a discussion on raids, raid mechanics and raid tuning.

[SDGDen]

as a foreword, i'd like to explain my experience on this matter: i've been playing warframe for 9 years now, i also played destiny 2 at a relatively high level, participating in 5 "day 1" raid clears and being a raid sherpa (someone who teaches raids) for two years. i quit destiny 2 because of some related traumatic experiences and would like to not discuss further about it but it did give me a very good grasp on raid mechanics in shooters. i have also played some division 2 and obviously, a long time ago i played warframe's old raids. 

on top of this, i've spent a while studying game design, while i didn't finish my study (did not have the money to do so) i do consider myself somewhat knowledgable on the topic. 

 

the first thing i will say is: the old raids will NOT work in the current meta. rampant powercreep would mean the old raids are a cakewalk. the only real threat in the old raids for modern builds would be the insta-death from messing up a hack. remember that the game was very different back then.

the issue with the old raids is of where they get their difficulty.

raid difficulty can be split up into two components: combat difficulty and mechanical difficulty. combat difficulty is the amount of enemies and how difficult it is to kill said enemies, mechanical difficulty is the difficulty of the encounter mechanics, how the players progress.

these two are linked together because if a player has to spend more time and effort on mechanics, that takes resources away from dealing with the enemies. 

 

due to powercreep, it is currently impossible to have high combat difficulty in warframe. large groups dont do us much because of AOE and tough enemies dont do us much because there are easy ways to deal percentile damage, true damage, bypass armor etc. 

of course, as one of the forum's resident balance hard-*sses, i WOULD call for blanket nerfs to address this issue, and i've made massive explainers for those before, but that wont be this post. this post will be about approaching raids without performing any *real* nerfs to players, since that's what the playerbase tends to want. 

 

to solve the combat difficulty side of the puzzle without nerfs, we'll have to look at making more complex enemies and raid mechanics related to those enemies, enemies that specifically counter the ways in which the player is overpowered (with ways open for the players to counter those enemies back)

these solutions are in no particular order and multiple should be applied at the same time.

#1: a new form of sentient mimic that can replicate whichever abilities the players activate. this will require significant strategic planning because the players' power can easily be turned against them. if someone casts mesmer skin with the mesmer shield augment and it gets replicated, the enemies are now tanky AF. if someone casts terrify, the whole squad may get their armor stripped. if someone casts roar, the enemies may gain a significant damage boost.

#2: an encounter where enemies spawn in waves, every wave, the enemies will be entirely immune to all the damage types that hit the previous 2 waves. this means players have to coordinate and alternate their damage types. this also means that you *can* still nuke every wave, as long as you bring nukes of different damage types.

#3: instant-kill mechanics, as much as they suck getting instantly downed for getting a mechanic wrong is a sure-fire way to create stakes since nothing can bypass it. 

#4: enemies with resistances or immunities to certain abilities. for example armor strips. this is already a thing for (field)bosses. 

#5: targeted dispels, enemies that dispel specific types of abilities

#6: for a boss fight, you could have 16 enemies "steal" each of the player squad's abilities, then give the players limited time to get them back before the DPS phase, such that they need to choose which abilities they want to bring into the DPS phase on the fly. do they want to drop their defensive powers in favour of having all their DPS buffs, or do they want to ignore some of their DPS buffs in favour of an easier time staying alive? 

#7: for bosses, i wouldn't recommend damage attenuation per-se, but rather per-weapontype damage resistance that's listed in-game. this resolves the issue that certain weapon types are significantly stronger than others without simply making all effort you put into making the best build worthless.

#8: a dangerous destructible environment that reacts poorly to AOE weapons and abilities, resulting in loss of mechanic progress for the raid. this means for this encounter specifically players would have to use precision weapons.

there are definitely more solutions, these are just a few i could think of.

if some of these sound annoying: that's because they probably are! higher combat difficulty tends to either be "the player needs to be nerfed" or "the player must be significantly inconvenienced"

 

now for mechanical difficulty, mechanics tend to be a combination of some very simple mechanics, such as:

>stand on a plate/capture and defend a plate

>pick up and carry an object or buff, then deposit it in the right place or throw it at the right thing.

