Can "hard content" even happen?

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

On 2023-01-16 at 3:36 AM, Highasafly said:

Lol. OP used Revenent and is complaining about challenging content. Revenent is immortal frame and exists for a reason. Now do the archon hunt without revenent/ Ivara  and kuva hek/felrax and see how you find it overall.

I never complained. I simply pondered how you make something like raids if (A) dps frame instakills everything or (B) invisible/tank/invulnerable frame is undefeatable, and therefore you can't lose. 

Revenant is literally only better than everyone else if you run endurance, and any Inaros/Hildryn/Nidus/Rhino etc can tank higher level content outside of those. Unless DE is going to make Raids level 500-1000 and above or fill everything with 1 million damage toxin procs there's going to be some way to just tank it. 

Like I can tell you made no effort in trying to refute me because I can think of Vazarin spam (especially when stacked with invisibility, rolling guard, or abilities like Wisp's 2) or the fact I can stack it with Last Gasp and go "yeah they're not nerfing that, definitely not just Revenant." (And no, they can't nerf Vazarin. So yes, I'm genuinely wondering how we're supposed to have hard 2-3 hour raids if I can make myself unkillable by at least 5 different methods.

[ShogunGunshow]

Raids, if they ever exist, would have to rely on execution-based mechanics that can't be shortcut. And lots of attenuation. And probably buff stripping. 

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

10 minutes ago, ShogunGunshow said:

Raids, if they ever exist, would have to rely on execution-based mechanics that can't be shortcut. And lots of attenuation. And probably buff stripping. 

DE did say Raids were going to be a topic of discussion this year.  I imagine that's where Pazoul/Erra will be considering how Archon Sorties are going.

My hope is that Raids are not on a rotational basis like the Archons. But I have a feeling they'll behave along similar lines considering how Archons work.

[thetdw2000]

2 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

And lots of attenuation. And probably buff stripping. 

As we saw with previous incarnations of damage attenuation they'll always forget to account for something. Last time it was multishot.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, thetdw2000 said:

As we saw with previous incarnations of damage attenuation they'll always forget to account for something. Last time it was multishot.

"Forget."

[thetdw2000]

33 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

"Forget."

Are you suggesting that it was an intentional design decision on DE's part to make the kuva hek able to oneshot archons? Or to make the laetum's not-crit crit mechanic shred them?

Point is DE would rather play balance whack-a-mole rather than fix the core issues with the game's modding and scaling systems.

[Mr.Holyroller]

Trials were the closest thing we had to "hard" content because of the mechanics, but it turns out most people didnt like doing them. Trials had like less than 2% participation.
Maybe things would be different if they brought it back but who knows.

[Tiltskillet]

12 minutes ago, thetdw2000 said:

Are you suggesting that it was an intentional design decision on DE's part to make the kuva hek able to oneshot archons? Or to make the laetum's not-crit crit mechanic shred them?

 

I'm saying it's unknown whether leaving out multishot was intentional or not, and either possibility is at least plausible.   (I wish I could say it's completely implausible they forgot about multishot and have taken no action over several months to address it, but I can't.)

I'm suggesting nothing about them predicting the most extreme effects of that decision, if it was a decision.

You said nothing about the Laetum Attrition until now, so I don't know why you would think I was referring to it.  FWIW, I think it's more plausible that was forgotten than multishot was.  But at the same time it's not hard to think of reasons DE might intentionally push incarnon weapons in this way. 

[ShogunGunshow]

1 hour ago, Mr.Holyroller said:

Trials were the closest thing we had to "hard" content because of the mechanics, but it turns out most people didnt like doing them. Trials had like less than 2% participation.
Maybe things would be different if they brought it back but who knows.

I mean they also broke, like, every patch. That didn't help.

[Highasafly]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

I never complained. I simply pondered how you make something like raids if (A) dps frame instakills everything or (B) invisible/tank/invulnerable frame is undefeatable, and therefore you can't lose. 

