Grustrag Three: Infuriating Penalties 2.0

[gnat6]

My point in this entire thread (and others like it), is not everyone is an insanely skilled/ranked player.

 

It is possible to trigger the Grustrag Three the moment you step on Mars. In fact, it is quite likely due to how credit-starved Newbies tend to be.

 

We have been making this game worse, and worse, and worse, and worse for newbies ever since Update 9. The small little boons we toss them now and then are not enough to offset the crap DE has been putting them through. Lemme go through a short list, shall we?

 

1). Update 9: Made Nano Spores, Plastids, and Salvage MUCH harder to obtain, making it impossible to craft anything (other than Orthos/Cronus) until you get through THREE planets.

 

2). Update 10: Defense/Mobile Defense made MUCH harder, respawns increased, Stalker made harder.

 

3). Update 11: Mod Drop 2.0, which made it very difficult if not nearly impossible for newbies to get incredibly important mods.

 

4). Update 12: Harvester, Gas City Tileset (which is NOT friendly to newbies in the slightest, those mobs in there downright hurt like hell). Also, the Revamp of Earth adding Karaks and Hellion Rockets everywhere on the third planet, before you can craft anything.

 

5). Update 12.4: Now we have the Grustrag Three! Lose a battle with them and you are suddenly unable to do much of anything in 75% of all the missions on the Solar Map until you farm ridiculously rare components! Oh, and don't forget about the environmental hazards -- let's make the Grineer even WORSE to fight!

 

What did we actually GIVE newbies? 20,000 credits for defeating Vor and a Redirection. Redirection is important, but uh... yeah. That doesn't stack against the above.

You forgot damage 2.0 nerfing the starter weapons so badly that the lato which I used to solo mars with back when I had no damage mods exept for No Return can barely kill anything on mercury with a rank 4 hornet strike and changing the mk1 braton to slash damage which has a damage penalty against both the grineer and corpus.

On the plus side DE buffed the spawn rate for grineer ballistas.

[Taranis49]

All this is just about thinking and being strategic before you go out Ninja-ing. The penalty is not that high, IMHO. For new players... You could always just not partake in an Invasion missions against Grinneer, if you are 2 green.

 

Except for the small issue that newbies probably won't know about little things like the G3 spawn mechanic until after they're marked, and potentially not even then and by that point, it's already too late. The information's not disclosed anywhere ingame beforehand. Hell, even veterans couldn't couldn't 100% confirm Harvey's spawn mechanic until DE made it clear and the whole e-mail shtick (and even then it didn't help since the ingame e-mail was bugged, what with people supporting Corpus getting the e-mail from Alad).

[kryori]

if you're always marked. then you should always be ready. If you take low level weapons to rank up, then take a high level frame. If you take low level frame then take high level weapons. This what's great about Warframe juxtaposed to say Borderlands or something.

 

All this is just about thinking and being strategic before you go out Ninja-ing. The penalty is not that high, IMHO. For new players... You could always just not partake in an Invasion missions against Grinneer, if you are 2 green.

 

Guns don't matter when you have a low level frame.  It took 1 hit to blow up my Molt and 2 hits to burn through 520 shields and 270 health, the most my low-rank Saryn could have with the mods I have available (unranked Physique, Fortitude, Molt, Venom, 8/10 Redirection).  I didn't even have time to identify the direction the shots were being fired from before I was incapacitated.  I could probably have killed them in a few seconds of 9k dps Phage fire, but that wasn't an option by the time I saw them.

 

Which sounds like complaining, but it's really not; if I'd had 3 teammates who were reasonably equipped and worked together it would have been easy to get rezzed and wipe them out.  Instead I had one Nova that ran away faster than I could keep up.  Yeah, I should have hit ALT + F4 earlier in that situation; but the fact that a situation exists where the best solution is to crash the game rather than deal with a harsh penalty seems, to me, to be a problem that should be addressed.  Maybe some sort of alternate reward for escaping successfully by running to the end of the mission rather than crashing the game?

[RawGritz]

Guns don't matter when you have a low level frame.  It took 1 hit to blow up my Molt and 2 hits to burn through 520 shields and 270 health, the most my low-rank Saryn could have with the mods I have available (unranked Physique, Fortitude, Molt, Venom, 8/10 Redirection).  I didn't even have time to identify the direction the shots were being fired from before I was incapacitated.  I could probably have killed them in a few seconds of 9k dps Phage fire, but that wasn't an option by the time I saw them.