>one person with a buff can see a thing and must communicate it to another person without a buff who must then do a thing

>hack a thing

>escort a thing/defend a thing

>players must pick up different buffs and do different things depending on the buff

>kill things

>theres a timer, you need to do a thing to extend the timer

 

these mechanics can be combined relatively easily, for example, in an encounter, transference is disabled and the group is split in two. on each side, one player must pick up the "void-touched" buff, which knocks them out of their frame and into operator mode. the other two players must then defend their partner, who cant deal damage to the normal enemies, but CAN deal damage to the weak spot of one "void-touched" enemy, once the weak spot is destroyed, the non-void-touched player must then kill the void-touched enemy. this must all happen within 30 seconds or else a wipe triggers, the previous void-touched players now get their warframes back and the process repeats but the previously void-touched players get a debuff that causes them to die if they pick up void-touched again, meaning that now the OTHER player needs to pick up the buff. 

 

to up the stakes, i would like to add the following: no self-revives (including last gasp and sentinel sacrifice) with the exception of warframe passive self-revives. each player can revive another player ONCE per encounter. 

on top of that, obviously these raids would have to be quite high in level and have steel path modifiers. i dont like sp modifiers myself but sadly they're the only way to get the enemies to be somewhat challenging. 

 

 

one more important aspect of raid-building is that the flow of the raid needs to make sense. the first encounter should ALWAYS be an introduction to a mechanic, the second encounter should then expand on that mechanic, the third encounter should then introduce a second mechanic that interacts with the previous mechanic or enhances it in some way, and the fourth encounter (the final boss in this case) brings everything together. 

 

 

to close off this discussion, i'd like to design a raid for yall, i'd love to hear what you guys think about this raid, and whether you'd like to see it in the game. 

 

Title: Mechanical Demons.

introductory lore: the void has gotten hold of some old sentient fragments, corrupted them, these fragments wouldn't have lasted long due to the void's poison, but seem to be thriving. this may be the biggest threat the solar system has ever seen. you must go there with a team of 8, find the core and disable it so these fragments can be put to rest before the void learns how to properly wield them.

the enemies in this raid are void-touched sentients, think of a blend between sentient tech and the new murmur enemies. great at adapting and capable of not just resisting the void, but wielding it. the raid takes place inside a large sentient ship on the edge between the void and material space. as a result revives are limited and transference cannot be accessed freely. 

 

first encounter:

the players enter a large courtyard, at the far end is a door, their goal is to open the door. in front of the door is a well. the door opens when the well is filled.

the encounter happens in waves, four random players get kicked out of their warframes, enemies will spawn that are immune to operator damage, the four non-transfered players must defend their transfered friends until four shielded enemies spawn, the transfered players must void-dash through these enemies to de-shield them, and then kill them with void damage. these enemies drop a void-touched buff that can be picked up by operators and deposited in the well. after being alive for 10 seconds, these enemies start casting a wipe mechanic that will trigger after another 10 seconds. this wipe mechanic instantly kills all players and thus fails the encounter. this cycle repeats until 16 buffs are deposited into the well, at which point the encounter ends and the door opens. 


second encounter: 

once inside, the players travel through some corridors and into a room with four large panels that have 4 empty spots on them and one small panel with 6 buttons with symbols on them.

instead of randomly, a rift appears, players can walk through the rift to get put into operator mode. once again, the enemies that drop the buff appear, they do not cast a wipe this time, at the same time, large amounts of enemies spawn that attempt to swarm and kill the players. some of these enemies have a blue glow on them that signifies them as "dispelling" enemies, hits from them will dispell one of your active abilities at random, other enemies have a red glow that signifies them as "buffing" enemies, these are invulnerable except for their weak spot, and make nearby enemies immune to all damage (including the ones relevant to the operator players). the operator players must each pick up a void-touched buff, this void-touched buff allows them to see sequences of symbols on one of the four panels around the room (each player can see one of the symbols). they must communicate these sequences of symbols to the other players, those other players must shoot the same sequence on the small panel. doing so will cause all the enemies in the room to be stunned momentarily as void energy surges through the room, all players are returned to their warframes and are granted 10 seconds of free abilities to clear out as many enemies as possible, at the end of the 10 seconds, the players are left with a full energy bar. this sequence then repeats another 3 times, once for each panel. 

