Snowday Showdown is the worst content I have ever seen in Warframe

[(XBOX)Raggypony]

4 hours ago, (NSW)Grizzlpaw said:

As a switch player. I can tell you... 

This event is agony on controller. 

Totally agree, xbox here, tracking with controller is next to impossible w/warframe player movement. Still trying to gauge melee distance with little effect

[Mixnek]

The amount of AFK and leaching players during this event is significant, which ruins any fun for the rest, who can use more than 2 brain cells at the same time. If they don't get punished, this event will mean more frustration than joy.

[abadaba6]

Yeah, the only winning move is not to play. AFK is the way to go here.

[Voltage]

3 hours ago, Mixnek said:

The amount of AFK and leaching players during this event is significant, which ruins any fun for the rest, who can use more than 2 brain cells at the same time. If they don't get punished, this event will mean more frustration than joy.

That kind of behavior is often never met with real consequences. It's happened to Dog Days more than once as well. DE is unfortunately not very good at upholding their rules consistently and making sure they stay up to date with what players are doing to discourage others from jumping onto that bandwagon.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Voltage

[MobyTheDuck]

7 hours ago, Voltage said:

That kind of behavior is often never met with real consequences. It's happened to Dog Days more than once as well. DE is unfortunately not very good at upholding their rules consistently and making sure they stay up to date with what players are doing to discourage others from jumping onto that bandwagon.

I think the problem is that they don't take the hint.

"Players are actively avoiding playing the event and finding ways to afk."
(patches current afk method along anything that makes the event quick, interesting or fun)
(players find another way to afk)

"Players are still avoiding playing the event and finding ways to afk."
(patches current afk method along anything that makes the event quick, interesting or fun)
(players find another way to afk)

"Players are yet avoiding playing the event and finding ways to afk."
(patches current afk method along anything that makes the event quick, interesting or fun)
(players find another way to afk)

Ad infinitum.

[Void2258]

Content comment: Literally the worst Melee stance in the entire game. Unable to hit AT MELEE RANGE. The main attack for the stance is a spinning 1 meter forward dash that ONLY CONNECTS AT THE FAR END. You literally can't hit people in melee range with the melee attack, it passes through them while throwing you forward. The later moves in the stance don't do this, but since the first move tends to miss, you just flail past each other over and over until someone gets lucky.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Void2258

[Wheelhouser]

So one day a couple years ago I figured I'd give Conclave a try.  After like 2 hours of no matches popping (after a bit of time to figure out what was allowed and what wasn't), I gave up.  Never got into a match.  I knew it was ignored by most, but didn't quite realize how ignored.  But it could have been a lull in content and a bad time of day - I don't know.

Did one of these today.  Easily the least fun I've had in Warframe by far (and that includes Kahl and K-drives, which I think are god awful, as well as Corpus Railjack missions which are also terrible design).

I don't know how representative this is of regular Conclave, but this Snowball event is atrocious.

[BansheeAndZephyrMarried]

17 hours ago, (NSW)Grizzlpaw said:

Tbf, One of this game's biggest flaws is how non-intutitive everything is. Mechanics like these are never communicated to the player. And unless they specifically go out of their way to search this game's melee mechanics, they can spend 3k+ hours in this game and never stumble across this crucial bit of information. The fact that this is so common suggests it's not a fault of the players, but of the game's design. 

I agree with this even though Warframe's relative lack of handholding is an aspect I liked from the beginning. 

I'm reminded of a review I saw few years ago where the reviewer commented on the double edged nature of a game like Warframe that, if I recall the quote correctly, "lets players play in the way they would absolutely hate." Due to how forgiving the game is, a player will most likely still be able to progress fine, and their last impression of the game will be what they hated. What I enjoy as hassle-free, open ended gameplay other players will experience negatively as obtuse and user unfriendly. It's a bigger hurdle than one might think in an F2P game. 

Yes it ties directly into overall bad or lacking new player onboarding. Warframe has always been bad at it and after how many layers and systems now, I don't think the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks. There's no easy solution left but DE has to bite the bullet and incorporate the outstanding mobility this game is known for into all its designs- I mean including but not limited to some rework of at least the starter planets' tilesets and content that actually encourages people to find out what they can and cannot do with Warframe's mobility. But that would require DE to know the floors and limits themselves intimately, and if years old mobility bugs and relative lack of updates to core controls are any indicator I wouldn't be surprised it's something that has gone out of DE's control. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by BansheeAndZephyrMarried

[NialaStormborn]

On 2023-12-01 at 2:50 PM, Void2258 said:

(I shudder to think how this plays on a controller).