 

Which sounds like complaining, but it's really not; if I'd had 3 teammates who were reasonably equipped and worked together it would have been easy to get rezzed and wipe them out.  Instead I had one Nova that ran away faster than I could keep up.  Yeah, I should have hit ALT + F4 earlier in that situation; but the fact that a situation exists where the best solution is to crash the game rather than deal with a harsh penalty seems, to me, to be a problem that should be addressed.  Maybe some sort of alternate reward for escaping successfully by running to the end of the mission rather than crashing the game?

You don't need to crash the game. If you can't handle them. Rabbit! Get the hell out of there and extract! Discretion is the better part of Valor.

[NikolaiLev]

TL;DR: Harvester was bad enough.  This is just insulting.

 

For those who don't know, upon losing a battle to the Grustrag Three your frames are fitted with a 'grustrag bolt' that cripples their effectiveness against the Grineer.  Removing this bolt requires neural sensors, neurodes, and oxium.

 

While the G3 would be a welcome set of loot pinatas in an Orokin Void mission or Derelict run,  If you're leveling up an unranked frame, playing with only one other person in a PUG, or otherwise not capable of soloing these guys blindfolded, you may as well hit ALT + F4 before they spawn and save yourself the indignity of being slapped with an arbitrary penalty.

 

The penalty for 'defeat' takes all the risk out of this equation; either you know you'll win and choose to stay to collect the free loot, or you don't know if you'll win and immediately quit the field, because time spent farming rare resources is tedious mediocrity and using that mediocrity as a penalty for loss is a slap in the face.  I don't have enough neurodes and neural sensors to build the stuff I do want to build, let alone suffer this penalty.  It's doubly insulting that, on many of my numerous other frames, I could have easily defeated these foes; this isn't a skill discrepancy, it's an equipment discrepancy caused by their random spawn mechanics.

 

The combination of this random spawn mechanic with this mouse-smashingly infuriating penalty mechanic doesn't feel like good game design.  The penalty seems designed to evoke a sense of risk, but with Harvester the risk was 'you'll have to play a boring mission' rather than 'you'll have to give up rare items you spend hours farming'.  I'd much rather see a high credit cost and common resources used as the components of the bolt release.

 

Agreed.  Punishment is fine.  But punishment that requires you to grind is not.  It'd be one thing if the fight was challenging, but the boss fight, like most DE boss fights, isn't a skill-based affair, it's just a gear check.

 

If you're using forma'd gear, well... you're outta luck.

[Monolake]

Tenno, remember, your actions have consequences. 

 

You basically want a win-win situation. There would be no risks or punishment if it didn't require effort from you. You got a deathmark, you know they can jump you - carry a good gun. Cant handle it? Do one invasion for Grineer to erase the mark - you'll be neutral.

And you can always abort the mission if you are caught pants down  with unranked gear.

 

 

Making the fight more skill-dependant rather then just gear check might be better, cause now these guys just cheat teleporting on your head.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Monolake

[Xylia]

Tenno, remember, your actions have consequences. 

 

And you can always abort the mission if you are caught pants down  with unranked gear.

 

Yeah, like Alt+F4 should be the answer to bad game design.

 

Suuuure.

[Yezzik]

The Grustrag are level scaled just like The Harvester, and The Stalker. Thus low level players have a fighting chance against them.

 

No they ain't. An entire party of low-level characters entered Apollodorus earlier today, myself among them--I was level 1, having just polarised my Trinity--and met a group of level 20 Grustrags.

 

Of course they wouldn't dare spawn during all those missions when I was level 30 and able to actually stand a chance. OF COURSE.

[Xylia]

No they ain't. An entire party of low-level characters entered Apollodorus earlier today, myself among them--I was level 1, having just polarised my Trinity--and met a group of level 20 Grustrags.

 

Of course they wouldn't dare spawn during all those missions when I was level 30 and able to actually stand a chance. OF COURSE.

 

And God Help those newbies that had never gotten past Mercury/Venus, because now they gotta go to Jupiter, Eris, or Derelict to have a chance of getting that bolt removed.

 

Until they do, they have very low chances of succeeding missions in Mercury, Earth, or Saturn...

Edited March 7, 2014 by Xylia

[Yezzik]

Yeah, it was a good thing the rest of the party bailed on me, because otherwise it wouldn't have been fair on them.

[Phatose]

Yeah, like Alt+F4 should be the answer to bad game design.

 

Suuuure.

