Devstream 30: An Unexpectedly Large Blow To My Hopes For The Game

[blackhalo321]

made a thread like this a bit back, didn't get near the traction, but I did throw out what I think are some solid ideas.

At very least making enemies typically spawn and move in groups (instead of trickles) will do TONS for this game.

.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/222445-bored-blame-the-npcs/?p=2576958

Edited June 13, 2014 by blackhalo321

[Rajko]

I would really appreciate it if DE would take a firmer stance on balance rather than treat it as rabble-rousing appeasement. This is one of the reasons why I'm really really not looking forward to the upcoming PVP section of the Dark Sectors. Unmodded weapons or no, one-shot-kills are going to be all over the place, and it'll be weeks before any significant changes are made if DE's patching history gives us any indication. 

 

On the bright side, having their own faces blown off may make players more inclined to acknowledge something as overpowered, since integrating PVP into Dark Sectors will hopefully mean that more players will play them. At the same time, I'm afraid that this will translate into PVP-specific balance changes (it almost has to,) which are unlikely to benefit the rest of the game. 

 

What makes me upset is that the one thought running through my mind when I heard "Dark Sectors will have PVP" was "So you're taking the easy way out. Dark Sectors didn't turn into the 'end-game' you thought it would, so you're leaving it to your players to introduce their own personal engagement and fresh gameplay. Even in spite of the fact that your forums have multiple threads with painstakingly detailed and carefully considered suggestions. 

 

What DE needs to realize is that they're not going to be able to make most changes without rousing at least one part of the community into vocal agitation. Some of us want to prioritize balance. Others think it is a waste of time. Even within the group of people who want balance, there are different and conflicting opinions. Trimming a lawn by clipping the tallest blades of grass doesn't work when you keep cutting the grass shorter than the rest of the lawn. Some drastic changes need to be made that will have the majority of the community rather agitated... but now is the time to do it. Now, when the game is in beta, rather than in a full release. 

 

As writers, we are advised to avoid editing our papers until we complete the final draft, because we otherwise waste time correcting sentences that may or may not exist when we finish. That makes sense. However, DE isn't writing a term paper or analytical essay. Writers get to keep their work private until they finish. Readers only ever see the final draft. Warframes players see each and every change, introduction, tweak, and correction that is made along the way. They are witness to the editing process. They can see what has been said, has not been said, and what needs to be said. They are there to witness every politically incorrect misstep. I can guarantee you that a writer whose audience was witness to their work from the beginning to the end of the writing process would be editing every step of the way.

Very well said.  I appreciate how well you captured the difference in approach between writing and the game.  The ridiculous analogy that I was thinking of as I read it was how you edit a blog post vs how you edit a tweet.  

Edited June 13, 2014 by Rajko

[DiabolusUrsus]

made a thread like this a bit back, didn't get near the traction, but I did throw out what I think are some solid ideas.

At very least making enemies typically spawn and move in groups (instead of trickles) will do TONS for this game.

.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/222445-bored-blame-the-npcs/?p=2576958

 

Well, you've got the general gist of it. We do need enemies that do more than show up and get shot. 

 

That said, I disagree entirely with you concerning balance. Balance is essential for creating enemies that don't get vaporized the moment they show their faces. Balance is essential for creating enemies that encourage teamwork rather than heroic showboating, yet at the same time accommodate players that are on their own. 

 

As notionphil has mentioned elsewhere, simply creating combat formations won't fix the problem either. Even if the formation somehow makes the enemy more resilient to ranged weapons, the player's next fall-back is still going to be the 1, 2, 3, or 4 key. I think someone else put it perfectly: putting the enemy into formations will only accomplish neatly collecting the loot in one place. If anything, the best way to deal with Tenno would be breaking formation. It'd be quite something to see enemies start to spread out when hit with Molecular Prime to prevent chain explosions. 

[CosyPigeon]

Passive aggressive bump.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Well, you've got the general gist of it. We do need enemies that do more than show up and get shot. 

 

That said, I disagree entirely with you concerning balance. Balance is essential for creating enemies that don't get vaporized the moment they show their faces. Balance is essential for creating enemies that encourage teamwork rather than heroic showboating, yet at the same time accommodate players that are on their own. 

 

As notionphil has mentioned elsewhere, simply creating combat formations won't fix the problem either. Even if the formation somehow makes the enemy more resilient to ranged weapons, the player's next fall-back is still going to be the 1, 2, 3, or 4 key. I think someone else put it perfectly: putting the enemy into formations will only accomplish neatly collecting the loot in one place. If anything, the best way to deal with Tenno would be breaking formation. It'd be quite something to see enemies start to spread out when hit with Molecular Prime to prevent chain explosions. 

 

I think it also should be said that interesting enemies won't exactly bring difficulty either.  All things considered, despite the Riot Moa, Evangelist, Grineer Bombardier and Manic, and all the other wonderful ideas that came from the contest, the key problem is always going to boil down to our life span versus our enemy's.  No matter how complex or engaging our enemies may be, we're still generally fearless towards them and they're generally helpless against us.  The shield lancer is only dangerous if that knockdown could kill us, otherwise he's just annoying.  The hellion does some real damage regardless of level and has a high chance to knock down, but he's not so fun because of homing missiles rending evasion pointless.  Those homing missiles could stand to be more fun to  interact with instead of simply taking cover, like the majority of Grineer weapons ask us to do.