It's as bad or worse than your shuddering imagines.

[peq42]

this is the most pathetic event I ever seen. I'd love to have the 50MB worth of content from conclave removed from the game and my drive.

[(NSW)Grizzlpaw]

It's day 2. Allow me to share my experience with this game mode as a console player. 

This event on console is about as fun as giving yourself a root canal. Actually landing snowballs on targets who rubberband around at the speed of sound while using imprecice stick controls? Good luck with that. 

I end up flinging my aresnal of snowballs to the wind, hoping, praying one of them lands only to get repeatedly headshot by someone with precision of a trained sniper. 

And then something magical happened.

I decided that If I was going to suffer, If I was going to die. I may as well die well dressed. So I grabbed my dripped out umbra and loaded into another match. One loading screen later I'm in the match and Lo and behold my head is gone. 

In a sudden stroke of genius, my Umbra had decided that the best way to prevent himself from being headshot... was to lop off his own head!

Inspired by this, I decided to double down. I wouldn't play their game. I'd show them just how terrible this event really is. I'd hunt down the nearest enemy. And then i'd roll, bullet jump, aim glide, wall bounce, and rubberband around them like a chicken with its head cut off. I'd distract them by looking just tentalizing and killable enough that they spend so much time trying to eliminate me, they'd miss the actual threat. My teammates. 

I went from feeding 20+ kills every match to going entire games without a single death. At long last I had my first win! And then my second win!

I laughed every time I managed to narrowly escape death. I finally found a source of fun in this game mode. Controller might be a pain and a half to aim with, but it's pretty darn good for movement. I'd play to my strengths and I'd ensure that, I, at the very least, wouldn't be an active detriment to my own team. 

This game mode is garbage. And I intend to show them why. >:)

 

 

[Zeemgeem]

Warframe's PVM skill floor is so low its all the way down in the earth's core. Years of being able to solve every mission by just picking revenant and an ignis, or sitting in a limbo bubble and shooting at enemies that literally cant do anything, or spamming an ogris with protea down the same hallway means the the game plays itself with no opposition or challenge or thought required and it is clearly rotting players brains to the point they have thousands of hours and have not picked up on the fact the skill ceiling is extremely high if you actually challenge yourself and don't just take the path of no resistance every single time.

it took me half of a single round to adjust to the quirks of the snowball and scythe. my experience with movement carried over to pvp because i actually try to improve and master the games i play. most players are going to move in very predictable ways if you just pay a little bit of attention to how they act. 5 minutes of basic level problem solving later and i already can lead shots, use the spin attack and animation cancelling to avoid spiraling away with the melee (something you should have picked up on from like, 5 minutes of pvm anyway) and figure out how to use the tools given to succeed. spoiler, its not even a little bit hard.

i'm scared for this game. DE will never do anything experimental, challenging, avante garde that might need some kind of learning curve when they realise their player base's response to even the slightest bit of opposition or obstacle to overcome is to just give up immediately and blame the game for it without trying for even a single second to try and improve or adapt, and maybe just maybe find that this game has a massive amount of depth to uncover and having to do something other than holding down a beam weapon or spamming an aoe the size of a small town to solve all their problems, god forbid, overcome a challenge in a video game, that might actually be fun.

 

tldr skill issue

[(PSN)rexis12]

'Players don't adapt'

Literally one of the mini bosses can go into an anti-ranged mode and when you try to engage in melee their melee hits have a refresh able lift status and they don't suffer from hit stun. 

Manics use to have a finisher attack that could not be interrupted and if they decided to use it, your only response was to deal through their entire health. 

Violence has an invisible, uninterruptable 'Turn your S#&$ off' mode that they already knew was an issue when the Scrambus was first implemented, making any encounter encouraging nothing but damage because no amount of skill can cancel it out. 

Hell, Nullifiers back then made it mandatory to bring high fire rate weapons, so if you liked having slow fire rate lmao good luck. 

You want players to actually 'adapt'? Maybe give them something to react and adapt to, don't make every encounter be solved with Huge Damage and Huge DR and then complain that players just spam damage. Like what are we supposed to do when enemies can go, super mode and unleash attacks that you can't even interrupt? Like that's a thing, a stun or stagger if the enemies are mid animation doesn't actually cancel then out, so why bother? 

[Zeemgeem]

8 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

'Players don't adapt'

Literally one of the mini bosses can go into an anti-ranged mode and when you try to engage in melee their melee hits have a refresh able lift status and they don't suffer from hit stun. 