 

On my one encounter with the G3, before they actually showed up Lotus made it quite clear that I should forget my mission objectives and high-tail it directly for extraction.  I didn't actually try it, as I was pretty well kitted out, but she made it seem very much like I could just head to extraction and leave without problems.  Run for your life ain't exactly the same as Alt-F4.

 

As for Mercury/Venus only players....is Venus subject to invasion?  Cause Mercury can't be, so unless Venus gets invaded, they shouldn't be able to encounter the G3.

 

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding - do they bolt people who aren't the marked target?

[Chymos]

Why not give a different bolt to players depending on their rank? It would make sense that they'd put a bigger penalty on the Tenno they see as a bigger threat. Perhaps one that requires common materials (mostly ferrite) with a touch of uncommon for rank 0-4, uncommon and a touch of rare (morphics would definitely be fair, but others could work as well) for 5-9, and rare with a bit of uncommon for 10+? Of course none of these should require TOO much grinding.

[Monolake]

Yeah, like Alt+F4 should be the answer to bad game design.

 

Suuuure.

How is it bad when you know what you are getting into, you have several ways to counter or prevent it. G3 is not just a Santa with presents, its a threat too, as it should be. 

[Xylia]

On my one encounter with the G3, before they actually showed up Lotus made it quite clear that I should forget my mission objectives and high-tail it directly for extraction.  I didn't actually try it, as I was pretty well kitted out, but she made it seem very much like I could just head to extraction and leave without problems.  Run for your life ain't exactly the same as Alt-F4.

 

As for Mercury/Venus only players....is Venus subject to invasion?  Cause Mercury can't be, so unless Venus gets invaded, they shouldn't be able to encounter the G3.

 

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding - do they bolt people who aren't the marked target?

 

From what I've read thusfar, sounds like everybody gets bolted if all 4 die.

 

That means if you're a newbie on Apollodorus and someone with a deathmark joins your group on a lowbie frame.... enjoy your BDSM mark.

 

How is it bad when you know what you are getting into, you have several ways to counter or prevent it. G3 is not just a Santa with presents, its a threat too, as it should be.

 

A threat is fine.

 

It is not fine, however, when dealing with the aftermath of said threat involves hours of farming before you can return to your regular gameplay.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Xylia

[kryori]

...but she made it seem very much like I could just head to extraction and leave without problems.  Run for your life ain't exactly the same as Alt-F4.

 

No, it isn't.  Running for extraction still gives them a good chance to inflict a penalty on you, since there is a good chance that they will spawn in and gib your low-rank frame before you can make it to extraction.

 

 

You basically want a win-win situation. 

 

No, I want a situation in which winning is possible if I play skillfully.

 

 

You got a deathmark, you know they can jump you - carry a good gun. 

 

I did that, which is why I was overconfident enough to attempt to fight in the first place; doesn't help if you get gibbed because your max hp/shields are low and three bosses spawn atop you.  

 

 

Cant handle it? Do one invasion for Grineer to erase the mark - you'll be neutral.

 

According to what?  Where can I find my mark status in game?  Where can I find instructions that indicate that backing the grineer erases my mark in game?  If this is accurate it would explain why I never seem to bump into Harvester lately - I need Fieldron more than Detonite Injectors - but I can't find anything anywhere to back this assertion up.

[MechaMarshmallow]

It's very possible for a newbie to get bolted. Say I'm levelling my newly forma'd warframe and guns so I go down to venus or mercury for the first couple of levels, forgetting I have the death mark. Suddenly the G3 appear, and while I may know to alt+f4 to gtfo, my three newbie teammates may well not, and they'll end up bolted... with a whole lot of grineer to get past before they can get to jupiter or eris.

 

That's not going to be fun.

[Mak_Gohae]

TL;DR: Harvester was bad enough.  This is just insulting.

 

For those who don't know, upon losing a battle to the Grustrag Three your frames are fitted with a 'grustrag bolt' that cripples their effectiveness against the Grineer.  Removing this bolt requires neural sensors, neurodes, and oxium.

 

While the G3 would be a welcome set of loot pinatas in an Orokin Void mission or Derelict run,  If you're leveling up an unranked frame, playing with only one other person in a PUG, or otherwise not capable of soloing these guys blindfolded, you may as well hit ALT + F4 before they spawn and save yourself the indignity of being slapped with an arbitrary penalty.

 

The penalty for 'defeat' takes all the risk out of this equation; either you know you'll win and choose to stay to collect the free loot, or you don't know if you'll win and immediately quit the field, because time spent farming rare resources is tedious mediocrity and using that mediocrity as a penalty for loss is a slap in the face.  I don't have enough neurodes and neural sensors to build the stuff I do want to build, let alone suffer this penalty.  It's doubly insulting that, on many of my numerous other frames, I could have easily defeated these foes; this isn't a skill discrepancy, it's an equipment discrepancy caused by their random spawn mechanics.