 

Y'see, it's like if in a game of old school Sonic the Hedgehog, we're facing an enemy with spikes on top while stationary, but they moved to the sides while rushing across the platform towards Sonic. In classic Sonic, it can be scary, but what if Sonic lost only one ring when he took a hit, instead of all of them.  That enemy is no longer dangerous, just annoying.  Dangerous is fun.  Annoying is not.  It's why I like going up against the Miter - it's easy to dodge, but likewise it's very dangerous to take a direct hit because it can cause profuse bleeding.  Sadly, people didn't want this, they want to be able to stack redirection and just stand there while taking hits...

Edited June 14, 2014 by Littleman88

[Trainsaw]

Those homing missiles could stand to be more fun to  interact with instead of simply taking cover, like the majority of Grineer weapons ask us to do.

I vote for Missile Parry

 

In regards to formations there are two enemies I think could really benefit from more tactics, specifically commanders and scorpions and anything else I haven't encountered yet with the power to actually move you about the battle field. The game forcing my location tends to bring at least a small sense of vulnerability, my first commander was a true 'what the hell was that moment" that I don't generally get from this game. My gripe about these two is that they never seem to do anything with it. Scorpions are more of a nuisance than anything right now, but they don't necessarily have to be. What if when being "get over here'd" there was actually more than one sword wielding alien with an obsession for your internal organs. Have them pull us into far more dangerous situations and give us some way to frantically escape (my votes for shooting the rope, but i'm sure there are other ways. Now commanders are where I feel like you could have some real fun, because unlike Loki they could actually have a use for switch teleport. How? Well picture this. You're deep in an enemy ship gunning down foes like you always do and you see an enemy in a small room, confident in your ability to bring the pain you do not deviate from your course and add another kill to your ever growing count, but what's this? You're not where you were before and your foe is gone, all you see is the now visible ambush of blood thirsty grineer that were hiding behind the scenery pointing a hell of a lot of firepower at you with malicious glee" or something.

[DiabolusUrsus]

I think it also should be said that interesting enemies won't exactly bring difficulty either.  All things considered, despite the Riot Moa, Evangelist, Grineer Bombardier and Manic, and all the other wonderful ideas that came from the contest, the key problem is always going to boil down to our life span versus our enemy's.  No matter how complex or engaging our enemies may be, we're still generally fearless towards them and they're generally helpless against us.  The shield lancer is only dangerous if that knockdown could kill us, otherwise he's just annoying.  The hellion does some real damage regardless of level and has a high chance to knock down, but he's not so fun because of homing missiles rending evasion pointless.  Those homing missiles could stand to be more fun to  interact with instead of simply taking cover, like the majority of Grineer weapons ask us to do.

 

Y'see, it's like if in a game of old school Sonic the Hedgehog, we're facing an enemy with spikes on top while stationary, but they moved to the sides while rushing across the platform towards Sonic. In classic Sonic, it can be scary, but what if Sonic lost only one ring when he took a hit, instead of all of them.  That enemy is no longer dangerous, just annoying.  Dangerous is fun.  Annoying is not.  It's why I like going up against the Miter - it's easy to dodge, but likewise it's very dangerous to take a direct hit because it can cause profuse bleeding.  Sadly, people didn't want this, they want to be able to stack redirection and just stand there while taking hits...

 

Agreed. If there's some part of my thread that makes you think that "different and interesting" enemies are the only qualifiers that need to be attached to new enemies for them to be successful, please point it out, because that is most definitely is not what I'm trying to say. Hellion Missiles either need to be easier to avoid or they need a longer cooldown between shots and slightly lower damage per missile. I did somewhat enjoy Eviscerators - my strategy was actually to use melee on them; they have no melee attack and an abysmal turn speed, so it was easy to stay behind them - but they would have been a better-designed enemy if they had better ranged-weapon resistance and were vulnerable to melee. They had all the makings of a glass-cannon... without the glass part, and that was a problem. Instead of giving them a high chance to ignore shields completely, I think it would have been a better choice to give the miter blades properties that dealt percentage damage to shields, e.g. 25% and your shield is gone in four shots (along with other enemies firing at you, this should be devastating, even to the tankiest of characters). Of course, that's probably not the best solution, but it should be better than what we have now. 

 

Of course... dangerous is only fun when you have the tools you need to avoid that danger. Massive-damage hitscan weapons and random chance bleed procs are more like an enemy with spikes that fill every part of the boss arena. Close calls are fun and exhilarating. Being held down and knifed in the gut while tranquilized and sluggish is not. 

 

The reason people want to be able to stack redirection and just stand there while taking hits is because doing so is one of the only three things we can do. Rely on shields to avoid damage, rely on blocking to avoid damage, or rely on abilities to avoid damage. I can almost guarantee you that if we had any sort of decently reliable evasion system, you'd see at least a good portion of players flocking to that, and forgoing Redirection for more utility mods. 

[Nagisawa]

We need different tiers of enemies.  We need mooks/minions that we CAN mow down by the bucket fulls.  We also need enemies that make us think a bit.  And then we need enemies that give us a challenge.

