Being forced to use outdated or bottom-tier RNG equipment in new high level game modes is not "difficulty"

[obiwandandobi2]

My hope is this mode will see some diversity on what people are running. The reality is it will no doubt still be filled with revenants. 

Gotta say I'm looking forward to trying this out

[pwnSacrifice]

Being forced into MR fodder is never fun. I have hundreds of forma invested in hundreds of weapons, and I still regularly get unusable combos for arbitration and archon hunts, both considerably easier content than what they're proposing, so I hope it's a little closer to duviri in practice 

Not really holding out much hope though. 

I wonder if it'll pick gear you don't have yet. I'm sure that'll go over well

[Goldy]

I really don't like the idea of more duviri-fication aka forced loadouts. There's enough RNG as is, don't need my loadout to be RNG too, DE...

And to the people that say "oh but it's optional"... bro so is playing Warframe, yet here we are 😒

[0_The_F00l]

I think players are missing what this actually is ,

Its Raids remastered :D, but i do have some concerns of how tough it could turn out to be depending on combination of modifiers you get - it does have the potential to be both fun and extremely frustrating.

3 consecutive missions with big rewards and high difficulty takes me back to when sorties were difficult , and raids needed proper coordination between player, guess we have come full circle.

I also dont get the "forced" part, sure there can be FOMO but thats not the same as forced.

i havent done any of the netracells in weeks , cause i find the rewards pointless , so not forced but you will have to make sacrifices if you want to be optimum,

[schilds]

There's a few things that really come down to what's going on in your own headspace. Seeing this as "forced" is one of them.

 

Some examples:

1. Some people think that if their loadout can't handle survival without ever touching a life support tower, then it's not viable. You don't *need* to only subsist on enemy kills for life support, but some people get it into their heads that it's a failure if they can't. This is a headspace issue.

2. Some people think that if a player can't carry an entire squad with their loadout, then they're leeching. Never mind that this is a co-op game and if everyone in a squad of 4 does 25% of the work, then that's a fair share. Again, headspace issue.

 

This is the same. The max bonus we've been shown is not necessary and it's up to the player what tradeoffs they make. Where in Duviri you are restricted in your options, in this new game mode you can take your favourite frame + weapon if you want, but are encouraged to try out other things. If you see this as "forcing" then it's an issue of your own psychology.

Edited February 24 by schilds

[Xzorn]

Get your Dual Zoren ready.

Besides the comical weapons. DE has forced meta conditions in the game you must follow or you're doing it wrong. It's why previous top Tier frames like Loki and Nyx are hardly used anymore. Band-aid after band-aid, only certain things work in Warframe. Deviation from this is a pipe dream. Esp since the addition of Overguard.

Their example of Nyx was hilarious to me. She's entirely held together by an augment at this point when previously her whole kit was used.

[Goldy]

13 minutes ago, schilds said:

There's a few things that really come down to what's going on in your own headspace. Seeing this as "forced" is one of them.

 

 

Do you also run normal instead of primed mods, and not upgrade your relics when hunting for rare parts? Sure sounds like it.

[Pragmatic_2015]

*Laughs in Immortal Nyx*

[schilds]

40 minutes ago, Goldy said:

Do you also run normal instead of primed mods, and not upgrade your relics when hunting for rare parts? Sure sounds like it.

The top bonus is a guaranteed legendary arcane. There's no reason to go for it unless you want to hurry your collection or for trading. Most people, once they've completed their arcanes, will see it as a dead reward.

If archon shards are your priority then it's a dead reward *in advance*, knowing that you will eventually cap your arcanes through rng long before you finish farming archon shards.

Hence, for most people, playing at max bonus is not about efficiency or optimization and feeling "forced" is an issue of their own pyschology.

[SpiritTeA]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Get your Dual Zoren ready.

Besides the comical weapons. DE has forced meta conditions in the game you must follow or you're doing it wrong. It's why previous top Tier frames like Loki and Nyx are hardly used anymore. Band-aid after band-aid, only certain things work in Warframe. Deviation from this is a pipe dream. Esp since the addition of Overguard.

