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

[NaoQalli]

On 2023-12-26 at 4:42 AM, 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. 

On 2023-12-26 at 6:47 AM, Corvid said:

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.

Ya'll have forgotten that the creative director of this game has changed since the release of SP, and with it their content philosophy. Steve wants to keep a tangible power ceiling. Rebb wants to see what's beyond the ceiling and kept buffing 99% of things in this game to be SP-viable. There's no reason Rebb should compromise her own vision of the game to adhere to Steve's personal vision.

Edited December 27, 2023 by NaoQalli

[Armadillidium_vulgare]

On 2023-12-25 at 4:42 PM, Tombsite said:

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

It's awesome, and I'm glad they've continued to make it more rewarding to play Steel Path. It encourages players to learn how to properly build their kit, and rewards those who put in the effort to make their frames and weapons strong. Any weapon in the game can tear through the star chart when modded to a decent degree, but you have to know what you're doing at least in broad strokes to make a weapon or frame work on the Steel Path.

Warframe can be a very braindead game. The enemies aren't complicated or especially difficult, so bumping up the numbers in terms of spawning, damage, and armor can help add back challenge to what is otherwise an easy game. Some people like having the feeling of being overwhelmingly powerful in the star chart, and that's fine. But I think that rewarding players who chose to take the more difficult path and have to learn how to make their weapons and builds function against stronger enemies is the better approach, and the healthier approach, rather than forcing players to exist in a state of overwhelming power and overwhelming stagnation. 

Warframe might not have an endgame, but it does have the Steel Path, and that's good enough for me.

[Skoomaseller]

On 2023-12-26 at 5:42 AM, 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?      

im fine with it as long as they keep giving us tools to conquer it/reworking old stuff to keep up

base star chart is kinda boring anyway i NEED the constant influx of enemies solo as much as i need air and water

Edited December 27, 2023 by Skoomaseller

[(NSW)Greybones]

Come to think of it, there wasn’t a reason to run Steel Path before it came into existence, yet players were still building like it was there and wondering why there wasn’t a reason to do so.

I think it was always doomed to fail as “Just an optional bit of content”, since even before it existed players were stuck in a few builds and loadouts

[Corvid]

6 hours ago, NaoQalli said:

Steve wants to keep a tangible power ceiling. Rebb wants to see what's beyond the ceiling

[CITATION NEEDED]

[Tombsite]

17 minutes ago, Corvid said:

[CITATION NEEDED]

They do have a point. Rebb and Steve look at things very differently. 

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, Tombsite said:

I don't have a problem because I suddenly want stuff I can’t have. I’m running a few assassinations on SP each day solo.
I got all the arcanes that I need from Scarlet spear and about a 100 tri-caps (More than enough to know I don’t want to do more). I’m farming the event so that I can have a rank 5 Arcane healing for completionist reasons. 

So no, the reason I give a “profanity” is in fact that the mode has changed.

It comes down to how much more optimal and how much more rewarding the Steel Path is becoming. From the start I got more from SP than the regular versions. I got more regular drops (less important outside of a few farms), more mods (an ok bonus) and Steel essence.

Then DE started to give me even more stuff for doing SP. First +20%, then +50% and now +100% of un-boostable drops in addition to Steel essence.

And the last increase came at an event where I honestly can’t feel much of a difference between regular and Steel path versions. It takes me basically the same effort to get twice the rewards and that just seems wrong.

So yes my question is a little faulty. I should probably have been “How do you feel about how much more optimal SP is becoming”, because it’s starting to screw over newer players who then feel a need to rush for SP because it is sooo much more efficient.

No one said it was because of stuff you couldnt have. I said you likely didnt care about the basic loot when SP released, atleast not to a point where you considered how much more beneficial it was to run SP compared to normal. The innate bonus of SP and the impact it has on rare loot is exactly like SP impacting other types of loot distribution, like increased rotational probabilities or straight up adding extra loot for certain modes (new event for instance). But it is also not something new to WF that came with SP, it has been part of the game for a very long time where higher difficulty equals more loot.

