Warframe is a tragedy of wasted potential

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 2023-07-14 at 3:07 PM, trst said:

But are they intending for those to actually be what the players would call an end-game or are they calling it by being at the "end" of the game progression wise? Because Warframe at every single stage of its life has had an actual "end-game" even if players never felt like there really was one.

Like Sorties were the end-point of the game for being the hardest content we had on offer at the time. Even though geared players back then didn't even consider it difficult or end-game.

🤔 I’ve wondered whether the idea of “Endgame” could be tied to limited build variety.

The term is nebulous for sure, but players and even DE sometimes bring the term up regardless as if there’s a commonly-accepted definition. The term certainly can’t be linked to difficulty because the content of the game will inevitably be tied to an established level range and the balance within the mission is according to the level, and players will find whatever means possible to build beyond that level range up to and including cheese mechanics like shieldgate abuse and DA bypass.

While the game has its limits and its balance of enemy types and damage and threat level and all that are more or less predictable and understandable and facilitate alternative ways to build and play according to how a player builds and the content the player takes their builds/loadouts to, players seem to be expecting instead that the game designed around playing in different ways (unbalanced or balanced as the player desires) should force them to play in a certain way while somehow and confusingly claiming that the game already forces them to play a certain way. Higher-level content like Sorties or Liches or Archons have lower build and approach variety which will work for the content (while typically requiring more investment in gear capacity through forma or potatos and mods as well), which is a sacrifice for long-term players who have earned multiple ways to build and play while also being a goal for new players to strive to overcome, but they’re not the only things we do even after hundreds of hours of playtime so it’s hard to peg them as true endgame because we’re not corralled into them as the only content worth doing

Edited July 16, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[0_The_F00l]

I do agree with the core concept of what the OP is saying. I too would like to use all the power that I have accumulated over the years in meaningful challenges.

But the thing is challenge changes based on where you are and what you are facing.

A new player with no forma or endo to his name facing a level 40 enemy is challenging , completing the star chart while having no potatoes is challenging , but that challenge goes away as soon as you get some power.

So there is challenge but it has a ceiling while our power can break that ceiling by a very wide margin.

My stance has always been for a stat squish , not a popular opinion but that's the only way to actually have engaging content in my opinion. Else you will get more kahls and duviri , cause DE has clearly given up on the rest of the game.

[SpicyDinosaur]

This may have been suggested, but I advise you to talk about challenge after doing a week of Conclave.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 hour ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I do agree with the core concept of what the OP is saying. I too would like to use all the power that I have accumulated over the years in meaningful challenges.

But the thing is challenge changes based on where you are and what you are facing.

A new player with no forma or endo to his name facing a level 40 enemy is challenging , completing the star chart while having no potatoes is challenging , but that challenge goes away as soon as you get some power.

So there is challenge but it has a ceiling while our power can break that ceiling by a very wide margin.

My stance has always been for a stat squish , not a popular opinion but that's the only way to actually have engaging content in my opinion. Else you will get more kahls and duviri , cause DE has clearly given up on the rest of the game.

Would you alienate a large portion of your playerbase to appease a few guys that are just bored of whatever other MMO they've been forcing themselves to play because they're self proclaimed "completionist"?

Keep in mind these players are really passionate i.e. they can harass/devbash on social media and get their "boys" to review bomb and create a situation where you can't criticize them because they're "paying customers".

[Frendh]

6 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Or maybe we could idk just fight more powerful enemies? I dunno like the leaders of the different factions, the big boss guys. What about big Sentients? Sentients are strong, and they're a big existential threat. Maybe they could roam around the open world zones like world bosses? Or maybe there's a Sentient in-fighting plot thing where some of the Sentients get turned into super-weapons made out of Warframes! And they're really powerful but they're loose now and have to be hunted down. Or we could fight some Void-powered bad guys, the warped manifestations of the Void. Like that big guy and his wall. What about big Orokin monstrosities that you ride in a big scripted fight? 🤔

So turns out we've got a lot of gods-fighting-gods to play with, and it's about all DE adds nowadays. Notice how none of the game's narrative focuses on "today the Tenno killed another bystander"? It's all grand world-saving? It'd just be cool if maybe some of that world-saving wasn't so easily cheesed into nothingness, and then the more mundane but still important "today the Tenno killed a really big cool robot" could be engaging too. And ofc if bystanders is all you want to rampage through there's always gonna be plenty of that for you.

