A General Review Of Update 13 (So Far)

[88th_Phantom]

Hey there, Tenno.

 

This topic should be pretty self explanatory - General feedback of Title Update 13 so far and where it can go from here (Improvements, adjustments etc.)

This review is much for the benefit of members of staff at DE as it is to any other forum reader and feedback is much appreciated.

 

So lets get started.

 

Melee 2.0

 

Melee 2.0 has really been the focus of the update's efforts from the beginning and it really shows now that the system has been implemented. There are very few gripes that I have about this system at all and it has definitely revived the once stale counterpart to our arsenal - it is the closest thing to success to see another melee weapon on somebody's back other than the Galatine.

You can complain about the 'nerf' of the once almighty Galatine all you like, but that doesn't distract from the fact that this weapon still possess an immense reach with ample crit and status chance if you actually build upon it.

Overall, this has been an incredible improvement to the playstyles of the game and has finally made it viable to use melee-only builds in missions along with the inclusion of unequipping weapon slots which has proven more than beneficial for weapon leveling and just removing redundant weaponry.

Although this new system is not gripe free...

 

Melee 2.0 - Melee Stances

 

There was no way that this wasn't being brought up at some point or another. Just to clarify, there is nothing wrong with the concept of gradually unlocking new stances for weapon types - this was the best way to introduce Melee 2.0 to avoid the hype burning out in a short week, but the execution of it has been sort of half-hearted.

 

As it stands, there are currently hundreds-thousands of players running around specific locations looking for a single mod they may only drop by chance on a single enemy type. Where in most cases this can be passed off as slightly silly, like trying to 'hunt' the Stalker or Harvester or the G3 for their one of a kind weapons, these stances are a vital product to the melee system and should really have more means of implementation than the cruel mistress of RNG. In short, this is burning out the player base extremely fast, whether they're impatient or just plain unlucky, it's rubbing a lot of people the wrong way with little means to an alternative.

 

The best improvements I could recommend is no different to any of the other 'pay for convenience' options of this game, simply stick up a booster pack for melee stances on the market that contains a random selection of stance mods.

Typically more chance of an uncommon than a rare - 100% for two uncommon stances, 10% chance of a rare for the third stance and a 30-50% chance of a rare stance from the forth in the booster pack, I don't know.

At least with this way, players can pay a small sum towards their progression if they don't have the time or willpower to farm grind the diversity of their melee builds.

 

Personally, I believe these mods should probably be redistributed more among the heavy and melee-only units of the game to help players focus their efforts in a manner that is more beneficial to a team that is not trying to hunt for melee mods instead of your Trinity spending all of her energy beating up standard crewmen.

While we're at it, why not increase the chances of said enemies dropping their melee stances mod by beating them with a melee weapon? or even the matching melee weapon to the mod they drop?

Try rewarding people for having a stacked codex of info that lets them accurately hunt for what they want in return for their scans. (as it stands, the codex isn't doing much in the way for lore right now, so whats the harm in this rewarding side feature?)

 

Melee Stances - hooray for diversity! boo for having to read the recruiting and trading chat do the exact same it does with every hard to get mcguffin:

 

"Need Rhino & Nekros team for Nikana stance farm"

"WTT my soul for Tranquil Cleave"

"Selling Brutal Tide for 1000 plat" <--- This happened and the guy actually got it...

 

Solar Rails & Dark Sectors

 

First off, I'd like to celebrate for the introduction to the gateway of Warframe's endgame content, this is a big thing to introduce and has to remain a key feature to the game for updates to come.

 

Now unto the current problems:

Confusion - the number one question I keep seeing about the dark sectors is "why are we fighting other Tenno?".

The system's best hope for maintaining balance in the universe is fighting against parts of itself in a bid for power...what are we, the Grineer?

This is about the furthest thing I'd expect from the Tenno as a whole, I can understand the effects of choosing your faction, as individuals, it's the user's best interest to pick what they believe to be the lesser of two evils.

Okay, sure, your decorum probably consists of who's offering the most Orokin cells, but i'm looking at this from a lore perspective here.

This isn't like wide scale sparring or pvp duels, this is just aggressive ownership between clans the ultimately results in a waste of resources for short term gain to what is currently one mission location with perks.

