This is not how you design random challenges.

[Aironfaar]

I've played my fair share of roguelikes that completely randomize your loadout every gameplay session. Among this type of game or game mode, Deep Archimedea is right at the bottom of the barrel. There is "try to make it work with what is available to you here", which last week's modifiers and loadout allowed me to do (and I admittedly had a degree of fun with that, although I ultimately also felt awful for not being of much use to the team despite my five days of effort preparing my loadout), and there is "lol this RNG sucks so hard, might as well not bother, better luck next week"… which I got this week.

Three ability dependent frames.

Nine weapons that, to my knowledge, don't perform well at the difficulty level that Deep Archimedea is at without the rest of the loadout supporting them, but don't synergize with each other.

Random challenges that, in combination, insanely punish casting abilities and cripple their usefulness if you do end up casting them, while also slashing shield gating, which is an important survival mechanism in high level content for many frames. (Including two of the three I could choose from. The third needs his abilities with duration to survive.)

In any randomized game I've played, that would be a candidate for maybe entertaining a half-hearted run to see how far you can get with this crap combination, or immediately resetting RNG to roll something else. While Duviri's RNG can screw you over too, you have decrees to offset bad RNG and can even reroll your random loadout easily in that mode, so the "let's see how far I can get with this" approach is actually fun to engage with and optional. But waiting for a week isn't exactly a feasible reset mechanism in such a case, especially since it makes you miss out on weekly rewards as well. (In Duviri, you can reroll for sufficiently decent loadouts easily enough to still get the weekly rewards that you could otherwise miss.)

To get to the point: In random challenges, you either need to implement safeguards to eliminate combinations of random selections that are just too punishing, or give players a means to reasonably reroll their random selections. Deep Archimedea does none of these while requiring the player to enable all challenge options (or almost all, considering that 50 vosphor are really not worth the effort) to get all rewards, making it an exercise in "time to check if I get to engage with Deep Archimedea this week" every Monday.

Sure, I don't have to enable all the challenges in Deep Archimedea and just not get all the rewards during weeks with bad RNG luck. But it feels so crap to be locked out of rewards because of bad RNG luck instead of faults of my own that I'd rather not bother spend time picking and choosing which options I should run with, and send a message by spending those search pulses on much quicker netracell runs instead.

[_Kit_Kat_Cat_]

inb4 defenders of this clearly poor game design come in and tell you that you're "wrong".

[Karyst]

27 minutes ago, Aironfaar said:

I've played my fair share of roguelikes that completely randomize your loadout every gameplay session. Among this type of game or game mode, Deep Archimedea is right at the bottom of the barrel. There is "try to make it work with what is available to you here", which last week's modifiers and loadout allowed me to do (and I admittedly had a degree of fun with that, although I ultimately also felt awful for not being of much use to the team despite my five days of effort preparing my loadout), and there is "lol this RNG sucks so hard, might as well not bother, better luck next week"… which I got this week.

Three ability dependent frames.

Nine weapons that, to my knowledge, don't perform well at the difficulty level that Deep Archimedea is at without the rest of the loadout supporting them, but don't synergize with each other.

Random challenges that, in combination, insanely punish casting abilities and cripple their usefulness if you do end up casting them, while also slashing shield gating, which is an important survival mechanism in high level content for many frames. (Including two of the three I could choose from. The third needs his abilities with duration to survive.)

In any randomized game I've played, that would be a candidate for maybe entertaining a half-hearted run to see how far you can get with this crap combination, or immediately resetting RNG to roll something else. While Duviri's RNG can screw you over too, you have decrees to offset bad RNG and can even reroll your random loadout easily in that mode, so the "let's see how far I can get with this" approach is actually fun to engage with and optional. But waiting for a week isn't exactly a feasible reset mechanism in such a case, especially since it makes you miss out on weekly rewards as well. (In Duviri, you can reroll for sufficiently decent loadouts easily enough to still get the weekly rewards that you could otherwise miss.)

To get to the point: In random challenges, you either need to implement safeguards to eliminate combinations of random selections that are just too punishing, or give players a means to reasonably reroll their random selections. Deep Archimedea does none of these while requiring the player to enable all challenge options (or almost all, considering that 50 vosphor are really not worth the effort) to get all rewards, making it an exercise in "time to check if I get to engage with Deep Archimedea this week" every Monday.

Sure, I don't have to enable all the challenges in Deep Archimedea and just not get all the rewards during weeks with bad RNG luck. But it feels so crap to be locked out of rewards because of bad RNG luck instead of faults of my own that I'd rather not bother spend time picking and choosing which options I should run with, and send a message by spending those search pulses on much quicker netracell runs instead.

Three ability dependent frames.