None of that is "gods fighting gods".  Unless they have the high and fast hitting damage potential of Warframes there is no "equal standing". No gods fighting gods. Like previously in Warframe, and most other games, it will be chunky bullet sponges with dangerous(not instantly lethal) abilities.

[0_The_F00l]

7 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Would you alienate a large portion of your playerbase to appease a few guys that are just bored of whatever other MMO they've been forcing themselves to play because they're self proclaimed "completionist"?

Keep in mind these players are really passionate i.e. they can harass/devbash on social media and get their "boys" to review bomb and create a situation where you can't criticize them because they're "paying customers".

DE has started showing some backbone recently (wukong and AoE changes along with not allowing players to bypass some quests) and i am happy about it, no matter how passionately they review bombed. This gives me some hope to that front. And the recent changes to their EULA (though a bit eyebrow raising) seems to be their attempt to take a bit more control.

I also dont particularly care about completionist/ casual/ hardcore tags, communities arent that easily classified, things would be a lot easier if that was the case. No matter the changes there will always be those that will dislike it , so a developer should follow their own vision and not bend over backwards to loud mouthpieces.

[CephalonCarnage]

12 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

What about big Sentients? Sentients are strong, and they're a big existential threat

I thought this - the New War should have introduced them as enemies. Not the ones we're used to fighting either, but the big bad ones from the old days. The ones where, as the lore says "Silence gripped the dome as Tuvul shook his head. Then suddenly, the creature moved, convulsed, the hard surface started undulating. In a moment the wound closed and the thing was whole again. Beside it another machine had grown from its severed parts. Their surfaces had changed however - brighter, harder, resilient to whisper rounds now."

Sentients that have heal-over-time status procs from slash damage. Oh how that would change the meta. You want hard enemies that are a challenge, ones you simply cannot nuke and keep going as if they were never there. This is the one - ones that get up behind you and come for you, possibly 2 of them now. you have to take each one down and ensure its stays down before going on to the next. That's the challenging, slower, gameplay people have been desiring. But one that doesn't require nerfing you to crappy slow Drifter or Kahl gameplay. One that lets you still play as a warframe with all the movement and gunpower and abilities, yet still makes you stop and check your path.

You can do the same for Grineer - the old ones that "They aren't making Grineer like they used to. The old ones could lose an arm and they'd keep on working". not as tough as the sentients but would prove a challenge in the earlier missions.

 

Edited July 16, 2023 by CephalonCarnage

[TheArmchairThinker]

Define "challenge" because it's always end up pitting you against enemies beyond your limit as "challenge" that becomes trivial once you get gears to close the gap and you're pitted against even more enemies like that, creating a pointless loop of climbing and grinding which is not something present in Warframe when you can do level cap runs even with Braton

[PublikDomain]

19 hours ago, Frendh said:

None of that is "gods fighting gods".  Unless they have the high and fast hitting damage potential of Warframes there is no "equal standing". No gods fighting gods. Like previously in Warframe, and most other games, it will be chunky bullet sponges with dangerous(not instantly lethal) abilities.

Archons are made of Warframes which is about as equal as it can get on that front, and the Man in the Wall is pretty much an actual god. That's the narrative and the setting. Not mechanically, ofc, but that's also kinda the problem. Our "gods" kind of suck.

But I would settle for chunky bullet sponges with dangerous abilities even if they're not instantly lethal. Maybe we don't even need to go all the way to bullet sponge, maybe just chunky is enough? That'd be quite a big step up from being hit with marshmallows and confetti thrown by guys wearing cardboard.

