SP Lock Is bad

[MercifulUnichron94]

I'm not trying to bag on my favorite game but I've been grinding especially solo for a while and I feel as if the starchart lock for steel path is beyond unnecessary as by the time some of us reach halfway through regular path (SOLO) most of the irl starchart will have exploded can we just play the game instead of being locked out once end story is done and lotus is back that should be it and steel path unlocked but this awful lockout gets annoying either that or make regular path with waaaaay less nodes to complete before sp unlock it would bring in more new players I know I'm not important and just yelling into the void but I'm epileptic risking literally my life every time I play I'm playing ding dong ditch with death just want to have the same "Fun" as I hear from others who are on sp and not having to just give up on my starchart because it is no longer enjoyable as a game

[PollexMessier]

I'm strongly of the opinion that unlocking steel path should just require clearing Void Mot. And all necessary junctions to reach void mot + the minimum amount of mission clears needed to reach said junction on each planet to prevent skipping via Taxi.
With the caveat of if you wanna do the steel path version of any individual node you have to clear the normal version of it first.
And maybe, maybe have a mastery lock on it of 10-15. I know a lot of people hate mastery locks, but I think this is fairly reasonable personally.

Anything more than that is too much. And it's especially unreasonable that they keep adding nodes to the list. The Zariman in particular I feel is completely unfair because it adds a huge grind wall to accessing steel path that didn't exist prior to it's addition.

[Birdframe_Prime]

What can I say, my dude, Star Chart is the easiest thing to do in Warframe, right?

So the answer is to just go do it.

Steel Path and the step-up to Steel Path (getting the better mods from Arbitrations), are both locked behind completing the Star Chart.

Even when the Star Chart expands, you have to go play those nodes to re-unlock Arbitrations.

If there's anything I've learned from playing this game for nearly ten years it's this: If the requirements for getting something are easy, but time consuming, then DE are going to want you to do it the time consuming way. Why? Because it keeps players in the game for longer, coming back for longer, and statistically this means that a greater amount of those players will eventually pay for something. So they have a revenue stream based on players being kept around for the longest time they can reasonably make them play, specifically because it's proven to get them more money overall.

So with cynicism and the whole 'just do it' comments said...

Not much more here, unless you want to get into a debate with somebody about what you think about Grendel's rework.

[ominumi]

Steel Path doesn't lock players out of content. Everything can be done in normal starchart alone. Not to mention Steel Path starchart is barren. Hardly anyone run missions there. You'll be luck to get a full group for relics in public matchmaking.

[PollexMessier]

3 hours ago, ominumi said:

Steel Path doesn't lock players out of content. Everything can be done in normal starchart alone. Not to mention Steel Path starchart is barren. Hardly anyone run missions there. You'll be luck to get a full group for relics in public matchmaking.

Unless you count arcanes and incarnon adapters as content.
Also I was running SP relics yesterday and almost always got a full squad instantly so ether you've never even tried and are just speculating, you tried once in the off-hours of the game and got bad luck, or were trying to run a slow fissure like defense or something cus people avoid those ones like the plague.

Edited February 25 by PollexMessier
Grammar

[Numerounius]

21 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

What can I say, my dude, Star Chart is the easiest thing to do in Warframe, right?

In the past yes, but not now when you consider there are numerous nodes locked behind main questline progression which can take days. And other nodes that don't get the regular complete screen so you can't even tell what is needed sometimes. And if it isn't easy it is tedious to unlock steel path which isn't exactly helping either.

[ominumi]

1 hour ago, PollexMessier said:

Unless you count arcanes and incarnon adapters as content.
Also I was running SP relics yesterday and almost always got a full squad instantly so ether you've never even tried and are just speculating or you tried once in the off-hours of the game and got bad luck, or were trying to run a slow fissure like defense or something cus people avoid those ones like the plague.

And that's the illusion new players like TC can only see. Steel Path isn't a special club only the best are allow to enter. All the good loot is from the normal starchart. Including Archon Hunts.