Their example of Nyx was hilarious to me. She's entirely held together by an augment at this point when previously her whole kit was used.

What the hell you even talking about. Nyx was the frame that carried me all solo interceptions on SP without any augment. I played it just fine for what I needed.

I honestly don’t understand where you all are getting this “forced gameplay” thing. Haven’t you played other games? In some crappy games like Dota if you playing off-meta character you will lose unless you’re 5x better than enemy team, because difference and impact of meta and off-meta characters is ridiculous. Or better example new Helldivers, when with non-meta weapons you WON’T BE ABLE TO EVEN FINISH MISSION. In Warframe I can kill SP enemies with “trash” weapons like Argonak, Tenora, Komorex etc just fine to be able finish any mission.

Where are you getting this “few things work in Warframe” bs? Did you post negative review to game on steam when AoE ammo economy and Wukong were nerfed?

 

P.S. Loki is my always safe pick in SP circuit because it’s very reliable frame with helminth abilities.

Edited February 24 by SpiritTeA

[Xzorn]

2 minutes ago, schilds said:

The top bonus is a guaranteed legendary arcane. There's no reason to go for it unless you want to hurry and make melee viable again.

 

Fixed that for ya.

I already forma'd most my decent melee 25ish to hit 100% or close to it in order to use Duplicate.
It's more DPS than Blood Rush since you save a mod slot and it's obviously double the stats rates.

If the melee can't hit close to 100% Crit with Umbra Steel it's more or less inferior now. Crappy band-aid.

[Hexerin]

1 hour ago, pwnSacrifice said:

I wonder if it'll pick gear you don't have yet. I'm sure that'll go over well

It will, just like every other variant of the "these are the randomly selected pieces of equipment this week" system in the game. Arbitrations, Archon Hunts, Duviri, etc. Which is just terrible, and a step back. At least in Duviri, it gave you a mostly "functional" pre-modded copy of the equipment if you didn't own it...

Edited February 24 by Hexerin

[schilds]

You will complete your arcanes via rng even without the guaranteed arcane, at which point every time you get an extra arcane you will say "oh darn, I wish I had given myself more chances at shards instead of hurrying my arcane collection".

[Xzorn]

2 minutes ago, SpiritTeA said:

What the hell you even talking about. Nyx was the frame that carried me all solo interceptions on SP without any augment. I played it just fine for what I needed.

I honestly don’t understand where you all are getting this “forced gameplay” thing. Haven’t you played other games? In some crappy games like Dota if you playing off-meta character you will lose unless you’re 5x better than enemy team, because difference and impact of meta and off-meta characters is ridiculous. Or better example new Helldivers, when with non-meta weapons you WON’T BE ABLE TO EVEN FINISH MISSION. In Warframe I can kill SP enemies with “trash” weapons like Argonak, Tenora, Komorex etc just fine to be able finish any mission.

Where are you getting this “few things work in Warframe” bs? Did you post negative review to game on steam when AoE ammo economy and Wukong were nerfed?

 

My most play frame in 5300 in-mission hours is Nyx even after I abandoned her from the rework.

I'm well aware Nyx is was queen of interception. She was only beaten by Ivara Noise Arrow which was deemed an bug. But have you played Nyx without Assimilate? The aforementioned crutch augment? I have. I never used it because her kit layered CC so well you only died if you made a mistake. RIP Rad procs.

That was the big difference between "Brawler" and "Caster" frames. Brawlers are easy but they hit a cap. Caster had no cap but one mistake and you die.
Is SP the new Sorties now? Cuz I don't really keep track of what the community considers normal content. Never have.

The forced game play is evident in Nyx's rework and Assimilate. Armor Strip, Damage buff and a way to soak up damage.
She needed none of that before and still wouldn't if DE didn't go aggro on CC for years instead of just fixing it.