 

The framework IS there, especially with the Grineer.  The Shield Lancers were a good call, for example.  And yes, the rest of the basic soldiery is fine to be killed in the hundreds, after all a SINGLE Tenno is supposed to take down several hundred on our own.

 

But we do need some boss level mobs that are require tactics.

 

At the same time, we need to have options on how to defeat them, multiple ways to take them down.  After all, each Tenno Warframe has a unique set of powers.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Agreed. If there's some part of my thread that makes you think that "different and interesting" enemies are the only qualifiers that need to be attached to new enemies for them to be successful, please point it out, because that is most definitely is not what I'm trying to say. Hellion Missiles either need to be easier to avoid or they need a longer cooldown between shots and slightly lower damage per missile. I did somewhat enjoy Eviscerators - my strategy was actually to use melee on them; they have no melee attack and an abysmal turn speed, so it was easy to stay behind them - but they would have been a better-designed enemy if they had better ranged-weapon resistance and were vulnerable to melee. They had all the makings of a glass-cannon... without the glass part, and that was a problem. Instead of giving them a high chance to ignore shields completely, I think it would have been a better choice to give the miter blades properties that dealt percentage damage to shields, e.g. 25% and your shield is gone in four shots (along with other enemies firing at you, this should be devastating, even to the tankiest of characters). Of course, that's probably not the best solution, but it should be better than what we have now. 

 

Of course... dangerous is only fun when you have the tools you need to avoid that danger. Massive-damage hitscan weapons and random chance bleed procs are more like an enemy with spikes that fill every part of the boss arena. Close calls are fun and exhilarating. Being held down and knifed in the gut while tranquilized and sluggish is not. 

 

The reason people want to be able to stack redirection and just stand there while taking hits is because doing so is one of the only three things we can do. Rely on shields to avoid damage, rely on blocking to avoid damage, or rely on abilities to avoid damage. I can almost guarantee you that if we had any sort of decently reliable evasion system, you'd see at least a good portion of players flocking to that, and forgoing Redirection for more utility mods. 

 

True, having a way to evade hitscan weapons would be nice, but I do have to disagree with the miter idea.  It's already easy to dodge as it's not a hitscan weapon and in fact fires a very slow projectile.  Random bleed procs are the potential punishment for taking the hit, but that's not a guarantee.  If people knew they could take a hit because their shield WILL absorb the blade, they'd just DPS race him, as usual.  This is why I think the bleed proc is a good mechanic and the eviscerator a good enemy.  It actually SHOULD make a player change the way they approach a new room filled with Grineer, much like how the shield lancer changes the way people approach shooting it (somewhat.)  You just provided a classic example of why, despite the eviscerator bringing an element of real danger with a more than fair weapon, that challenge would actually be met with scorn.  If it's actually dangerous, people will be against it.  The irony is that they're asking for the challenge.  

 

The moment I hear that miter fire off, I know I need relocate before the blade reaches me because if nothing else, we can trust the AI to zero in on us like machines [as they are.]  I'll never understand why people have such a hard time with this guy.  A tenno can sidestep his blades 10-15m out while ADS as they're THAT slow.  To me, he's the one unit that really changes things up.  The shield lancer still has a hit box wider than his shield, so it's only a matter of aiming towards the edges to score a kill, otherwise, his only real danger is when he gets close.  The miter however, always dangerous because he negates our first line of defense: the shield.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Littleman88

[Arkezuli]