[PollexMessier]

1 hour ago, ominumi said:

And that's the illusion new players like TC can only see. Steel Path isn't a special club only the best are allow to enter. All the good loot is from the normal starchart. Including Archon Hunts.

Erm Nobody said anything about steel path being some "special club only the best are allowed to enter". The whole point of the topic is that steel path is too hard grindy to enter, and it's barrier to entry should be lowered. So, literally the opposite. Aside from my MR requirement suggestion which I emphasized was more of an optional side-suggestion and was meant as more of a tradeoff to the currently ludicrous grind. And I have a pretty lengthy reasoning for, but I felt going off on it would make it feel like my main point when it was really more of an afterthought.

Also, Given incarnons are currently the best weapons in the game, I'd classify incarnon adapters as "good loot". So that's also just wrong.
Also Arcanes for that matter. And without steel path you basically don't have access to weapon arcane adapters as far as I'm aware. Aside from a really limited amount available from the trader in duviri for some reason. But they cost pathos clamps sooo depending on how you feel about the grind for those that option might as well not exist at all. Unless DE made them available for plat which... I wouldn't be surprised if they have. I haven't been keeping up with the game that much to have noticed.

[Birdframe_Prime]

22 hours ago, Numerounius said:

In the past yes, but not now when you consider there are numerous nodes locked behind main questline progression which can take days. And other nodes that don't get the regular complete screen so you can't even tell what is needed sometimes. And if it isn't easy it is tedious to unlock steel path which isn't exactly helping either.

But still easy. No quest content is difficult, just a time investment.

No Star Chart content is difficult, just a time investment.

Again, DE want you to stay in game for longer overall. It's their stated goal for years now. Not you, specifically, you as in 'part of the community'. And not longer at a time, but longer in terms of days, weeks, coming back for twenty minutes to an hour a day if they can get you to. Because this is a proven tactic to get DE money.

It's supposed to be tedious, it's supposed to take more days of short-run play, it's supposed to keep you here.

Whether you like it or not.

Because the fact remains that, if you want the higher level content, you're going to go do the low level content to get there for as long as DE says you have to.

So the only answer anyone here can give you, whether they agree with you or not, is to just... go do it.

[CrownOfShadows]

In my experience there's a big cliff the average player falls off when they hit the SP - making it available even earlier would make that problem a lot worse.

Usually, everyone gets the SP and they run Earth and they're like nah this is easy... because there's usually enough matchmaking on earth that you're running it with people, but then as people venture out the matchmaking dwindles to nothing rapidly and for almost all the rest of the SP they are alone and it is HARD, especially stuff like interception and defense, simply because they don't have the breadth or depth of mods needed or the heavy investment into frames & weapons or the experience.

 

I will say that they could make running through the starchart a lot more fun for newer players, like if there were matchmaking groups for like 'hey let's knock out saturn together' stuff like that, because recruiting for that is not possible in recruit chat and usually in your clan very few people are on the same spot on the journey. Then they could do the same for SP and also stuff like lich hunting & sisters

[Xylia]

Some of the Star Chart, especially the Zariman and now the new missions in Deimos are kinda unfair to require for SP.

SP existed before these, right? And they weren't required back then. So because I didn't unlock SP back then, I can't do it now because of Zariman and the new Deimos missions, and some of them are rather annoying to be quite honest.

I'm down to like 12 nodes left, and they are not solo friendly content, not because I can't kill the enemies, but because there are defense targets, time limits, etc. I can kill the enemies in those easy, but the time limits and mechanics and stuff is just meh. I wouldn't be doing SP of those even if I could.

[Numerounius]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

But still easy. No quest content is difficult, just a time investment.

No Star Chart content is difficult, just a time investment.