 

The combination of this random spawn mechanic with this mouse-smashingly infuriating penalty mechanic doesn't feel like good game design.  The penalty seems designed to evoke a sense of risk, but with Harvester the risk was 'you'll have to play a boring mission' rather than 'you'll have to give up rare items you spend hours farming'.  I'd much rather see a high credit cost and common resources used as the components of the bolt release.

 

Dont get battlepay from Corpus Invasions.

You are actually given the option to do or not do this.

[(PSN)ariaandkia]

I don't know about you, but I personally have no issues with the punishment of some of these spawns.

 

Now, there are times when the roaming bosses do a cheap kill on me:

Attacking me when the life support air is running out when I have low ranked weapons (so that the battle takes over 5 minutes and it counts as their kill when the life drain hits-to be fair, my own fault for fighting them instead of extracting)

Attacking me during defense mission so that they get 10+ seconds to kill me. (Harvester didn't last long when it tried that since I was used to the stalker by then, stalker once somehow killed the cryopod (instead of me) and made the entire team fail before the timer finished counting, other times, stalker got me)

 

However, I think that the punishments are fine.  If they are too strong for you to fight, you are either: solo (don't get me wrong, those bosses are soloable) or in an area above your level or both.  

 

Now, if you are a newbie and in an area above your level, it is totally your own fault.  Most of those invasions are not on the first planet so you've had time to learn game mechanics.

 

If you are a veteran, you have no reason to have an issue (why are you going into a mission with no decent weaponry unless you are doing something like deception?) (as someone pointed out, for veterans, those bosses are easy.  I still don't get what people were saying about the Stalker being too difficult.  I'm going to assume that the stalker got debuffed after the apparent "buff" pc players were complaining about before 12.0.5 came out. That or they just didn't know how to fight him)

 

Now, we PS4 players don't have these grustrag three, but from what I have been hearing, they don't sound all that difficult as long as warframe isn't your first action third person shooter game.  

 

Now, there is the issue of your party abandoning you (though in some cases, fighting solo can be easier than fighting in a group), but that is more of players being jerks than bad design.

 

There is also the issue of most players being very aggressive and not taking cover outside of skills like snow globe.  You'll notice that the enemy takes cover quite often which makes them harder to kill by weaponry.  Newbies should be using cover a lot more than veterans because they are still at a point where they are learning and the natural response SHOULD be "I'm getting shot at, let me find something to stop that."   Veterans of warframe, on the other hand, are more likely to have weaned themselves off that reaction and be more: "RUSH THE ENEMY, KILL IT BEFORE IT CAN KILL ME!"   While that isn't necessarily a bad reaction, it generally doesn't work very well unless you have far superior firepower.

 

When I fight the stalker, I'm not going to do either-he can't be fought like most enemies.   I don't rush him because that would be suicide, but I don't find cover either (at least not against the stalker himself) because that would be suicide.  Instead, dodge, block, etc. while fighting.  Some slides, some parkour, even some wall attacks.   Mobility.

 

Against the Harvester, I go for heavy firepower, stuns (some work oddly well against harvester), and positioning.

 

Point is: even with a lower rank frame and weaponry, as long as I have at least one decent weapon and am in an appropriate level area, the other two bosses are definitely doable.  I firmly believe that the grustrag three are the same.  Just change your tactics a little.   As for the resource costs, the only hard one to get is neural sensors and even then.

 

 

Now, what I see as a problem is being punished for someone else's miniboss.   If you are getting punished because someone else dragged a miniboss into your mission, that is wrong.  I haven't had that problem, but I'm so used to fighting them at this point that I can almost fight them asleep.

Edited March 7, 2014 by (PS4)ariaandkia

[Yezzik]

If they are too strong for you to fight, you are either: solo (don't get me wrong, those bosses are soloable) or in an area above your level or both.  

 

I was level 1, in a level 1 mission with other level 1s. In come the level 20 Grustrag Three, and we get annihilated. If the people I pugged with were just starting out, they wouldn't even know where to find Oxium in the first place.

[(PSN)ariaandkia]

I was level 1, in a level 1 mission with other level 1s. In come the level 20 Grustrag Three, and we get annihilated. If the people I pugged with were just starting out, they wouldn't even know where to find Oxium in the first place.