[Monolake]

TLDR: WF is badly unbalanced and this is just rolling a dice if you get good gear or crap gear, its not a 'challenge'

 

[DrivaMain]

Don't like to deal with "RNG loadout nonsense" but still want the new shiny? Then skip the grind by using the "trading" route. Let the "RNG loadout locing masochists" have fun this time, mkay?

With all due respect, all I am seeing with this "forced" mentality is just a buzzword so you can play all parts of the game by your own rules and only your rules. It's amazing that DE doesn't listen to you people when The Circuit was launched up till today. I hope they'll keep this up.

My advice to you is buy these items with your hoards of platinum and go back to the content Island you enjoy. There is no "perfect" Content Island that satisfy all types of people, even myself. 

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, schilds said:

You will complete your arcanes via rng even without the guaranteed arcane, at which point every time you get an extra arcane you will say "oh darn, I wish I had given myself more chances at shards instead of hurrying my arcane collection".

 

It's not really a hurry. It's a fix IMO. That's what I really dislike about Melee Duplicate in general. Yes, I hate it.

DE crushed melee DPS to 1/3 it's original output which was kinda silly since the extra damage intake you get from playing as melee usually results in dying faster. You didn't really get to use that damage potential anyways. Now they added an Arcane that only works on normal Crits. What about all these heavy status melee? They already killed a lot of them by adding IPS but now they can't even use this Arcane intended to put melee back around 60-70% it's original output.

I used to use an easy scaling comparison back in the day with Blade-Whips.

Jat-Kusar = Terrible Scaling. Only good for low levels and Infested.
Mios = Middle road. Scales okay.
Lacera = Highest scaling potential of the tree.

The main reason for this is that it's easier to boost damage over status but Melee Duplicate does both.
They could have just doubled melee base damage or similar and gave us more fun Arcanes to use but no grind back the nerf we did instead.

I agree. Eventually it'll happen. Hell first 2 weeks I sold my Duplicates cuz I knew they'd make it easier to farm them.
I want Shards when I do netracells but it's just such a bad addition I can't help but dislike everything about it.

[Ghastly-Ghoul]

Here's how to take Inaros to level cap without any subsumable abilities with a Stug:

Step 1: Mod your Stug
Step 2: Use Vazarin Protective Sling every 5 seconds

Step 3: Shoot Stug

Congrats, you've been given advice on how to level cap with any frame and weapon.

6 hours ago, Kaiga said:

So devstream 177 teased a new level 300+ sortie-like game mode with random debuffs, where you're locked all week into a random loadout and frame set to pick from like the circuit, where the way to play efficiently or get any decent rewards is to go with the selected options, whatever they are that week.

That's sounds like a lot of fun- If warframe's arsenal and frame roster was reasonably suited to gameplay in 2024, and not when they were released. 

But it is not. Most of our arsenal and frame design is stuck in 2011, and it shows. This game mode is supposed to be, like reb said "A challenge for people who want something extra" but, we didn't spend all this time tweaking, experimenting, investing resources and fine tuning our builds only to be told "whoops, here's banshee and a stug- go fight level 300 enemies in three different mission types in a row with it!"
The number of items that cannot perform at these levels vastly, vastly outweighs the number that can, and since you're locked in for a week to whatever random items roll, well, you're probably getting the shaft more often than not. An expectation of consistent player performance is a cornerstone of design.

Difficulty, this isn't. You're being given potentially bad options against debuffs and higher enemy levels and told that it is.
Warframe is a game about building and mastering content, and the inevitable response to this is: "not so strong now that you're forced to not use your one overpowered build, huh?" or some variant of "just build out everything in the game 5head duh"

Well it doesn't really matter if you've acquired tested and built everything to perfection if you still get the stug regardless, does it? Sure revenant and wukong exist, but competent players will have built out several different setups uniquely suited to different tasks and roles that you need to do.

And you can't even use any of that on a regular basis. DE need to start making a lot more balance passes or cranking out the incarnon adapters by volume if they expect people to play these game modes that remove access to all the work you've put in over the years.