So, I took a few things away from today's Livestream:1. Screw solo players.2. We want you guys to have a choice concerning how you play the game, but no, not really.3. We have read and understood the basic gist of notionphil's AI thread, but don't actually understand how to go about fixing things.4. No, seriously, screw solo players. 5. And screw melee-only players, too, even though we introduced that as a new playstyle that did not previously exist.  That's probably an overly-simplistic way of representing things, and there were some promising ideas expressed in the stream. Nanite MOAs and pretty much everything after that abominable poison Osprey looked legitimately interesting. Nevertheless, this has been one of the most disheartening and morale-lowering developer feedback sessions to date. So, where to start? Where else, but RNG RNG RNG? DE, I'm gonna level with you here. You really need to wean yourselves off of RNG as a gameplay crutch. It's in the loot system? Fine. That's how most games work. It's in the spawn system? Fine. That actually does keep things relatively dynamic. However, when you start designing enemy challenges around systems that rely on RNG, you have a huge problem. Allow me to explain.  First, the Prosecutors. You may think these are interesting and challenging enemies, but they really, really aren't. Why? Well... you act as though a player can somehow set out contingency plans for dealing with erratically resistant enemies, which is somewhat true. But... what part of that is fun? Quick Answer: It's not. Simply swapping out mod loadouts so that you have poison on your primary, ice on your secondary, fire on your melee, and electricity on your Sentinel is by no means dynamic or an engaging part of gameplay. It doesn't introduce a challenge. It introduces a chore. Is that chore somewhat more bearable with four people? Absolutely. However, then you're stuck with one person who can deal with the prosecutor, while everyone else just waits for the loot drop. You guys need to realize that "different" is not the same thing as "interesting."  Throwing random resistances onto a single (or even multiple) enemy doesn't do anything to change the fact that the player still responds to that enemy by simply pumping damage into it until it dies. At the end of the day, randomly-generated Prosecutor elemental resistance does nothing aside from smokescreen the fact that what was supposed to be an enemy that let players engage in Melee 2.0 content is nothing more than an over-glorified Flameblade. Combos? Unnecessary. Blocking? Unnecessary. Just more damage.**But only the right kind of damage, which you can't actually predict. Just cover all of your bases.  The thing is... that's ultimately how every enemy is going to work. Consequently you should not be focusing on enemies that feature arbitrary roadblocks to the damage process. You should be focusing on enemies that force players to alter their behavior. That was the single most important (in my opinion, anyways) point to notionphil's thread, and you guys missed it completely. The Nanite Moa looks great. The Diseased Ancient does, too. Enemies that simply deal poison damage that bypasses shields don't do anything more than make players hope they are Rhino, have invisibility, or that there is a healer on their team. The Eximi suffer from the same problem. They're the same old trash mobs that are a little bit more difficult to kill, and simply have the most annoying abilities available to them stuck on with duct tape. Venemous Ancients that can proc poison on you from across the room make the game harder, sure, but they don't make it more fun. They make it frustrating and arduous simply by virtue of how decisively simple they are. The only viable solution is to kill them faster. How imaginative. Parasitic Eximus? Wow, I'm out of energy. Still just going to shoot it. Fire Eximus? Wow, damaging knockdown attack with a huge AOE. Still just going to shoot it. Blast Eximus? Wow, a Grineer Heavy that looks like a MOA. Still just going to shoot it. The problem here is that the only viable way to counter the "challenges" the Eximi bring to the table is to kill them faster. You can't dodge them. You can't block them. You can only kill them before they proc, and that is indescribably dull.  Second, your prescribed philosophy when approaching boss encounters is extremely unsettling. You need a specific loadout when going into the boss fight? You can only fight it a certain way? This makes bosses unique and interesting? it keeps the players engaged?  Pardon my French, but... what the flying F***? Are you serious?  General mod loadouts, I can understand. It's probably not the best idea to go up against Sargas Ruk carrying nothing but fire damage. That's something that can be discerned with a basic degree of common sense. However, you guys mentioned that you wanted players to learn how to beat bosses by trial and error. Having specific playstyles and loadouts players are supposed to discover is absolutely the worst possible way to go about doing that. Why?Well... Having specific loadouts be the only viable loadouts punishes players for going into boss fights uninformed. Hence, the typical response will be consulting the local wiki or asking more experienced players for answers. It's like a multiple choice test where students are penalized for not cheating. You're actively encouraging players to spoil surprises for themselves because they otherwise run the risk of being completely powerless to overcome the challenges you set before them. You should have seen the same issue arise with the Mastery Rank exams.  Furthermore, you're purposefully limiting player choice. The player is no longer playing your game and trying to intuitively or dynamically solve problems. They are jumping through arbitrary hoops that you have thrown out for kicks and giggles. That's not overcoming a challenge, it's going through the right motions. We're not space monkeys, for Christ's sake. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a generally accepted "best" way to fight a boss. Of course taking out an aerial Vay Hek is going to be easier with a fairly accurate hitscan firearm, preferably an automatic. That's fine. But a player should still be able to succeed at bringing him down with a sword through a greater expenditure of effort and demonstration of skill. Let me give you a couple examples of challenging bosses done right.  Video Spoilers As Requested

 The Containment Room boss battle from Devil May Cry 4 is a good example of a boss battle that needs to be completed a certain way. The only way to damage the reinforced glass (hah) protecting Agnus is by throwing the the circling Gladius enemies into it. At the same time, the player has to contend with attacks from the enemies themselves, and avoiding the electrical charges that sweep the floor. Observant players will notice that they will be safe from the charges if they stand on the center pedestal, but they will then have to contend with more concentrated attacks from the enemies. Some players won't be as familiar with throwing enemies at separate targets, and will assume that they just need to kill them all (sorta like I did, the first time around.) They'll be stumped, and slightly confused as to what they are supposed to do to get out of a seemingly protracted boss fight. Once they figure things out, though, the boss is fairly trivial to beat, and they enjoy a rather rewarding sense of success.  Bosses can definitely be successfully designed around puzzle-solving gimmicks. The catch, though, is that DMC4 players literally cannot enter that boss fight completely unprepared. The Containment Room boss is very easy for Nero who has his Devil Bringer for throwing enemies, but it would be nigh impossible for the other character Dante, who has no means of doing so. The problem with Warframe is that such a guarantee is virtually impossible. The number of weapons available to players is much larger, they may or may not choose to bring certain weapons, and they might not even have the inventory space to carry the weapon they might need. The same thing goes for mods, which is the biggest problem with using the modding system as a means of obtaining baseline combat effectiveness. How is a player supposed to overcome a challenge that requires a specific loadout, if they have no reliable means of obtaining that loadout, much less knowing what it is? This is the primary example of why your game design is crippled by an over-reliance on RNG. RNG can be contextually appropriate, but as an actual gameplay mechanic it is maliciously unstable and far from the universal bandaid for diversity and intrigue you seem to think it is. If you want puzzle-solving gimmicks and "right" versus "wrong" approaches to boss battles, you need to take RNG out of the player progression system entirely. If you don't want to take RNG out of the drop tables and player equipment, you must not design bosses that can only be defeated a certain way. Period. 

