Will Warframe Ever Be Challenging?

[notionphil]

Will there ever be content released in Warframe which is actually challenging to high Mastery rank players?

 

I'm not referring to Endless modes and numerical press-4-faster-to-win scaling. I'm also not referring to making the early-mid game more difficult.

 

I mean missions, scenarios and enemies which absolutely require tactics and skill to overcome, in addition to being balanced for top-tier gear. Situations where failure is an ever-present threat unless you and your team perform at their peak. Will there ever be an protracted encounter where pressing 4 with half of the game's characters doesn't ensure victory?

 

We've built our arsenals for months or years, pouring hundreds of hours and for some, real dollars; all to create an ultimate warrior avatar. We have trained, honed, reinforced and collected. And there our men-of-war stand, uncontested, unchallenged - frankly, un-needed.

 

With U13's introduction of Prosecutors who mind-numbingly use RNG as a defense, Dark Sectors (AKA ODD) as Endgame and Tenno Spectres with the self-preservation instincts of lemmings, we see more and more design decisions that indicate challenge is either not understood, or is not a priority to DE.

 

This is not a notionphil suggestion thread. This community has made enough suggestions and requests for high-mastery rank challenge. This thread exists simply to ask the question:

 

Will Warframe ever introduce challenging content for high mastery players?

 

Yes, there is one such encounter in game, the Stalker. We can all understand that a single RNG based rare encounter, which lasts seconds is not a fix for game-wide challenge.

 

There are 5 Threads requesting more difficulty on the first 2 pages of General alone. The suggestions are out there, but DE has yet to address the issue of challenge. Why?

 

Oh Boy, Prosecutors Are Those Epic, Powerful And Dangerous Melee Units!

Captains, Commanders, Field Tacticians

Vr Horde Suggestion

Simple Fix To Make Dark Sectors Endgame

I Know You're Working On It De , But The Infested Are Too Weak >:(

 

and some from my archives:

 

Challenge-Lock Prime Blueprints

 

"ancient Healer *resists* Your Molecular Prime"

 

Enemy "commanders" Need Serious Buffs

 

Where Are The Interesting Enemies?

 

 

Edited April 23, 2014 by notionphil

[spacedkadet]

Something like the underworld in guild wars, tough missions and likely to fail if team is un-prepared but also has methods that can be employed to make it easier but that are difficult to master (imagine underworld speed clears, difficult to learn with no margin for error).

 Something similar in warframe would be great, team co-ordination required to complete with the possibilty of great rewards but also allowing some scope for skilled players to do it well :)

[izzatuw]

Asks for WF to be challenging. Uses high ranked weapons mods and Warframe

[Socks]

Asks for WF to be challenging. Uses high ranked weapons mods and Warframe

Why should people have to limit themselves to get a challenge?

[Liverslices]

Will there ever be content released in Warframe which is actually challenging to high Mastery rank players?

 

I'm not referring to Endless modes and numerical press-4-faster-to-win scaling. I'm also not referring to making the early-mid game more difficult.

 

I mean missions, scenarios and enemies which absolutely require tactics and skill to overcome, in addition to being balanced for top-tier gear. Situations where failure is an ever-present threat unless you and your team perform at their peak. Will there ever be an protracted encounter where pressing 4 with half of the game's characters doesn't ensure victory?

 

We've built our arsenals for months or years, pouring hundreds of hours and for some, real dollars; all to create an ultimate warrior avatar. We have trained, honed, reinforced and collected. And there our men-of-war stand, uncontested, unchallenged - frankly, un-needed.

 

With U13's introduction of Prosecutors who mind-numbingly use RNG as a defense, Dark Sectors (AKA ODD) as Endgame and Tenno Spectres with the self-preservation instincts of lemmings, we see more and more design decisions that indicate challenge is either not understood, or is not a priority to DE. Which is it?

 

This is not a notionphil suggestion thread. This community has made enough suggestions and requests for high-mastery rank challenge. This thread exists simply to ask the question:

 

Will Warframe ever introduce challenging content for high mastery players?

 

Yes, there is one such encounter in game, the Stalker. We can all understand that a single RNG based rare encounter, which lasts seconds is not a fix for game-wide challenge.

 

There are 5 Threads about difficulty on the first 2 pages alone. I won't even bother looking back at my numerous threads on this topic. The suggestions are out there, but DE has never, ever addressed the issue of challenge from what I've seen. Why?