 

[Slayer-.]

6 hours ago, Voltage said:

I like the concept of the new mode and I've been waiting for something to release with even a shred of the feeling Trials had. 3 uninterrupted missions where you need to consider different objectives sounds really enjoyable, and it rewards having the most gear fully built with proper Forma settings. 

I know it isn't a popular take, because people like playing in their comfortable loadouts, but this mode would be a snooze-fest if you could just take Revenant and Torid like you can most stuff these days. Giving extra research points for making a determined set of gear work looks fun to me.

Also if you can't handle it, just play normal Netracells. I don't understand this idea of "forced". The players who can handle this kind of content getting rewarded appropriately is something this game severely lacks.

I thought the same thing when I saw it on the stream this morning.

6 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Do you have any non meta weapons forma'd and ready to go? 

 

All my weapons are pimped/tweaked out. 

[Pakaku]

7 hours ago, Kaiga said:

we didn't spend all this time tweaking, experimenting, investing resources and fine tuning our builds only to be told "whoops, here's banshee and a stug- go fight level 300 enemies in three different mission types in a row with it!"

Then don't play this gamemode, you have the other 99% of the game to fulfill your power fantasy

[SDGDen]

7 hours ago, quxier said:

I'm tired of recent(ish) "challenges":

- slap more ehp, damage reduction, immortality phase

- random gear

When I beat something with my preferred gear.I feel like I've achieved something. Those kind of things just makes me cheater or playing roulette. It's horrible feeling when you are basically told: "grab everything or it will be bad experience".

sadly, this is the only way DE can actually challenge the players, we all know that if they just allowed you to pick your gear for the highest rewards, people would simply run revenant, press 2 and play the game on baby mode.

this way of creating a challenge is such a thing because the community doesnt accept that for proper challenge DE basically has to take a lot of their beloved powerful mechanics out back and shoot them with the nerf shotgun. the mentality of "nerf bad, buff good" is what has led to not being able to cherrypick your gear as the pinnacle of "challenge".

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

8 hours ago, Kaiga said:

Difficulty, this isn't. You're being given potentially bad options against debuffs and higher enemy levels and told that it is.

You're right. It isn't difficulty.

And.

You're also wrong.

Why?

Because difficulty doesn't actually exist in Warframe.

There is no way to put enough debuffs or enemy levels or damage or forced usage of specific frames that it will counter the actual power we can achieve even with the random frames and weapons we could be tasked with. And this is because none of the enemies can meaningfully affect us in any way other than damage or taking out an objective that we're trying to defend. There are no interactions triggered by our proximity, or by us jumping over them, or by us whipping out an AoE weapon, or by us switching to melee (the game is literally built so that some enemies can be killed by melee without penalty while guns have massive DR to the enemy unless you hit headshots thanks to The Sword Alone update years ago).

All the elements of difficulty are there, the way enemies try to group up to heavy units, enemies that buff each other, enemies that have shields and other enemies hide behind them, enemies that can ensnare us, enemies that lock down rooms... but it never actually does anything to us that we can't roll out of or just shoot through.

This is the closest DE can get to difficulty in the game they've currently got.

That's not an apology for them, it's a judgement of them.

That said...

'We didn't spend all this time tweaking, experimenting, investing resources and fine tuning our builds only to be told "whoops, here's banshee and a stug- go fight level 300 enemies in three different mission types in a row with it!"'

I did. Well, to be fair, take a look at the Circuit; how many times has the Stug appeared there? For anyone? I really want to do an @ to everyone that could be on the Forums to ask if any of them have ever had the Stug on the Circuit, because it's got to be a low proportion. Tiny. 1% or less. We've had some definite lower tier weapons, lots of melee that aren't really up to par, lots of secondaries that are usually dual pistols that under-perform, but the actual trash tier? Not so much.

But yeah, to be clear, I've definitely been spending my time tweaking, experimenting and investing resources into all of my builds ever since the Circuit started giving me random frames to work with. This is not going to be more than an inconvenience.