after the first panel is cleared, the subsequent void surge disables energy orb drops.

after the second panel is cleared, the subsequent void surge disables energy regeneration.

after the third panel is cleared, the subsequent void surge disables abilities in general.

when the fourth panel is cleared, the encounter is finished.

if the code is filled in wrong, an alarm sounds and void energy washes over the room, taking all of the players' energy and granting all of the enemies a significant amount of overguard. the players then re-start the panel they're on from scratch. 

 

intermission: parkour!

which shooter raid isn't complete with some intermission exploratory parkour? probably with a hidden chest that gives extra loot! 

 

third encounter:

in this encounter, the void touched buff gains a timer, when the timer runs out it becomes "void-starved" and starts rapidly damaging the player. this encounter also introduces the void-touched altar. when a void-touched player and a non-voidtouched player stand within range of the altar and interact with it, the void-touched buff will swap to the non-voidtouched player and the timer will reset. only operators can do this, not warframes. 

this encounter will also introduce unstable enemies, these are comparatively weak and look like they're about to explode, when they get killed they create a rift in their location that allows one player to go into operator mode. 

in this encounter, there are 8 plates, each with a symbol on them. in the center of the room is the core, around he core is a protective field. to disable the field, the players must capture the plates in the right sequence and prevent them from being recaptured. when the encounter starts one player is granted void-touched for 30 seconds. capturing a plate takes 60 seconds and requires 4 players. there are 4 void-touched altars in the 4 cardinal directions. 

the symbol sequence floats around the core and is easily readable (but both the symbol sequence and the plate symbols are only readable by void-touched players). once the second plate is captured, a second player gets granted the void-touched buff at random, this repeats until 4 players have the void-touched buff (plate 4 capped= 3rd void-touched buff, plate 6 capped = 4th void-touched buff). players that are granted the void-touched buff this way are pushed out of their warframes, their warframes are returned when they lose the void-touched debuff. 

so the goal is pretty simple: capture the 8 plates in the right sequence, which isnt hard to figure out. but do it while having to kill unstable enemies to go operator mode so you can take over the buff for another player. 

 

fourth encounter: destroy the core. 

the core has some attack functions, big sweeping beam attacks that deal massive damage, waves of magnetic, pulses of directed void energy that dispel your abilities etc.  

every "phase" starts with a one minute timer, a bunch of enemies (including all the previously mentioned variants) spawning and an audio queue of three requiems (it is only at this point in writing the raid i decided that the symbols are the requiems, it seems fitting and would be established symbols that bring some depth to the raid). these three requiems match up with the plates, three players must pick up the correct requiems and remain in operator mode with them, a fourth player must find the enemy that drops the void-touched buff. when the timer is up, a wave of void energy pulses out that instantly kills anyone not on one of the correct plates, at that point the core is overheated and DPS starts. DPS is only 5 seconds, but there are three weak spots on the core (left, middle, right). one of the weak spots lights up with a symbol. the player with the void-touched buff must call it out and the player with the matching requiem must shoot that weak point to extend DPS by 10 seconds, 5 seconds later the next weak spot lights up, rinse-repeat. once DPS phase ends, the entire thing happens over again. 

after 3 phases, or when the final stand is reached, a new sequence will sound: 3 times oull. there is no oull in the arena, signifying that the players have 10 seconds to finish off the remainder of the health bar or wipe. the enrage in this case is a soft-enrage where it simply goes into final stand with however much health is left.

the core has a central weak point that has an additional 2x multiplier to weak point damage on top of the normal weak point multipliers. the core is immune to the actual effects from status procs and abilities, but can be afflicted by status procs for the purposes of condition overload or galvanized status builds. 

