Why I don't follow the meta

[Waeleto]

It's so funny that people now are hating on incarnons when last year they were praising them so hard, same thing happened with AoE tenet/kuva weapons

Meta players and meta haters really are 2 faces of the same coin, one will immediately chase after the strongest thing and the other will immediately start hating the new most popular thing

As for this post specifically i really don't see a point other than saying that you like being challenged more sure you gave yourself an extra challenge by picking relatively weaker weapons but the MAJORITY of players will pick the strongest thing because people like to be comfortable and the whole point of modding system and upgraded version of mods is to gain more and more power and that's okay, I don't think the variety you're asking for will ever happen because you're essentially asking people to limit themselves

[(PSN)robotwars7]

after I got to around MR18, I'd say I started to explore using random loadouts more often. by the time I got to MR25, I was hooked, and I pretty much did it all the time, but then I reached a point where I questioned why I was doing it; did I really NEED to forma all these weapons? especially with nowhere to properly use them? hmm... I wasn't sure.. sometimes it felt like I'd maybe wasted a lot of my time..

then Duviri happened.. and I was vindicated. while everybody else was struggling with their randomized loadouts, I had, unknowingly, trained and equipped myself for exactly this. I was unlikely to ever get a truly bad loadout, and when I did, I knew how to work around it. now it's happening again with the Deep Archimedea, and once again, people are worried they won't get all the research points or whatever they're called for using the suggested gear because they'll get trash selections, while I have no such worries, and actually look forward to seeing what this mode will offer.

if I'd only followed the Meta, I never would've reached a point where I could solo Netracells reliably with any gear. The Meta is restrictive, and it's up to you to free yourself from it's restraints. It doesn't help you, it just gives you a crutch to rely on.. even if you can walk absolutely fine. and if I can, you probably can too.

Edited March 15 by (PSN)robotwars7

[MetalMechabolic]

2 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

People get their accounts locked for going into negative plat though. If you get bad plat from someone that bought it from a 3rd party site or bought it then canceled their payment DE will remove the at from your account and put you in the negative until you buy enough to go positive again. I'd be more worried about this honestly..

Oh geeze, and I thought playing too much was going to be a pitfall.  Thanks for reassuring me about that playtime issue though.  Stinks about the plat situation though, one reason why I wanted to play was the thought of a player based economy based on plat.  The fact that the devs hit the buyer AND seller really scares me.  I might just stick to buying plat(From the in game shop!) and buying from others, lol.

Edited March 15 by MetalMechabolic

[Raikh]

What exactly is this spooky restrictive Meta in Warframe? Player Power exceeds general content difficulty by so much that I can't really see there being a very restrictive meta, unless you wanna say that meta is simply trying to build things as optimally as you can for a purpose.

The way its framed here makes it sound like not using "the meta" is akin to a challenge run and for general play I couldnt come to a reasonable definition of that term to make that true. And I would think intentionally handicapping yourself beyond your choice of weapons or frame or intentionally using the worst weapons in the game is a step beyond simply not committing to a meta.

 

[ReddyDisco]

Play what you want, what is fun for you do that, whether it be meta or non-meta

[Berzerkules]

38 minutes ago, MetalMechabolic said:

Oh geeze, and I thought playing too much was going to be a pitfall.  Thanks for reassuring me about that playtime issue though.  Stinks about the plat situation though, one reason why I wanted to play was the thought of a player based economy based on plat.  The fact that the devs hit the buyer AND seller  really scares me.  I might just stick to buying plat and buying from others, lol.

As long as you have a bank that you don't touch you should be fine. Or just don't spend more plat than you earned for a few days. 

I've been trading pretty much since I started WF. I used to run out of trades almost every day and was buying, selling, rolling and flipping rivens for high prices regularly and I have never had any problems with bad plat. It was a constant cycle of plat in and out of my account. I've really slowed down on trading now because I have almost everything I really want and would rather just play with my toys. 

 

The toys that I like to play with are a weird mix of meta and off meta I guess. I don't really care either way, I play with whatever I want. My current favorite weapon loadout is Argonak, Ocucor and Rakta Dark Dagger. Ocucor was in the top 10 secondary weapons in 2023 and argonak+RDD were a combined .33%. After 900+ rolls on 3 different RDD rivens I hit exactly what I wanted for an influence build with speed/range/electric roll, but I got a -123% crit. I can't crit with my melee but that frees up a mod slot dropping bloodrush so now my dagger has room for spring loaded blade. I have almost 9m range on a dagger that full armor strips enemies in a 20m radius from the enemies hit.

IDk, something fun about about a no crit build steamrolling SP for hours. Anyone got a sc/ms/tox/-cc ocucor riven? 

[parrowlili]

Personally, I love the Tenno theme so I only run Tenno weapons, e.g. Skana, Braton, Lato. I love running weapons people never even knew existed :)

[Voltage]

15 hours ago, Berzerkules said:

I've never heard of anyone getting an actual account banned from running endurance. I have gotten more than a few 2 week trade bans for for running endurance but that has not happened to me in like 3 years. I don't think anyone else has gotten a trade ban in that time either, if they heave I haven't heard about it. 

They used to be more frequent a long time ago. I have no idea how it is this days.

[Aldain]

I'm just too lazy to follow the meta, hell I only got the Incarnons I have because I wanted my Braton, Burston and Boltor to feel worth using again.