Edit: And fwiw, we get this in SP Circuit. If you get good gear (which is a big if), and if you get a good squad (another big if), then 10+ rounds in it can get kinda hairy. The enemies die quick, but it's not instantly, and there are big bads that are both canonically and mechanically chunky, and while you can be downed or die you also have ways to mitigate that through active play. It's nice, and content like this shows that a challenge really isn't some impossible thing to create. It's entirely attainable if those ifs are answered.

14 hours ago, CephalonCarnage said:

I thought this - the New War should have introduced them as enemies. Not the ones we're used to fighting either, but the big bad ones from the old days. The ones where, as the lore says "Silence gripped the dome as Tuvul shook his head. Then suddenly, the creature moved, convulsed, the hard surface started undulating. In a moment the wound closed and the thing was whole again. Beside it another machine had grown from its severed parts. Their surfaces had changed however - brighter, harder, resilient to whisper rounds now."

Sentients that have heal-over-time status procs from slash damage. Oh how that would change the meta. You want hard enemies that are a challenge, ones you simply cannot nuke and keep going as if they were never there. This is the one - ones that get up behind you and come for you, possibly 2 of them now. you have to take each one down and ensure its stays down before going on to the next. That's the challenging, slower, gameplay people have been desiring. But one that doesn't require nerfing you to crappy slow Drifter or Kahl gameplay. One that lets you still play as a warframe with all the movement and gunpower and abilities, yet still makes you stop and check your path.

You can do the same for Grineer - the old ones that "They aren't making Grineer like they used to. The old ones could lose an arm and they'd keep on working". not as tough as the sentients but would prove a challenge in the earlier missions.

 

Reminds me of how Sentients were first described by DE. It was some marketing wank like "it's a whole new way to fight" or "everything will be different after this" or whatever, I'm paraphrasing but it was that kind of thing, but really it was just early DE having to deal with the exact same problems they still have to deal with today: players with too much power being countered with yet another adaptive damage system.

Edited July 17, 2023 by PublikDomain

[Marvelous_A]

On 2023-07-13 at 5:31 AM, PublikDomain said:

The lack of challenge is an old, old problem for DE, and they know people want something done about it. It's just a matter of DE getting around to actually doing something about it.

"When people talk about “I’m bored of Warframe” typically it’s because it’s gotten too easy for them."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXzRlxny-v8&t=892s

We understand those seeking a different outcome will disagree with this choice, but ultimately we are not willing to further bolster AoE at this time. This is due to the increasing difficulty in creating content that serves to challenge the Tenno.   
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1286070-update-3090-prime-resurgence/

Players would like to see Trials come back, in addition to some more challenging end game content
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1301906-the-warframe-2022-survey-results/

https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-136-overview

How do you view "power creep" and the topic of player power VS game challenge?
[DE]Pablo: We have always embraced the power fantasy and the fun that comes from being godlike while fighting mere mortals!
The one downside of this, is that it's near impossible to make truly challenging content when Warframes can easily be immortal and deal ludicrous amounts of damage. Those two objectives are at odds with each other, and for us the fun comes from the power fantasy, so that is our guiding principle.
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1345625-digital-extremes-reddit-ama-summary/

I could dig up more quotes but you get the idea.

I wish people would understand making ideal challenging content WHILE NOT LOSING WARFRAME'S ATTRACTION is just fundamentally not possible for Warframe. It's easy to make things difficult for players but Warframe arsenal is just way too variable and overpowered to create reasonably challenging content for all sorts of players. Devs would have to homogenize our loadout for that to bring everyone to a similar power level, like Kahl missions and exploiter orbs.

Edited July 17, 2023 by Marvelous_A

[gamingchair1121]

5 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

I wish people would understand making ideal challenging content WHILE NOT LOSING WARFRAME'S ATTRACTION is just fundamentally not possible for Warframe. It's easy to make things difficult for players but Warframe arsenal is just way too variable and overpowered to create reasonably challenging content for all sorts of players. Devs would have to homogenize our loadout for that to bring everyone to a similar power level, like Kahl missions and exploiter orbs.

that's why DE should start making miniboss enemies that copy our power

[trst]

6 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

I wish people would understand making ideal challenging content WHILE NOT LOSING WARFRAME'S ATTRACTION is just fundamentally not possible for Warframe. It's easy to make things difficult for players but Warframe arsenal is just way too variable and overpowered to create reasonably challenging content for all sorts of players. Devs would have to homogenize our loadout for that to bring everyone to a similar power level, like Kahl missions and exploiter orbs.

