarder]

13 hours ago, Achlevius said:

So, you're suggestion for challenge is to make the player start with a new account?

That's not how my proposition works... not even close.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

5 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Some of those highlight the problems I'm talking about, though:

• Eidolons are great! Until they're being one-shot and their mechanics stop mattering...
• The Wolf was a blob of EHP that didn't work for everyone, because everyone is different. So much so that DE had to adjust him over and over again and still didn't get it right (because it's impossible to).
• The attenuation "puzzle" seems to be the main thing people don't like about the Archons, and just like with Eidolons there are strategies that can one-shot through their attenuation anyways. DE is already having to address this.
• If you mean Jackal, any player with an Operator can essentially throw away the gridwall mechanic that's so central to the fight and idle through it.

Of course DE can create good fights, and some of the fights in the game are great. Like recently in Veilbreaker when you get the Grattler that actually feels like a weighty, powerful weapon. Or TNW's Teshin segment and the Drifter Archon fights. In that content every player has identical equipment and stats and the fights can be tuned to exactly what DE wants them to be every time. But throw in the extreme variations that can exist between unrestricted players and there are no guarantees anymore, and we get stuff like the third Archon in TNW where the big bad boss fight folds like wet tissue.

Good points but I think you're presenting your points exactly like many vets are: Already experienced and worn to the ground. This makes the argument harder because of course the future us will know the strategies and the youtubers would already have done the hand holding thing. But, what about past us, first time us and the finally mastering the boss us? This is who DE makes the bosses for. So, here's where I would stand:

"Some of those highlight the problems I'm talking about, though:

• Eidolons are great! Until they're being one-shot and their mechanics stop mattering...

This is the future player I mentioned. No one was anywhere close to one shot or 6x3 skill for at least a month. Even still, a HUGE chunk of the player base was constantly getting wrecked by even the first eidolon.

• The Wolf was a blob of EHP that didn't work for everyone, because everyone is different. So much so that DE had to adjust him over and over again and still didn't get it right (because it's impossible to).

True but I did love how Hydron quickly became the place of nightmares. Lol!! Personally, I loved the tanky nightmare the Wolf represented and, while experienced players wanted an even harder Wolf for the final showdown, he proved to be too hard for players. Fortunately, the Lich model was made after him.

• The attenuation "puzzle" seems to be the main thing people don't like about the Archons, and just like with Eidolons there are strategies that can one-shot through their attenuation anyways. DE is already having to address this.

One shot aside, the attenuation was also a strong point for many players. I guess some thought of the sentient system while others just kept shooting and not watching the numbers dwindle. While some may not like it, attenuation is a great way to have players think about the type of gun, observe the procs and trying something different to solve the puzzle, like a usual boss killer: a sniper rifle.

• If you mean Jackal, any player with an Operator can essentially throw away the gridwall mechanic that's so central to the fight and idle through it.

Again, that's a strategy for a vet with that ability. The Jackal appears way before operators so how does the Jackal feel for those players?

I always take the approach of when the boss is supposed to appear in the game. That's who DE was to accommodate first. I've seen newer and mid level players die easily and constantly against the Jackal and especially from the eidolons and profit taker. It's a challenge to them (until YouTube) so I think DE has nailed them based on that logic 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

2 hours ago, Szeron said:

My 2 credits:

Opt-in challenge modes with extra rewards. Some great examples would be things like the Dragon Keys and Steel Essence rewards.

 

--==Example case for Archon Hunts==--

Archon Key 1:  Disables all mods on equipped warframe/companion(s).

Archon Key 2:  Disables all mods on equipped weapons.

Archon Key 3:  Prevents the use of your Operator/Drifter.

Archon Key 4:  Adds Attenuation and Steel Path modifiers to all enemies.

Archon Key 5:  Disables the ability to join/host a squad.

 

Each equipped key gives 1x"Archon Essence" upon Hunt completion per week. Completing a Hunt with all 5 keys equipped at the same time rewards 1x"Tauforged Essence".

A special vendor deals with these currencies:

3x Archon Essence can be traded for a normal shard of choice(once per week), along with a selection of special cosmetics for bragging rights - voidshell companion skins, Operator cosmetics, etc.

3xTauforged Essence can be traded for a Tauforged shard of choice and a selection of even more prestigeous cosmetics - ephemeras based on the Archons, a Veiled/Archon Landing Craft skin, etc.

 

 

This method does not exclude people who just want to run around blasting out their power fantasy from the content; it also gives the "hardcore players" something to challenge themselves and chase virtual clout with.