Fissures, Bounties and SO/ESO are examples of that, all out dating SP by far. And if you look at SP nothing has really changed, it's just that reworking old drop tables to cater to SP would have been a waste, but with new content added post SP it's natural to have drop tables etc. be altered to fit the idea of SP i.e being more rewarding. The mode already has an innate modifier to rare loot, which practically works the same for guaranteed rare loot as a flat increase to boss specific loot does. So The Fragmented One's loot distribution is pretty much inline with things like Oxium when you run SP,

And that you get twice the reward for the same effort... well congrats, you are geared enough to run SP efficiently! There are others that arent in that situation, where SP is slower but rewards more for the extra effort. The game cannot be balanced and tweaked around you when the power floor and power ceiling have a massive gap between them. Or should we suddenly also see a reduction to everything else in SP since we've had the power ceiling raise further from the point it was at when SP released? There are still a constant amount of people that refuse to do SP or see it as too difficulty, so there are those that also experience it as the sweet spot, where risk vs time vs reward is just right since they can handle it just well enough, then there are those of us that feel no difference between star chart Lith and SP Mot.

How can you possibly know what it does to newer players? How is giving new players a goal screwing them over? It wouldnt matter which difficulty had the higher loot, players would push it just the same if they feel a need to rush. SP is no different than any other higher level content released or content with several different difficulties/level bands. T5 bounties for instance give a crap load of more standing than a T1, staying for max rotation bonuses in fissures is far more rewarding than leaving after C1 and so on.

[(NSW)Greybones]

37 minutes ago, Tombsite said:

They do have a point. Rebb and Steve look at things very differently. 

If true, one was fighting against the players, the other gives them what they want.

That causes concern, since if the majority of players were actually in charge and got what they wanted, the game would become not so much a game as an AFK simulator, and any alternatives to the contrary would be culled for not being valuable components

[(XBOX)Lord ChibiVR]

13 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Go on. The only reason any element of player interaction in shieldgate abuse (an odd interaction for sure that only got its mod because DE identified that players were making their own fun with it and, being a game designed around the notion of “Make your own fun”, it made sense they’d keep it as an option in some form) is necessary is because players haven’t figured out how to stand around invincible for an infinite amount of time without input; any element of skill is due to the lack of being able to remove it and is not desired, and it’s not even a very good example of gameplay design

Well yes but no. Shield gate was always designed to be the way it was, just without the key. It would make more sense to say that brief respite is the actual thing being exploited, and even then DE has made frames like Protea and Wisp that intentionally benefit from shield gate (but at this point it doesn't matter, DE did rework shields so it's more balanced now).

And you already said the other thing: if it wasn't for shield gate, everyone would be building for armor + adaptation which would be a lot more of standing around tanking compared to being killed for a simple mistake in shield gate.

Not to mention that shield gate doesn't protect the player against toxin damage or staggers. The amount of times I've died to getting stun locked in steel path balanced out shield gate for me, it's just that people love to spam primed surefooted to nullify this weakness (and believe me, if there was an arcane or mod to remove all toxin damage, people would use it).

Edited December 27, 2023 by (XBOX)Upl0rdYT

[SneakyErvin]

31 minutes ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Not to mention that shield gate doesn't protect the player against toxin damage or staggers. The amount of times I've died to getting stun locked in steel path balanced out shield gate for me, it's just that people love to spam primed surefooted to nullify this weakness (and believe me, if there was an arcane or mod to remove all toxin damage, people would use it).

In my opinion it is too bad DE didnt introduce Overguard instead of shield gate back when they implemented shield gate. Would have solved most of the issues that came with shield gate and could have applied to frames like Inaros and Nidus aswell if Augur mods and Brief Respite had been converted.

