DE's obsession with randomization feels more about monetization than "challenge" or anything else.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Kinda right, but it's not an issue for veterans....who the content is for....

If some vet is already sitting on 10,000 plat, them using 20p to give an old weapon more mod space isn't a big deal.

We recently had an affinity weekend, so paired with a blessing and booster, it's 15min of ESO to max out a weapon....

 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

10 hours ago, ECCHOSIERRA said:

Lets start with the fact that pretty much every player learns pretty quick to save plat/forma/potatoes for weapons that they actually like, and or are actually good.

Because hey, if blue potatoes are a limited resource that are either slow to come by or cost plat, you should invest them carefully right? 

But wait! Between The Circuit and now archimedia, theres all of a sudden a reason to "invest" in weapons you would normally never use. 

 

People defending the randomizer usually point to "but muh challenge".

A) you cant tell me the circuit's random loadouts are meant to provide challenge when decrees exist and even a mid weapon with enough decrees piled on top of it, is gonna be more "overpowered" than anything in the game outside of that mode. You can also get carried.

B) All you really "need" in deep archimedia is to first of all not die, and second have at least one viable weapon that can kill enemies in at least a semi reasonable amount of time.

And pretty much every frame is survivable enough if built right and you can effectively ignore at least one personal modifier per week. Or just get carried.

 

If DE actually "stuck to their guns" and didnt give us ways to "get around" the "challenge" or having to use randomized loadouts then i could at least say "well its them attempting to make challenging content", but that isnt the case so it really just feels like a cash grab more than anything.

Why is challenge and difficulty still being placed in the same category? A challenge doesn't have to be difficult. I can challenge you to count to 10. It's just a game mode that offers a unique twist to the all day, everyday style of play.

They gave us the 60 eyes boss as a "higher end difficulty challenge", with its own set of rewards structure. DA and EDA are other types of challenges, where some may find difficult (and there are many from what I'm experiencing), again with its own rewards structure. The challenge is the game mode and its conditions. The difficulty is the subjective toughness of the challenge.

This has been a tiring issue with Warframe, where both completely different words are attempted to be combined as one. You guys gotta change this way of thinking because the message of what you want gets mixed with those who want what a challenge actually is: new game modes, new ways of playing, interesting conditionals, etc. You guys want it to be "difficult", but you honestly have done an extremely poor job of explaining to DE what that actually is. Every single time a difficulty topic is brought up, it's quickly blended with challenge, and challenge carries the weight of the topic's ideas. Separate the two and tell us exactly what a difficult mission looks like, because this seems to be the most difficult task we all have, me included.

 

[ECCHOSIERRA]

7 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Why is challenge and difficulty still being placed in the same category? A challenge doesn't have to be difficult. I can challenge you to count to 10. It's just a game mode that offers a unique twist to the all day, everyday style of play.

They gave us the 60 eyes boss as a "higher end difficulty challenge", with its own set of rewards structure. DA and EDA are other types of challenges, where some may find difficult (and there are many from what I'm experiencing), again with its own rewards structure. The challenge is the game mode and its conditions. The difficulty is the subjective toughness of the challenge.

This has been a tiring issue with Warframe, where both completely different words are attempted to be combined as one. You guys gotta change this way of thinking because the message of what you want gets mixed with those who want what a challenge actually is: new game modes, new ways of playing, interesting conditionals, etc. You guys want it to be "difficult", but you honestly have done an extremely poor job of explaining to DE what that actually is. Every single time a difficulty topic is brought up, it's quickly blended with challenge, and challenge carries the weight of the topic's ideas. Separate the two and tell us exactly what a difficult mission looks like, because this seems to be the most difficult task we all have, me included.

 

>extremely poor joh of explaining to DE what "difficult" actually is.

Its not that I or anyone else cant "explain" what difficulty is, its that nobody can ever agree on what "difficulty" means and even if they could, not everyone *wants* their experience to be super difficult. 