 

so yeah, the symbols are the 8 requiems: vome, fass, xata, netra, lohk, jahu, kra and ris. 

 

as for drops: finishing this mission will drop a random weapon out of a pool of 6 for every player, these weapons will have the same bonusses as lich weapons (with the element based on which frame you beat the raid with) 

you can get drops from the raid 5 times a week. 

as i said above, there's no self-revives and every player can only revive another player once per encounter, revives ARE infinite during the parkour intermission.

before each encounter is triggered, ammo, health and energy pads are unlimited, during the encounter they can not be used. effectively: you can replenish before the encounter, but not during.

the entire raid is ONE mission, meaning you CANNOT swap gear during it. you also cannot join a raid that's in progress, and it will not be matchmade. 

 

i'd imagine this being level 200 steel path, but i'd be down to have a "non-SP mode" that drops blueprints for the weapons (without the elemental buff, valence fusion or the ability to go to rank 40) as a kind of training mode. 

 

sorry for the VERY long post, but i hope yall like this idea i guess? i hope i also brought up some interesting things related to implementing raids in warframe, and well... as much as they probably wont, i hope DE sees this and does *something* with it. if they want to rip this entire concept off whole-sale they have my full permission to do so.  

 

[ShogunGunshow]

TL;DR everything but I do agree that basically the only possible way to actually challenge players in Warframe is to have some honest-to-god do-this-or-wipe raid mechanics.

Unfortunately, if history is any indication, the moment most players encounter ANY amount of adversity they'll start screaming on reddit and the forums about it being too hard.

[0_The_F00l]

I am mostly in support for the changes to how difficulty would be handled.

The actual raid itself ... Sounds a bit too complicated and considering 50% of it needs to be done by operators feels excessive.

[Xzorn]

There's a fundamental flaw with Raids and mechanic driven encounters which Warframe could never manage.
The slaw is that once you learn the dance, you know it forever. Replay value then plummets.

Of course you have players who only care about gear and aren't interested in the actual content but even those players will stop once they get said gear. Competition has generally proven effective in keeping player retention with mechanic encounters. Originally this was a race for spawns in which any group on the server could grab because dungeons were not singular instances. Later World Firsts/Server First became a thing but even with that route, progression guilds are the ones who have all the fun.

Path of Exile throws out a new boss nearly every league and I always go in blind but after the 10th kill, I can't be bothered anymore.
The best boss/encounter you can make is where the attack patterns and mechanics change which is why I feel AI will take the reigns in the future.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

best I could see happening with regards to raids are maybe more secret bosses, but perhaps with missions designed specifically around them, that would involve taking on a few puzzles or whatever, before going into a very difficult fight that requires players to be mindful of their tactics and gear, as opposed to "take X and win". that seems like a decent basic premise for such a mission to me.

beyond that though, I'm not sure DE want to invest that much into such a mode, when most players are enjoying the power fantasy and such content would require a lot of resources to develop, which they may feel would be better spent elsewhere.

 

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Raids can be a thing in warframe. Only problem is who is willing to fail 100 times before finally seeing the stars align just to get the boss kill? No one wants to stay in the same group if they fail Eidolon hunting 2 times at all. 

[Xzorn]

14 minutes ago, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

Raids can be a thing in warframe. Only problem is who is willing to fail 100 times before finally seeing the stars align just to get the boss kill? No one wants to stay in the same group if they fail Eidolon hunting 2 times at all. 

 

Well, there's not much teamwork in Warframe these days and that's mostly DE's fault by removing any rewards for doing so.

It first started with the AABC rotation to limit rewards then they replaced Void Key Shares with Relics which also started the whole "my teammate is just for better loot" concept and it's been that way since. The new 5 time weekly can easily be solo'd. They just put a pointless mechanic in there to force players to group.

Steel Path Circuit is a great example in the outcome of this method over time. No one cares what frame you play and there's even a Topic up now talking about how people end on Defense rotation. That can only be an issue if literally no one got a frame that can function in defense which is a low probability. Everyone just want's to deeps.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Everyone can't decide on raid mechanics. 

