Can "hard content" even happen?

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

After breezing through archon hunts with Revenant, I have to ask, "is it possible to make hard content in Warframe, if everyone can use an unkillable frame, or overoptimize against said content?" 

For example, archon hunts and arbitrations were created with the intent of making difficult content where you can't afford to mess up, but if you use a tank frame, you can't really mess up and die. 

This sort of thing also happens with other mission types, like spy (where Wisp or Ivara guarantee a perfect completion), or mobile defense (where Limbo can shield the terminals from all damage and Vauban groups up all threats for easy extermination). 

So will we ever get challenging content, or will things like trials and raids fail as warframes stay undefeatable forevermore?

 

[Voltage]

Yes, we did. They were called Trials. The "hard" part of the mission was team communication and competent players in a team working efficiently to complete 3 missions in a row. The majority of players didn't like them because they didn't stoop to the low bar of players that want to solo Revenant cheese or let On Call Crew wipe a tileset while they make a sandwich. It didn't help that the mode locked the most prestigious enhancements at the time (namely Arcane Grace, Guardian, Avenger and Energize). The ironic part is that back then people called Trial puzzles "not Warframe", but here in 2022, that is closer to Warframe than most of what we get these days.

I think DE is more than capable of making new content that has older players thinking about arsenal choices and cheeses being reeled in. The issue is the playerbase has been nurtured for a decade now that missions should have almost no fail conditions. I still feel that Self-Revives were a bit of a mistake, and Arbitrations were made worse with the addition of revives in my opinion.

[--END--Rikutatis]

Short answer: no

The closest we can get is stuff like disruption or void cascade/flood, where fail states are also related to reaction speed, map awareness, etc. But anything combat, DPS or defense related, forget about it. Better wait for Soulframe and hope the magic can happen again.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Short answer: yes.

The number of people I see dying in Archon Hunts, Zariman bounties and Elite Sanctuary Onslaught (I don't do Arbitrations anymore), as well as when Acolytes pop in on Steel Path... is way higher than I'd ever expect from all the humble-bragging I see going on here on the forums.

There is hard content in the game right now, for the majority of the playerbase... long time expert players who have learned to min-max will obviously have an easier time of things.

[RichardKam]

Without arsenal restriction? No.

With arsenal restriction? Yes, but people complain. So no.

Solo level cap SP void cascade, or solo 36 rounds railjack Orphix can be considered hard content, but they were more on the mechanical and game design problem rather than the player skill.

[Voltage]

4 minutes ago, (PSN)AyinDygra said:

The number of people I see dying in Archon Hunts, Zariman bounties and Elite Sanctuary Onslaught (I don't do Arbitrations anymore), as well as when Acolytes pop in on Steel Path... is way higher than I'd ever expect from all the humble-bragging I see going on here on the forums.

Sure, but there is basically no consequence to dying and you have self-revive plus Last Gasp now, so nobody cares when they go down. Lots of people die in this game because the game teaches you that it doesn't really matter, myself included. I don't build for much eHP in general content, only in places like Steel Path Circulus. Why? Because if I go down in a Fissure from some AoE grenade or a Zariman bounty from a Thrax beam, it doesn't matter.

[Pakaku]

According to complaints I've seen on this forum, "hard" content is as basic as throwing a Nullifier or Ancient Disruptor into the mission here and there. So the bar isn't very high, apparently.

[--END--Rikutatis]

1 minute ago, (PSN)AyinDygra said:

There is hard content in the game right now, for the majority of the playerbase... long time expert players who have learned to min-max will obviously have an easier time of things.

That's the point. Gear, min-maxing and loadouts allow you to erase any semblance of difficulty. I won't even say min-maxing tbh. Nowadays min-maxing in WF is completely overkill for anything up to level cap. In many other games reaching endgame loadouts and gear progression opens up challenging endgame content to do. In WF reaching endgame progression means the game loses any semblance of difficulty and becomes trivial. 

[PublikDomain]

It can, and DE keeps trying to create content like that, and sometimes you can find it ingame already, but big and controversial things need to happen before it can be a stable, consistent experience for everyone.

[--END--Rikutatis]

15 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Yes, we did. They were called Trials. The "hard" part of the mission was team communication and competent players in a team working efficiently to complete 3 missions in a row. The majority of players didn't like them because they didn't stoop to the low bar of players that want to solo Revenant cheese or let On Call Crew wipe a tileset while they make a sandwich. It didn't help that the mode locked the most prestigious enhancements at the time (namely Arcane Grace, Guardian, Avenger and Energize). The ironic part is that back then people called Trial puzzles "not Warframe", but here in 2022, that is closer to Warframe than most of what we get these days.