 The Dark Souls series does an excellent job of presenting players with boss battles that reward trial and error. The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that there is no one true way to defeat them. Notice that part of the video title is "Melee Strategy; No Shield." This particular strategy is, in my experience, by far the most difficult... but is still just as possible as bringing a powerful shield or fighting from range. Pretty much every boss in the game is structured in a way that any particular strategy can be made to work, but I chose Manus, Father of the Abyss because he brings such a wide diversity of strategies to the table. The easiest way to beat him is to simply shoot him to death with arrows before even entering the boss arena, but that is an exploitative oversight on the part of the developers and by no means something I would like to see make its way into Warframe. Setting that aside, the sheer intensity and pacing of his melee attacks, and the introduction of dark-magic partway into the fight are what keep the gameplay dynamic and introduce challenge into the fight. They keep things interesting, and ultimately reward players for experimenting with different approaches. Players can opt for the easier way out by staying out of range of Manus' attacks using spells or arrows and dodging his much simpler magic attacks, or they can go for the more challenging up-close method. This allows them to introduce a personalized degree of challenge, which is something that would go a long way towards helping you accommodate both newer and veteran players with your content. It introduces something beyond simply slapping higher values onto health and damage, and it is part of what keeps the boss fights fresh even after three or four NG+ cycles. In games like Warframe where you can go back and fight the boss any time you want, this replayability is even more critically important.  Ultimately, you guys (DE as a whole, not just the Enemy/Boss Design Team,) need to come to a consensus about how players should approach your game. Will you accommodate solo players, or will you not? If not, the Solo Play option needs to go. If you will, enemies that require teamwork are okay, but they need behaviors that allow solo players to defeat them as well, even if it requires a greater degree of effort.  Will you accommodate melee-only players, or will you not? If not, the option to remove our firearms needs to be rescinded. If you will, players need a means of using melee to damage all enemies, even if it requires a greater degree of effort.  Will you accommodate a greater freedom of choice, or will you not? If not, you need to make player progression much more linear and remove RNG from the drop tables. Players need to have certain gear by the time the reach certain points on the star chart. If you will, you'll need to design multiple viable approaches to different challenges so that players can tackle them with their available gear at the time, and come back to experiment later when they've found newer and shinier toys.  Either way, this is going to require a great deal of work on your part. To start, players need stronger means of defending themselves. They need more complex blocking, and evasion systems that don't rely entirely on their ability to sprint fast. RNG rolls for resisting knockdowns are a halfway-decent supplement, but by no means a passable excuse for defensive countermeasures. We're not playing Dungeons and Dragons here. RNG rolls for parrying non-telegraphed melee strikes is even less acceptable.  Ultimately, this whole debacle comes back to the core issues of player agency and RNG that have been longstanding topics of discussion here on the forums. If you want to create a game with lasting replay value and player engagement, you need to make the player directly responsible for their own success and survival by equipping them with a means of relying on their reflexes and ability to execute strategies.  If a player has to rely on their equipment for survival and success as they do now, you're going to be stuck in an unending cycle of creating enemies that are weak enough that the player can rely on their equipment for survival, yet strong enough to make the player feel as though said equipment is needed and worthwhile. You are then confronted with the issue of there being absolutely no reliable means of guaranteeing that your players have what they need to survive. Does that sound fun to you? It doesn't sound fun to me.  I love this game, and I want to see it succeed, but the philosophies expressed in Devstream 30 have made it exceedingly clear to me that you may be reading player feedback, and/or listening to it, but you most certainly aren't fully understanding the more important details we are trying to communicate.  Yes, we would like more of a challenge. No, we don't mean higher health values and damage numbers. No, needing to cross our fingers and hope we brought the right tools into a mission is not interesting or fun when we have no means of reliably predicting which tools we will need.  We do not appreciate being presented with gameplay options that are supposed to be viable yet are not actual matters of concern.  RNG is not actual gameplay (with regards to knockdown resists and parries.) Seriously. I love you guys, but you scare me sometimes.

...#Amen.

[BETAOPTICS]

Agreed. If there's some part of my thread that makes you think that "different and interesting" enemies are the only qualifiers that need to be attached to new enemies for them to be successful, please point it out, because that is most definitely is not what I'm trying to say. Hellion Missiles either need to be easier to avoid or they need a longer cooldown between shots and slightly lower damage per missile. I did somewhat enjoy Eviscerators - my strategy was actually to use melee on them; they have no melee attack and an abysmal turn speed, so it was easy to stay behind them - but they would have been a better-designed enemy if they had better ranged-weapon resistance and were vulnerable to melee. They had all the makings of a glass-cannon... without the glass part, and that was a problem. Instead of giving them a high chance to ignore shields completely, I think it would have been a better choice to give the miter blades properties that dealt percentage damage to shields, e.g. 25% and your shield is gone in four shots (along with other enemies firing at you, this should be devastating, even to the tankiest of characters). Of course, that's probably not the best solution, but it should be better than what we have now. 