Interesting ideas. I personally don't recommend the ideas because many of the complaining players are simply trying to guilt DE into detuning the archon's so they can get the rewards more easily. 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

4 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

You make a lot of good points, but I'm forced to disagree with your first sentences here.

That's like saying it's impossible to make a new warframe or a new weapon that the majority love. Same for new game modes, same for new levels. Will there always be a mixed response? Absolutely. Is it still possible to please more than 50% of the population with something? Definitely. Is it hard? For sure. Is it IMPOSSIBLE?!?! no.

Unfortunately, difficulty and enjoyment are both critical elements in a boss fight, and they can very easily contradict each other.

Is the arsenal divide a big issue? Yes. But when you really think about it, we really only need to balance around the top shelf of weapons and the top shelf of warframes, because the rest can't compete. So in that sense the arsenal divide kinda works in our favor for balancing high end content.

 

 

Thank you. 

I hope whoever is forcing you can be evaded or avoided. (This is a joke). 

I don't think its impossible to make a new Warframe or weapon that the majority love, and specifically, my own position, strengthens and weakens around what do we actually mean by the majority? Over 50 percent? In terms of feedback, informal or a survey? Accept or love? I don't want to get too abstract with language though, but my original post was structured in a way where I proceeded to explain my initial statement. 

Warframe and weapons are a bit different in concept to end game player difficulties. There are perceptions around choice and preference. Consider a game like Monster Hunter World/Icebourne. You can have end game players, who take on high end difficult challenges like Alatreon and Fatalis. They carry a lot of the same lessons picked up from earlier Monsters. They are much tougher, but in a linear fashion. When creating and thinking about that as a concept and implementing in a game, its very different than designing the weapon classes and weapons. Just like in Warframe, creating a universally popular Warframe or weapon is different from a end game level players challenges. Also, sometimes you don't necessarily want a Warframe or weapon to be universally popular, having a niche with dedicated players is fine too. 

My first sentence wasn't some absolutist claim. This is like if I were to take your claim "will there always be a mixed response" and attempt to reject it, under the idea that if a majority are in the heavily favoured to quite enjoyed categories in a survey, by definition thats not mixed, but overall more satisfactory, but, I can get what you are generally saying in spirit, and agree with it, as I do agree with it. So I am not sure why you bring the element of impossible to this? The difficulty I am alluding to, is because a lot of the positives Warframe has created, naturally create a scenario that frequently splits the fanbase, and allows them to pursuit activities that best suit them. The downside to that, is fans often think their strengths or play styles, are Warframe, and then when the game tries to either broaden itself or narrow itself (activities or events with low barrier of entry, to harder content with a high barrier of entry) many players fall out of that range. So we get threads where people are complaining and insist Archons should be nerfed and players bragging they killed it in one shot and was ez, and DE need to actually provide a challenge. Plus many other types of clashes. Like the person who just logs in, wants to get the Archon shard as fat as possible, and is annoyed when the whole thing takes longer than half an hour. Then you have the person, who gets excited that they can have an hours of new content for Warframe each week, and wants to have an epic fight, and team work with others, because thats their idea of fun. Then you have the person min  maxing to run the Archon boss part over and over, solo, to get faster times, the person who wants the Shards to be tradable so they can just use Plat to buy... Other parts of the game, can accomodate and enable those attitudes and practices because there is so much to it... Appealing to all the different types is therefore, inherently, going to be tricky and challenging (but no not impossible) and in a way thats not as comparable to say a Warframe or weapon. 

To put it another way, if you designed your own personal end game encounter, and made a thread called "Perfect End Game Boss Challenge (with lots of details, including what weapons, Warframes, might be meta, rates of failure, how long would it be finished under optimal conditions, how long if non optimal etc" would the majority like it, or would you get people who don't, make different suggestions, mixed responses? Now, I know DE has more incentives to nail that than you do (but I do like a lot of your general suggestions and threads, like the uh PVP one and the Spy one, I think, if those were yours, my apologies if they aren't). So maybe you could do it, but I imagine if exposed to a bunch of different Warframe type players, the results will be mixed, because I see that all the time in the forums. Its not a bad thing, it many ways, its a good thing, that a game could have so much variety as to produce players who log in and do completely different activities from each other... but... it also makes new content really hard to accommodate everyone. Which is also why sometimes its better to not try and just keep making more different content, so if you don't like one thing, well you have the old thing and maybe a new thing you might enjoy. 