And if having a few Galvanized mods on my weapons is considered following the meta...then the standards for following the meta are extremely low.

[PrideB4TheFall]

I pay attention to builds on occasion, just to see where the mods are at. When builds start getting into reorganizing your entire weapons / warframe forma layouts though that's when I shut down.

[Xzorn]

On 2024-03-14 at 10:47 AM, (XBOX)Varzin said:

In my opinion meta is only relevant if you're doing endurance runs, which most people are not doing.

 

These two were not the same long ago. It's sad really. Everything considered "meta" didn't work for endurance runs. Not even close.

Tonkor, Simulor, Plasmor, Catchmoon, wouldn't even dent higher level enemies and DE still went nerf happy on them.

I was trying to make that point with my first post. "Not playing the meta" isn't really a thing anymore because most things work now.

[Pragmatic_2015]

On 2024-03-14 at 8:24 PM, Anti-Incarnon said:

1. Richer gameplay. By limiting my weapon power, I actually have to engage with my warframe and operator abilities in order to kill and survive. I can't nuke entire rooms with a few trigger presses, I need to press more buttons in order to keep myself alive. To me, this is more engaging, and it allows me to appreciate the qualities of individual warframes and focus schools.

2. Inventory becomes more meaningful. The obvious reason being that I can pick pretty much any weapon I want to use. Another one is that I sometimes need to bring, say, an arcane I otherwise wouldn't use, in order to make a specific weapon work.

3. Build variety. I can't necessarily rely on standard weapon builds, and I may need to choose weapons that compliment each other, with builds that work against different enemy types, in order to kill fast enough. I may need to put some thought into the IPS weighting and do loadout tests in the simulacrum.

4. I'm not chasing an illusory next high. I really can't imagine finding the Torid, Dual Toxocyst and/or the Dual Ichor and making these your main weapons at MR14, because what is there to chase after that, other than an increased mastery rank? I recently fell in love with the Perigale, and a few days ago I formaed my Aegrit multiple times. Unique weapons that have limitations you have to work around in order to be successful with them. But they are very much SP viable if you do. There are so many cool and unique-feeling weapons in this game.

 

Some will say that using whatever are the most powerful weapons and builds is the only real measure of "skill" in this game, since the gameplay itself isn't challenging. This is, besides really being an indication of the power creep and its consequences having been ingrained into the minds of the players, to some extent true. Mechanically it isn't a very complex game, but using non-meta weapons does make it more complex. I'm pretty sure few would appreciate the game if it had a completely minimalistic approach. I.e. if you could press a button to nuke the entire map (well, there are those who "enjoy" thermal sunder spam..).

I think that for most players, gameplay matters. I created this post because I'd like to see more variety in the game and to challenge the addictiveness of following the meta. The fact is that most of the weapons in the game can be brought to hour long SP runs, and if you do take on 5+ hour long runs, then wouldn't the incarnons be a more meaningful part of your arsenal if you equipped them specifically for those?

All of my this

[(PSN)rexis12]

If DE wants me to take out every single enemy with just a single target weapon ala:

Something like this, then I hope to God that you don't expect me to run any mission Several Hundred times for the chance of a drop.

10%

~ 10 C Rotations

65 ± 21 C Rotations

 

Reminder that this is the drop rate for Hespar parts on Void Armageddon where the game mode involves defense and killing lots of things because it's on a timer and if you don't kill fast enough it punishes you with Enemy Buffs.

[SneakyErvin]

On 2024-03-15 at 2:14 AM, Waeleto said:

It's so funny that people now are hating on incarnons when last year they were praising them so hard, same thing happened with AoE tenet/kuva weapons

Meta players and meta haters really are 2 faces of the same coin, one will immediately chase after the strongest thing and the other will immediately start hating the new most popular thing

As for this post specifically i really don't see a point other than saying that you like being challenged more sure you gave yourself an extra challenge by picking relatively weaker weapons but the MAJORITY of players will pick the strongest thing because people like to be comfortable and the whole point of modding system and upgraded version of mods is to gain more and more power and that's okay, I don't think the variety you're asking for will ever happen because you're essentially asking people to limit themselves

It's just human behavior in general. We see it in real life aswell, something turns out popular and some people will "hate" it for that and others will "like" it simply because it is popular and vice versa. The concept of liking or disliking something just because you simply like or dislike it is void to some people. They prefer to claim they arent controlled/defined by X, but like @UnstarPrimepoints out, that which they actively avoid very much defines them.

[Lord_Drod]

Nice OP.  Now try the archon missions solo with your least used first qualifying warframe and primary, no mods equipped and no other weapons.  Of course, this isn't hard either since you have operator access.  The main reason why you would avoid certain meta OP things is because DE usually tunes them back pretty harshly and then you lose all your time investment.  So its nice to find some off meta things, and make them "meta", as in efficient for you at getting the job done quickly.

There's too many missions in this game to really waste time slogging around with subpar gear, but sure if that's what you enjoy..  I stopped heavily switching my gear around because they don't really balance the game properly when they just look at % used (and I've found a niche playstyle I prefer and its too much effort).  It's just more about nerfing things so they can get more money.  If only 5-10 of the weapons are being used, they'll make less.

Also, @(PSN)slightconfuzzled, the first part of your post was hilarious :)

Edited March 17 by Lord_Drod