It's actually not that impossible, just something DE has never actually tried to do/stick to.

The most straightforward approach would be to do what Steel Path was originally meant to be: an optional mode for players to engage with harder content without waiting forever for enemy scaling. DE could just create some new toggle that throws in some massive sweeping changes (cut all player damage in half, give all enemies ability resistance, remove/nerf slash/viral procs, etc) that would entirely destroy that "attraction" and force out most players so long as it's 100% unincentivized.

If the only benefit of running it was the challenge itself then there'd be no reason to ever nerf it (like they did for SP) and they could even make it harder without any risk of player friction. As anyone who didn't find it fun would have no reason to ever engage with it in the first place. And DE killed the potential for SP to be like this by putting rewards behind it.

 

The only problem is trying to justify the dev time into something, even as "minor" as another SP toggle, with little to no expected return on the work invested.

[kamisama85]

On 2023-07-16 at 9:25 AM, CephalonCarnage said:

Sentients that have heal-over-time status procs from slash damage. Oh how that would change the meta. You want hard enemies that are a challenge, ones you simply cannot nuke and keep going as if they were never there.

Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this matter. The moment you do this, you will trigger a different vocal minority. The "warframe is supposed to be a power fantasy wahhh" group will be knocking when they can't nuke anymore.

There is a very deliberately blurred definition of "challenging" among these groups on the forum and it usually goes something like:

- its too easy and boring

or

- its tedious and not fun

I knew a guy who cried about how sentients being able to fly around was "annoying" (hard) and "unfun", but I knew he was crying because it was too hard for him to no-brain kill. He wanted sentients to stand still at same eye level so he could shoot them, but at the same time complained warframe is too easy.

These people demanding challenge always speak out of two sides of their mouth. And as soon as its actually challenging, its not fun anymore and it's DE's fault for making something require a few more brain cells. This group will -never- be satisfied and it's not worth the debate.

 

[trst]

18 minutes ago, kamisama85 said:

Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this matter. The moment you do this, you will trigger a different vocal minority. The "warframe is supposed to be a power fantasy wahhh" group will be knocking when they can't nuke anymore.

There is a very deliberately blurred definition of "challenging" among these groups on the forum and it usually goes something like:

- its too easy and boring

or

- its tedious and not fun

I knew a guy who cried about how sentients being able to fly around was "annoying" (hard) and "unfun", but I knew he was crying because it was too hard for him to no-brain kill. He wanted sentients to stand still at same eye level so he could shoot them, but at the same time complained warframe is too easy.

These people demanding challenge always speak out of two sides of their mouth. And as soon as its actually challenging, its not fun anymore and it's DE's fault for making something require a few more brain cells. This group will -never- be satisfied and it's not worth the debate.

 

Not everyone complaining is simultaneously complaining on both sides. The real problem there is that every player has a different definition on what they consider to be difficult or fun. And things get viewed as tedious instead of difficulty when it's a form of difficulty that doesn't align with what they personally desired.

 

For instance Aerolysts are difficult due to their mobility and small mandatory weak points. But hitting a tiny spongey weakpoint that's flying around and often blocking itself with their own collision isn't something many would consider fun. But at the same time that specific type of difficulty is something others might consider fun.

Meanwhile there's others who just want the 5+ weapons and the several progression paths involved in our loadouts to all simultaneously matter. Yet everything still only requires some form of survivability and a single good weapon, thus anything trying to be difficult isn't appealing to their desires.

And some just want to be able to play the game as the co-op game it is without worrying about a single player casually leveling the entire mission. They want difficulty so that one player can't forcibly solo everything for them or be forced into solo themselves.