What you think is ideal, someone else won't like and vice versa. 

It's ultimately up to the the company to decide. They'll take feedback and adjust like always, but that's about it.

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

4 hours ago, Xzorn said:

 

Well, there's not much teamwork in Warframe these days and that's mostly DE's fault by removing any rewards for doing so.

It first started with the AABC rotation to limit rewards then they replaced Void Key Shares with Relics which also started the whole "my teammate is just for better loot" concept and it's been that way since. The new 5 time weekly can easily be solo'd. They just put a pointless mechanic in there to force players to group.

Steel Path Circuit is a great example in the outcome of this method over time. No one cares what frame you play and there's even a Topic up now talking about how people end on Defense rotation. That can only be an issue if literally no one got a frame that can function in defense which is a low probability. Everyone just want's to deeps.

People leave Defense Circuit because it's bugged. Not because they dont' have frames for the game mode. Any frame will do since it's actually hard to fail Defense Circuit. 

[ShogunGunshow]

Also as far as mechanics, DE *used* to use them more in boss encounters. The example I always think of is Kela - where you have to stand on the platforms in order to spin the tiles and expose the point to shoot. Something a step or two more complicated than that and you've got a mechanic that can be a step in a boss phase. 

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

Destiny raids were fun for awhile but eventually it just felt like a weekly ritual of herding cats. 

Theres so many different kinds of warframe abilities, so many different kinds of weapons, such variances in stats and potential DPS, idk how they'd balance it. 

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

7 hours ago, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

Raids can be a thing in warframe. Only problem is who is willing to fail 100 times before finally seeing the stars align just to get the boss kill? No one wants to stay in the same group if they fail Eidolon hunting 2 times at all. 

>you only have however many minutes in a night cycle to do eidolons before waiting 2 hours (or whatever it is dont give me any crap) to do them.

 

The result is zero patience from most people. If they ever bring any form of "raid" to the game i sincerely hope they dont do that and either let us run it as much as we want or at least make it a X per week thing.

[Enxchiol]

Cool ideas you have here. In general i really like your raid idea. The only thing is that it seems this concept would make voice chat in the group mandatory(especially the main boss dps phase), and some people dont want or cant do that. That could be avoided if it was more set up in "roles", like in Railjack, you have the gunner, the engineer, pilot and archwing(I still think Railjack would be the best place to build a raid from xd).

 

I also feel that with all encounters that are designed to have a very real possibility of failure, it needs to be as convenient as possible to try again. For example the new murmur secret boss is really cool but getting to it in the first place is so inconvenient with gathering all the 60 eyes. People will mind mission failure much less if they can just jump right back into the challenge.

 

Also also, I have been thinking about enemies that function not as the main challenge but as "adds" to a fight, like the enemies spawning during a boss, and how the Murmur enemies fit that role very well, considering how they are slow and have basically no ranged attacks. If you had grineer or corpus enemies in the secret boss fight it would be a hail of gunfire that would make it extremely hard to focus on what the boss is doing(or neccessitate a special "add clear" role from the team).

 

 

[SneakyErvin]

On 2023-12-20 at 2:07 AM, SDGDen said:

#1: a new form of sentient mimic that can replicate whichever abilities the players activate. this will require significant strategic planning because the players' power can easily be turned against them. if someone casts mesmer skin with the mesmer shield augment and it gets replicated, the enemies are now tanky AF. if someone casts terrify, the whole squad may get their armor stripped. if someone casts roar, the enemies may gain a significant damage boost.

#2: an encounter where enemies spawn in waves, every wave, the enemies will be entirely immune to all the damage types that hit the previous 2 waves. this means players have to coordinate and alternate their damage types. this also means that you *can* still nuke every wave, as long as you bring nukes of different damage types.

#3: instant-kill mechanics, as much as they suck getting instantly downed for getting a mechanic wrong is a sure-fire way to create stakes since nothing can bypass it. 

#4: enemies with resistances or immunities to certain abilities. for example armor strips. this is already a thing for (field)bosses. 

