You have altered the deal DE. I just pray you don't alter it any further.

[Tombsite]

When the Steel Path was launched DE it was an optional challenge. We got some better drop chances for resources/mods and some steel essence but that was supposed to be it. Outside of those things there was not supposed to be any reason to run the Steel Path version over the regular version. It was an optional mode for those who wanted a bit of a challenge. 

Then came the Zariman. Turns out that the mod booster from SP allowed you to farm the new arcanes that launched with the update twice as fast. But that was just a quirk of the mechanics, not a design decision right?
  
Then came the Voruna update. You could run the new missions as an old school farm but DE were nice to us and implemented a bit of a pity system. You needed to farm Lua Thrax Plasm for building Veruna but you could also use it in the store to offset bad luck. There were even two new missions to farm this on. A low and a high level version. Obviously the higher level version had a higher output of Lua Thrax Plasm (times 2 to be exact). Well the Steel Path was even harder so obviously it gave an even bigger output (20% bonus on the highest level). Wait so now there is a reason to run Steel Path? That is a deliberate design decision to make Steel Path better than regular path!

Then came the Citrine update. DE copied the, generally well received, system from the Voruna update. We collected crystals instead of plasma but the result was the same. But now there was a 50% bonus to the pity system for running Steel Path! This is getting kind of significant DE.

And with this latest event the SP-bonus is now at a +100%. With twice the amount of curses and and twice the amount of expected Grotesque splinters per run.

So we went from Steel Path being "an optional challenge” to “twice as efficient”.

I believe this is bad. But this is already in tl;dr territory so I’ll wait a bit with my arguments and instead ask my fellow players:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

[Rathalio]

Since when there wasn't supposed to be any reasons to play SP over regular mode? As far as I'm aware, Steel essence have been a existing since SP release so... I mean there has always been exclusive content to get there...

And I mean in general in terms of farming efficiency aside from the global drop increase, SP has a higher spawn rate, so it's always been more optimal if your DPS followed.

I really don't see where is your point?

Edited December 25, 2023 by Rathalio

[sunderthefirmament]

9 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

I’m fine with it so long as DE designs and reworks frames so that they have scaling and can stay relevant in the Steel Path. 

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Don't really see an issue with that, if you're good enough to do the harder mission then might as well get rewarded better

[Tombsite]

1 minute ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

Don't really see an issue with that, if you're good enough to do the harder mission then might as well get rewarded better

You see Steel path as a thing that requires skill ("being good enough") and not just a gear check?

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

I play the harder version, I get the stuff I want faster, standard game design.

[Sambhaid]

The new event does kind of borderline go into forced steel path territory as the reward difference is massive but completion time difference is negligible. Im not sure how to feel about this, I think the normal version could use better reward rate for splinters especially.

[Yamazuki]

When SP was released it was already more efficient than non-SP if you had similar TTK, your complaint should have been present day 1. However, I find it absurd to try and argue SP should have absolutely zero benefit over the standard star-chart.

The 'optional' line simply came down to there being no progression actually requiring SP, but again, why didn't you complain about the SP specific Arcanes? If all SP offers is the same exact rewards but quicker, then it's still entirely optional. If you're going to argue otherwise, then why don't you make a big issue over DE's monetization instead.

The quicker rewards is simply an easy way to reward people who progressed through the game or lucky enough to be carried in public. As otherwise, you could ignore SP and not miss out on anything beyond a small number of Arcanes and cosmetics that only a minority care about.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

9 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

You see Steel path as a thing that requires skill ("being good enough") and not just a gear check?

No, it doesn't matter if it requires skill or not it still is a harder version of the regular star chart even if the harder part of it is just making enemies more beefy.

There's still plenty of people that struggle in steel path even with access to gear that could melt enemies, I guess knowing how to build a weapon requires a spec of skill maybe that's why there's many that go to YouTube instead of building something themselves.

[trst]

SP was optimal* from the start since it gave you more rewards than normal. Everything done since then is just a continuation of the original implementation.

That said it is still 100% optional since you don't require anything that's exclusive to SP. Going through a farm slightly faster isn't mandatory and even the upgrades acquired through SP aren't mandatory anywhere except maybe in SP itself. Plus this is all very standard fare for having the option of harder content as it should be more rewarding than normal.