 

Oh Boy, Prosecutors Are Those Epic, Powerful And Dangerous Melee Units!

Captains, Commanders, Field Tacticians

Vr Horde Suggestion

Simple Fix To Make Dark Sectors Endgame

I Know You're Working On It De , But The Infested Are Too Weak >:(

 

You look like a person who has never played no shields nightmare mode....

[izzatuw]

But I do like the idea of challenging things but Prosecutors are more annoying than challenging. I'd like levels that actually say that you can only use one type of weapon like Melee, Rifle/Bow Pistol only. Better Corpus and Infested.

[Shifted]

I think a Hardcore Mode 2.0 should be considered.

 

Instead of a random gimp like we have now, buff the living hell out of enemies and give it a dark-sector style reward bonuses

(Maybe not necessarily credits and exp, but along the lines of increased drop chances for rare mods and stuff)

 

I'm sure plenty of people would be interested in a high risk / high reward environment, while still keeping it optional for people who just want to feel badass and have fun.

 

PS:

No shields nightmare mode is hard?

 

Rhino is amused.

 

Edited April 23, 2014 by Shifted

[Nyxcha]

Will there ever be content released in Warframe which is actually challenging to high Mastery rank players?

 

I'm not referring to Endless modes and numerical press-4-faster-to-win scaling. I'm also not referring to making the early-mid game more difficult.

 

I mean missions, scenarios and enemies which absolutely require tactics and skill to overcome, in addition to being balanced for top-tier gear. Situations where failure is an ever-present threat unless you and your team perform at their peak. Will there ever be an protracted encounter where pressing 4 with half of the game's characters doesn't ensure victory?

 

We've built our arsenals for months or years, pouring hundreds of hours and for some, real dollars; all to create an ultimate warrior avatar. We have trained, honed, reinforced and collected. And there our men-of-war stand, uncontested, unchallenged - frankly, un-needed.

 

With U13's introduction of Prosecutors who mind-numbingly use RNG as a defense, Dark Sectors (AKA ODD) as Endgame and Tenno Spectres with the self-preservation instincts of lemmings, we see more and more design decisions that indicate challenge is either not understood, or is not a priority to DE.

 

This is not a notionphil suggestion thread. This community has made enough suggestions and requests for high-mastery rank challenge. This thread exists simply to ask the question:

 

Will Warframe ever introduce challenging content for high mastery players?

 

Yes, there is one such encounter in game, the Stalker. We can all understand that a single RNG based rare encounter, which lasts seconds is not a fix for game-wide challenge.

 

There are 5 Threads about difficulty on the first 2 pages alone. I won't even bother looking back at my numerous threads on this topic. The suggestions are out there, but DE has never, ever addressed the issue of challenge from what I've seen. Why?

 

Oh Boy, Prosecutors Are Those Epic, Powerful And Dangerous Melee Units!

Captains, Commanders, Field Tacticians

Vr Horde Suggestion

Simple Fix To Make Dark Sectors Endgame

I Know You're Working On It De , But The Infested Are Too Weak >:(

 

and some from my archives:

 

Challenge-Lock Prime Blueprints

 

"ancient Healer *resists* Your Molecular Prime"

 

Enemy "commanders" Need Serious Buffs

 

Where Are The Interesting Enemies?

 

 

you mean like the new vay hek?

 

cause if more bosses are made as challenging as him then that would make some serious challenge(long as people dont use only the msot OP of weapons)

[notionphil]

But I do like the idea of challenging things but Prosecutors are more annoying than challenging. I'd like levels that actually say that you can only use one type of weapon like Melee, Rifle/Bow Pistol only. Better Corpus and Infested.

 

Asks for WF to be challenging. Uses high ranked weapons mods and Warframe

 

 

You look like a person who has never played no shields nightmare mode....

 

And use Rhino like everyone else in that mode?

 

I played this game for X hours to gain tools and power. So your suggestion is to ignore the tools and power, or play modes which prevent me from using them entirely?

 

Why not play with my monitor upside down too? Or with one hand? Or always play with hobbled key.

 

Contrived meta-restrictions only go so far towards challenge. Content and mechanics are the solution.

[izzatuw]

I think a Hardcore Mode 2.0 should be considered.