#5: targeted dispels, enemies that dispel specific types of abilities

#6: for a boss fight, you could have 16 enemies "steal" each of the player squad's abilities, then give the players limited time to get them back before the DPS phase, such that they need to choose which abilities they want to bring into the DPS phase on the fly. do they want to drop their defensive powers in favour of having all their DPS buffs, or do they want to ignore some of their DPS buffs in favour of an easier time staying alive? 

#7: for bosses, i wouldn't recommend damage attenuation per-se, but rather per-weapontype damage resistance that's listed in-game. this resolves the issue that certain weapon types are significantly stronger than others without simply making all effort you put into making the best build worthless.

#8: a dangerous destructible environment that reacts poorly to AOE weapons and abilities, resulting in loss of mechanic progress for the raid. this means for this encounter specifically players would have to use precision weapons.

None of these require a raid though, or a group for that matter.

Just as the list of mechanics, none of them aside from "stand on plates" requires other people, and "stand on plates" is just an arbitrary mechanics to increase the needed number of members in the group. In the end it is uninteresting and not why people raid. Which is also why "raids" in shooter games and arpgs are a big joke, since they dont have actual raid mechanics, just arbitrary things to inflate the number of players required in the content. 

So why the need for a raid when the mechanics can be implemented for solo and group overall? All you add with the raid are the arbitrary and uninteresting mechanics, nothing else. The bosses wont be extra engaging for the group just because a puzzle is added to open a door in order to reach said boss. Having to play your class (which we lack in WF) during the boss fight is what makes raids fun and engaging for a larger than regular group.

Boss does X thing, people go hide behind the tank, or the dps with a blind or kick ability needs to time an interrupt etc. which in turn requires the tank or off tank to be on their feet to pull aggro back directly after.

Things spawn that need to be taken out by the dps while the tank and a healer holds the boss, or similar things.

Or like some encounters. The boss has this massive ability which can either be soaked up by the tank with support from the healer, so the dps can continue their work, or everyone needs to fall back behind cover.

Or one of my favorites that isnt even really a boss. The core hounds in Molten Core, where they all need to die roughly at the same time, so the dps needs to be on par across all of them while the tank(s) keep them occupied. If they die in a slightly desynced order the dead ones will res again. Which could lead to a terrible kill cycle.

Things like those justify increased group sizes and they manage to engage atleast most of the group that face the encounter. And we wont get that in WF since we dont have tanks, healer and dps, because everyone does everything all at once with zero aggro management options really.

I just dont understand the obsession or need regarding raids when they'll just end up like regular content only requiring more people. Not to mention we still rely on peer-to-peer, which is unreliable enough with a single group of 4 players. That is something I dont wanna experience with 1+ groups or a player holding the fate of even more players in their hand incase of a wild host migration monster appearing.

[Graavarg]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I do think you are missing a central part. Raids are meant to be ultimate co-op missions. That means that in addition to "combat difficulty" and "mechanical difficulty" you also have "teamwork difficulty". And as a very central thing too. In any worthwhile raid, you can't just round up a certain number of randoms using whatever equipment and playstyle they like, and while in mission everyone can't just do their own thing. Which is why most Warframe missions plays as the opposite to raids. Also, the difficulty with Warframe bosses are damage and gimmicks, there is very little else to do aside from figuring out/handling the boss gimmicks and tanking damage while dealing damage.

Stuff like "stand on plates" or "flip switch X, Y, Z" are easily meaningless gimmicks (as they were in the previous raids) and shouldn't even be in a raid (it's pre-kindergarden stuff where real raids are concerned). Better raids are also designed to NOT follow the same identical path every time, you might know the boss(es), their summons, the tells etc. etc., but you can never be totally sure exactly how the fights will happen. This "pseudo-randomness" factor gets reduced in really high-level raids, due to the difficulty getting cranked up, which in turn actually makes them less fun to play than well-designed mid-level raids.

I consider Trids to be the best "raid-like" experience in Warframe, because a co-op team with roles is much more effective than anything else. While some other bosses, events or operations have some raid-type stuff going on they never actually determine anything. This is not because Warframe design sucks, it is simply because a huge part of the game is "random squads" and "solo play".