And if you put all the other modifiers on, the optional ones that aren't the chosen Warfame, that means you only have a 1 point deficit to the maximum score, can take whatever frame you're happy with, and get the higher tier rewards for it.

Or better yet, go in a group. One of the players will have a frame that over-performs. Weapon choices that over-perform. Penalties that don't affect them because that particular frame has been modded to not care. Just stay alive through all three stages and contribute what you can, and you'll have the thing done. You'll have the guaranteed reward despite all of that.

Game doesn't have 'difficulty'. Only damage, damage sponges, and inconvenience. For one mission a week to get 5 rewards from a soon-to-be narrowed drop table? Take the easy route.

[Aerikx]

*The Monkey's Paw finger curls in with a deafening snap* 

'Veteran' players beg for a hard and challenging mode that respects their oversized arsenals and forces them to use all the skills they have acquired...

DE gives them that mode by giving them a taste of Duviri-ish gameplay.

IE: Adapting and using skill to make up for not having an ironclad meta build designed to pump out 99 billion DMG every half-second.

Additionally, this also (like Duviri) gives players a reason to a mass an arsenal. To rank up, and empower their gear. Also incentives players to not just acquire an item, rank it for mastery, then toss it to the wind. 

DE called the bluff and folks are mad.

I admit, considering all the tears that filled each Archon's personal pools because players couldn't one shot them, scurry off, then shout: "EZ!" without some crazy gymnastics and Loadout shenanigans being performed; I wonder why DE decided to humor the players falsely claiming they wanted a challenge. 

As usual...it was a lie. Players just want easy free loot under a facade of "challenge". 

I honestly think the mode being literally a "Devil's Deal" is genius.

You really want that legendary loot? Well, you have to make some sacrifices and overcome challenges that are no joke. 

Also, the modifiers will force players to use teamwork, tight coordination, and maybe even....shift/change their loadouts before going into the mission.

I give it 3 months before DE declaws and defangs the mode and dresses it up in a foam suit.

They eventually caved and made Archon's laughably easier so eventually the salt in the segment of the community asking for this content will eat away at DE.

Before I get the backlash...

Archons were designed to be actual fights. Damage attenuation made them something players couldn't just burn in seconds, and forced players to actually engage with the enemy. 

However, the bad faith argument was that the attenuation was an insult to player investment in their loadouts. Which really translated to: "We don't actually want to engage with the boss. Just let me one shot it." 

The best work around to this conundrum is to break apart the meta builds via player volition and/or giving foes invulnerability phases/mechanics (which the self-same players also hate). 

If this mode was something players could go in as a squad with their meta loadouts to get max rewards, the only way to truly give them a challenge would be something akin to Netracells but with all enemies having damage attenuation (so they can actually fight back) and Steel Path damage outputs.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

random loadouts eh?

as someone who used to randomize loadouts long before Duviri, never had issues with bad circuit rolls (before they showed you what rolls you'd get for that spiral )and likes to just use whatever Arbitrations/Archon Hunt bonuses roll for me, regardless of how "optimal" it is, I say... bring it.

while I still like my OP gear, I take pride now in being able to do missions with sub-optimal gear, for me it's exciting, it reminds me of my newbie days where my mod loadouts and gear investment weren't so high and I just had to learn to make do. recently I've been running Caliban a lot. took him to archon hunts, Netracells, the lot. the frame that people pretend doesn't exist is still absolutely usable (he could be better though.)

I hope this new mode will feel like SP Netracells did. I want pure chaos. 

[SDGDen]

1 minute ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

I hope this new mode will feel like SP Netracells did. I want pure chaos. 

it won't be *as* difficult in the way SP netracells were difficult, because it wont have the SP armor modifier (it, netracells and archon hunts only have health, shield and damage output boosts based on squad size) 

but it'll still be madness with the various modifiers you have to turn on to get max loot, and the fact you cant just bring cheese gear!