Revenant is literally only better than everyone else if you run endurance, and any Inaros/Hildryn/Nidus/Rhino etc can tank higher level content outside of those. Unless DE is going to make Raids level 500-1000 and above or fill everything with 1 million damage toxin procs there's going to be some way to just tank it. 

Like I can tell you made no effort in trying to refute me because I can think of Vazarin spam (especially when stacked with invisibility, rolling guard, or abilities like Wisp's 2) or the fact I can stack it with Last Gasp and go "yeah they're not nerfing that, definitely not just Revenant." (And no, they can't nerf Vazarin. So yes, I'm genuinely wondering how we're supposed to have hard 2-3 hour raids if I can make myself unkillable by at least 5 different methods.

First off, with the mission restrictions and and damage attuneation most of the frames and weapons have harder time to do archon hunt. The player's response to it has been tank or invisible frames and kuva hek/incarnon weapons and honestly personally i can't find fault with it. Riddled with power creep, almost all bosses and significant enemies are immune to abilities/abilities have reduced efficiency against them/or they disable all abilities entirely apart from having mechanics like damage reduction and damage attueanation so that the only way against them is nuke frames, tank frames and pure dps. However we continue to get stuffs like molt augumented, cascadia flare or red archon shards.

What we need is not difficult content per say but rather fun content that is not hampered by these issues. And the process starts from reigning in the power creep. I'd be ok if they removed mods like serration/ point blank as well as merciless arcanes and replace that with say a arcane thet gives certain dmg resistance on headshots (not headshot kills) so that it opens up possibility for a banshee or oberon to reliably do all sort of contents at higher level. Then it would give proper value to frames in a squad as you need to be mindful of a frame's abilities as well as focus abilities.

As of right now, pure dps/ tank/ nukes is the expected right answer.

[thetdw2000]

16 hours ago, Highasafly said:

What we need is not difficult content per say but rather fun content that is not hampered by these issues. And the process starts from reigning in the power creep. I'd be ok if they removed mods like serration/ point blank as well as merciless arcanes and replace that with say a arcane thet gives certain dmg resistance on headshots (not headshot kills) so that it opens up possibility for a banshee or oberon to reliably do all sort of contents at higher level. Then it would give proper value to frames in a squad as you need to be mindful of a frame's abilities as well as focus abilities.

So in other words

Zamboni was right

[Highasafly]

1 hour ago, thetdw2000 said:

So in other words

Zamboni was right

I don't know who or what that is

[thetdw2000]

7 minutes ago, Highasafly said:

I don't know who or what that is

Zamboni made similar criticisms to Warframe's modding and drops systems to yours and mine almost a decade ago. At the time, Steve shrugged it off, talking about all the great mods they had in store for us and how this whole system would improve the game. 9 years later the game still has basically the same problem. Nobody frequently uses weapon mods other than pure damage scaling mods because, well, why the hell wouldn't you? The powercreep has only gotten worse in recent years with the addition of galvanized mods, damage arcanes, and all kinds of numbers boosting that DE uses to keep you on the damage treadmill. I don't agree with all his suggestions but he's definitely right about the fundamental flaws in the modding system.

[White_Matter]

Try more squishy frames and steel path orokin survival becomes hard. Sometimes you get oneshot, or run out of energy and get overwhelmed. Happened to me even with frames like Valkyr.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

37 minutes ago, thetdw2000 said:

Zamboni made similar criticisms to Warframe's modding and drops systems to yours and mine almost a decade ago. At the time, Steve shrugged it off, talking about all the great mods they had in store for us and how this whole system would improve the game. 9 years later the game still has basically the same problem. Nobody frequently uses weapon mods other than pure damage scaling mods because, well, why the hell wouldn't you? The powercreep has only gotten worse in recent years with the addition of galvanized mods, damage arcanes, and all kinds of numbers boosting that DE uses to keep you on the damage treadmill. I don't agree with all his suggestions but he's definitely right about the fundamental flaws in the modding system.

I think your assumption that these are flaws is, honestly, your flaw. The game is fun enough to have players since day one...over 10 years ago. The game has always been an experiment that we, the players, give feedback for. A single or few forum posts with, itself, low feedback or agreeance, will not change the game. In the case of "hard content", balancing and scaling, the vast majority of players don't want any of it.