Again, DE want you to stay in game for longer overall. It's their stated goal for years now. Not you, specifically, you as in 'part of the community'. And not longer at a time, but longer in terms of days, weeks, coming back for twenty minutes to an hour a day if they can get you to. Because this is a proven tactic to get DE money.

It's supposed to be tedious, it's supposed to take more days of short-run play, it's supposed to keep you here.

Whether you like it or not.

Because the fact remains that, if you want the higher level content, you're going to go do the low level content to get there for as long as DE says you have to.

So the only answer anyone here can give you, whether they agree with you or not, is to just... go do it.

 I said if it isn't easy it is tedious which still makes it bad.

If it was DE's intent to make getting to steel path intended even though it was tedious they would've done something to address the fact it was tedious even if it didn't improve on that fact or that this mechanic is specifically designed money-wise. There isn't anything to suggest that clearing nodes in order to unlock steel path is an intended mechanic that is designed to evolve with the game. That was why I pointed out there are nodes that you can't even tell are cleared or not for steel path since DE hasn't done anything to address that the design to go forth and unlock steel path is supposed to be a core mechanic of the game even if it is supposed to act as a tedious mechanic.

[Birdframe_Prime]

22 hours ago, Numerounius said:

 I said if it isn't easy it is tedious which still makes it bad.

That's the thing. It's time consuming.

That's the point.

Tedious is a matter of perspective. Tedious is you not enjoying what's there, for whatever reason. Maybe you aren't going out of your comfort zone, maybe you're not playing with others, maybe for you it's just repetitive.

Be that as it may, it's your perspective on it. It's directly countered, in terms of argument and feedback, by my perspective that I enjoyed completing the Star Chart and I enjoy going to do more nodes when they unlock after a new update reveals them. Opinions hold equal weight, for good or for ill.

22 hours ago, Numerounius said:

That was why I pointed out there are nodes that you can't even tell are cleared or not for steel path since DE hasn't done anything to address that the design to go forth and unlock steel path is supposed to be a core mechanic of the game even if it is supposed to act as a tedious mechanic.

What are you talking about? There's literal pulsing indication on every single node that's incomplete and if you want actual details you can check up on a full list of what's still to unlock by going to the Arbiters of Hexis rep for Arbitrations, which is always available, since access to Arbitrations requires you to have completed the Star Chart to unlock.

The game doesn't hand-hold you through the process, but it's not supposed to. Completing the Star Chart is a mechanic because it grants you Account Mastery Rank, you would, and should, be doing it even if Steel Path didn't exist. People did it before Steel Path existed for the basic completion, and because the Alerts at the time did actually appear on random Nodes that you had to unlock before you could get to (without a taxi from another player), so having everything unlocked made you better able to access content.

Again, you finding it tedious is... kind of irrelevant?

You can feel the same way about having to rank a frame up to 30 four or five times for a full build, but you still have to do it. Usually on the same missions, using the same tactic, because it's optimised. The requirement to Forma a frame will never go away.

You can feel the same way about having to run Duviri Circuit over and over again for the rewards, or when you actually get to Steel Path, the Arcanes and Incarnon Adapters. Still got to do it, though.

A game has requirements, and those are set by what the Developers want from their player base. In this case, what the Devs have literally told us they want, it's for players to do shorter play sessions, but come back daily, for weeks, months and years, to play at least a little as consistently as possible.

That's it. That's the goal. They've literally told us this. So the requirement is to finish the Star Chart, then do it all again at a higher level. That's it. That's the requirement. You get rewards for doing the required tasks. Simple as that.

Tedious doesn't even matter.

If it's too tedious, then... that's honestly okay. Make that decision and don't go for the rewards. As long as you do it while informed of all the facts, that's all anyone can ask for.

When all's said and done, do you want my real recommendation?

Take a break.

With all the genuine good will and actual desire to make things better for you, I would say to take a break. Warframe is a game that genuinely is healthier to take a few weeks off from and come back after a new update. See if what they change gives you any more joy when you go and stomp those nodes again to make progress. If it doesn't... maybe you don't actually want to be playing Warframe and the gameplay has just sucked you in, while the requirements of grind has ruined your enjoyment of it.