 

*And even then if you want to look at it from the time saving angle technically opening your wallet and/or plat farming is the most optimal route for most of the game. As there's no faster way to get new content than buying plat/selling items to get them off the market or from other players.

[VanFanel1980mx]

23 hours ago, Tombsite said:

When the Steel Path was launched DE it was an optional challenge. We got some better drop chances for resources/mods and some steel essence but that was supposed to be it. Outside of those things there was not supposed to be any reason to run the Steel Path version over the regular version. It was an optional mode for those who wanted a bit of a challenge. 

Then came the Zariman. Turns out that the mod booster from SP allowed you to farm the new arcanes that launched with the update twice as fast. But that was just a quirk of the mechanics, not a design decision right?
  
Then came the Voruna update. You could run the new missions as an old school farm but DE were nice to us and implemented a bit of a pity system. You needed to farm Lua Thrax Plasm for building Veruna but you could also use it in the store to offset bad luck. There were even two new missions to farm this on. A low and a high level version. Obviously the higher level version had a higher output of Lua Thrax Plasm (times 2 to be exact). Well the Steel Path was even harder so obviously it gave an even bigger output (20% bonus on the highest level). Wait so now there is a reason to run Steel Path? That is a deliberate design decision to make Steel Path better than regular path!

Then came the Citrine update. DE copied the, generally well received, system from the Voruna update. We collected crystals instead of plasma but the result was the same. But now there was a 50% bonus to the pity system for running Steel Path! This is getting kind of significant DE.

And with this latest event the SP-bonus is now at a +100%. With twice the amount of curses and and twice the amount of expected Grotesque splinters per run.

So we went from Steel Path being "an optional challenge” to “twice as efficient”.

I believe this is bad. But this is already in tl;dr territory so I’ll wait a bit with my arguments and instead ask my fellow players:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

From the moment it came out I thought it was the lazy "challenge" design where enemies are just bulkier and beefier, sadly it didn't even become an alternative for solo power leveling, at least they backtracked in the whole "play steel path to get these mods which will make steel path a bit easier" deal, I think the sponge path is being used as a way for DE to pretend the grind is fair as long as you can play the "harder" version of the game, not only that, they took a step back from the Zariman token system by having the new tokens give less standing, yes, you can do bounties but maybe people prefer to approach the game differently like they were allowed before, and then of course they also made the tilesets vertically ample to have people with small loot radars miss on the stuff, the game content is being padded as usual, people need to realize that trying to stop players from breezing through the content is stupid, yes, there are very few ones who do that and then complain about content drought, it should be their choice, let them deal with the consequences instead of punishing the rest of the players.

Edited December 26, 2023 by VanFanel1980mx

[TARINunit9]

33 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

So we went from Steel Path being "an optional challenge” to “twice as efficient”.

I believe this is bad. But this is already in tl;dr territory so I’ll wait a bit with my arguments and instead ask my fellow players:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

Steel Path has always had increased drop rates AND increased pickups per drop. In addition, Steel Path has always had cosmetic rewards (the planet holograms). Steel Path has even always had exclusive bosses, sort of (the Acolytes were moved from Shadow Debt to Steel Path)

There's even some content that CAN'T be done Steel Path, namely Narmer Bounties and Archon Hunts

I don't think DE have started down the slippery slope just yet... But they are certainly giving it the side-eye

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

Power creep and complete lack of balance make steel path "the normal" difficulty. I personally do not mind that sp allows for a faster farm.

[CosoMalvadoNG]

hace 13 minutos, (XBOX)C11H22O11 dijo:

There's still plenty of people that struggle in steel path even with access to gear that could melt enemies, I guess knowing how to build a weapon requires a spec of skill maybe that's why there's many that go to YouTube instead of building something themselves.

Hmm, that's what it's like to be a newbie in any game. They tend to watch streamers or videos on YouTube so they don't understand how the game works and then doing post crying about nonsense.
 

hace 45 minutos, Tombsite dijo:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

I don't really care, it's just a way to farm better.

When will you all understand? This game is 10+ years old... I'm still waiting for drastic measures to reduce general farming at the beginning of the game and here you are complaining about something that the vast majority doesn't care about because the vast majority plays the game, you know, experimenting with mods, weapons and warframes.

DE bathes in the tears of the weepers.