[trst]

5 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

In my opinion it is too bad DE didnt introduce Overguard instead of shield gate back when they implemented shield gate. Would have solved most of the issues that came with shield gate and could have applied to frames like Inaros and Nidus aswell if Augur mods and Brief Respite had been converted.

Except Shield Gating came out of the age old complaints of shields being a worthless stat. Which they would have continued to be if Overguard was made first. Plus without gating on some system we'd still have the complaints about one-shots from high level enemies.

[(NSW)Greybones]

6 hours ago, (XBOX)Upl0rdYT said:

Well yes but no. Shield gate was always designed to be the way it was, just without the key. It would make more sense to say that brief respite is the actual thing being exploited, and even then DE has made frames like Protea and Wisp that intentionally benefit from shield gate (but at this point it doesn't matter, DE did rework shields so it's more balanced now).

And you already said the other thing: if it wasn't for shield gate, everyone would be building for armor + adaptation which would be a lot more of standing around tanking compared to being killed for a simple mistake in shield gate.

Not to mention that shield gate doesn't protect the player against toxin damage or staggers. The amount of times I've died to getting stun locked in steel path balanced out shield gate for me, it's just that people love to spam primed surefooted to nullify this weakness (and believe me, if there was an arcane or mod to remove all toxin damage, people would use it).

And it was a reasonable mechanic to introduce, since in any game getting one-shot out if the blue is either not a great experience for any player, or it’s an extremely considered game design decision that the whole game has to support and be designed around. There are a tiny handful of scenarios in the balanced part of the game to this day where someone could get one-shot out of the blue despite how well they move and position and keep up on their situational awareness, and that’s what Shieldgating was meant to counter, not be a way for bad players to be practically invincible so long as they were quick on their casting fingers, movement and positioning and any sort of combat awareness be damned

[(NSW)Greybones]

43 minutes ago, trst said:

Except Shield Gating came out of the age old complaints of shields being a worthless stat. Which they would have continued to be if Overguard was made first. Plus without gating on some system we'd still have the complaints about one-shots from high level enemies.

Complaints from players who jump headfirst into groups of enemies and start sucking on their guns while blindly swinging with melee in the hopes they’ll get the bad guys first before the bad guys have any chance to retaliate.

Shields are good, I was fighting Archons with shields before their buff, but they require things like movement and positioning and not getting hit to play to their strengths, their recharging nature to protect non-recharging health. And this community struggles with anything more complicated than smacking with overtuned melee or AoE enemies who are  stunlocked

[TheTundraTerror]

I wouldn't mind SP as much if half of the "challenge" wasn't immediately invalidated by throwing a full armor strip on your Warframe.

[trst]

8 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Complaints from players who jump headfirst into groups of enemies and start sucking on their guns while blindly swinging with melee in the hopes they’ll get the bad guys first before the bad guys have any chance to retaliate.

Shields are good, I was fighting Archons with shields before their buff, but they require things like movement and positioning and not getting hit to play to their strengths, their recharging nature to protect non-recharging health. And this community struggles with anything more complicated than smacking with overtuned melee or AoE enemies who are  stunlocked

Uh, no you didn't. Shield gating was added in 27.2 (March 5th, 2020) while Archon Hunts were added in 32.0 (Sep. 7th, 2022).

As for shields prior to gating (what was being talked about in what you quoted) shields were beyond useless as enemies would melt them, high level enemies like Bombards and Ancients could one-shot you regardless of your shields, and the only mod that directly affected shield survivability was Adaptation (only added in 23.10) which is very relevant as health has always had DR through armor.

And yeah while good movement does wonders for survivability that alone never made old shields viable.

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, trst said:

Uh, no you didn't. Shield gating was added in 27.2 (March 5th, 2020) while Archon Hunts were added in 32.0 (Sep. 7th, 2022).

As for shields prior to gating (what was being talked about in what you quoted) shields were beyond useless as enemies would melt them, high level enemies like Bombards and Ancients could one-shot you regardless of your shields, and the only mod that directly affected shield survivability was Adaptation (only added in 23.10) which is very relevant as health has always had DR through armor.