If a game is tedious to you, it's not really a game anymore.

So... yeah, maybe take a break.

[Xylia]

So, not directly related to Steel Path, but kinda-sorta:

 

Someone in another thread suggested I should go out and get galvanized mods to make Murmur missions easier.

Just let that sink in for a bit.

Not to be mean to someone trying to offer suggestions, but the answer to Murmur missions being annoying (specifically the enemies that cause overguard and how difficult it can be to single out a single target in a whole sea of spawns with the ludicrous spawn rates in there) is to go do the Murmur missions, AND other missions that are harder than it, such as some of the level 60+ nodes in the Kuva Fortress, that 80-100 Conjunction Survival on Lua (IIRC that's where it is), and then go do those Arbitration Alerts, which are like Level 80 with special modifiers to make them harder than normal missions.

 

But to even do the Arbitration Missions, you gotta.... yes, finish the whole Star Chart. Back when this was first released, Zariman and the Murmur didn't even exist, and players had these Galvanized Mods already by the time Angels of the Zariman was released.

But, to any new coming player, they're expected to clear the Zariman and the Murmur nodes first for .... reasons nobody understands.

 

It's wholly unfair to newer players that they have to jump through MORE hoops than those who came before.

Edited February 28 by Xylia

[Vryheid]

Warframe is a game deigned to be played for months or years over potentially thousands of hours to see and collect everything, so asking players to spend a weekend or two clearing out star chart missions once they've finished the main questlines before they can access the real endgame "challenge" content does not come off as at all unreasonable to me. Not only are arbitrations and Steel Path a great reward for completionists, this star chart clear requirement forces players to get into the mindset that time management and mission efficiency often matter more than raw warframe power and exposes them to specific mission nodes they may have been deliberately avoiding while unlocking all the planets, thus better preparing them for endgame. If having to invest a bare minimum level of effort and time into endgame content is so "tedious" or "annoying" that it's making you not want to play the game all I can say is- too bad, so sad. Not everything in life should come easy and if this bothers you then you should work on improving your strategies and builds to clear these missions quicker and more efficiently.

[Xylia]

10 hours ago, Vryheid said:

Warframe is a game deigned to be played for months or years over potentially thousands of hours to see and collect everything, so asking players to spend a weekend or two clearing out star chart missions once they've finished the main questlines before they can access the real endgame "challenge" content does not come off as at all unreasonable to me. Not only are arbitrations and Steel Path a great reward for completionists, this star chart clear requirement forces players to get into the mindset that time management and mission efficiency often matter more than raw warframe power and exposes them to specific mission nodes they may have been deliberately avoiding while unlocking all the planets, thus better preparing them for endgame. If having to invest a bare minimum level of effort and time into endgame content is so "tedious" or "annoying" that it's making you not want to play the game all I can say is- too bad, so sad. Not everything in life should come easy and if this bothers you then you should work on improving your strategies and builds to clear these missions quicker and more efficiently.

So, you're in favor of gating easier content behind harder content and/or screwing over newer players by making them do more work to get the same stuff players who came before did?

That's nice to know.

I don't suppose you have any explanation as to why you think that ought to be?

 

EDIT: And it's only going to get worse in the future if we continue with this design philosophy: every time they add something new to the Star Chart, it's going to have higher difficulty than what came before, and they're going to add it into the requirements for Arbitrations and SP. And newer players who haven't unlocked it yet are going to have yet more hoops to jump through without any sort of rhyme, reason, or compensation.

People who came along when Arbitrations were first introduced, got theirs with just the star chart at the time.

Then came all of those updates with the new content islands and star chart nodes, and anybody who came after that, now they gotta do all of those when the players who did it before didn't have to. But yet, the new content is always getting harder, needing more gear, and players are told "oh, just go get galvanized mods" ... uh, they can't without first doing that harder content.