At the very least I think people would generally agree that a "difficult videogame" should be *fair*.

That winning or losing should be up to the player somehow. That it is inherantly beatable *somehow*.

And if thats the case, sooner or later its just not gonna feel that hard after awhile.

[(PSN)rexis12]

Honestly I'm just saying if the end game is for all weapons to be used in the final level, don't hate things like Potatoes and Forma behind both plat and time.

This isn't the case of 'Make your weapins stronger with Galvanized Mods' because I can farm for a Galvanized Mod or a Steel Path Arcane to build up the weapon I want to. I can't say the same for Potatoes and Forma. 

'But you can trade Plat!'

Listen if the challenge progression of the game is literally dependant on:

1. A premium currency that is only kept afloat by the whales in Warframe that buy every single plat pack/prime access upgrade that let them hoard hundreds of thousands of plat that they can give to others

And

2. A Premium currency gained through in game trading with no actual limitation and supervision by the head directors of the game themselves. 

Then the moment the plat dries up, the game and the challenge crashes.

I remember when I posted how much Plat it would take to actually make all weapins viable just by unlocking them with slots, not counting potatoes and forma. It was well in the Hundreds of Thousands and the only response to me saying that a game with hundrees of wealons and gating them  behind the currency of the game was

"Well you  can get 2 extra slots every 5 months, so that's irrelevant"

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

2 hours ago, traybong111 said:

Though in fairness, requiring some coordination could fall under a category of "difficulty" in content. Mechanics in LOR were extremely simple--literally just standing on buttons and not letting mobs move you off buttons--but even those had a consistent failure rate because cooperation is evidently challenging for many people. But I agree with your main point about DE's attempts at creating variety--for a game with as much stuff as Warframe, a variety of gameplay and multiple distinct metas (which DE can tweak around to relatively less backlash) would work better for longevity rather than constantly churning out new content islands that still offer little variance from what we've always done.

I've been duo'ing most EDA since launch with a clanmate and it's a lot of fun trying to mix and match the hands we're dealt for that week. He didn't get all that lucky this week, but luckily I rolled into Cycron which could entirely ignore the ammunition nerf, and I could crutch on my clanmate's Harrow to boost said Cycron, so on and so forth. He didn't have any of the primaries of the week built up, so he slapped on a bunch of status mods and Primary Exhilarate on one of them (I think it was Quartakk?) to keep up Condemn and Covenant. There are so many tools at our disposal in Warframe and even if it's just for one or two missions a week it's so exciting to find a use for them.

 

Oh, for sure. Just that the relationship is more nuanced. Like take the idea of weeklies and dailies in different games including Warframe. Do they exist, and are they designed for difficulty only, or retention only? Well, its more of a combination that can be a bit different in context and relatively speaking. Usually with weeklies, dailies, its developers wanting player retention and to get players to develop habits, and incentivise checking into the game almost like a schedule. Then usually since a given activity will have an innate level of difficulty or challenge anyway, that just differs based on other variables (like for example Archon Hunts, EDA, Netracells are all weekly activities, but can be argued to be much harder than say a bunch of different Nightwave tasks, Daily Sortie. 

Its more of an educated guess as far as Warframe, since I am not privy to such inside strategy, or internal data, but encouraging weekly group activity style quests for the purpose of retention is probably a high priority for DE. As far as positive effects on and from player behaviours. Whilst also likely wanting it in such a way as to not alienate solo players or frustrate players too significantly. So less about necessarily trying to create super hardcore content, where player retention and cooperation is a happy unintended side effect. Consider the Steel Path 60 Eyes Murmur Assassination boss fight for example, and its rewards, versus the rewards for Netracells and EDA. With 60 Eyes, you basically only get a one time reward of a cosmetic, and Pablo explained on Twitter they didn't want that fight to have anything else significant as a reward. They could have slapped a guaranteed Tau Forge shard on it to do weekly but... I don't actually think a lot of people would enjoy having to grind it every week... Like whilst many liked it on release, I am not sure that there are too many that regularly run it, outside maybe speed runners. Netracells/EDA reward pools are set in a way, to encourage weekly play/rotations, but they also require more engagement, effort and thinking. 60 Eyes is kind of "solved", with meta strats on how to carry, mitigate its energy drain, and high damage, to maintain higher DPS for a shorter fight etc. EDA much less so (Netracells could also be considered solved, but one of the main complaints/criticisms from a lot, other than the red circle issue with randoms, and reward pool, was lack of variety).