I think DE is more than capable of making new content that has older players thinking about arsenal choices and cheeses being reeled in. The issue is the playerbase has been nurtured for a decade now that missions should have almost no fail conditions. I still feel that Self-Revives were a bit of a mistake, and Arbitrations were made worse with the addition of revives in my opinion.

Just a quick point: while I agree with you on the mentality of the player base, even trials fall in the category of what I said in my first post. The reaction speed, coordination and other mechanical challenges that had a fail state could be considered challenging, but combat and defense was entirely trivialized by loadouts. Enemies were meaningless and ignored, you just perma CC'ed them. Bosses were one shot. And that was before any of this more recent power creep even existed. 

[dEjAvU5566]

Please define what “hard content” is, then we discuss.

other than that, it is just everyone talking about they own idea, there will no focus.

[(XBOX)elementXGHILLIE]

Content gets harder when you don't Meta hug. People can find alot of enjoyment if the tried to make the bad things good, and quit abusing the Meta. 

[trst]

There's a few ways they could go about creating something that's "hard" but without some massive overhaul to balance along with a plethora of nerfs it all requires invalidating or circumventing our progression and gear.

Basically systems which prevent invulnerability either through abilities or shield gating abuse. Some counter to invisibility. Preventing infinite CC chaining. As well as proper damage attenuation that accounts for outliers like multishot stacking, headshot bonuses, and things like the Incarnon upgrades. But this is a system which makes all your hours of grinding feel pointless as all that power is invalidated.

Or something else that could work would be content structured like release Railjack which was reliant on systems that have no/limited mod influence. Where the objective is to balance other smaller objectives unrelated to our builds where the overall "challenge" is in how efficient and fast we are without being able to solve every problem at once with one button press. But this approach can result in a system that's more "skill" reliant and less of a gear check which would make it vastly different from the entire rest of the game.

[Berzerkules]

Guess I'll be the guy that says you can make your own difficulty.

Stop playing tanks and come up with weird helminth builds for every frame. I was making what I liked to call abomination builds. I would helminth off what I considered to be a frames signature ability to see what I had left to work with. Then try to find something that complimented or synergized with what was left of their kit. Like make a Rhino with no iron skin and build around his 4 for crowd control or Mesa without peacemakers. It's not difficult content but It was probably the most fun I've had in WF. 

 

[Gamma745]

My answer would be no. At least, not in the way most hardcore players would like. There are too many mechanics and tools we have access to that will make whatever "challenge" anyone would think of moot.

No, I'm not talking about bloated damage numbers yet. The multitude number of hard-CC that effectively shut-down anything (Vauban's Bastille, Nyx's Mind Control, Limbo's Stasis, Operator's Magus Lockdown Arcane, and so on) will make even the smartest AI turn into a shooting gallery. But if we shut down or even just reduce its effect, people would cry foul that the "challenge" is too restrictive, only catering to a narrow meta, killed CC warframe, or whatever else.

And then, as you said, the way we can effectively use unkillable frames will make any threat a polarizing subject. We have a very wide survivability range in our roster, from the literally immortal (Valkyr, Harrow), semi-invincible (Zephyr, Limbo), just plain hard to kill (Inaros, Nidus, Atlas, Grendel), to the basically dying without shield-gating (Banshee, Nova). What is considered a threat to the strong / survivable ones would practically be a death sentence to the fragile ones. Even if the health/armor/survivability value are normalized, what can you do against Limbo, Harrow, Zephyr, or even Ivara, Ash, Loki, short of disabling or nullifying their abilities? But again, if that happens, more people would cry foul.

 

As for damage, there just far too many things to consider, even when you want to balance it out. As someone else had observed, there a lot of buff and multiplier in this game that can stack with one another. People kept mentioning stat-squish, but how low can the number go before each stuff become basically not worth it unless it is stacked on top of each other? The other alternative would be making the buffs and stat booster cannot stack with each other, only the strongest one in the team counted. But would that really be accepted by the hardcore community?

[(PSN)Zero_029]

Not without a rework of stats, mods, and weapons. 

The game stat wise is too chaotic. Even with Damage Attenuation DE is hard pressed to challenge us without resetting us. (Hence the "Not in a Warframe" gameplay that's becoming more frequent.) 

Everyone heard my speel on this to death so I'll just leave it at this.

Edit:

The desire for hard content is the Warframe community's version of "Nostalgia" / "Rose colored Glasses"

They say they want it but when they get it....they can't handle it.

The amount of us who enjoy a challenge probably rival the percentage of players who actually played Trials / still play conclave.

[Pizzarugi]

Unless nerfs are made, it's never going to happen. All DE can do at this point is turn enemies into tougher bullet sponges which players are constantly figuring out how to trivialize.