Manics use to have a finisher attack that could not be interrupted and if they decided to use it, your only response was to deal through their entire health. 

Violence has an invisible, uninterruptable 'Turn your S#&$ off' mode that they already knew was an issue when the Scrambus was first implemented, making any encounter encouraging nothing but damage because no amount of skill can cancel it out. 

Hell, Nullifiers back then made it mandatory to bring high fire rate weapons, so if you liked having slow fire rate lmao good luck. 

You want players to actually 'adapt'? Maybe give them something to react and adapt to, don't make every encounter be solved with Huge Damage and Huge DR and then complain that players just spam damage. Like what are we supposed to do when enemies can go, super mode and unleash attacks that you can't even interrupt? Like that's a thing, a stun or stagger if the enemies are mid animation doesn't actually cancel then out, so why bother? 

Yeah. The average player just continues doing the same braindead thing as before and dies. I've been in enough squads to see this. I agree with your point, though. The game never really requires you to do much of anything, but the casual playerbas3 also hated content like eidolons and profit taker and grendel's missions that did have unique mechanics and a skill incentive, and then DE stopped adding content like that.

[TerriFoxx]

For me it would be better, if the event was something similar like Dog Days. I hate ALL PvPs. 

[ToxicCookie91]

On 2023-12-02 at 4:41 AM, (NSW)Grizzlpaw said:

Tbf, One of this game's biggest flaws is how non-intutitive everything is. Mechanics like these are never communicated to the player. And unless they specifically go out of their way to search this game's melee mechanics, they can spend 3k+ hours in this game and never stumble across this crucial bit of information. The fact that this is so common suggests it's not a fault of the players, but of the game's design. 

This.

When I started playing Warframe just over a year ago, I didn't realise you could bullet jump up (I only thought it was sideways jumping), until a mastery test forced me to find out 😂

That was 1-2 weeks of not using bullet jump properly, but a good introduction to Warframe's ability to (not) learn away mechanics 🙃

[ToxicCookie91]

On 2023-12-03 at 5:37 AM, Zeemgeem said:

Warframe's PVM skill floor is so low its all the way down in the earth's core. Years of being able to solve every mission by just picking revenant and an ignis, or sitting in a limbo bubble and shooting at enemies that literally cant do anything, or spamming an ogris with protea down the same hallway means the the game plays itself with no opposition or challenge or thought required and it is clearly rotting players brains to the point they have thousands of hours and have not picked up on the fact the skill ceiling is extremely high if you actually challenge yourself and don't just take the path of no resistance every single time.

it took me half of a single round to adjust to the quirks of the snowball and scythe. my experience with movement carried over to pvp because i actually try to improve and master the games i play. most players are going to move in very predictable ways if you just pay a little bit of attention to how they act. 5 minutes of basic level problem solving later and i already can lead shots, use the spin attack and animation cancelling to avoid spiraling away with the melee (something you should have picked up on from like, 5 minutes of pvm anyway) and figure out how to use the tools given to succeed. spoiler, its not even a little bit hard.

i'm scared for this game. DE will never do anything experimental, challenging, avante garde that might need some kind of learning curve when they realise their player base's response to even the slightest bit of opposition or obstacle to overcome is to just give up immediately and blame the game for it without trying for even a single second to try and improve or adapt, and maybe just maybe find that this game has a massive amount of depth to uncover and having to do something other than holding down a beam weapon or spamming an aoe the size of a small town to solve all their problems, god forbid, overcome a challenge in a video game, that might actually be fun.

 

tldr skill issue

I agree about the skill floor and ceiling, that there's a lot of space between. But holy S#&$ my dude, that explanation doesn't save this gamemode. This has been my only chance at levelling conclave, and after getting to rank 3, halfway to 4, I don't think I have enough willpower to keep going. During the first few days of the event I had tons of kills, easily going 20+ kills with 5+ deaths, while past few days (When I'm able to get a game, that is) has seen me at less than 1kdr. Problem is, it was barely more fun having 4 kdr than 1, and that says something about the gamemode.

Sure, I've been able to work around the horrible melee weapon, where you automatically dash 5-10m past your enemy, unless you of course 180 with the mouse during the attack, or if you hold backwards and use a slide attack. But that it's halfway possible to work around it, doesn't make it "hurr durr good, skillcap mate". It just means that you can make an very annoying thing slightly less annoying. I still end up in fights where I see 2-4 players from both teams, do the dash melee in a small area for 10 seconds, with no one dying. I've NEVER seen that in any other pvp game in my entire life, and I wouldn't say that's because it's a gamechanging positive game design...