Oh nice, about your clan mate. Having a friend who can go Harrow is a pretty nice advantage, heh. Thats a bit similar to my first two weeks of EDA too. Was playing with a friend. I just took Styanax who also had Nourish, and gave everyone on team Overguard, Energy Regain,/Shield Regen and DPSed with my 2 and 4, with no worry about running out of energy. Was very smooth. Last week I couldn't use that strat, well, maybe. The decreased duration on abilities would have probably made that strategy a bit more annoying for me, play style wise, My mate was also ill, so I was with PUB, had to come up with a different strategy, and it was one that evolved once I realised my random team mates were all willing to talk and strategise in chat. People would make suggestions, coordinate triggering an enemy Necramech to kill to shorten timer, making sure others prioritised the defence point, and so on. Was fun with people i knew, and fun with randoms. 

Mind you I have always been able to flex on to different Warframes/weapons, its my play style. I do feel bad/sympathy for players who have mains and most of their play time wrapped up in one or two Warframes almost exclusively. I understand why many are frustrated over such and other details. 

Cheers.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

1 hour ago, ECCHOSIERRA said:

>extremely poor joh of explaining to DE what "difficult" actually is.

Its not that I or anyone else cant "explain" what difficulty is, its that nobody can ever agree on what "difficulty" means and even if they could, not everyone *wants* their experience to be super difficult. 

At the very least I think people would generally agree that a "difficult videogame" should be *fair*.

That winning or losing should be up to the player somehow. That it is inherantly beatable *somehow*.

And if thats the case, sooner or later its just not gonna feel that hard after awhile.

I agree here, and that's the problem. I think we should be pointing at 60 eyes and saying, "more of that, and always make it hidden". We then should be telling YouTubers "hey, don't spoil this!!!", and then let some super cool, but very conditional mods, shards and arcanes, be the rewards. If DE has a buffer from social media spoiling crap all of the time, or forum posters whining about how something hard is "annoying", then I think we can have difficulty added. 

I would start by asking what were the most difficult first experiences you've had in Warframe? For me, it was Mot, the Eidolon, the Tridolons, PT, 60 Eyes, 1000+ SP Circuit and SP Fortuna Arena.

 

[ReddyDisco]

It's about money, always has been. DE is not a non-profit.

[Binket_]

19 hours ago, ECCHOSIERRA said:

People defending the randomizer usually point to "but muh challenge".

A) you cant tell me the circuit's random loadouts are meant to provide challenge when decrees exist and even a mid weapon with enough decrees piled on top of it, is gonna be more "overpowered" than anything in the game outside of that mode. You can also get carried.

B) All you really "need" in deep archimedia is to first of all not die, and second have at least one viable weapon that can kill enemies in at least a semi reasonable amount of time.

I have always viewed it less as "challenge" and more of a desperate attempt to strongarm players out of using the stock-standard stuff they've been using for months on end.

Yes, [META-OF-THE-WEEK] Warframe/Weapon is suuuuuper comfy to a lot of players and their one total finger to use at any given time...
... but it's also an obnoxious hell to make any sort of meaningful content with that in mind without making it focus strictly on that.

If you made content that was focused to counter things like Revenant or Dante?
You effectively have to make something so ungodly strong that it makes everything that's already struggling to be relevant... even more irrelevant.
... or you force players to adapt to something new, since they cannot be trusted to do it on their own.