 

There is no one solution to all these issues. But DE doesn't even really try to solve any of them and their attempts to do so just upset their (seemingly main) casual powercreep focused audience. Or they do accomplish adding in difficulty some players want but it then gets removed entirely in favor of casual players.

In the end every group just keeps getting upset.

[PublikDomain]

10 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

Devs would have to homogenize our loadout for that to bring everyone to a similar power level, like Kahl missions and exploiter orbs.

Which they've been doing, though. Kahl and Exploiter are just two examples. More recently is basically all of Duviri, where DE has the Drifter's weapons balanced to the same standard of power for everyone - and can thus balance it exactly how they want to provide the intended experience - and where they prevent the player from optimizing non-Drifter Duviri play by disrupting player builds with RNG. Right before that were Archons that have mechanics to homogenize loadouts and bring everyone to a similar level of power. And it works! At least, it does until DE loses interest, forgets mechanics exist, and doesn't address widely known workarounds. There's nothing impossible about standardizing power, or doing it well, or doing it in a way that's "Warframe"... It just requires attention and upkeep DE doesn't seem all that keen on providing.

Edited July 17, 2023 by PublikDomain

[Loza03]

11 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

I wish people would understand making ideal challenging content WHILE NOT LOSING WARFRAME'S ATTRACTION is just fundamentally not possible for Warframe. It's easy to make things difficult for players but Warframe arsenal is just way too variable and overpowered to create reasonably challenging content for all sorts of players. Devs would have to homogenize our loadout for that to bring everyone to a similar power level, like Kahl missions and exploiter orbs.

I want to briefly challenge this - what is Warframe's core attraction?

As has been discussed, if it's the power fantasy, that's servicably done, but could certainly do with several touch ups. It's hardly like we're ragdolling enemies, making them flee in terror. I feel a lot more powerful from demon types I used to be terrified of in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous fleeing where they realise "Oh. It's the commander." or the Villain of the entire first act going from smug self-righteousness, to the desperate resistance of a cornered rat, to being so scared she'd rather fight Baphomet than me. Similarly, throwing goons around like a ragdoll in Devil May Cry, bullet time in Breath of the Wild, or squashing my way through a Dead Cells run all offer things Warframe can't. Warframe offers a taste of that, and certainly offers wholesale slaughter, but it neither has the presentation or the teeth to make it really satisfying.

If it's the speed and agility fantasy - which is what draws me back a lot of the time - then it's worth noting just how much of the game's design new and old isn't built for it. Even Jupiter is mostly flat surfaces. Enemies, too, behave like any cover shooter which means you can either disregard them, or fighting them requires no real interaction with the game's stellar movement anyway. Hell, a lot of the time it's outright a bad thing. Most of time the game sets you up to defend a location, which is a lot, it's generally unwise to leave the objective unattended. I mean, that's just logical - it lets you respond to threats from any angle more quickly. So the speed fantasy isn't being attended to either.

 

And let's be honest with ourselves - examining what items and frames have been meta for years now, that's been extremely homogenised. For every Perigale single-target sniper, you typically have two or three explosive weapons. Everything wants to use viral due to how broadly effective it is against every faction, even Sentients, due to the damage boost it offers. If not Viral, then Slash or its little brother Toxin for their ability to bypass armour and shields respectively. And even Toxin only gets taken out of the toybox at absurdly high Corpus levels with how squishy shields are. Don't even get me started on how Melee weapons are practically reskins of each other, a fact that's only recently even being acknowledged, really. Even Warframe abilities are playing catch-up at best - lacking weapon mods, unless your frame's got crazy high damage by default or some way to strip enemy defenses built in, throwing around the couple of hundred or couple of thousand damage abilities are capable of isn't a viable way of killing enemies. Unless your name is 'Arquebex.'

All this has knock-on effects on other more specific class fantasies. Wanna play as a sneaky rogue? You can, but the game is spawning hundreds of enemies, none of which are threatening enough to be worth playing a 'Pick class' type frame. Want to be a healer? Players can instantly heal themselves, no need for Trinity (and there's so many ways to gather energy, energy-producing frames aren't that valuable either). What about playing a caster. You're in luck if you're good for more passive damage, usually, but active caster playstyles are at best relegated to casting your 4th ability over and over until you need to juice up. And of course, sniper rifles, daggers, semi-automatics, even regular pellet shotguns are all at varying levels of languishing, with a handful of exceptions and niches apiece.