 

Of course... dangerous is only fun when you have the tools you need to avoid that danger. Massive-damage hitscan weapons and random chance bleed procs are more like an enemy with spikes that fill every part of the boss arena. Close calls are fun and exhilarating. Being held down and knifed in the gut while tranquilized and sluggish is not. 

 

The reason people want to be able to stack redirection and just stand there while taking hits is because doing so is one of the only three things we can do. Rely on shields to avoid damage, rely on blocking to avoid damage, or rely on abilities to avoid damage. I can almost guarantee you that if we had any sort of decently reliable evasion system, you'd see at least a good portion of players flocking to that, and forgoing Redirection for more utility mods.  

This made me thinking. I agree on this very much but it also puts forth another underlying problem with the game. There is no reliable way to sustain close calls at all. The team heals are very expensive and rarely utilized and I don't think that mechanically it is a way to go about it either. The Life Strike mod was a nod to right direction in my opinion. It gives the opportunity to claim upwards again while still having the risk of failure.

Without this mechanic or Valkyrs ultimate that is bulletproof at the moment provided you spam it, there is no good ways to sustain close calls. You either die or dominate. The life regeneration aura is a good concept, but it sacrifices so much for most Frames, is weak and if buffed, doesn't make you works towards getting in better condition. This is again the same issue I talked about earlier.

Players need to have the tools to adapt into situations while still facing a challenge. This ties into my earlier suggestion of how the weapon, gear and leveling system is flawed in my opinion and that they need changing as well. There has to be a balance. Balance between the tools that you can use and the more skillful use you can utilize, the better results you get and the dangerous environment you have to fight trough with those tools.

EDIT: I have to make another point on behalf of some people who like a different challenge is that fun, as it is, is subjective. And because of that, the long discussed mission difficulty settings would really benefit different kinds of players. It could be balanced around easily, that is not an issue and it would then serve people who love to dominate and relax that way, get a moderate challenge or get a challenge that puts them on their toes every moment.

Edited June 16, 2014 by BETAOPTICS

[Madotsuki]

Man it's been months since i quit Warframe, didn't even bother checking the forums. Finally got so bored i decided to check tonight, and lo and behold, what a wonderful surprise: the playerbase is finally sick of DE's sh*t.

 

I've waited a long time for this really. Been disillusioned for a LONG time, possibly all the way from update 10 (or whenever the Gradivus Event was, that was the biggest turning point for me), yet whenever i read the forums, for every post about how many problems WF has, are several replies about how OP is a whiner and how betas can't be complained about; for every post suggesting detailed solutions to everything, are several replies saying DE is perfect and has everything covered, stfu and "play" (read "grind"). Even when it's not fanboy replies people were still somehow generally optimistic. You have no idea how happy it makes me to see a majority of people actually getting sick of DE's self-contradicting tooting of their own horn, though ultimately it accomplishes nothing, as OP and everyone else has seen from the latest livestream. Still rather disturbed to see the pallete sharing thread still on front page of GD after over half a year at almost 50 pages o_O

 

IMHO at this point WF is so rotten to the core that barely anything short of a complete system reset would save it. Melee mechanics are crap (melee 2.0 was mods. how utterly surprising.), stealth mechanics are nigh non-existent, RNG is still rampant, way too many redundant weapons, bosses are lame, enemies are cheap and uninteresting, the entire upgrade system is RNG-based and relies on cash shop items that rarely appear for free, player agency is minimal beyond "get mods to sprint faster", the list goes on and on. I can barely even see any salvageable content from the current system beyond ART ASSETS and the bare fundamentals.

 

So, honest question to you all. Do any of you think, and i don't mean just hope but actually believe, that DE will sort out all of their mistakes at ANY point in the future? Can any of you actually trust DE to listen to players, understand and implement their suggestions properly anymore? Just genuinely curious.

[CBAROG]

So, honest question to you all. Do any of you think, and i don't mean just hope but actually believe, that DE will sort out all of their mistakes at ANY point in the future? Can any of you actually trust DE to listen to players, understand and implement their suggestions properly anymore? Just genuinely curious.

No.

[(PSN)billy-d-squid]

So, honest question to you all. Do any of you think, and i don't mean just hope but actually believe, that DE will sort out all of their mistakes at ANY point in the future? Can any of you actually trust DE to listen to players, understand and implement their suggestions properly anymore? Just genuinely curious.

 

Have they so far in any of the previous updates? No. So I think the safe answer will probably be no, at least until the foreseeable future and by that point more options will be available.

 

Warframe's biggest advantage was it came out on consoles in a period where the bigger games' market consisted of rather slim pickings, that's quickly becoming a thing of the past. I don't have to put up with or give them a pass for unfinished or botched mechanics now that there are other options. 

[__Kanade__]

I still remember many livestreams ago that they didn't want Warframe to be nothing but a grindfest and I think it was Scott who said that and this was the week before Nekros was released. So instead of loosening up the RNG rates, it just ended up getting larger and larger and more and more diluted.

 

Good example of recent increases to grinding is the 600 Oxium in total that you need to craft all 3 of Zephyrs components and Oxium is hidden behind heavy RNG. I only found 2 Oxium after doing a 30 min survival on Earth the other day.