And I still maintain that it makes no sense, and it's not fair to newer players. IMO, they should do Arbitrations and SP by Star Chart Area. Unlock the basic planets to get them in SP/Arbitrations and then if you wanna go to Kuva Fortress SP, Zariman SP, or Albrecht labs, you gotta finish their nodes first.

etc etc. That would be the true fairest way to do it.

Edited February 28 by Xylia

[--Xalted-LuaGuard--]

On 2/25/2024 at 1:12 PM, MercifulUnichron94 said:

I'm not trying to bag on my favorite game but I've been grinding especially solo for a while and I feel as if the starchart lock for steel path is beyond unnecessary as by the time some of us reach halfway through regular path (SOLO) most of the irl starchart will have exploded can we just play the game instead of being locked out once end story is done and lotus is back that should be it and steel path unlocked but this awful lockout gets annoying either that or make regular path with waaaaay less nodes to complete before sp unlock it would bring in more new players I know I'm not important and just yelling into the void but I'm epileptic risking literally my life every time I play I'm playing ding dong ditch with death just want to have the same "Fun" as I hear from others who are on sp and not having to just give up on my starchart because it is no longer enjoyable as a game

As a counter point, the origin system is, to an extreme, not difficult. Just to make the point I was attempting to get through the quests and SP at MR2, using excal Braton Lato Skana built for crit viral slash with basic mods (and critical delay) and it EASILY clears all the way to The New War where Nataruk scales into Steel Path. I did this in 2 weeks with a purchased voidrig only.

vay hek is locked to mr5 and I think that’s the only thing stopping me. The solo missions really aren’t that bad especially if you build to each faction the missions will be 5 minutes or so each, but it is a matter of doing it

[CrownOfShadows]

18 hours ago, Xylia said:

So, not directly related to Steel Path, but kinda-sorta:

 

Someone in another thread suggested I should go out and get galvanized mods to make Murmur missions easier.

Just let that sink in for a bit.

Not to be mean to someone trying to offer suggestions, but the answer to Murmur missions being annoying (specifically the enemies that cause overguard and how difficult it can be to single out a single target in a whole sea of spawns with the ludicrous spawn rates in there) is to go do the Murmur missions, AND other missions that are harder than it, such as some of the level 60+ nodes in the Kuva Fortress, that 80-100 Conjunction Survival on Lua (IIRC that's where it is), and then go do those Arbitration Alerts, which are like Level 80 with special modifiers to make them harder than normal missions.

 

But to even do the Arbitration Missions, you gotta.... yes, finish the whole Star Chart. Back when this was first released, Zariman and the Murmur didn't even exist, and players had these Galvanized Mods already by the time Angels of the Zariman was released.

But, to any new coming player, they're expected to clear the Zariman and the Murmur nodes first for .... reasons nobody understands.

 

It's wholly unfair to newer players that they have to jump through MORE hoops than those who came before.

Yeah I think these are fair points!

Everytime new nodes get added to the starchart the amount of time to get to arbitrations increases and you need arbis to get really important mods. Clearing the Zariman & the Sanctum without galvanized is asking a lot and doesn't seem particularly good.

After thinking about it I believe arbitrations should maybe be available as soon as you clear Sedna or possibly the Kuva Fortress. Not only do players need galvanized mods around then - they really need the endo too (not to mention Adaptation if for some reason they don't want to / can't buy it).

 

[3xt1inct]

On 2024-02-28 at 9:01 PM, Xylia said:

So, you're in favor of gating easier content behind harder content and/or screwing over newer players by making them do more work to get the same stuff players who came before did?

That's nice to know.

I don't suppose you have any explanation as to why you think that ought to be?