 

Is it really "challenge"? No.
To anybody with a functioning brain and half the motor functions of a potted plant?
This game is a joke for difficulty. No matter what gear they use.
There is no challenge to find in 99% of the game.
^{Yes, that includes Level Cap content because shutting down Enemy AI reduces all damage taken to a fat 0. Which can be done in a plethora of ways.}

However, does it force the player to work in new conditions? Yes.
That's the key here.

 

So when I look at your two other points? I'll say:

• Decrees function as a sort of "Hey, here's something to ensure this low-tier gear won't force you to fail. Here's something to work with."
• Which is why I feel that the randomizer restriction does feel a bit obstructive, but not for the reason everyone is screaming about.

Both could easily be turned into the most boring chore this side of the Origin System if you brought something like Wukong to it. We all know he's powerful, blah blah blah.
... but it's because the game keeps trying to force you to think, that's what makes it difficult.

It's really apparent that Warframe Players HATE thinking. The moment you try to get to change their strategy, they lose their minds.
It's been an enabled problem for a good while now and stifles creative gameplay (be it a dev's design or a passionate player's skill), but it needs to be curbed sooner than later.
This is that sooner.
^{Hell, I recently read a little fanmade story written I was recommended to read that wasfrom the view of a Corpus Crewman. Lemme tell ya, really elaborates how much of a mindless horror we are to them.}

 

Granted, I WILL say that certain modifiers in Deep Archimedea do suck-- regardless of what you get as a choice.
These usually involve ones like "-75% Duration" as it's -75% off your modded total, not lowered like how Transient Fortitude would.
This makes a LOT of Warframes very poor choices or just unusable outright. Such as Gyre, Banshee, Trinity, Vauban, Protea, Nyx-- a large majority of the roster.

With the randomizers stifling your choices? These kinds of modifiers make it very difficult to warrant them as viable let alone fun.
The easiest solution to- for instance, the negative duration modifier- would be to take another look at how they interact with the entire roster and their chances of leaving a player without options.

 

 

 

I understand why people don't like it. I also understand why this system exists to begin with.
It's far from a perfect system... but when you have to build for Warframe players?
Far from perfect is the best miracle they could perform at this point.

When the community stops crying that the newest killstick got a little scrape on it because it was (very obviously) too powerful?
THAT's when we'll get something worth a damn here. We can't make anything good if people can't see the good. _{^{(People STILL think Yareli sucks, despite the numerous buffs making her actually REALLY good.)}}
Until that time, we'll be stuck with whatever lab experiments DE has to cook up to avoid review bombs from lazy rejects forgetting they have a jump button.

[(PSN)rexis12]

"Adapt to something new"

Oh hey, remember when they decided to add in enemies that are resistant to Viral and Slash, but at the same time literally add in enemies with Armor, which are literally the enemies why Viral and Slash were so prominent? 

Remember when DE decided that an enemy that could not only turn off CC at a whim, but also have reduced CC effects and then make that enemy increasingly tanky and even made it status immune at the point you would WANT to attack them, thereby tunneling you down even further into the DPS Meta that makes any kind of challenge impossible. 

HEY REMEMBER WHEN THEY ADDED IN WEAK POINTS FOR THE CULVERINS AND THEN AT THE SAME TIME MAKE THOSE WEAK POINTS UNBREAKABLE IF THEY HAVE OVER GUARD?! WHICH WAS ALREADY AN ISSUE THAT THEY FIXED WITH THE NOX!? 

I'll believe that DE is 'struggling' to make challenging content when they actually try to design something around content that isn't just "Deal Damage" And "Deal Damage only to this area lmao".

Honestly if I have to say the worst of this design is Void Armageddon. Where, besides the mandatory Angel at the end, you need to 'defend' the Exodampers but that just translates to you needing to kill really fast or you're #*!%ED. 