 

I dunno, but it seems if the core appeal of Warframe is a highly variable power fantasy where you move fast play however you want, I don't know if Warframe really is hitting that core anymore.

[(NSW)Greybones]

4 hours ago, Loza03 said:

I want to briefly challenge this - what is Warframe's core attraction?

Core attraction?

Why it’s grind, of course! Safe, homogenised, low-effort grind. Alternative build and playstyles aren’t the core attraction, it’s how close someone can get to opening the console and entering godmode, and then how many places they can do that. Because that’s powerfantasy if your standard player is to be believed (and a few of the “Challenge seekers” certainly aren’t going to want slower grind), and it’s logical too because it’s all in service of the grind for things that don’t get used and gameplay that’s pretty samey

Edited July 18, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[(XBOX)AMONGTHEWEAK]

Game has been going downhill for years. It’s had its peak. The current team isn’t really bringing fresh new ideas but ideas other games have already done but in a worse manner. 
 

DE is trying too hard to make Warframe into something it’s not and their lack of competence to understand and see this is really showing as of recent IMO. 
 

Wasted potential? Absolutely.
 

But it’s not unfixable, I believe they can recover. It just might require a new team with some fresh passion for the game. I don’t doubt you can begin to hate something you once loved if a good portion around you tries to convince you that you should and somehow succeeds. Or maybe like a lot of jobs, you may enjoy it in the beginning because it’s new and different but after years you begin to grow immune to the joys it once gave you and if the harsh criticisms take your feelings about your work captive, you’re in trouble. 

 

[CephalonCarnage]

14 hours ago, kamisama85 said:

Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this matter

No, but there are ways around it. A new starchart of hard content for those who want it, and the rest can continue to play the normal starchart with their OP weapons for the grind.

SP circuit is the current "harder than the old hard" mode, and I think it sucks. I don't play it much because I don't want hard, I just want a slower game that's harder, not annoyingly difficult. Like in the early days when you were MR1 with a Lato and Braton, it took many hits to take down the few grineer and you coudl go at your own pace to finish the mission (ie not an arena with infinite enemies). A new starchart progression of the story with new enemies could recreate that pace and progression through a new extension of the story. I'm sure those players who only want their "power fantasy" would hate it, but they'd play it to completion and then go back to the old starchart where they could continue to nuke. Those players tend to want the good rewards without the difficulty of getting them though, so I doubt they are healthy for themselves or the game.

What nearly everyone wants though, is more warframe,

[Stafelund]

On 2023-07-13 at 5:31 AM, PublikDomain said:

How do you view "power creep" and the topic of player power VS game challenge?
[DE]Pablo: We have always embraced the power fantasy and the fun that comes from being godlike while fighting mere mortals!
The one downside of this, is that it's near impossible to make truly challenging content when Warframes can easily be immortal and deal ludicrous amounts of damage. Those two objectives are at odds with each other, and for us the fun comes from the power fantasy, so that is our guiding principle.
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1345625-digital-extremes-reddit-ama-summary/

I could dig up more quotes but you get the idea.

Their nerfing of ammo for plenty of weapons clashes with the power fantasy. I mean, packing heat with high stockpile of ammo is a power fantasy in itself, just look at Rambo and countless other action movies out there.

[Loza03]

8 hours ago, Stafelund said:

Their nerfing of ammo for plenty of weapons clashes with the power fantasy. I mean, packing heat with high stockpile of ammo is a power fantasy in itself, just look at Rambo and countless other action movies out there.

It is worth noting that even in those action films, the really big guns aren't the ones that have the infinite ammo.

 

How often does the T-1000 use his minigun verses shotguns or pistols?

[PublikDomain]

8 hours ago, Stafelund said:

Their nerfing of ammo for plenty of weapons clashes with the power fantasy. I mean, packing heat with high stockpile of ammo is a power fantasy in itself, just look at Rambo and countless other action movies out there.