Edited December 25, 2023 by CosoMalvadoNG

[Qriist]

25 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

You see Steel path as a thing that requires skill ("being good enough") and not just a gear check?

Modding is a skill.

[Packetdancer]

23 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

When SP was released it was already more efficient than non-SP if you had similar TTK, your complaint should have been present day 1. However, I find it absurd to try and argue SP should have absolutely zero benefit over the standard star-chart.

Moreover, I'll note that I've certainly encountered people who can handle Steel Path but cannot maintain a similar time-to-kill on SP missions as on the Star Chart equivalent. In those cases, the Steel Path version takes longer; if it gave rewards identical to the non-SP version, you'd actually be punished for running the Steel Path variant.

At any rate, to address OP here...

If you want to object to Steel Path, I wouldn't pick "better drop rates than the star chart" as the hill to die on, personally; I think you can make a much more powerful argument with regards to certain Steel-Path-exclusive content which isn't just cosmetics (like the ephemera, the planet holograms, and so on). And even there, the acolyte arcanes were a marginal case; you could get them only on the Steel Path, but you could still trade with other players for them. (And now we can get them through the Cavia.)

Umbra forma only being available via the Steel Path Honors shop except from Nightwave rewards (or the MR30 rank-up rewards) is probably a better example, and I think you could legitimately argue that the incarnon genesis adapters cross the line to actively become a problem, since not only is there no place to get them other than the Steel Circuit -- with the exception of the five that Cavalero sells for plat -- but they cannot be traded and thus cannot be purchased from other players. So there are items that give actual gameplay benefit which can only be obtained in Steel Path content.

Now, I actually enjoy the Steel Path (including the Steel Circuit), thus I benefit from the increased drops and all. So, obviously, you can feel free to take this with a large grain of salt and say I'm biased when I say the drop rates don't strike me as an issue. But nonetheless... if you want to call out issues with the Steel Path giving benefits to other players, I don't think "increased drop rates" is the hill on which to make your stand; there's potentially much bigger Steel-Path-only benefits where I think you can legitimately make a case they might be problematic.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Packetdancer

[Silligoose]

44 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

When the Steel Path was launched DE it was an optional challenge. We got some better drop chances for resources/mods and some steel essence but that was supposed to be it. Outside of those things there was not supposed to be any reason to run the Steel Path version over the regular version. It was an optional mode for those who wanted a bit of a challenge. 

Then came the Zariman. Turns out that the mod booster from SP allowed you to farm the new arcanes that launched with the update twice as fast. But that was just a quirk of the mechanics, not a design decision right?
  
Then came the Voruna update. You could run the new missions as an old school farm but DE were nice to us and implemented a bit of a pity system. You needed to farm Lua Thrax Plasm for building Veruna but you could also use it in the store to offset bad luck. There were even two new missions to farm this on. A low and a high level version. Obviously the higher level version had a higher output of Lua Thrax Plasm (times 2 to be exact). Well the Steel Path was even harder so obviously it gave an even bigger output (20% bonus on the highest level). Wait so now there is a reason to run Steel Path? That is a deliberate design decision to make Steel Path better than regular path!

Then came the Citrine update. DE copied the, generally well received, system from the Voruna update. We collected crystals instead of plasma but the result was the same. But now there was a 50% bonus to the pity system for running Steel Path! This is getting kind of significant DE.

And with this latest event the SP-bonus is now at a +100%. With twice the amount of curses and and twice the amount of expected Grotesque splinters per run.

So we went from Steel Path being "an optional challenge” to “twice as efficient”.

I believe this is bad. But this is already in tl;dr territory so I’ll wait a bit with my arguments and instead ask my fellow players:

How do you feel about the Steel Path becoming the optimal way to play?      

I'd argue that good balance in a game includes potentially more efficient farming being tied to more difficulty content being completed and/or greater implementation of skill. It would seem imbalanced if SP did not allow for the potential to farm more efficiently.

SP remains an optional mode, as not playing it won't lead to missing out on elements such as story, but I will say the waters get murky when certain more unique assets or elements of gameplay gets locked behind it as well, such as weapons that have unique mechanics ie Incarnon Genesis Weapons.