[Hayrack]

The real challenge is tanking this baloney with your current arsenal, through carefull selection of mods, not with silly "use a Stug and get +300% bonus damage on it HOW COOL IS THAT HUH??". If you manage that - mad respect.

[ECCHOSIERRA]

7 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I agree here, and that's the problem. I think we should be pointing at 60 eyes and saying, "more of that, and always make it hidden". We then should be telling YouTubers "hey, don't spoil this!!!", and then let some super cool, but very conditional mods, shards and arcanes, be the rewards. If DE has a buffer from social media spoiling crap all of the time, or forum posters whining about how something hard is "annoying", then I think we can have difficulty added. 

I would start by asking what were the most difficult first experiences you've had in Warframe? For me, it was Mot, the Eidolon, the Tridolons, PT, 60 Eyes, 1000+ SP Circuit and SP Fortuna Arena.

 

The eidolons originally were very difficult for me but not in a fun way. 

First there was the bugs. Then there were issues like players randomly not wanting to put the shards where they go or something silly like that. Then there was the toxicity. 

The toxicity was one issue but the general try-hard-sweatiness was another. 

Like bruh I'm not expecting every little thing to be frame perfect trying to get 900 try caps in one night. 

Then there was the fact that I work full time and it always seemed like I was at odds with the day/night cycle unless I wanted to set alarms and or use an external service like a discord server or website just to keep track of the time.

 

But, aside from all that, keeping the lures alive, the coordination it took, someone keeping lures alive someone taking limbs someone downing shields, and learning what weapons and what builds were effective was a struggle at first. 

 

[Xylena_Lazarow]

22 hours ago, Agall said:

Having to actually be good at Warframe and not just a particular set of builds to do the most rewarding content in the game is a good thing in my opinion.

To me these modes are about demonstrating minimum competency, not superior high level skill. I've found it most efficient to lean on the same little cluster of survival mods and Helminth abilities on any under-modded or unfamiliar frame, so for me the randomization does end up reducing to just a particular set of builds.

[Agall]

53 minutes ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

To me these modes are about demonstrating minimum competency, not superior high level skill. I've found it most efficient to lean on the same little cluster of survival mods and Helminth abilities on any under-modded or unfamiliar frame, so for me the randomization does end up reducing to just a particular set of builds.

Sure, there is in fact a wrong way to play a game mode. Blizzard was notorious for the 17 years I've played their games for making decisions that enforce a specific type of gameplay, then not compensating properly when the player base as a whole doesn't "play it right", sticking to their guns about how they think it should be played.

I personally haven't attempted EDA this week because the RNG I got is particularly poor, nothing but MR fodder weapons and Caliban, Mag, and Nova for Warframes, none of which I have builds for. I'll have to find a way to get 34 research this week unless it just ends up being that I join a group with friends willing to split run it.

[SneakyErvin]

I dont see the monetization angle, since the way these systems are set up I see no incentive to spend on more things. I only see a slight incentive to getting of my ass and finish some of the things I've saved since I wanted them in order to use them. But getting more items to add to the pile I see zero reason to, since that would just mean I'd end up with the things I want to use less, since those things I dont wanna use but suddenly get would start competing for the "guaranteed" pulls in those systems.

But hey, if you like shooting yourself in the foot who am I to judge, we all have our kinks and fetiches.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

4 hours ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

To me these modes are about demonstrating minimum competency, not superior high level skill. I've found it most efficient to lean on the same little cluster of survival mods and Helminth abilities on any under-modded or unfamiliar frame, so for me the randomization does end up reducing to just a particular set of builds.

That's you demonstrating superior high level skill though. You've worked your way up to gathering all of the right mods for the job and earned your way through the entire game to get to Helminth. From there, you are highly skilled enough to use "any under-modded or unfamiliar frame" to complete the mission. 

In contrast, demonstrating minimum competency would be selecting your most meta builds, your most powerful setup, and playing a mission with restrictions you could easily offset.