[Ventura_Highway]

40 minutes ago, trst said:

There's a few ways they could go about creating something that's "hard" but without some massive overhaul to balance along with a plethora of nerfs it all requires invalidating or circumventing our progression and gear.

Basically systems which prevent invulnerability either through abilities or shield gating abuse. Some counter to invisibility. Preventing infinite CC chaining. As well as proper damage attenuation that accounts for outliers like multishot stacking, headshot bonuses, and things like the Incarnon upgrades. But this is a system which makes all your hours of grinding feel pointless as all that power is invalidated.

Or something else that could work would be content structured like release Railjack which was reliant on systems that have no/limited mod influence. Where the objective is to balance other smaller objectives unrelated to our builds where the overall "challenge" is in how efficient and fast we are without being able to solve every problem at once with one button press. But this approach can result in a system that's more "skill" reliant and less of a gear check which would make it vastly different from the entire rest of the game.

These are all rules that should have been written into the start of the game, not the middle, and I would say cannot be injected into the middle without vast player outcry. Ah well. The average Warframe player's dream is to obliterate the 1,000,000,000th Grineer Lancer 5% more totally.

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Hard content in warframe exist. Grendel missions is an example. Majority of the playerbase don't care about it. Even so much as Steel Path players don't want to do. Anything a 5 year old can't do on their personal tablet or a disable elderly person can't accomplish is a no go. The New War already highlighted the amount of warframe players not willing to participate in said content all because of personal limitations. 

[trst]

15 minutes ago, Ventura_Highway said:

These are all rules that should have been written into the start of the game, not the middle, and I would say cannot be injected into the middle without vast player outcry. Ah well. The average Warframe player's dream is to obliterate the 1,000,000,000th Grineer Lancer 5% more totally.

Well they've already been doing the first one with ability resistance on bosses/Sentients, status caps on certain enemies, overguard CC immunity, and Lich/Sister/Archon damage attenuation.

The second was done exactly with Railjack. But DE went and nerfed every obstacle, hazard, and enemy while buffing everything players have. The really dumb thing with Railjack though is that they reworked it before finishing the update with the system (ai crew) that would have addressed the difficulty complaints on its own. And to a lesser extent it was also done with Trials by having failure states tied to the ""puzzles"".

 

So they've already done it all, they've just not stuck to it and caved into players who get upset at the slightest roadblock (or in Trials case deleted it because it was held together with paperclips and spit). Also players will outcry at literally any perceived nerf to their gear no matter what the practical impact actually is.

[ReddyDisco]

Yes there is already hard content. it's incredibly hard to see what's happening with all the particle vomit, after a mission with a bright energy mirage with an aoe weapon you'd be visiting your eye doctor.

[(PSN)youdog122]

it is kinda impossible  for content to stay hard cuz of powercreep, but this is something no pve live service has really been able to figure out

[Tyreaus]

Yes, but there's a particular, peculiar roadblock: we have hard content. 

The problem is that said "hard content" isn't hard in the way players seem to want or acknowledge. They're largely gear checks, arsenal knowledge, and willingness to use a cheese strat (or twelve). But it counts as "hard content", so trying to design any alternative is a hard sell.

I think the sort of difficulty players want—or, at least, what I want—can be seen with the new Eximus. Well-telegraphed, not too hard to dodge, yet requiring attention and so ramping up engagement. Mash some of those attack patterns into a cohesive boss fight and you could have a decent challenge. It doesn't need to be especially punishing—we don't need Warframe to be Dark Souls—just have enough "oomph" to encourage the player to dodge. Heck, a regular knockdown can pull that off.

Of course, others have mentioned plenty of other blockades to that goal. The damage system is a pretty big speedbump. I'd add enemy disorganization to that list. The idea of "hide in cover to recharge shields" is fine and dandy, until enemies are so strewn about that every iota of natural cover is targeted by some enemy or another. Nevermind discerning particular enemy patterns or priority targets or routes of escape. It makes our only recourse "kill everything, cheese, or die".

[zuraja]

No.  And I honestly wish they would stop trying because aside from Trials (which were removed because they kept breaking because of spaghetti code and were popular enough that they couldn't just ignore the issues) every attempt at making it has made the game worse.

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

The majority of players didn't like them because they didn't stoop to the low bar of players that want to solo Revenant cheese or let On Call Crew wipe a tileset while they make a sandwich. 

I'm gunna stop you right there. The majority of players didn't like them because they were glitchy as hell and had a notorious, as in literally notorious breakage rate. Devs spent more time fixing progression stopper bugs than players did actually getting to the exit