DE could balance around top tier weapons, but thats the easy part, because DE has to deal with... people. Like so many people loved the slower pace of Kahl's missions in New War, but then recently haven't... because naturally, we are not a hive mind. Comes down to the different ways players disagree with each other, including how they also form conclusions about the player base and how "urgently" DE needs to fix an issue. I personally adapt well, and I have everything, so I am fine with DE balancing around top shelf of weapons, and even going one step further, and giving certain weapons a niche. I personally rather have the Kuva Hek do more damage than say Glaive Prime in a fight against Archons, because Glaive Prime is way better against a mob of Steel Path enemies than the Kuva Hek, because of its AOE slash explosion and the latter, single target, small magazine issues... but look at how many people have issues with the Archon fights? On the other hand, if those fights were made a lot easier and faster... I'd probably enjoy them less, hence... you can't really appeal to everyone. Not just because of the arsenal divide, as earlier mentioned, you try to exclude that aka Nihil, and some enjoy it (I did), and many hated it (whats the point of grinding stuff and doing dumb platforming?) also, I some of my friends just disliked it because they died, and they don't like failing or something, lol stigma of it, which I can't personally relate to, but hey. 

If i had to think of a TL;DR version, DE is going to struggle to try and make everyones favourite ice cream flavour (not that its impossible...). Unlike most games, they also give us a lot of ingredients too, options, variety etc to eat other things, so when it comes time to unveil the big dessert at the end, well, so many tastes have developed, its going to be more hit and miss. Best thing they can probably attempt for, is just be appealing enough to people keep eating, even if they complain a lot, and many are a bit dissatisfied at first (and many may end up coming to enjoy it) etc, my analogy gets a little wonky taken too far lol. 

 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

6 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

If i had to think of a TL;DR version, DE is going to struggle to try and make everyones favourite ice cream flavour (not that its impossible...). Unlike most games, they also give us a lot of ingredients too, options, variety etc to eat other things, so when it comes time to unveil the big dessert at the end, well, so many tastes have developed, its going to be more hit and miss. Best thing they can probably attempt for, is just be appealing enough to people keep eating, even if they complain a lot, and many are a bit dissatisfied at first (and many may end up coming to enjoy it) etc, my analogy gets a little wonky taken too far lol. 

I think a missing piece to the dinner are the influencers. People LOVE to follow other people so, if Brozime says a frame is trash, then his audience will say it's  trash, often without even touching the frame. In this case (and apparently often the case), only ONE player has determined the quality but that player barked so loudly that it appeared as though a great many have spoken. It's exceedingly difficult to fight against that. 

[(PSN)ApoX95]

Am 19.9.2022 um 08:16 schrieb 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.

I agree that PVP would deliver timeless endgame

I don't say that it would act as a constant substitute because I also think this game needs proper PvE endgame but at least PvP would help in keeping the desire for endgame at bay at least.

Limitless PvP wouldnt work though since there will be a few frames that would make PvP obsolote and then everyone will just use those frames. It is a nightmare to code but Conclave needs a true Remake.

What would suffice though would be Corpus/Grineer PvP :D this could be a whole thing, maybe even with kill streak-like systems' that would unlock their abilities (like summoning drones with corpus or throwing grenades as Grineer) and with certain Classic weapons at your choosing after every death - this at least would be much easier to implement since from 50 frames you now only need to adjust 2 'main frames' 

(And you could even add like a kill streak that gives you limited access to teshin or Stalker, similar to Battlefront )

Either way, I definitely agree that we would grately appreciate a PvP revamp :D and there is no need to complain either - those who dont like it just abstain from playing it like they already do now. Conclave can be so much fun honestly, even in the current state - it's just not really worth it to search for a Lobby because it always seems empty (at least definitely on Playstation)

[CrownOfShadows]

6 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

I hope whoever is forcing you can be evaded or avoided. (This is a joke).

If i had to think of a TL;DR version, DE is going to struggle to try and make everyones favourite ice cream flavour (not that its impossible...). Unlike most games, they also give us a lot of ingredients too, options, variety etc to eat other things, so when it comes time to unveil the big dessert at the end, well, so many tastes have developed, its going to be more hit and miss. Best thing they can probably attempt for, is just be appealing enough to people keep eating, even if they complain a lot, and many are a bit dissatisfied at first (and many may end up coming to enjoy it) etc, my analogy gets a little wonky taken too far lol. 

 

Yeah, there's a big variety of players in WF, for sure, and even pleasing 30% of everyone would be a good accomplishment imo.

33 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think a missing piece to the dinner are the influencers. People LOVE to follow other people so, if Brozime says a frame is trash, then his audience will say it's  trash, often without even touching the frame. In this case (and apparently often the case), only ONE player has determined the quality but that player barked so loudly that it appeared as though a great many have spoken. It's exceedingly difficult to fight against that. 

Also, agree about the influencers, they're good for publicity but also decide how too many people feel about things, like you say often before they even experiment with it for themselves.