And yeah while good movement does wonders for survivability that alone never made old shields viable.

@Qriist is correct, I was talking about the recent buffs.

Regarding shields before shieldgating; I remember Bombards and their stealth homing rockets (which I’ve since learned to identify and avoid), that’s the thing I was talking about as a “Rare instance of enemies one-shotting us”. Everyone else does chip damage to shields while the player moves around, which then gets recharged while someone moves around and breaks lines of sight and generally doesn’t get hit. It’s a good thing health has damage reduction, because unlike shields which recharge and present an endlessly replenishing resource, health doesn’t and once it’s gone, you’re dead. But you need to play to shield’s strengths in the first place instead of treating it like health, since they’re designed to recharge while not getting hit, which players have always struggled with the moment they decided that the best way to play was to not bother watching their movement and positioning while endlessly stunlocking enemies so that testing in the Simulacrum with enemy AI disabled does actually equate to field testing instead of there being a difference between the two

1 hour ago, Qriist said:

Was watching a random warframe video while I ate lunch today, and I learned that Hildryn first pioneered shieldgating into the game. For a good while after her release it was a mechanic that was unique to her. It's interesting to me that DE took the two strongest aspects of her kit (shieldgating and Pillage) and just made them available to all frames.

Shieldgating was always a reasonable addition to the whole roster, even if it was a passive of the Shield-based frame at the start; the difficult part is figuring out how to make it so it stopped one-shots, but still leaves some risk to a player who hangs around too long instead of getting out of the dangerzone once their shields are gone. Not only does it prevent frustrating one-shots, it also serves a valuable and powerful feedback indicator and chance to react; I remember before shieldgating I would have difficulty noticing when my shields were down in the chaos of a fight, and then stick around the dangerzone or jump in for some quick in-and-out melee strikes with my valuable health left undefended and die.

Pillage is whatever. It’s a helminth ability, if someone struggles to keep on top of their shields or wants to shieldtank even more or whatever interactions between kit and builds it lets a player utilise and engage with for how they want to play instead of using any other ability they could subsume, that’s fair. It’s not mandatory or anything

edit: That said, much as I respect what Shieldgate brings to the table and how it can help preserve the fun, I do miss the consequence of one-shots from sources I can actively see; getting sneak attacked by a Bombard rocket from full health is one thing, not having to worry about that sniper trace or jumping straight into the rocket I can see coming is another

Edited December 27, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[SneakyErvin]

21 hours ago, trst said:

Except Shield Gating came out of the age old complaints of shields being a worthless stat. Which they would have continued to be if Overguard was made first. Plus without gating on some system we'd still have the complaints about one-shots from high level enemies.

I mean they could have done OG as the 1HK stopper like it is now, then made shields useful in some other way. Instead we got SG, then now recently we got both OG and improved SG, which have given some frames some seriously ridiculous survivability, while at the same time the problem with the poor pure HP frames is still an issue, same as Toxin 1HK for low armor/low hp shield frames, including Hildryn if you dont invest in health/armor.

[trst]

4 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I mean they could have done OG as the 1HK stopper like it is now, then made shields useful in some other way. Instead we got SG, then now recently we got both OG and improved SG, which have given some frames some seriously ridiculous survivability, while at the same time the problem with the poor pure HP frames is still an issue, same as Toxin 1HK for low armor/low hp shield frames, including Hildryn if you dont invest in health/armor.

But if they did Overguard first then we'd need ways to get Overguard on the squishy frames that players were having issued with. Meaning if we eventually got improves shields we'd just be in a similar situation as we are currently but with the option of Overguard on everyone. Though personally I wouldn't have minded some form of it earlier in the game as it might have prevented P.Sure Footed from existing.

As for frames like Nidus, Inaros, and Hildryn they're all outliers for their weird stats. But I'd imagine it's only a matter of time before we see Overguard pushed into at least Inaros. Plus Nidus and Hildryn have their passives to deal with one-hits.