The servers I have been playing on as well, have not been kind with the snowballs. It took me a while to realise it was the snowballs that caused the slow, as the slow proc hardly ever matched when I got hit or when I hit other players with snowballs. Then again, the slow proc is horrible, as it seems to stack with the animations... Have you tried being knocked down and hit with a slow proc? That means you're taking a vacation while gaming. Usually I do the other way, and game in my vacation. Easier way than to get knocked down, is to just use smash attack. A delicious snow proc, and you can enjoy your slam animation for 3+ seconds, if game bugs out and doesn't let you animation cancel into  a roll.

Slam attacks as well, is hell in its' own right. It's completely rng when you slam if you manage to down a dude where he stands, or if he gets downed but slides of in whatever direction he bullet jumped. Or maybe he just doesn't get knocked down, because why would he do that? Sometimes I've even been sliding in the direction I was slam-attacked towards as well, weird enough, but it is what it is.

Plenty more where this is coming from, but I suppose your counter to this is just more of 'git gud', despite skill not being an issue, but gameplay.

[Void2258]

They need to just abort this event. It's actively driving players to quit the game. It is hands down the absolute worst thing in the whole game, and by making an event, you drive players trying things out or returning to do it and leave thinking this is what they consider quality content. NOTHING is better than this (as in better to do nothing than to do this). They spent last night advertising the game at the awards show to get more players and today they are losing all those taking a look due to this event.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Void2258

[--Leyenda-yight6]

hace 41 minutos, Void2258 dijo:

They need to just abort this event. It's actively driving players to quit the game. It is hands down the absolute worst thing in the whole game, and by making an event, you drive players trying things out or returning to do it and leave thinking this is what they consider quality content. NOTHING is better than this (as in better to do nothing than to do this). They spent last night advertising the game at the awards show to get more players and today they are losing all those taking a look due to this event.

It's a terrible event and that's it, it's not mandatory and only gives a few simple glyphs as a reward, you don't even have to win, if this causes a player to leave the game I'm sure they would leave even without the event.

[Void2258]

2 hours ago, --Leyenda-yight6 said:

It's a terrible event and that's it, it's not mandatory and only gives a few simple glyphs as a reward, you don't even have to win, if this causes a player to leave the game I'm sure they would leave even without the event.

The problem is with it in the nav menu, new players are being directed to it. They have a bad experience, assume all events are like this, and stop playing. We vets can say "just avoid it" all we want, but new players with no clue and no warning just see a snowflake and click it. I have had 2 new players declare the game is dumb and leave mid match saying they are uninstalling the game (asking why people play this if it's so bad), so while anecdotal it's not unfounded. You have to assume any event will pull in new players just by existing in the nav menu, so the experience needs to have minimum quality to avoid scaring them off. This does not, and it needs to be taken off before it tanks any player gains.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Void2258

[Stafelund]

There's an annoying bug that causes you to get stuck on the score screen and be unable to move.

[Zeemgeem]

On 2023-12-07 at 4:35 PM, ToxicCookie91 said:

I agree about the skill floor and ceiling, that there's a lot of space between. But holy S#&$ my dude, that explanation doesn't save this gamemode. This has been my only chance at levelling conclave, and after getting to rank 3, halfway to 4, I don't think I have enough willpower to keep going. During the first few days of the event I had tons of kills, easily going 20+ kills with 5+ deaths, while past few days (When I'm able to get a game, that is) has seen me at less than 1kdr. Problem is, it was barely more fun having 4 kdr than 1, and that says something about the gamemode.

Sure, I've been able to work around the horrible melee weapon, where you automatically dash 5-10m past your enemy, unless you of course 180 with the mouse during the attack, or if you hold backwards and use a slide attack. But that it's halfway possible to work around it, doesn't make it "hurr durr good, skillcap mate". It just means that you can make an very annoying thing slightly less annoying. I still end up in fights where I see 2-4 players from both teams, do the dash melee in a small area for 10 seconds, with no one dying. I've NEVER seen that in any other pvp game in my entire life, and I wouldn't say that's because it's a gamechanging positive game design...

The servers I have been playing on as well, have not been kind with the snowballs. It took me a while to realise it was the snowballs that caused the slow, as the slow proc hardly ever matched when I got hit or when I hit other players with snowballs. Then again, the slow proc is horrible, as it seems to stack with the animations... Have you tried being knocked down and hit with a slow proc? That means you're taking a vacation while gaming. Usually I do the other way, and game in my vacation. Easier way than to get knocked down, is to just use smash attack. A delicious snow proc, and you can enjoy your slam animation for 3+ seconds, if game bugs out and doesn't let you animation cancel into  a roll.