[PublikDomain]

10 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Good points but I think you're presenting your points exactly like many vets are: Already experienced and worn to the ground. This makes the argument harder because of course the future us will know the strategies and the youtubers would already have done the hand holding thing. But, what about past us, first time us and the finally mastering the boss us? This is who DE makes the bosses for. So, here's where I would stand:

"Some of those highlight the problems I'm talking about, though:

• Eidolons are great! Until they're being one-shot and their mechanics stop mattering...

This is the future player I mentioned. No one was anywhere close to one shot or 6x3 skill for at least a month. Even still, a HUGE chunk of the player base was constantly getting wrecked by even the first eidolon.

• The Wolf was a blob of EHP that didn't work for everyone, because everyone is different. So much so that DE had to adjust him over and over again and still didn't get it right (because it's impossible to).

True but I did love how Hydron quickly became the place of nightmares. Lol!! Personally, I loved the tanky nightmare the Wolf represented and, while experienced players wanted an even harder Wolf for the final showdown, he proved to be too hard for players. Fortunately, the Lich model was made after him.

• The attenuation "puzzle" seems to be the main thing people don't like about the Archons, and just like with Eidolons there are strategies that can one-shot through their attenuation anyways. DE is already having to address this.

One shot aside, the attenuation was also a strong point for many players. I guess some thought of the sentient system while others just kept shooting and not watching the numbers dwindle. While some may not like it, attenuation is a great way to have players think about the type of gun, observe the procs and trying something different to solve the puzzle, like a usual boss killer: a sniper rifle.

• If you mean Jackal, any player with an Operator can essentially throw away the gridwall mechanic that's so central to the fight and idle through it.

Again, that's a strategy for a vet with that ability. The Jackal appears way before operators so how does the Jackal feel for those players?

I always take the approach of when the boss is supposed to appear in the game. That's who DE was to accommodate first. I've seen newer and mid level players die easily and constantly against the Jackal and especially from the eidolons and profit taker. It's a challenge to them (until YouTube) so I think DE has nailed them based on that logic 

... no? This has nothing to do with me being a veteran player.

For example, Eidolons: I really, really like Eidolons... when I am allowed to fight them. If I get a PUG that doesn't have that one guy in it, we all get to play and have a nice, mechanically satisfying fight. But if that one guy is present, which is an unavoidable part of this game being a multiplayer co-op game, then the game is perfectly happy letting them one-shot the shield and weakpoint phases and we're done with all three in minutes. This has nothing to do with me being a vet that's played Eidolons to death, and everything to do with the game allowing random players to undermine the mechanics that make the fights enjoyable in the first place.

On 2022-09-07 at 8:00 AM, [DE]Megan said:

3) “Is this playstyle disruptive to other players?” 
A majority of sessions are played co-op, so ideally everybody gets a chance to play. We’ve reached a point where players are asking us to change these weapons, because they leave so little for others to do. 

Or attenuation which, mathematically, is supposed to make the type of gun and damage not matter. That's the entire point: to take a wide variety of inconsistent damage sources and unify them to one standard so that everyone can fight the boss. It's also the core complaint, because it takes whatever power you've accrued and ignores it. And because everything's damage gets averaged away except for whatever item has a mechanic that lets it bypass the whole thing then, like Eidolons, the game allows individual players to spoil the fight for everyone else. It isn't a puzzle, and when people treat it like one and try to "solve" it they end up undermining the mechanics it's supposed to protect.

On 2022-09-16 at 1:42 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

We will share the stats in our upcoming Devstream (which of the three Archons had what type of success rates, etc), and will provide deeper explanations of the challenges in using damage attenuation vs. having ‘single digit second’ boss fights.

Or fights like Jackal, which are not solely limited to pre-Operator players. For one, Warframe is a game that regularly sends players back to fight older content. I've fought Jackal as a Sortie-playing veteran far more than I've fought him on his base node. And you get your Operator at like... 8 hours? You get it before you're even through the Starchart. Jackal isn't the only fight with this issue either: the same problem occurs with fights like Kela and Ambulas, who are both later bosses. The same issue will occur in any and every boss fight where damage is a mechanic, not just these. You can use the same "strategy" to invalidate damage from all sources, just like you could use AoE "strategies" to invalidate the need to aim.

On 2022-09-07 at 8:00 AM, [DE]Megan said:

1) “Can this be automated?” 
Currently, some explosive weapons and playstyles remove the need to aim, or otherwise care about your surroundings.  This doesn’t fit the “automated” category perfectly, but we want such impactful weapons to require more consideration and tactical decision making than currently exists. 