[SneakyErvin]

16 hours ago, trst said:

But if they did Overguard first then we'd need ways to get Overguard on the squishy frames that players were having issued with. Meaning if we eventually got improves shields we'd just be in a similar situation as we are currently but with the option of Overguard on everyone. Though personally I wouldn't have minded some form of it earlier in the game as it might have prevented P.Sure Footed from existing.

As for frames like Nidus, Inaros, and Hildryn they're all outliers for their weird stats. But I'd imagine it's only a matter of time before we see Overguard pushed into at least Inaros. Plus Nidus and Hildryn have their passives to deal with one-hits.

That could have been solved by converting all energy:shield mods to energy:OG mods. That way every frame would have had access to it. They would have just had to keep Lavos and Hildryn in mind aswell, so they'd get OG from those mods based on what the skill would cost on a normal frame. They could have also mimiced shield gate this way by giving all frames a natural 1 point of OG and have shields be the first health type to take damage followed by OG. Then the moment shields would start regging 1 point of OG would be refilled and give a partial gate similar to shields. The benefit would be it working on all frames and stopping 1 shots from toxin aswell.

[Jarriaga]

Meh. A more-difficult-than-normal mode (Even if said harder mode is easy as hell) must absolutely be more rewarding and offer exclusive/unique/powerful/game-changing rewards or it's otherwise a literal waste of time.

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Some people really just want everything while literally doing the bare minimum 

[(NSW)Greybones]

8 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

Meh. A more-difficult-than-normal mode (Even if said harder mode is easy as hell) must absolutely be more rewarding and offer exclusive/unique/powerful/game-changing rewards or it's otherwise a literal waste of time.

Further Steel Path-exclusive rewards is only going to further the idea that players need to sacrifice the very variety they’re earning and playing the game for in order to keep up.

Like, sure, players were already doing that even before SP and then lamenting that the game was too easy and limited because they couldn’t stop, but that was due to something other than what the game told them to do.

Nowadays the game is implying that players need to go against the point of the game and shoehorn themselves into a comparative few builds and just be as unbalanced as possible because the game mode is unbalanced, and with the community furthering the narrative, that just means that once someone hits Steel Path (and even before if someone who thinks SP is endgame gets hold of a newbie), all notion of seeing an alternative side of the game gets lost and players quit because it’s either unbalanced and doesn’t make sense, or too grindy and they need to sink 30 forma into Sevagoth  and they don’t even get to use the stuff they earn

Edited December 29, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[SneakyErvin]

14 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Further Steel Path-exclusive rewards is only going to further the idea that players need to sacrifice the very variety they’re earning and playing the game for in order to keep up.

Like, sure, players were already doing that even before SP and then lamenting that the game was too easy and limited because they couldn’t stop, but that was due to something other than what the game told them to do.

Nowadays the game is implying that players need to go against the point of the game and shoehorn themselves into a comparative few builds and just be as unbalanced as possible because the game mode is unbalanced, and with the community furthering the narrative, that just means that once someone hits Steel Path (and even before if someone who thinks SP is endgame gets hold of a newbie), all notion of seeing an alternative side of the game gets lost and players quit because it’s either unbalanced and doesn’t make sense, or too grindy and they need to sink 30 forma into Sevagoth  and they don’t even get to use the stuff they earn

But none of this is really true and mostly misconceptions of players, or simply players that dont want to progress while still wanting all the loot available. We dont need to sacrifice anything for SP and we arent really shoehorned into a few builds to farm it efficiently. It isnt really the game that implies it either, it's negative players that spread misinformation. 

SP overall can be pushed far if we look at endless, the only game mode that gets harder and harder, and it doesnt require any specific setup to push acceptably far for it to be efficient. This can be done without any real issue with both shield based frames and HP tanks, and a multitude of weapons. Sure if someone wants to just use the S#&$ties of S#&$e available to them, then yeah they likely wont do much in SP. But then again, why should the rest of the players be stopped by someone that doesnt really care anyways regarding what items they use?