And yet they did it anyways. They (or at least Pablo) say they want a casual power fantasy "that comes from being godlike while fighting mere mortals", but then they also say that this makes it impossible to make a challenge, a challenge they also say players want, that they also sometimes work towards with things like the ammo nerf or upcoming return of self damage, that they then undermine or undo with things like Incarnons, Shards, and all the other powercreep.

[Stafelund]

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

It is worth noting that even in those action films, the really big guns aren't the ones that have the infinite ammo.

 

How often does the T-1000 use his minigun verses shotguns or pistols?

True. Though you can't deny that infinite ammo is a form of power fantasy. Hell, in games with power ups that let the player get their way and stomp everyone for a moment, there's a chance that infinite ammo is one of said powerups. Though we're probably getting too indepth here.

23 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

And yet they did it anyways. They (or at least Pablo) say they want a casual power fantasy "that comes from being godlike while fighting mere mortals", but then they also say that this makes it impossible to make a challenge, a challenge they also say players want, that they also sometimes work towards with things like the ammo nerf or upcoming return of self damage, that they then undermine or undo with things like Incarnons, Shards, and all the other powercreep.

I say that if you gotta work for the said equipment hard, then the equipment better be godlike and worth it. Kuva and Tenet, especially Tenet isn't that easy to grab unless you have other people helping you, but for me those took some time to get. It wasn't until I was properly equipped with mods and stuff that I started tackling Liches. Really is a bummer to nerf Zarr this way and 5 ammo and for a 10 total if you include your current magazine seems off; something like from a knee-jerk reaction. I really have a feeling the nerfs from WuClone and specters caused this change.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

And yet they did it anyways. They (or at least Pablo) say they want a casual power fantasy "that comes from being godlike while fighting mere mortals", but then they also say that this makes it impossible to make a challenge, a challenge they also say players want, that they also sometimes work towards with things like the ammo nerf or upcoming return of self damage, that they then undermine or undo with things like Incarnons, Shards, and all the other powercreep.

Standard star chart players can experience a safe and wonderful power fantasy where ammo is much less a concern. Steel Path players wanted more challenges so things liked ammo and high defense enemies requires more planning. Mods like Ammo Drum and Shock Absorbers suddenly become more vital in builds than flat out damage. This is a great thing.

[PR1D3]

1 hour ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Standard star chart players can experience a safe and wonderful power fantasy where ammo is much less a concern. Steel Path players wanted more challenges so things liked ammo and high defense enemies requires more planning. Mods like Ammo Drum and Shock Absorbers suddenly become more vital in builds than flat out damage. This is a great thing.

I don't think that's Publik's point. I think its more of how DE saying/doing contradictory actions in regards how content difficulty curve exists across the whole of the game. That they want to maintain the bonkers power fantasy that part of the community wants but try to design 'challenging' content for the part of the community that wants it. You know, having their cake and eating it too sort of thing. Again, the most consistent thing about WF is how inconsistent it is.

On a side note, your point on how Star Chart can provide that power fantasy. That is true but honestly that isn't how it plays out most of the times. More times than not the difficult content that is supposed to exist for the players who want it eventually gets nerf and brought down to level that casuals and power creepers want. With some instances where some items get introduced that helps them trivialize the difficult content. Sometimes both. The ammo changes? I agree with you on that, but the side that doesn't want the difficulty and wants everything to be on easy mode? They absolutely flipped their S#&$ over that.

At this point it's just mixed signals and I don't see a good solution out of this for them that does not involve them gaining a pair and actively tell people 'No'. I can see a future where they can play both side but it would require them to essentially say, "Hey, you guys have your power fantasy in the low levels. The guys that want a challenge need their content to play where they can get that itch. If that means you get locked out of rewards cause you don't want to deal with the possibility of losing a match/run, tough. We're not forsaking them to make everything 100% in your favor. Hard mode is going to stay hard." Again, that would require them to say no, but I don't see the Canadians doing that any time soon.