The Crackhead Pace of Modern Warframe

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, Mr.Lube said:

Suffice to say Warframe is trying to get the best of both worlds, but it is indeed one of the closest game to actually getting there.

 

To further compare Path of Exile to Warframe. Something I tend to do since I started both in 2013 and watched both grow up.

Despite both games starting with slower and methodical combat they both gave into power fantasy. They also both suffered the same problems as result. Unlimited resource management, AoE Layering, map clear speed, one-shots, mass enemy density, stat smashing problems, minimal attention required. The list goes on.

PoE chose to band-aid this problem with unrealistic drop rates, league resets and grind gating content which are literal meters you fill by spamming.

Warframe chose to band-aid this with time gates. Dailies and weeklies. Daily limits started out reasonable enough. You hit the cap then farm some extra so you don't need to tomorrow. Just turn in and move on. This new weekly trend is another beast though. A dirty one that screams mobile gaming. Ever notice the looter part of this game is almost gone at this point? It's all mission completes. That alone hinders a player's interest in actually engaging with enemies and maps.

If you've played Steel Path Survival it's easy to see why. It's just numbers covering the screen. Now compare that to Drifter Durviri combat.
I actually wish Drifter didn't get Decrees. After 4-5 you stop caring about the far superior combat of perfect parries, counter attacks and interrupts.
It's a great example of less but more meaningful enemies and how players interact with them. I'm not holding down melee and running in circles.

[Zahnrad]

3 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

Yareli can't use Helminth abilities because she mounts a k-drive, and apparently whoever designed k-drives didn't realize that they'd have to account for abilities other than Yareli's being able to be cast on it.

Why this is the case I don't know, since the Helminth subsume stuff was added in 2020 and Yareli was 2021. But presumably it has to be a lot of coding work to fix - maybe even a complete rewrite of Merulina specifically - since DE confirmed just straight up refuses to fix it. 

I hope it's a code issue, because I don't buy the animation excuse, since Lower Body and Upper Body animations have been a thing in Warframe for ages. And even if it was because of animations, Titania can look jank with subsumes but I don't believe they should be taken away from her over it.

[Mr.Lube]

14 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

To further compare Path of Exile to Warframe. Something I tend to do since I started both in 2013 and watched both grow up.

Despite both games starting with slower and methodical combat they both gave into power fantasy. They also both suffered the same problems as result. Unlimited resource management, AoE Layering, map clear speed, one-shots, mass enemy density, stat smashing problems, minimal attention required. The list goes on.

PoE chose to band-aid this problem with unrealistic drop rates, league resets and grind gating content which are literal meters you fill by spamming.

Warframe chose to band-aid this with time gates. Dailies and weeklies. Daily limits started out reasonable enough. You hit the cap then farm some extra so you don't need to tomorrow. Just turn in and move on. This new weekly trend is another beast though. A dirty one that screams mobile gaming. Ever notice the looter part of this game is almost gone at this point? It's all mission completes. That alone hinders a player's interest in actually engaging with enemies and maps.

If you've played Steel Path Survival it's easy to see why. It's just numbers covering the screen. Now compare that to Drifter Durviri combat.
I actually wish Drifter didn't get Decrees. After 4-5 you stop caring about the far superior combat of perfect parries, counter attacks and interrupts.
It's a great example of less but more meaningful enemies and how players interact with them. I'm not holding down melee and running in circles.

I've never played PoE, it's very interesting to see you draw the comparison.

As someone who has seen the two different paths that each game has taken, do you have any suggestions as to what you'd like to see change in Warframe?

[Skoomaseller]

13 hours ago, Zahnny said:

I hope it's a code issue, because I don't buy the animation excuse, since Lower Body and Upper Body animations have been a thing in Warframe for ages. And even if it was because of animations, Titania can look jank with subsumes but I don't believe they should be taken away from her over it.

they could also just make 1 generic animation for infused abilities. or if they're feeling like they should work for their paycheck, different generic animations for different types of abilities (damage/buff/debuff/etc...) without having to copy paste the original ability's animations

Edited December 19, 2023 by Skoomaseller

[Xzorn]

31 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

I've never played PoE, it's very interesting to see you draw the comparison.

As someone who has seen the two different paths that each game has taken, do you have any suggestions as to what you'd like to see change in Warframe?

 

I think keeping everything available for trade is important. Bind of Pickup was such a terrible mechanic for games with RPG elements.

The history of the once per day or per week was actually created with good intentions. It was originally designed to replace spawn timers. Other players could no-life you out of a critical spawn that only showed up every few hours and sometimes several days. Large guilds kept timers on all rare spawns in a game and dominated.

The introduction of daily progression like Steel Path Alerts does exactly what this was intended for. It gives more casual players a way to get some quick progress. It also doesn't block those who want to farm to get the Umbra Forma. This is ideal. The concept didn't go dark until around WoW where it was being used to limit instead of aid.

Soft Caps are generally the first idea I try in situations like this. You got one Archon mission per week but what if you did it again for a 5% chance non-Tau? You could also go the route of doing it multiple times increases the chance the next will be Tau by 5% per run. This is somewhat a mix of what both Warframe and Path of Exile have done. You get the quick hit of Warframe but you can choose the grind of PoE also. Even when MMOs went bad with dailies and weeklies you could do them on multiple characters.

Total lock out of content per week is just a bad feeling.

EDIT: Khal is also a good example. It's weekly but you can keep doing it for 10 Stock each run.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Xzorn