 

For the time and effort that goes into creating these endgame devices, it seems oddly short lived and counter productive to anyone involved in it.

The best way I could see these improved would be something that takes time; when we heard of re-opening the solar rails, my first impression was unlocking entire new mission zones to keep up with the rising difficulty demands of the veteran players that still want a challenge without having to trudge through the void.

 

This is exactly what these dark sectors should be - buffed difficulty locations for players who want a greater challenge or just richer rewards or even an advanced location for newer players willing to test their skill to fast track ahead with higher xp bonuses. Most of the bonus features already exist in these missions just not for a direct purpose.

 

A solar rail should be a gateway to the dark sector as enhanced difficulty areas in each planet sector - they offer you higher reward amounts, better chance a rare drops, and xp bonuses to a predetermined weapon type. the missions in the dark sectors should contain one of each mission type and unknown enemy encounter, (play the mission once and you'll get corpus, play it again you could get infested) so the people that enter these zones have to be equipped to take on every possible situation instead of the mix and match of the Corrupted.

 

The way we gain access to these locations is by a clan/alliance placing a solar rail at one of the dark sector locations. For as long as the solar rail is intact, the dark sector remains open and instead of being in competition with other clans/alliance groups, the solar rails can come under attack by invading Corpus and Grineer forces (or hit by an infestation outbreak) and the clan has to push back the invasion as quickly as possible to maintain the integrity of the solar rail, offering tribute rewards to anyone outside of the clan that helps clear the solar rail.

 

If and when that solar rail is eventually destroyed from repeated attacks, then it will collapse and the race is on for the first clan to deploy their own solar rail within the dark sector so they can reap the rewards of the people who enter it.

instead of making this a direct conflict, it becomes a race for control with other clans to gain the tribute fees that are currently put up. This also makes the needs for tribute fees more dynamic - in order for a clan to keep your favourite dark sector open, they may need to raise their resource or credit tribute of those who enter in order to maintain or maybe even repair their solar rail against the repeated invasions.

 

This just seems to function much more effectively and beneficially and presents a lot less compromise than the current competing solar rail incidents where even if the contesting solar rail is not destroyed, then the lesser of the two it is lost due to sci-fi magnetic radiation magic. The current system is trying too hard to work in a place where it just doesn't flow correctly and I would kill to have something like this replace it in expanding updates to come. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, that's the bulk of my review and concerns dealt with. on the subject of new content such as the new weapons and warframe, I have no real concerns outside of just how many warframes are we going to continue to reveal - there s certainly no shortage of creativity for what warframes can be created, but i can't help feeling that this is eventually going to turn into a Gen-1 Pokemon roster with the rate that these warframes continue to be made and more importantly where they are all going to end up dropping without making the current boss drops system redundant or the necessity of the warframe lab too overbearing.

 

In terms of the Vay Hek reveal, I'm overjoyed to see the level of effort that went into making him a very unique boss encounter and how he turned out to be far more intimidating than the over-sized robo-chicken we previously thought he would be with his whole Terraframe suit.

 

As far a title update launch goes, this has been a successful overall introduction of content that - although not perfect - can be built upon and improved for the future.

 

As far as I'm concerned, Update 14 could consist of nothing optimizations and lore and i'd consider it a success with the groundwork that has been laid by this current update.

But seriously, we need to sort out some miscellaneous lore for these items - hold a community competition for it if you have to, it's just be nice to have some arbitrary lore to why things are like they are: "The Dark brand weapons emit radiation due to their conception in the '___'est part of the '____'. " something like that for people who took the time to max their codex info.

 

That's about all of it for me.

Please leave your own thoughts towards this review and feel free to suggest whatever you want towards the opinion.

Again, if anyone at DE has found the time to look into this, I'd be more than happy to hear your take on the situations - I can only critique what I know and if you have any future plans that address these issues then it'd be happily noted.

 

Kudos to anyone who managed to read all of this and as always...

Thanks for your time.

 

 

 

 

 

[Not_Oliver]

 

"WTT my soul for Tranquil Cleave"

 

 

 

Good deal IMO 

[MessoR]

Good one.

Totally agree on dark sectors part. This is ridiculous to fight among each other while lore says we fight to create a balance in the system. We are supposed to uphold it, not joining this power struggle.