[SneakyErvin]

14 hours ago, Szeron said:

My 2 credits:

Opt-in challenge modes with extra rewards. Some great examples would be things like the Dragon Keys and Steel Essence rewards.

 

--==Example case for Archon Hunts==--

Archon Key 1:  Disables all mods on equipped warframe/companion(s).

Archon Key 2:  Disables all mods on equipped weapons.

Archon Key 3:  Prevents the use of your Operator/Drifter.

Archon Key 4:  Adds Attenuation and Steel Path modifiers to all enemies.

Archon Key 5:  Disables the ability to join/host a squad.

 

Each equipped key gives 1x"Archon Essence" upon Hunt completion per week. Completing a Hunt with all 5 keys equipped at the same time rewards 1x"Tauforged Essence".

A special vendor deals with these currencies:

3x Archon Essence can be traded for a normal shard of choice(once per week), along with a selection of special cosmetics for bragging rights - voidshell companion skins, Operator cosmetics, etc.

3xTauforged Essence can be traded for a Tauforged shard of choice and a selection of even more prestigeous cosmetics - ephemeras based on the Archons, a Veiled/Archon Landing Craft skin, etc.

 

 

This method does not exclude people who just want to run around blasting out their power fantasy from the content; it also gives the "hardcore players" something to challenge themselves and chase virtual clout with.

The problem for me with this is that it doesnt actually tackle the issue with where the game is currently at. You are pretty much just suggesting Nihil veiled behind an illusion of choice. You need to remove your progress if you want anything in the examples you gave, that isnt a solution, that is a bad old rancid bandaid.

When people look for endgame it tends to imply content you can go and do thanks to your earlier progression in the game. With your examples we'd strip our power in content that could have been actual endgame in order to come out of them even more powerful with no real content to use that power in. And the content would never promote real builds, min-maxing and so on either. Removing the majority of the reasons why we play and chase gear in the first place.

If anything, something similar to maps in PoE would be a better thing to add, since they could practically end things like AoE meta, facetank Inaros and other things without removing our progression. It could be anything from AoE damage reduced on weapons by 90%, having health hardcapped at a certain value, extra shields added (to penalize key usage), parts of health shifted to shields but shields also benefit from armor, energy costs increased, element X immune enemies, enemies deal X element as extra damage. Kinda like sortie modifiers meeting dragon keys and expanded on. 

Then depending on the modifiers, loot, affinity and whatever else is increased or decreased. With the option to remove any and all positive modifiers if we like.

Both PoE and Marvel Heroes did those systems successfully and they are heaps of fun to play around in. And WF is similar to Marvel Heroes since we have a full toolbox of things to tackle different challenges, so a system like that would work here. And those that would like to still run around with AoE can simply avoid the missions where AoE is gimped, while others simply change loadouts when different modifiers occur.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

3 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Yeah, there's a big variety of players in WF, for sure, and even pleasing 30% of everyone would be a good accomplishment imo.

 

Its a strength, but a weakness too. I agree, 30% is a good percentage to aim for, plus there are other strategies they can employ and do employ as well. Like providing a good satisfying story/narrative and progression can be great as well. New War was positively received by many. It wasn't difficult for some, but was to others. Creating story beats, emotional resolutions, good music, resolving long running plot lines, etc can be more inclusive of players expectations. Then as far as variety. You have some players who get excited for Deluxe skins/Voidshell skins, some who are keen on gameplay modes. Zariman and Steel Path Relics have given us faster ways to get to level cap. 

Even though I think that making a difficult end game challenge for a large majority of players would be difficult, DE can lean into their strength of variety/choice, and just give players a lot of other cool stuff they can choose to focus on.Which is what they usually do with updates, a bunch of content for variety of people. Plus there is always the difference of vocal satisfaction/dissatisfaction and quiet satisfaction/dissatisfaction. 

 

4 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think a missing piece to the dinner are the influencers. People LOVE to follow other people so, if Brozime says a frame is trash, then his audience will say it's  trash, often without even touching the frame. In this case (and apparently often the case), only ONE player has determined the quality but that player barked so loudly that it appeared as though a great many have spoken. It's exceedingly difficult to fight against that. 

 

Yeah sometimes. I like Brozime and think his content is good for Warframe overall. I think sometimes he takes too narrow a view on some aspects of the game. Like his first impressions, or older impressions can linger. Like I am not knowledgable or an expert in his opinions, but I remember his stance on Vauban was odd. To his credit though, he will also change his mind about stuff too, I can remember a few times, seeing his opinion change, and reevaluating a part of the game. Like his praise for the Zephyr rework, and realising Mag is a pretty good starter.