 

Today I only have 88 Oxium, I bet I could get 5 Lakoria Fangs first before I ever reach 600 Oxium to craft Zephyr.

Edited June 16, 2014 by __Kanade__

[Innocent_Flower]

Inb4 someone tells you that there's missions where you can get about 40 oxium a game, but you still have a point. 

[BETAOPTICS]

Have they so far in any of the previous updates? No. So I think the safe answer will probably be no, at least until the foreseeable future and by that point more options will be available.

 

Warframe's biggest advantage was it came out on consoles in a period where the bigger games' market consisted of rather slim pickings, that's quickly becoming a thing of the past. I don't have to put up with or give them a pass for unfinished or botched mechanics now that there are other options. 

Biggest and biggest. It was another opportunity and one another is coming soon when this game is released for Xbox One. But, each time this opportunity goes unused, each time it harms the game ever more.

They get wealth of income at these kind of bigger events. Yet, the decide to source it to things that could wait for a future. Did Melee 2.0 improve things? Yes it did. But did it fix things? No it did not nor can it in the way it now works until they do another overhaul with some mechanics or until they do Mod balance 3.0 or so.

But none of this matters if the fundamental aspects of the game. To the gameplay experience of RNG and the enemies etc. and the premise of which this game is sold. Being a space ninja. So stealth.

Then we also miss some pretty basic tools like the mission difficulty to serve a wider audience. Easy to implement, vital for the game and yet for some reason they have dismissed it for as long as i can remember for no particular reason whatsoever. I do have high hopes for the personal space ship notion to serve a gateway for this things that once we get that, they can start working on issues that matter and not how great and shiny looking their " main menu " looks like.

[Rajko]

As long as players play to get things, how can any game not be a grindfest?  The only factor becomes how difficult the reward is to achieve.

 

I feel like questions of grind are separate enough from player agency, enemy AI and Behaviour and mechanics, etc that it needs a separate thread to keep things from getting de-railed.

[Yorinar]

Honestly I disagree, the core combat issues aren't tough to fix. They're just being ignored.

 

1) add a few survivability mechanics to regular enemies like shields, ranged weapon resistance, AoE resistance. ~3 or so per faction.

 

2) make Eximus 5 times as badass, once they hit level 30, and power resistant (and able to protect allies from powers). Make them spawn as announced minibosses on survival/def (like prosecutors are announced)

 

3) remove all bandaid mods (speed holster, handspring, parry etc) and make all those mechanics skill based

 

4) remove any shield bypassing attacks that are not telegraphed. This includes bleed.

 

5) make every single poison nuclear explosion cloud AoE you just showed in the LS telegraphed

 

6) make melee 2.0 have a more effective way of gap closing and hitting flying enemies.

 

7) understand that glowy weakspots on bosses don't work vs melee, and invul phases are typically not fun

 

8) implement some minor balance mechanics where AoE and powers are more harm than good

 

9) give bonus affinity/loot/whatever for killing an enemy in its 'skill based' way as opposed to nuking it

 

10) have an ice cold margarita, you've just made a frigging awesome game.

 

Is that everything? Maybe not, but it's enough to make core combat leagues better IMO.

 

DE, why haven't you hired this guy?

[DiabolusUrsus]

*snip*

 

Please don't turn this into something it isn't. Or rather, something it's not supposed to be. I'm not particularly concerned about DE's ability to "fix" the game. I think they definitely have it in them, and this game is very far from "unsalvageable," or "hopeless." Sure, it needs to go through quite a few Overhaul 2.0s before it'll be close to passable, but I think that the community is largely to blame for how long it takes to push beneficial changes through. (Yes, balance this! No, don't balance that! More content! Hold off on content and fix this!) Just look at people starting up "hype trains" left and right before they even have a reason to expect something. 

I'm not angry with DE. I'm not "tired of their S#&$." Anyone who thinks that they aren't genuinely interested and personally invested in the success of this game is full of it. Even more so if they think that there is some sort of malicious usury going on here. This isn't a conspiracy thread. I am genuinely concerned that they have been reading our feedback, listening to our feedback, and completely misinterpreting which parts of our feedback are flexible and which parts are absolutely essential. I am unsettled by how little communication between separate departments there seems to be (the enemy design team is not the enemy balance team is not the weapon balance team, etc.)

 

I believe they can sort out the existing issues, provided they knuckle down and take a decisive stance on where they want to go with this game rather than pandering to back-and-forth sects within the community. I know it's sort of dodging your actual question, but I believe that DE will try. I don't think that they're complacent or unconcerned. I think that they are inept, and too hung up on modifying user-generated ideas to feel more "original." I don't want this to be a "bash on DE for not fixing things sooner" thread. I don't want this to be a "OMG DE are so incompetent and lazy" thread. I want this to be a "DE, please show us that you're listening, that you believe us when we say you have a problem, and reach out to us concerning how we can go about fixing it" thread. 

[BETAOPTICS]

I still remember many livestreams ago that they didn't want Warframe to be nothing but a grindfest and I think it was Scott who said that and this was the week before Nekros was released. So instead of loosening up the RNG rates, it just ended up getting larger and larger and more and more diluted.