 

Instead of a random gimp like we have now, buff the living hell out of enemies and give it a dark-sector style reward bonuses

(Maybe not necessarily credits and exp, but along the lines of increased drop chances for rare mods and stuff)

 

I'm sure plenty of people would be interested in a high risk / high reward environment, while still keeping it optional for people who just want to feel badass and have fun.

 

PS:

No shields nightmare mode is hard?

 

Rhino is amused.

 

*COUGH* IRON SKIN *CHOKE*

[(PSN)billy-d-squid]

No,

 

At least not until the insane damage % buff and nerfs on elements are addressed. (the combined elements render weapon variety irrelevant, slap magnetic damage on a Latron and it'll do as well vs Grineer as it will vs Corpus, which IMO is wrong)

 

Sorting out the RNG tables, which are a train wreck and the weapon mod utility, some being a must for any progress to be made and others being useless, while still others provide stupidly powerful status chances and benefits letting people shred enemies all the way up to lvl 70.

 

Frames that are actually balanced, currently we have Nova with MP and AMD, Trinity Link Blessing spam, Rhino Vanguard helms, Loki with Radial disarm (which although not OP as a power, really calls into question how powers are designed utility wise when it comes to the lvl system and how their usefulness scales) While others like Nekros and Banshee are badly implemented.

 

The enemy spam is seen to, ie: there needs to be a variety of enemy leader types and enemies which have a decent AI and don't act like bullet sponges. Prosecutors being immune to certain element types is a perfect example of them not being a challenge but daft artificial difficulty.

 

Actually making the infested a treat (which they aren't, players say Vauban trivialises them so he needs a nerf? No the Infested get roflstomped regardless of what frame you take) 

 

Instead we got update 13 and a new frame.... really, that's all very nice but I'd prefer no new content for the next 3 major updates if they can address some of the myriad of issues which I've briefly covered. 

Edited April 23, 2014 by (PS4)billy-d-squid

[Sirabot]

Something like the underworld in guild wars, tough missions and likely to fail if team is un-prepared but also has methods that can be employed to make it easier but that are difficult to master (imagine underworld speed clears, difficult to learn with no margin for error).

 Something similar in warframe would be great, team co-ordination required to complete with the possibilty of great rewards but also allowing some scope for skilled players to do it well :)

UW SS RIT, :D

[(PSN)billy-d-squid]

You look like a person who has never played no shields nightmare mode....

 

Looks like someone who hasn't grasped that Rhino's Iron skin or Valkyr makes it laughably easy.

[notionphil]

you mean like the new vay hek?

 

cause if more bosses are made as challenging as him then that would make some serious challenge(long as people dont use only the msot OP of weapons)

 

Honestly, I can't imagine how anyone could fail a Vay Hek run with max frames/gear. I ran him about 8 times with PUGs and we barely had to revive an ally. Again, I'm talking about maxed frames and "OP" gear.

 

However, beggars can't be choosy:

 

If the new vay hek were an actual enemy that I could encounter outside of farming a key for 2h, sure. If vay hek popped up from time to time in a Grinner mission, sure.

 

If the only challenge in game is key locked and in 1 or 2 out of 100+ missions, that's a problem.

[Sirabot]

you mean like the new vay hek?

 

cause if more bosses are made as challenging as him then that would make some serious challenge(long as people dont use only the msot OP of weapons)

NEW VAY HEK is not a challenge. He's craptastic boss with "openings". Hit, hide a few seconds, hit again. over and over. This type of boss conflict is not epic, challenging. It's annoying and cheap. Bosses need to be feared, you need to be worried, otherwise there is no sense of overcoming. I shouldn't be encouraged to hide from the boss until he opens up and lets me hurt him. I should be doing things to stimulate the openings. I'd rather have bullet sponges than what we have now.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Sirabot

[izzatuw]

And use Rhino like everyone else in that mode?

 

I played this game for X hours to gain tools and power. So your suggestion is to ignore the tools and power, or play modes which prevent me from using them entirely?

 

Why not play with my monitor upside down too? Or with one hand? Or always play with hobbled key.

 

Contrived meta-restrictions only go so far towards challenge. Content and mechanics are the solution.

Try your weaker weapons? Try doing a nightmare survival? Maybe that'd please your need? Currently DE needs to think to make HARD enemies not annoying ones. Like the prosecutors, they're annoying because you need a certain element to beat them quickly. Maybe an event that both. Grineer and Corpus try to fight against you, double the enemies. New ones. And probably somehow the infested help you.