 

So you were all newbies?  Including you?  Otherwise, you missed another point I was making.  Also, did the boss spawn rules change? Because i thought minimum for spawn was rank 5 which means minimum rank is 20.

 

And you definitely missed a few points I made.

Edited March 7, 2014 by (PS4)ariaandkia

[Yezzik]

So you were all newbies?  Including you?  Otherwise, you missed another point I was making.  Also, did the boss spawn rules change? Because i thought minimum for spawn was rank 5 which means minimum rank is 20.

 

I mean I was on a just-polarised frame. This happened today. I was the one Deathmarked, and it wasn't fair to the other people in the group that the G3 came in at level 20. They're lucky they ditched me and left the group--that way they hopefully didn't get Bolted.

[(PSN)ariaandkia]

I mean I was on a just-polarised frame. This happened today. I was the one Deathmarked, and it wasn't fair to the other people in the group that the G3 came in at level 20. They're lucky they ditched me and left the group--that way they hopefully didn't get Bolted.

As I said, I do disagree on being bolted because of someone else's fault.  (Has this been confirmed/confirmed as intended?)

 

However, why did you have no good firepower?

 

I always keep at least one weapon that I can use against any specials.  Just in case something happens.

 

 

I know I've had the stalker come after me with a fresh frame but I killed him easily because I kept high level weaponry on me and knew how to fight him.

[RawGritz]

As I said, I do disagree on being bolted because of someone else's fault.  (Has this been confirmed/confirmed as intended?)

 

However, why did you have no good firepower?

 

I always keep at least one weapon that I can use against any specials.  Just in case something happens.

 

 

I know I've had the stalker come after me with a fresh frame but I killed him easily because I kept high level weaponry on me and knew how to fight him.

^^ All day, this!!

[Yezzik]

However, why did you have no good firepower?

 

My firepower was all mid-level weapons. At the time, I thought it more than enough to deal with what I was going to face.

But now it seems like I need to keep my level 30 Soma on at all times until I'm done with the G3 and can safely polarise *that* as well.

Honestly, though, the problem wasn't firepower--the problem was the whole party exploding as soon as they looked at us.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Yezzik

[kryori]

Point is: even with a lower rank frame and weaponry, as long as I have at least one decent weapon and am in an appropriate level area, the other two bosses are definitely doable.  I firmly believe that the grustrag three are the same.  Just change your tactics a little.   As for the resource costs, the only hard one to get is neural sensors and even then.

 

The other two are more doable at low levels because they're individual enemies and tend to remain fixated on their mark targets.  Stalker in particular is a bit of a joke because he spawns in as a black blob, slowly stands up - and in my experience typically falls over on the spot before he can finish the 'standing' animation.  You get to shoot him first, and if you run fast enough you can make Harvester fire on you and reveal its location prior to damage hitting your shield.

 

That isn't the case with G3 simply because there are three of them; being shot at may mean you know where one of them is, but the other two are still out there and will still one-shot your low level frame.  You can take cover from Stalker or Harvester (you shouldn't, but you can) but you can't take cover from all of the G3 at once.

 

Again, I'm not trying to say this is a hard fight.  With a passable team they're easy to defeat, but the points I describe above make running away from them on a low level frame a crapshoot regardless of player skill.  You can make a good strategic plan, strong tactical decisions, execute those ideas well, and still get gibbed and penalized.

 

And as to the resources, I think you're missing the point.  These are the same resources I need to craft forma, orokin catalysts, orokin reactors, etc.  The real 'end game' of Warframe is farming that stuff, so when I take a break from my end game chores to level up a new frame, only to be slapped with a penalty that forces me back to the grind, I think I'm legitimately frustrated to find that decisions about how I spend my play time are being forced upon me.

 

 

Now, there is the issue of your party abandoning you (though in some cases, fighting solo can be easier than fighting in a group), but that is more of players being jerks than bad design.

 

Good design encourages players to cooperate, not to abandon / abort a mission to avoid a penalty.  Most players aren't jerks in the sense that a troll is a jerk, but most players are looking out for themselves first.  Someone earlier mentioned that veteran players who already had the Brakk are bailing out of this fight to avoid the penalty - and they already know they can win the fight and are best equipped to do so!  I doubt we'd see people bailing if the neurode / neural sensor requirement was removed, but the bolt could still pose a threat cost-wise by upping the credit requirement.  Unlike neurodes and sensors, credits are attainable through any game mode, so players don't end up forced into a small group of specific missions to effectively farm the required components.