Large parts of the community lack a serious understanding of building properly or making a working loadout. It's easy to spot this when jumping into public, more notably in higher content like archon hunts. People investing in pointless amounts of power strength that will never give any value to the content they are currently in, while sacrificing survival in return and go down quicker than a slut on promnight. This has been an issue ever since the plague that was the "endless" guides pre-shield gate. Where people followed a guide intended for endless so deep that you would always get 1HKed, so building for any survival stat was pointless. But at the same time they didnt play that deep endless with the build, so only lowered their own TTL in the content they ran for absolutely no reason. Which also was a large part of the massive "I get 1-shot!" outcries.

[Merkranire]

44 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

But none of this is really true and mostly misconceptions of players, or simply players that dont want to progress while still wanting all the loot available. We dont need to sacrifice anything for SP and we arent really shoehorned into a few builds to farm it efficiently. It isnt really the game that implies it either, it's negative players that spread misinformation. 

SP overall can be pushed far if we look at endless, the only game mode that gets harder and harder, and it doesnt require any specific setup to push acceptably far for it to be efficient. This can be done without any real issue with both shield based frames and HP tanks, and a multitude of weapons. Sure if someone wants to just use the S#&$ties of S#&$e available to them, then yeah they likely wont do much in SP. But then again, why should the rest of the players be stopped by someone that doesnt really care anyways regarding what items they use?

Large parts of the community lack a serious understanding of building properly or making a working loadout. It's easy to spot this when jumping into public, more notably in higher content like archon hunts. People investing in pointless amounts of power strength that will never give any value to the content they are currently in, while sacrificing survival in return and go down quicker than a slut on promnight. This has been an issue ever since the plague that was the "endless" guides pre-shield gate. Where people followed a guide intended for endless so deep that you would always get 1HKed, so building for any survival stat was pointless. But at the same time they didnt play that deep endless with the build, so only lowered their own TTL in the content they ran for absolutely no reason. Which also was a large part of the massive "I get 1-shot!" outcries.

What are you talking about “Not sacrificing for Steel Path”? It’s not the place that supports the most variety from the modless baseline of any combination of gear and build, that’s why it was introduced was because players were living in beyond-redundant levels of power attained by minmaxing at cost to variety; even if DE elevated a few things through the introduction of subjectively-problematic options to elevate our gear, we’re still not able to take the vast majority of builds we can make that customise our gameplay.

Though if I remember correctly you didn’t call a build a build unless it fulfilled some kind of criteria-I-can’t-quite-recall-but-I’m-pretty-sure-it-was-SP-related.

And then when it comes to impressions on how important SP is, it’s all anyone uses as the warped measuring stick the moment they had a reason to run it extremely early in its introduction. It’s not the place for balanced gameplay, not the place to live in, not the place to go for variety, but what do players use as the baseline if not Steel Path, hm? I’m not going to deny that plenty of players suck at the game, but all you hear is how SP is the place to go if you’ve got something to prove when the rest of the game is already there to play with better balance and more variety, and DE don’t need to keep shoving unique rewards into Steel Path to entice players into living in the game mode; they’ve got unique mechanics to bossfights in SP! That pisses me off that they’re not at least present in the non-SP part of the game as well

edit: this is Greybones btw; it seems my switch and PC accounts were merged on the forums as well

Edited December 30, 2023 by Merkranire

[Rakosta_Kai]

On 2023-12-25 at 1:42 PM, Tombsite said:

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. 

SP remains as optional content but DE never asserted it wouldn't be optimal content. Quite the opposite, in fact, given the effect on drop rates.

The Risk : Reward ratios are a distinct improvement over the years past imo but I can understand how Tenno might feel they are being encouraged to play in SP given the gradual increase in content difficulty levels as a whole.