Slam attacks as well, is hell in its' own right. It's completely rng when you slam if you manage to down a dude where he stands, or if he gets downed but slides of in whatever direction he bullet jumped. Or maybe he just doesn't get knocked down, because why would he do that? Sometimes I've even been sliding in the direction I was slam-attacked towards as well, weird enough, but it is what it is.

Plenty more where this is coming from, but I suppose your counter to this is just more of 'git gud', despite skill not being an issue, but gameplay.

I agree these issues exist but the arguments most are making is "scythe make me go forward, game bad" while they are well aware how the scythe works and continue hammering E expecting it to suddenly do something else for the hundredth time in a row. This is not the fault of the game but players who have no ability to adapt or learn. It's not a very good weapon, but it's not the primary weapon you're supposed to be using anyway. It's a snowball fight, not a candy cane fight. And I would put absolutely 0 weight into what you observed other players doing, because most players don't even sprint, roll, bullet jump, regular jump, or slide. And they deserve to have a bad experience for it if they won't engage with the mechanics. The inconsistencies with connection are a valid complaint, though they also do not occur when the alerts aren't up as there are enough dedicated servers for everyone. This is still a fault in the mode and DE should put up temporary servers for the duration of the event to account for the extra players.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Zeemgeem
Extra detail

[Graavarg]

In my opinion this sucks so immensely the only way to keep your sanity is to AFK the whole thing.

Or even better, just let it pass you by. 30 minutes of this is not worth a catalyst. Not even close. Just about any other mission in PvE Warframe Universe is more fun than this. Much more fun.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with any Warframe "git gud", that is just silly. On the other hand the only positive is that it doesn't matter how much you suck at the actual game, you can still "win" your exciting snowball fight. Especially on some platforms.

I got hijacked into one match when the event dropped, and joined a friend today for another match. Never again. Never ever ever again. I actively hate this.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Graavarg

[Ruddertail]

Every other game developer learned one particular lesson in fast-paced PVP games. This lesson was that primary weapons need to be either hitscan, rapid fire, or explosive. You'll even see this in DE's own games - Unreal Tournament - so they can't pretend they missed it somehow.

The rockets and flak bombs are slow projectiles but they explode, which helps them actually be fun to use. Bio rifle is slow projectiles, but practically explosive. The basic pistol you start with is hitscan. The minigun is rapid fire and hitscan. It's good design.

I don't understand why this lesson was discarded for Warframe because very slow-moving projectiles with tiny hitboxes that barely deal any damage would make any game mode a slog.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Ruddertail

[ToxicCookie91]

On 2023-12-10 at 12:02 AM, Zeemgeem said:

I agree these issues exist but the arguments most are making is "scythe make me go forward, game bad" while they are well aware how the scythe works and continue hammering E expecting it to suddenly do something else for the hundredth time in a row. This is not the fault of the game but players who have no ability to adapt or learn. It's not a very good weapon, but it's not the primary weapon you're supposed to be using anyway. It's a snowball fight, not a candy cane fight. And I would put absolutely 0 weight into what you observed other players doing, because most players don't even sprint, roll, bullet jump, regular jump, or slide. And they deserve to have a bad experience for it if they won't engage with the mechanics. The inconsistencies with connection are a valid complaint, though they also do not occur when the alerts aren't up as there are enough dedicated servers for everyone. This is still a fault in the mode and DE should put up temporary servers for the duration of the event to account for the extra players.

It's not the game's fault that people don't learn to workaround it, but it is the gamemode's fault that the base functionality, is confusing and hard to get into.
The reason I point out stuff that needs to be changed, is because I actually want Conclave to be an active part of Warframe, and not just a dead part that gets brought out for an event once every few years.

Players who are new to conclave, have no reason to get into it at all, when they're met with systems that are this hard to understand and get into. Makes much more sense for them to just play an arena mode in any other game, or just retreat to other parts of Warframe. I consider myself experienced now when it comes to Warframe, but it took a while for me to grasp the slow mechanic in Snowclave, due to how weird it procced. Often felt / saw I got hit by snowballs, but due to connection issues, it took time for the proc to register. I also don't know if melee has a small chance to proc slow, as I've rarely seen an enemy be slowed, despite there not being allies nearby. Of course, could just be lucky snowball from far away, but there's no information at all, so there's only guessing..

Edited December 15, 2023 by ToxicCookie91