 

EDIT: And it's only going to get worse in the future if we continue with this design philosophy: every time they add something new to the Star Chart, it's going to have higher difficulty than what came before, and they're going to add it into the requirements for Arbitrations and SP. And newer players who haven't unlocked it yet are going to have yet more hoops to jump through without any sort of rhyme, reason, or compensation.

People who came along when Arbitrations were first introduced, got theirs with just the star chart at the time.

Then came all of those updates with the new content islands and star chart nodes, and anybody who came after that, now they gotta do all of those when the players who did it before didn't have to. But yet, the new content is always getting harder, needing more gear, and players are told "oh, just go get galvanized mods" ... uh, they can't without first doing that harder content.

And I still maintain that it makes no sense, and it's not fair to newer players. IMO, they should do Arbitrations and SP by Star Chart Area. Unlock the basic planets to get them in SP/Arbitrations and then if you wanna go to Kuva Fortress SP, Zariman SP, or Albrecht labs, you gotta finish their nodes first.

etc etc. That would be the true fairest way to do it.

Im very sorry fellow returnee, but the kuva fortress was released 4 years before SP was a thing and 2 years before arbitrations. So kuva fortress was already in the reqs from the very beginning. I returned after the Duviri update and had never unlocked SP and found it pretty easily achievable, the higher level missions like Circulus (Lua) and zariman missions felt like playing the final mission of a Sortie of old (sortie around 2017), ofcourse i already had significant playtime at the point where i quit, but no galvanized mods, lots of warframe arcanes sure, but a very selective set of primed mods, about a third off all weapons unlocked, etc. point being if you treat the missions at lvl 60-70 as if they were the final sortie survivals of old, you'dd be good to go in any of em. I can see how the labs would challenge returning players but imo the overguard giving enemy is severly outperformed by the ancient healer. 

Another point to be made here is that in more recent updates than this thread there is now the possibility to play (and thus clear) these nodes with relic missions (omnia ones), you will always find squads in relic missions and it makes it easier to clear the node.

I'll end this with a great hint for some, the friendlies you can spawn with your air support from kahl's vehicle scale with enemy level, as does your on call railjack crewmember.

 

[Venus-Venera]

Am 25.2.2024 um 21:12 schrieb MercifulUnichron94:

I'm not trying to bag on my favorite game but I've been grinding especially solo for a while and I feel as if the starchart lock for steel path is beyond unnecessary as by the time some of us reach halfway through regular path (SOLO) most of the irl starchart will have exploded can we just play the game instead of being locked out once end story is done and lotus is back that should be it and steel path unlocked but this awful lockout gets annoying either that or make regular path with waaaaay less nodes to complete before sp unlock it would bring in more new players I know I'm not important and just yelling into the void but I'm epileptic risking literally my life every time I play I'm playing ding dong ditch with death just want to have the same "Fun" as I hear from others who are on sp and not having to just give up on my starchart because it is no longer enjoyable as a game

another problem is that certain parts are hidden behind difficult quests that only a few people seem to want to do.

so I would simplify the whole thing or even unlock it after x-xxx logins. or with certain mastery ranks - that could prevent loads of people from leeching in public and doing nothing.

[Merkranire]

What fun are you referring to in Steel Path…?

[Pandygon]

Better idea, just give us the game fully completed. Why should I play for hundreds of hours when we could have everything unlocked from day one? All games should be like this. Oh no, wait... there would be no more games...

Jokes aside, you find more players in the normal star chart than in Steel Path, because why would you want to lengthen your mission in a game that is already grind itself? Unless you need to farm stuff in survival, then I could understand. You set yourself the goal of 'Steel Path,' while for example, I'm currently decorating a dojo, which is much more difficult than reaching Steel Path XD, but I'm not asking to give everyone an already decorated dojo. There's so much to do in Warframe and you're free to choose what to do, that wanting to rush a game that has existed for over 10 years is equivalent to ruining it. I imagine how many things you must have missed or are skipping to find it boring, or maybe you simply started with the wrong community, meaning too much disparity in playtime and they pushed you to rush.