[NinthAria]

Eh. It's true that Steel Path has evolved a bit into offering more than just faster affinity/resource gains (Steel Path Duviri comes to mind), but none of that stuff is really required for progression--except, arguably, in Steel Path itself. So, yeah, it's the only place to get certain arcanes or whatever (or was, until the arcane packs with Whispers), but there's still a thousand ways to outpace enemy defense scaling on normal mode without those things, so...I dunno if it really matters that much? It'd be one thing if there were no other options for, say, acquiring big stuff like new weapons or warframes, but at best Steel Path just nets you the resources to build those things faster--and, frankly, not so much faster that playing the normal mode version isn't still a decent option.

I feel like it's a pretty good sweet spot, personally. There's reward enough for people who can handle it, but if you go without, you're not really missing anything that you absolutely need.

[Voltage]

45 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

You see Steel path as a thing that requires skill ("being good enough") and not just a gear check?

A gear check is build knowledge/skill. There's really no difference in what you just said. This reads like the people that say "man nothing ever pushes the limits of weapon DPS" and then throw the stupid phrase "bullet sponge" around at anything that doesn't die at a sneeze.

[Tombsite]

14 minutes ago, Voltage said:

A gear check is build knowledge/skill. There's really no difference in what you just said. This reads like the people that say "man nothing ever pushes the limits of weapon DPS" and then throw the stupid phrase "bullet sponge" around at anything that doesn't die at a sneeze.

Taking my Revenant and pushing "2". Then pointing my Incarnon (I have several that'll do) and clicking the left mouse button until damage-attention allows the boss to die, does indeed display such a level of knowledge and skill that I should get twice the reward of the regular version.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Tombsite

[Voltage]

14 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

Taking my Revenant and pushing "2". Then pointing my Incarnon (I have several that'll do) and clicking the left mouse button until damage-attention allows the boss to die. Does indeed display such a level of knowledge and skill that I should get twice the reward of the regular version.

You're getting 5:45 to 6 minute runs of the 30 eyes Effervo Steel Path boss with just Mesmer Skin and pointing an Incarnon weapon? 

You're omitting several layers of "skill" that is not Guitar Hero or Counter Strike, but more of Chess or an RTS game. Yes, I am aware that there are cheese builds in Warframe. For one to effectively pull it off, you need to actually understand several mechanics in-game as well as modding capabilities. Revenant does not simply make Steel Path "twice as rewarding" by existing. This is disingenuous and a misrepresentation. There's parkour, damage attenuation, damage modding, damage buffs, debuffs, mission-specific knowledge, the Void Angel, and more that goes on within that single mission. You have to grind several areas of the game and be well-equipped in the first place before "pointing and clicking" as you think it amounts to.

I will absolutely agree with you that the Superboss (60 eyes) Steel Path Effervo mission does reward players by removing RNG. However, if we're looking at mission efficiency, it is skill based performance in Steel Path. If you want to tell me it's nothing to do with skill, join any public mission and you will see that the 30 eyes boss typically takes 8-9 minutes, where a two person squad can do it in 6 minutes or less. That's a skill gap, and it is measurable through rewards and performance.

People like to throw around that Warframe lacks skilled gameplay, but that's just not true. You can get away with being inefficient, and you'll still finish missions and content, but if you are skilled with the game, you are often rewarded with better uses of time and more effective reward output.

You can boil any computer game down to "point and click" if you really want to. It completely misrepresents what we're talking about though.

I really don't understand the thought process of "the game should allow me to have everything without me ever raising the bar with the content I participate in".

Edited December 25, 2023 by Voltage

[Tombsite]

3 minutes ago, Voltage said:

You're getting 5:45 to 6 minute runs of the 30 eyes Effervo Steel Path boss with just Mesmer Skin and pointing an Incarnon weapon? 

You're omitting several layers of "skill" that is not Guitar Hero or Call of Duty, but more of Chess or an RTS game. Yes, I am aware that there are cheese builds in Warframe. For one to effectively pull it off, you need to actually understand several mechanics in-game as well as modding capabilities. Revenant does not simply make Steel Path "twice as rewarding" by existing. This is disingenuous and a misrepresentation.

I will absolutely agree with you that the Superboss (60 eyes) Steel Path Effervo mission does reward players by removing RNG. However, if we're looking at mission efficiency, it is skill based performance in Steel Path. If you want to tell me it's nothing to do with skill, join any public mission and you will see that the 30 eyes boss typically takes 8-9 minutes, where a two person squad can do it in 6 minutes or less. That's a skill gap, and it is measurable through rewards and performance.