Some prerogatives. Because it is "a raid", we can drop "design for solo play", as raids are multi-player co-op by default. The very first design challenge then becomes how to make a squad of 4, 6 or 8 randoms behave like trained unit. Because a Warframe "raid" really has to be open to randoms, otherwise there are groups and clans that will (once again) behave like less-than-human idiots/a-holes. In my opinion the best way to do this is by presenting the gathered squad with a mission brief and doling out "role cards" and allowing players to switch roles (better than allowing players to select them). Roles could be both functional ("tank", "healer", "sniper", "sneaker" etc.) and linked to specific in-mission tasks ("in phase 2, got here and to that, when the bridge/door/whatever is blown up"). This card should be an active part of the raid "HUD" (showing that players objectives and tracking the raid progress).

This means that Warframe/DE would have to make a 180 degree turn, and actually explain explicitly how to finish a mission/raid in advance. "Going in blind without clue" would be replaced by "going in prepped, with a plan, and with a designed task/role for everyone".

In order to make the raid fun, it cannot be just a complicated list of "go there, do that, get the reward", even if there are different roles and stuff. That is just a more complex version of "go stand on your plate". There has to be action and reaction, stuff happening that makes things (and "the plan") go sideways, downways, upways and backways. And force the raiding team to respond, in part or in full. With how Warframe currently works, there are actually a lot of options. A technically simple one is serialized spawns: enemies that can call other enemies that can summon or build other stuff. If you don't break that chain you will be in trouble/swamped. You can have other factions randomly also deciding to raid, turning part of the mission into a three-way fight. Enemies can turn out light (like really turn out light) by destroying a generator (that can be repaired). There are lots of environmental variables that can be put in play. Ammo can be limited (having to take raiding enemy ammo storage into account), invisibility can be counteracted (even Grineers can throw cans of paint around).

I agree that the power we have is insanely high. Insane because we can do much, much, MUCH more damage with "normal" weapons that we can handle ourselves. As a result the only way to balance the game is to make enemies insanely tanky, in that they can take MUCH more damage than they dish out. However, in a way this is a zero sum game, as it is all about balance (the numbers are actually unimportant). Also, that balance is geared for single player power vs multiple enemies, which is why even in a squad of our any well-equipped player could handle all the killing in a mission. I am fairly sure that this could be tweaked into working quite well, raid-wise. That is why our power itself is not a problem, that the power is "general" (everything kills everything fast) is a much bigger problem. The easiest way to address this would (of course) be upping enemy immunity to certain damage types. This is quite close to (some) existing design and easily implemented. It would be much more interesting if such immunity was an in-mission thing, resulting from the enemy reacting to Tenno damage (getting "anti-viral shots", "non-conductive armor coating", "anti-toxin diffusers" etc., which can be destroyed). All such details adds to the "randomness" and makes the raid more interesting, and allows "good squads" to be more effective. An "easy add" would also be enemy healers, even allowing them resurrect enemies immediately after death.

Finally, raids should differ from much of the rest of the game by NOT being two things:

- They should not be about FARMING loot, time and time and time again. So much of the game is like that already, and that is sure to trigger the "I want everything at once without effort"-brigade. With the humongous amount of content in Warframe it should not be impossible to fill that final treasure room with meaningful stuff that players can select. Boosters, arcanes, vaulted relics, skins and cosmetics, weapons, mods, adapters, even companion genetic prints (with some defined traits), rivens (and riven "lock one attribute while rolling"-adapters), invigoration cards (for equipping into the Helminth), shards... Warframe itself is like a g'damn mega-size treasure house so just by getting to select from huge mix of stuff (with us not even knowing what CAN drop) would be "exciting".

- And they should NOT be "easy". "Failure" should be the most common outcome. Failure need not mean coming out empty-handed, as rewards can be added incrementally during progression. But getting to the end and "winning" should actually mean something, and be the result of teamwork. Currently there is no such content in the game (not even the new boss). Having "teamwork" as the most important factor would foster both co-op and clans, making both more meaningful again.