[notionphil]

NEW VAY HEK is not a challenge. He's craptastic boss with "openings". Hit, hide a few seconds, hit again. over and over. This type of boss conflict is not epic, challenging. It's annoying and cheap. Bosses need to be feared, you need to be worried, otherwise there is no sense of overcoming. I shouldn't be encouraged to hide from the boss until we opens up and lets me hurt him. I should be doing things to stimulate the openings. I'd rather have bullet sponges than what we have now.

 

Agreed, but honestly, if a mini-hek popped up in missions, I'd take that as a start.

 

I even welcome Prosecutors horribly thought out RNG defense mechanism...because it at least creates a situation where an ult doesn't instakill everything, and you have to target prioritize for a moment.

 

Compared to WF's current state...I'll take what I can get.

 

It feels like the "make-players-feel-like-warlords" team is fully-funded and staffed, but the "interesting-enemies-and-challenge" team is one guy in a basement plugging away on a Tandy.

[notionphil]

Try your weaker weapons? Try doing a nightmare survival? Maybe that'd please your need? Currently DE needs to think to make HARD enemies not annoying ones. Like the prosecutors, they're annoying because you need a certain element to beat them quickly. Maybe an event that both. Grineer and Corpus try to fight against you, double the enemies. New ones. And probably somehow the infested help you.

I do. I have. My most used frame is Saryn and my most used weapon is the Seer.

 

Despite having nearly everything in game - I stay away from Rhino, penta/ogris/soma, perma invis, blessing and Mprime.

 

But it doesn't resolve the issue I'm talking about. Warframe's entire metagame is about obtaining and powering up gear. Your suggestion is to pretend I don't have powerful gear.

 

Why play Warframe at all if I'm just going to ignore the entire metagame?

Edited April 23, 2014 by notionphil

[izzatuw]

I do. I have. My most used frame is Saryn and my most used weapon is the Seer.

 

Despite having nearly everything in game - I stay away from Rhino, penta/ogris/soma, perma invis, blessing and Mprime.

 

But it doesn't resolve the issue I'm talking about. Warframe's entire metagame is about obtaining and powering up gear. Your suggestion is to pretend I don't have powerful gear.

 

Why play Warframe at all if I'm just going to ignore the entire metagame?

Hmm I see but what do you think about Solo players? Your post is mainly about teamwork so how does Solo play work? How do you suggest the tactics part? Maybe there should be enemies/event where powers are just useless, Rhino Stomp doesn't have stasis, Bastille doesn't trap. Chaos doesn't chaos .Maybe a stealth mission where it can be the meaning of life and death. Currently DE are focusing on content like weapons and what not but not actual enemy scaling like they should.

[notionphil]

Hmm I see but what do you think about Solo players? Your post is mainly about teamwork so how does Solo play work? How do you suggest the tactics part? Maybe there should be enemies/event where powers are just useless, Rhino Stomp doesn't have stasis, Bastille doesn't trap. Chaos doesn't chaos .Maybe a stealth mission where it can be the meaning of life and death. Currently DE are focusing on content like weapons and what not but not actual enemy scaling like they should.

 

If you look through threads in the spoiler, you'll see plenty of suggestions for introducing challenge which aren't teamwork dependent. In fact I'd love to see some content balanced specifically for solo.

 

Making powers utterly useless would just be frustrating, and again denying content. Instead, making enemies who resist powers but a well placed/timed bulllet or sword turns their defenses off - that could introduce challenge.

[Recel]

Call me pessimistic, but I don't think Warframe will ever be challenging. Not even close.

 

Because DE doesn't wants to change the mod system, to force weapons effectiveness back to the intended mob levels of the game. Currently it's easy to make a weapon 60x more deadly than it's base stats. Same with frames. Besides survival and defence, where levels increase to infinity, the game is easy. And even there it's just a bulletsponge.

 

Because DE doesn't improve AI, instead they use bulletspongees and invulnerability times, or in the case of stalker/G3/Harvester, statistic advantages to make them harder to fend of. They don't seem to care for the word challange, and only focus on hard. The RNG system, bosses and the general fluidity of the game all points to this. To kill things take time, to find things take time and to build things take time, but non of them are actual challanges. Things are hard to get when you have to run a mission 100 times to get something, but no, not challenging.