More critically, it would all be pointless because we have people on YouTube RUSHING AT BREAKNECK SPEEDS TO HOLD EVERY'S HAND THROUGH THE CONTENT. It's absolutely stupid and a massive waste of time to risk having the majority of the player base rip DE's head off for "correcting" their fun game so a select few of you forum guys can complain anyway while checking YouTuber channels for guides. It doesn't make good business sense nor common sense. .

[thetdw2000]

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

I think your assumption that these are flaws is, honestly, your flaw. The game is fun enough to have players since day one...over 10 years ago. The game has always been an experiment that we, the players, give feedback for. A single or few forum posts with, itself, low feedback or agreeance, will not change the game. In the case of "hard content", balancing and scaling, the vast majority of players don't want any of it.

Have you polled them? And I don't mean forums, where the 80/20 rule means you're overwhelmingly going to see posts made by 1k+ posters. I mean the real playerbase, the ones that don't even know the forums exist. Do you think they enjoy putting 5 forma on a weapon just to put on the same mods you'd put on any other weapon anyway? It's not an interesting system, it just tricks you into thinking you've progressed as a player by adding a bunch of multiplicative damage buffs. Even if people say they would like to keep the current system around, the fruits of the current modding system are universally disliked. Damage attenuation is a direct result of the modding system producing such ridiculous damage numbers that there's no way DE can balance boss fights around player damage output. If they chose to balance around meta gear it would be literally impossible to beat bosses with weaker gear (without running out of ammo), and if they were to balance the experience around weaker gear you get people oneshotting bosses before they even get a chance to attack you.

Warframe has survived in spite of its modding system, not because of it. The core gameplay is engaging enough to keep coming back even if the grindy nature means you get burned out quickly.

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

More critically, it would all be pointless because we have people on YouTube RUSHING AT BREAKNECK SPEEDS TO HOLD EVERY'S HAND THROUGH THE CONTENT. It's absolutely stupid and a massive waste of time to risk having the majority of the player base rip DE's head off for "correcting" their fun game so a select few of you forum guys can complain anyway while checking YouTuber channels for guides. It doesn't make good business sense nor common sense. .

If the best argument you have for keeping a system is that players use it to spend as little time playing your game as possible, you've got a poorly designed game. That was another part of Zamboni's argument, that the RNG nature of drops encourages players to get it over with as soon as possible rather than stick around and enjoy themselves. Personally, I think DE should stop using mobile game tier psychological manipulation to encourage player retention and encouraging people to pay money to skip grinds.

Besides, DE pisses off the playerbase every update. Pushing one that would improve the balance of the game (and potentially cut down on grind, not to mention open up a lot more variety in the arsenal) would be objectively better than more broken content that takes months to patch in and nerfs a bunch of stuff anyway. A mod system rebalance wouldn't even have to nerf anything really, it would mostly just be a numbers crunch so you don't have to put on mods that do +3000% damage in order for a gun to be usable.

[Highasafly]

15 hours ago, thetdw2000 said:

Zamboni made similar criticisms to Warframe's modding and drops systems to yours and mine almost a decade ago. At the time, Steve shrugged it off, talking about all the great mods they had in store for us and how this whole system would improve the game. 9 years later the game still has basically the same problem. Nobody frequently uses weapon mods other than pure damage scaling mods because, well, why the hell wouldn't you? The powercreep has only gotten worse in recent years with the addition of galvanized mods, damage arcanes, and all kinds of numbers boosting that DE uses to keep you on the damage treadmill. I don't agree with all his suggestions but he's definitely right about the fundamental flaws in the modding system.

Interesting ideas. The key concept and proposed reworks would work against the problem of power creep riddling today and focus on creating content that are fun to play rather than another weapon/ arcane with massive damage as well as more grind. If a viable source of revenue for DE could be found while implementing those ideas so that further development for the game could be continued, this sounds like an ideal solution.