People like to throw around that Warframe lacks skilled gameplay, but that's just not true. You can get away with being inefficient, and you'll still finish missions and content, but if you are skilled with the game, you are often rewarded with better uses of time and more effective reward output.

No. I'd get shorter runs by optimizing my parkour when collecting eyes and perhaps a bit of role assignment in regards to who takes out the angel (But I only play solo so who knows). But those skills are already rewarded in regular play. You’re already getting more rewards by being skilled and doing the mission twice in the span of time it takes unskilled people to do it once.
What Steel Path does is making sure you get even more rewards because you own more stuff.

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, Rathalio said:

Since when there wasn't supposed to be any reasons to play SP over regular mode?

It was originally pitched to the playerbase purely as a way to increase the base difficulty of missions so players could feel like their overpowered gear was useful for something, with no additional benefits. No exclusive rewards, no drop modifiers, just a way to start at a higher level so players wouldn't need to go on long endurance runs to feel tested.

And in my humble opinion, it should have stayed that way. Putting rewards behind it was only ever going to breed resentment, and having gameplay content gated behind it means DE can't adjust it to account for the increases in power that we've gone through since its addition (level cap runs, anyone?), so it no longer serves as a "challenge mode" for the part of the playerbase that it was originally supposed to satisfy.

[ricuse7]

I disagree fundamentally with Steel path being the most optimal way to play. because Optimization requires inclusion of one's personal circumstances.

I have a borderline Solo Clan: I have to input 2 of each Curse, I have a week to get a total of 6 curses.
I'm Still ranking up the Syndicate (or getting all the things from the syndicate shop)

During Angels, Ranking up that syndicate during the same time, Doing it on steel path didn't really make sense, because you could do both at the same time. And I was able to buy the arcane rather than beat my head against the higher difficulty while you may have been done in half a month, and it took me 2 months. I'd argue I spent significantly less time on it because I was averaging 10 arcane an hour of playtime because I was maxing out rep... and then stopped playing that area.

During the Voruna update I actually agreed with you doing high level survival, with higher drops and higher chance of getting the rare stuff in a set timeframe just seemed to make the most sense here.

Citrine? You could rank up weapons while doing it.... So why go steel path when you can progress at twice the pace, So I was able to rank up all of my weapons and max them out with 3-4 forma during this. There was no reason for me to go steel path because I was getting crystals while ranking up weapons.

The most efficiently way to do whispers for me without even thinking about it, is Do the missions from fish that are assassination missions. You get rep, and you get a single curse. after you have 2 of each... you do whatever mission gets you the best rewards for your time. I have all the other stuff that I already farmed entirely during scarlet spear. so that's not a motivating factor at all... and I was able to get all but one of the Items during the first (half) week. The only thing I'm using my grotesques on now is Arcane energize. to melt down and buy the arbitration arcanes, because I'm not farming that I already have everything I need, and the arcanes there are stupidly low drop chance. I get other arcanes while I'm involved in other pursuits... So there's laterally no reason for me to play steel path unless my goal was to stop playing the game, and it's not.

[NecroPed]

I feel like it's helped a seemingly unrelated problem, having people constantly paired with people on the opposite end of the gear spectrum, steel path helps direct those with stronger gear to those missions, which helps leave enemies for lower geared people to kill etc. in normal missions. I've seen a lot less people complaining about things like missions essentially being played by 1 person in the squad because they kill everything since steel path came out. 

I guess it kinda sucks that the idea of it just being a hardmode with no extra rewards is no longer there but I think there are ways to handle that while keeping SP as it is because I honestly love SP as it is now (Before it came out I would have likely stood by it being a no extra reward mode though), it's a looter shooter and people will almost always want something out of their gameplay, and this got me thinking about what if you could unlock modifiers for a customized Sanctuary Onslaught-type mission by playing SP, so you can customize your SO to your liking, without having to change SP, while also giving people that hard mode content without a real incentive to go out of your way to do it other than you like doing it. Like maybe if every node on the SP star chart unlocked a different modifier you can pick from, unlock level increases as you progress, different tilesets, faction choices etc.