 

Because DE finds it more important to release new enemies, new gamemodes, new weapons, mods and frames than to focus on the actual gameplay experience. While massacaring hundreds of mobs can be fun from time to time, and new ways to do it, like with Melee 2.0 also compliments this, there is still no reason for teamwork, no real reason to use weapons designed against the faction you're facing, no reason to think about what powers to use in the intended levels of the game.

 

And because when players refer to high level as in something outside of the intended level range, that you can only find as a side effect of two game modes, and they look for a challange there, than you can clearly see there is not one intended  drop of challange in this game.

 

And because all of these problems were brought up for a long time now, and DE doesn't seem to even care about this part of their game.

Warframe is a fast paced, shootem up, farming simulator. It's designed to take time, not skill.

 

And you can say that you should remove mods, use certain weapons and so on, but than the challange is comeing from you, and not the game.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Recel

[XRAY0128]

Why should people have to limit themselves to get a challenge?

Its funny, because people complain that its too easy, and when stuff gets harder, they complain their weapons are too weak.

[notionphil]

Its funny, because people complain that its too easy, and when stuff gets harder, they complain their weapons are too weak.

 

Those aren't the same people :)

[XRAY0128]

Those aren't the same people :)

Hope not

Id love the game to be more skill based rather than gear based though.

As it feels right now, if you have the right gear, you can steamroll most enemies, if you dont, expect lots of tedium or instant death.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Something like the underworld in guild wars

 

And then we'd end up with a Rhino-way or 'whatever the name would be' speed clear meta that every player will have to adapt to in order to even get in group. Yeah, UW required more skill, but after broken builds appeared that took years to get nerfed(55/600-smite) or never were(PermaSF) I don't want something like this happening in warframe as well. It's already bad enough as it is, though way less of an issue compared to other pve online games.

More challenging encounters needn't revolve around learning the best way to complete a piece of content, cause that will always lead to players demanding the most optimal loadout for that content, but adapting to the enemy's properties and moves. Being thrust into a situation you couldn't prepare 100% for is always more challenging because if forces players to adapt to the situation instead of jut going through the motions for the 100th time.

Nightmare mode was a good start, but some frames can still breeze through the mission without risking anything, so naturally that's what most players use to run these missions. If you want challenge you need to prevent people people from knowing exactly what they're facing and make sure that the advantages of every single frame/class can be countered by the AI under the right circumstances.

Ideally, we'd have many subtypes of AI behaviour that are coupled with certain skill sets that make succeeding through blind spraying and praying impossible. That's even more relevant now with the fact that we're getting even more powerful with the focus system. Leader types could force some adaptation, but rarely a challenge because our gear trivializes them. Ceres elemental guardsmen, even with the damage resistance being more of a gimmick than anything, forces players to adapt more than anything we've seen so far in the game. That's good, but to make content less trivial you'd need for these mechanics to be systemic, i.e. be present throughout the game.

Example: Sniper units. If they hadn't different colored suits you wouldn't even notice that they're there. They're m-prime fodder with a lanka instead of a dera or flux. They don't pose a unique or even additional challenge. Now give them a cloak that they activate as soon as they take fire, make them invulnerable to AoE and have them run away to hide to another spot where they decloak again and try to take another shot at you. Make their shots stagger, you know, like the railgun moas did before(they need the stagger back as well). Or give them high status chances on their lanka that makes it likely for them to stun you with electricity damage if they hit. Something.

What they did with the capture targets was what pretty much any unit type in this game needs in terms of AI development. Then add a bit of randomisation to counter people min maxing and it could lead to some pretty entertaining fights. That, and adding some serious counter measures to AoE, especially with the infested.

 

The most fun in a while I had last week when a friend and I with all leveling frames and weapons did a melee only mission on ceres. Even though it wasn't effective from a progression standpoint, we tried to keep the Grineer from setting off the alarms, and also because it woudl have likely cut our trip short. We could also take 3 or 4 shots/bursts before our health started to go, so we had to run around and move from cover to cover. It was tense because we knew we could always die if we just didn't pay attention to the enemy for a couple of seconds. Risk of failure, it was there. You know, the same risk of failure you're starting to get after 40 minutes of T3 Survival but you're way too burned out from to care? Yeah.