 

Nine weapons that, to my knowledge, don't perform well at the difficulty level that Deep Archimedea is at without the rest of the loadout supporting them, but don't synergize with each other. What were they?

[Drachnyn]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Aironfaar:

(or almost all, considering that 50 vosphor are really not worth the effort)

This is the safeguard.

[NOsPL]

1 hour ago, Aironfaar said:

Three ability dependent frames.

Nine weapons that, to my knowledge, don't perform well at the difficulty level that Deep Archimedea is at without the rest of the loadout supporting them, but don't synergize with each other.

Random challenges that, in combination, insanely punish casting abilities and cripple their usefulness if you do end up casting them, while also slashing shield gating, which is an important survival mechanism in high level content for many frames. (Including two of the three I could choose from. The third needs his abilities with duration to survive.)

Framecurse Syndrome inflicts dmg on ability cast, lethargic shields increases recharge delay. You can use brief respite and augur mods to recharge your shields. You can use Magus Elevate to restore your health. That will require you to to carefully cast abilities while also forcing you to switching to operator, to regenerate your health, on top of killing enemies. Pretty decent way to increase difficulty that can be overcome by combination of mods/arcanes, arsenal knowledge and extra focus. 

In terms of bad weapons, I agree that some of them should be blacklisted from DA. But still, you can pick one favourite weapon and you get 5/5 rewards.

1 hour ago, Aironfaar said:

Sure, I don't have to enable all the challenges in Deep Archimedea and just not get all the rewards during weeks with bad RNG luck. But it feels so crap to be locked out of rewards because of bad RNG luck instead of faults of my own that I'd rather not bother spend time picking and choosing which options I should run with, and send a message by spending those search pulses on much quicker netracell runs instead.

Deep Archimedea was added on top of Netracells mode, not as a replacement to it. You are not being punished for not using all EDA modifiers. Players with robust arsenal are being rewarded.

[ShogunGunshow]

Reject duration, embrace Dante.

And then pray that someone of your team got a CC frame for mission 2.

[0_The_F00l]

once again my issue this week is the mirror defense ,

its almost a repeat as last time.

last time: enemies have cc resistance thanks to OG and energy kept getting drained,

this time enemies cannot be CCed cause you dont have any duration or the limius sucked your energy while you were casting.

and the enemies can still very easily kill you and the objective can die cause you killed enemies near it (and staying near it attracts the limius which sucks everything you got).

i dont even know how bad the third mission is yet cause i keep failing at the second mission and keep getting paired (if at all) with those that dont speak english.The poor matchmaking irks me more than anything.

[EDM774]

6 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

once again my issue this week is the mirror defense ,

its almost a repeat as last time.

last time: enemies have cc resistance thanks to OG and energy kept getting drained,

this time enemies cannot be CCed cause you dont have any duration or the limius sucked your energy while you were casting.

and the enemies can still very easily kill you and the objective can die cause you killed enemies near it (and staying near it attracts the limius which sucks everything you got).

i dont even know how bad the third mission is yet cause i keep failing at the second mission and keep getting paired (if at all) with those that dont speak english.The poor matchmaking irks me more than anything.

I had no issues last time mirror defense was on it barely took any dmg, but this week after 3 fails in a row the 4th run won us with the final objective being at 2k HP when the timer hit zero, I think my butt made diamonds that moment. it took a volt sppamming his ult and my 5 tau red slowva being reduced to base duration (400% /75% = 100%) to keep the enemies at bay long enough, and still barely made it. the Disruption after was a cake walk by comparison.
Something definitely needs to be done to address this.

[_Kit_Kat_Cat_]

13 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

once again my issue this week is the mirror defense ,

its almost a repeat as last time.

last time: enemies have cc resistance thanks to OG and energy kept getting drained,

this time enemies cannot be CCed cause you dont have any duration or the limius sucked your energy while you were casting.

and the enemies can still very easily kill you and the objective can die cause you killed enemies near it (and staying near it attracts the limius which sucks everything you got).

i dont even know how bad the third mission is yet cause i keep failing at the second mission and keep getting paired (if at all) with those that dont speak english.The poor matchmaking irks me more than anything.

Just use Nercamechs for all 3 missions. 

[0_The_F00l]

9 minutes ago, EDM774 said:

I had no issues last time mirror defense was on it barely took any dmg, but this week after 3 fails in a row the 4th run won us with the final objective being at 2k HP when the timer hit zero, I think my butt made diamonds that moment. it took a volt sppamming his ult and my 5 tau red slowva being reduced to base duration (400% /75% = 100%) to keep the enemies at bay long enough, and still barely made it. the Disruption after was a cake walk by comparison.
Something definitely needs to be done to address this.