[(PSN)Lucky_luciano737]

MELEE 2.O ? µµµùI% THAT SHµ*t 

http://www.2dopeboyz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flatbush-zombies-team-supreme.jpg

[Varzy]

Solar Rails & Dark Sectors

 

First off, I'd like to celebrate for the introduction to the gateway of Warframe's endgame content, this is a big thing to introduce and has to remain a key feature to the game for updates to come.

 

Now unto the current problems:

Confusion - the number one question I keep seeing about the dark sectors is "why are we fighting other Tenno?".

The system's best hope for maintaining balance in the universe is fighting against parts of itself in a bid for power...what are we, the Grineer?

This is about the furthest thing I'd expect from the Tenno as a whole, I can understand the effects of choosing your faction, as individuals, it's the user's best interest to pick what they believe to be the lesser of two evils.

Okay, sure, your decorum probably consists of who's offering the most Orokin cells, but i'm looking at this from a lore perspective here.

This isn't like wide scale sparring or pvp duels, this is just aggressive ownership between clans the ultimately results in a waste of resources for short term gain to what is currently one mission location with perks.

 

For the time and effort that goes into creating these endgame devices, it seems oddly short lived and counter productive to anyone involved in it.

The best way I could see these improved would be something that takes time; when we heard of re-opening the solar rails, my first impression was unlocking entire new mission zones to keep up with the rising difficulty demands of the veteran players that still want a challenge without having to trudge through the void.

 

This is exactly what these dark sectors should be - buffed difficulty locations for players who want a greater challenge or just richer rewards or even an advanced location for newer players willing to test their skill to fast track ahead with higher xp bonuses. Most of the bonus features already exist in these missions just not for a direct purpose.

 

A solar rail should be a gateway to the dark sector as enhanced difficulty areas in each planet sector - they offer you higher reward amounts, better chance a rare drops, and xp bonuses to a predetermined weapon type. the missions in the dark sectors should contain one of each mission type and unknown enemy encounter, (play the mission once and you'll get corpus, play it again you could get infested) so the people that enter these zones have to be equipped to take on every possible situation instead of the mix and match of the Corrupted.

 

The way we gain access to these locations is by a clan/alliance placing a solar rail at one of the dark sector locations. For as long as the solar rail is intact, the dark sector remains open and instead of being in competition with other clans/alliance groups, the solar rails can come under attack by invading Corpus and Grineer forces (or hit by an infestation outbreak) and the clan has to push back the invasion as quickly as possible to maintain the integrity of the solar rail, offering tribute rewards to anyone outside of the clan that helps clear the solar rail.

 

If and when that solar rail is eventually destroyed from repeated attacks, then it will collapse and the race is on for the first clan to deploy their own solar rail within the dark sector so they can reap the rewards of the people who enter it.

instead of making this a direct conflict, it becomes a race for control with other clans to gain the tribute fees that are currently put up. This also makes the needs for tribute fees more dynamic - in order for a clan to keep your favourite dark sector open, they may need to raise their resource or credit tribute of those who enter in order to maintain or maybe even repair their solar rail against the repeated invasions.

 

This just seems to function much more effectively and beneficially and presents a lot less compromise than the current competing solar rail incidents where even if the contesting solar rail is not destroyed, then the lesser of the two it is lost due to sci-fi magnetic radiation magic. The current system is trying too hard to work in a place where it just doesn't flow correctly and I would kill to have something like this replace it in expanding updates to come. 

Excellent thoughts here.

 

Your suggestion really clicked with me -- have the Grineer or Corpus try to tear down the rails, and once the rails are down let us choose which rail to support.

 

I can see it working like our current system, but reversed in many ways. On selecting the node, two sides each offer rewards for your support. Instead of showing the damage each rail has received, it show how much progress the rail has made to completion. When you choose a side to support, the mission is like the current sabotage except instead of overloading the reactor you 'stabilize' it in some way. (Unfortunately the opposing clan has sent Specters and drones in to interfere, perhaps?) First side that reaches 100% occupies the space, the other rail is dismantled.

 

As for the Dark Sectors themselves, DE previously said that they'd be buffed in terms of levels so I'm really disappointed that this didn't happen.