 

Good example of recent increases to grinding is the 600 Oxium in total that you need to craft all 3 of Zephyrs components and Oxium is hidden behind heavy RNG. I only found 2 Oxium after doing a 30 min survival on Earth the other day.

 

Today I only have 88 Oxium, I bet I could get 5 Lakoria Fangs first before I ever reach 600 Oxium to craft Zephyr.

And before that they said they do not want this game to be a grind fest.

And even then. Grinding is not gameplay. It is just repeating the same sequence all over again. If grind was gameplay then I guess box factories are gameplay too. Now, I am not saying that there shouldn't be grind at all. Grind, in itself is acceptable to a some extent. But the excessive reliance to RNG and grindy elements is toxic for the game.

Warframe is not an different example to this rule. It has been proven that truly sustainable gameplay can not rely on repeating pattern because most do not find it engaging and while I can tolerate grinding myself. I do recognize that if we are to make the overall gameplay experience. We have to find other ways right next to the grind. In other words.

If you want to make the game purely based on grind, then fine. So be it. But if they want to make a long and truly sustaining game, it has to offer something else than pure grind. The concept behind grind was to originally slow down the progress of the player to make the game longer. The games that first utilized the concept of grind had other gameplay elements to them in areas like gameplay experience.

What does Warframe have to offer outside of grind? Well, a few briefly introduced bosses that die within seconds. This has guns, and melee, abilities and... running. Huh. Is that truly all? Well kind of is. Not once have I had to utilize my parkour abilities for any other reason than to maneuver around the map quicker. Or if I happen to use it, it is purely on gimmicky purposes.

Within this premise. Warframe is quite a shallow game as it is. Even some of the features outside of grinding I mentioned are pretty outdated or not working well enough to give someone a reason to continue playing the game. Unless they are fine with grind and love the unique art style like I do.

If we at least had good enemies to fight against with variable combat scenarios. I think it could easily disguise the excessive use of RNG elements wheres now, it is self evident that this game is build to be grind fest first and a game second.

Edited June 16, 2014 by BETAOPTICS

[azmyth1]

Now, Unless DE uses tools that are so crudely awful that they need eight giant arms to operate, they really should have fixed a lot of problems shortly after they were conceived into warframe

I had an argument with someone on another thread who was claiming that number changes would be difficult.  I can believe that it's hard to change AI, or add a new mission type, but it can't be hard to go into the file where the Soma's damage number is stored and type in a smaller number.  Seriously.  Just go to DPSframe or any number of other tools, look at the damage numbers and think for 5 seconds "is this really how much damage this weapon should do?"  Yes, notionphil's post on "Balance 2.0, the cost of power" would be fantastic if it were implemented, but it would take a week or two of programing.  Balancing on DPS would take a day.  Tops.  Changing scaling would take a week, and most of that would be playtesting various power levels.

[notionphil]

I am unsettled by how little communication between separate departments there seems to be (the enemy design team is not the enemy balance team is not the weapon balance team, etc.)

 

I believe they can sort out the existing issues, provided they knuckle down and take a decisive stance on where they want to go with this game rather than pandering to back-and-forth sects within the community. I know it's sort of dodging your actual question, but I believe that DE will try.

 

I don't think that they're complacent or unconcerned. I think that they are [making the same mistakes repeatedly], and too hung up on modifying user-generated [or conventional videogame] ideas to feel more "original."

 

I want this to be a "DE, please show us that you're listening, that you believe us when we say you have a problem, and reach out to us concerning how we can go about fixing it" thread. 

 

For anyone who doesn't read long posts, this is essentially what is wrong with WF distilled down into four phrases IMO.

 

 

I had an argument with someone on another thread who was claiming that number changes would be difficult.  I can believe that it's hard to change AI, or add a new mission type, but it can't be hard to go into the file where the Soma's damage number is stored and type in a smaller number.  Seriously.  

 

Just go to DPSframe or any number of other tools, look at the damage numbers and think for 5 seconds "is this really how much damage this weapon should do?"  Yes, notionphil's post on "Balance 2.0, the cost of power" would be fantastic if it were implemented, but it would take a week or two of programing.

 

 Balancing on DPS would take a day.  Tops.  Changing scaling would take a week, and most of that would be playtesting various power levels.

 

You're right. It would take a day...if there were even a concept of balance/progression.

 

The problem is that WF has no system or standard for balance. You can't tweak a number when you haven't even made a rough guideline of what it's "supposed" to be near.

 

Why is the MR2 Boltor Prime stronger than the MR 6 Flux? Why is the MR 6 grinlok weaker than the MR0 Tetra? Why is the most defensive frame also nearly the most mobile? There is no rhyme or reason. Why? Because as Diabolus just said, the people designing these disparate frames and weapons are doing so in a vacuum.

 

There appears to be little overarching vision, goals or guidelines to Warframe's design other than the Rule of Cool. If there is, we certainly haven't heard it.

Edited June 16, 2014 by notionphil

[StevangarCronox]

Normally, i would dismiss threads like this. HOWEVER, after a year of playing Warframe (or Warfarm) i have grown to be annoyed by these types of decisions as well. I loved this game to pieces, but this has become such a problem that people are making threads like this where they are writing essays on HOW they could improve and are to the point of citing their sources.

[Brahmastra]

Awesome post full support!