We keep getting close too , like 45 seconds to go and bam ,another wipe cause a CC immune enemy focused fire in the objective and you are either reloading or can't cast anything.

9 minutes ago, _Kit_Kat_Cat_ said:

Just use Nercamechs for all 3 missions. 

The first mission is fine , you have tools to get over it and just be smart enough to ignore the enemies without weakpoints and keep moving ahead.

The defense mission though , I had a squad using 2 mechs , they made the bad decision to sit in the objective. The limius decided to camp with them. The health of the objective kept falling rapidly and then bam.

Guess this week is a no go, unless I get a squad setup that works well.

I have a decent loadout too ,

well the weeks still young let's see what it brings along.

[Drachnyn]

vor 41 Minuten schrieb 0_The_F00l:

once again my issue this week is the mirror defense ,

its almost a repeat as last time.

last time: enemies have cc resistance thanks to OG and energy kept getting drained,

this time enemies cannot be CCed cause you dont have any duration or the limius sucked your energy while you were casting.

and the enemies can still very easily kill you and the objective can die cause you killed enemies near it (and staying near it attracts the limius which sucks everything you got).

i dont even know how bad the third mission is yet cause i keep failing at the second mission and keep getting paired (if at all) with those that dont speak english.The poor matchmaking irks me more than anything.

Fire blast worked pretty well for CC in my experience and spamming out specters helps to pull away some aggro from the defense objective.

[sh0shin]

6 hours ago, Drachnyn said:

This is the safeguard.

Yeah probably but it's a horrible mechanic. Gee whiz I'll just pick Revenant each week and give up the Vosfor and *eventually* beat the EDA, even if it takes 45-60 mins with my Amprex or whatever. 50 Vosfor is a joke. Kill 2 acolytes. You've basically got the Super Extra Reward, congrats! 🎊 🥳 🎉

 

53 minutes ago, _Kit_Kat_Cat_ said:

Just use Nercamechs for all 3 missions. 

This is pretty annoying for Alchemy in particular just sayin'. It does help though.

[Voltage]

7 hours ago, NOsPL said:

Framecurse Syndrome inflicts dmg on ability cast, lethargic shields increases recharge delay. You can use brief respite and augur mods to recharge your shields. You can use Magus Elevate to restore your health. That will require you to to carefully cast abilities while also forcing you to switching to operator, to regenerate your health, on top of killing enemies. Pretty decent way to increase difficulty that can be overcome by combination of mods/arcanes, arsenal knowledge and extra focus. 

In terms of bad weapons, I agree that some of them should be blacklisted from DA. But still, you can pick one favourite weapon and you get 5/5 rewards.

Deep Archimedea was added on top of Netracells mode, not as a replacement to it. You are not being punished for not using all EDA modifiers. Players with robust arsenal are being rewarded.

This is my take as well. You're also encouraged to play as a group so that between 4 players, you can make up the shortcomings of each other through your gear choices.

This is why I like the mode. I completely understand why someone who has hundreds or even thousands of hours in the everyday Warframe gameplay would see this as a roadblock, but I just don't see it as "bad design", just "different from what you're used to". Duviri Decrees trivialize the level scaling, and the RNG for gear there is more of a mild inconvenience than something to build around. Deep Archimedea rewards a robust arsenal like you said, and properly rewards team play. You can also sacrifice the Vosfer if you're struggling to the point where you need a specific crutch like Revenant or Torid.

Edited April 15 by Voltage

[BeefyScar]

18 hours ago, _Kit_Kat_Cat_ said:

inb4 defenders of this clearly poor game design come in and tell you that you're "wrong".

what do you mean? Its perfectly balanced logic in Roguelike to have NO REROLL even through weapon performance between best and the worst is heaven and hell difference.

It is perfectly balanced for the game pick only 3 weapons even though just in secondaries alone can have 6 "unique" dual wielding hitscan automatic guns. 

Its all for the challenge. You don't have access to every gun you like, all the time. If you wanted that, you'd go play RPG shooter games.

/s

 

It's honestly real sad that the game is literally moving away from its core and some players are defending it. Restrictive weapon by type per week, or even top weapon restrictions, I'd understand as a challenge because nerfing the player is simply the easiest way to increase difficulty. I wouldn't like it, but I'd understand it, but random loadout? Even duviri had no place in being a part of a RPG shooter game. 

[Chewarette]

The max research points' reward being lame is exactly their way of giving you control. I had Styanax in the picks, so I took it and gave up the Ability Duration malus. If I had had lame warframe choices, I would have pick a non-Duration-dependent one and it would have worked just fine.

Not saying EDA is very well implemented, but the choices are merely a problem - particularly if you play in groups which is the recommended way of doing it.