I Think I'm Disappointed.

[Vitras]

Some background of me that is vital for readers understanding some things: I am a solo player as I don't have sufficient internet speed to enjoy playing online. Please do not bash me because of that, as DE has said in the past they wanted to keep solo and online play balanced and fair.

 

 

A couple of months ago or so this game's development frustrated me so much that I had wrote a topic, kind of this one, and took a long break. About a week ago I come back after news of the new update. There are few things that has impressed me, both old and new.

 

In this topic I will tell what I think should stay, what could use improvement, and what needs to be completely redone.

*   *   *

 

 

To be redone-

 

-Dark Sectors?

I have trouble remembering if anyone was actually excited about the Dark Sectors. I know I was bracing myself for something horrible the minute I heard DE say "player-controlled" and "taxes". After the first couple of days getting the mods I wanted, I never played it again. I thought it sucked. And even now, I don't read too many players in the forums happy about the Dark Sectors either. I'd prefer it be scrapped entirely, but if it can be made into something good then go ahead.

 

-The kubrows

Wow, this was hell. I didn't have a grown one until today, but when I came back the more I heard the more I was let down. 100,000 credit blueprints? DNA degeneration? No customization? They get stuck everywhere? They die??? I know this was something new, but the scale of these things…it's hard not to think DE did all of this intentionally because a) to get people to spend plat b)…wait no that's it. Just plat.

(For more)

So far the only thing I like about it over a sentinel is my raksa (that's it, right?) can regenerate my shields and they don't have to be completely depleted…but only if it's near me. Sure there are upsides, but the downsides are just too big to ignore.

On the first mission I took my kubrow on (the quest defense mission) he got stuck 3 times before I even got to any enemies. That's ridiculous. I took screenshots of how many times it got stuck…I have more than twenty and that was after only 5 missions. One time it wouldn't even follow me past the starting point. Besides that, when it dies in a mission, you don't even get a notification that it died

I'm probably going to put mine in stasis and just forget about it.

 

-Grineer doors and arc traps

This is what ticks me off the most. I understand the Grineer needed some of their own "security" similar to the Corpus, but this was overboard. The Corpus security is perfect as it is. You can get shot by turrets and stopped by a laser gate, but only if you're seen by a camera. My guess: the Grineer "door trap" is supposed to be the Corpus laser gate and the arc traps are supposed to be the turrets. It would've been fine if they worked the same way; if you're seen the security turns on. Nope. They're always on. And besides that, you can't even hit all of the arc traps and some of the "door trap" sensors are blocked by the ceiling making them mostly hidden. The "door trap" sucks all of your energy and pretty much all of your shields. I can't enjoy playing Loki with all of my energy sapped by accidently walking through one of those. Holy hell I hate those so much, I'm getting mad just remembering it. Either make it so they need to detect you first or reduce damage/energy drain.

 

-RNG

This game hugely relies on RNG. There's a point where some is okay, where more is needed, and where there is way too much. Warframe is at the point where there is way too much. An example of good balance: certain mods being dropped by only certain enemies. That was a big yes for me. The next step for the mods would be to increase the chances for rares. Grinding for mods is not fun, especially if you're forced to play a certain map hunting for a certain enemy. And I never go vault hunting in the derelict because it's hopeless as a solo player. The void RNG is just horrible though. Repeat awards throughout different missions are a bad idea. For someone like me, getting keys is not easy and I can't tag along with anyone else.

An idea:

Something that popped in my head while I was thinking about how much I hated the RNG: alternate objectives. I had played through the prologue to see how it was. The thing that caught my attention the most was when Lotus gave you the option of either sabotaging the ship or just leaving. My idea was something similar, where if you had different objectives and completing the different objectives would give you different rewards…Honestly I'm not really sure how it would go from there, but it'd be a start.

 

-Stat balance

The damage variations between all of the weapons make me flinch. Some are extremely powerful available in the market at mastery rank 2 while some are extremely useless needing mastery rank 6. Balance is by far the downfall of this game. All of the stats of weapons should be revised and restricted to mastery rank accordingly. The warframe stats are fine as is, which is why the weapon balance is even worse.

 

-Difficulty balance

The problem is there isn't an obvious balance. There might be tiny differences between online and solo, but it's just crap to be honest. Playing online is a breeze while playing solo is a nightmare. When I first played the game I remember I actually creeped through the halls and around every corner. It took me more than half an hour for a simple raid mission. And I died twice. The part I can't stand: it not only hasn't gotten better than that, it's gotten worse. Sure extermination missions are tolerable, but defense, survival, and interception are thrown out the window. Playing solo is taking the load of four players onto yourself without any lowered difficulty.

My proposition:

Make enemy health/damage/numbers dependent either on number of players or combined conclave rating.

 

-Prices

A few things on this. Once a price for something is put in the game, it won't be changed unless a player uproar demands it be changed (even then maybe not). This means that Nekros's blueprint will probably stay expensive for no real reason. Prices aren't very consistent at all except maybe that for featured items the prices get higher and higher *cough*. This is one of the handful of things that DE seems to shoot and forget in the game.

 

-Too much

There is too much in the game. At least too much little things. There is so little I would know about warframe if I only played the game and didn't look things up on the wiki or the forums. There's random crap hidden everywhere. For example: oxium, enemy elites (what each one does), elemental side effects, codex scanner, and so on. Things need to be properly implemented in the game and not just thrown in willy-nilly.

 

 

To be improved-

 

-Melee

The new melee system was great. Despite it being fun, there is a big flaw that keeps me from being able to play melee only is the lack of ability to melee airborne targets. I don't think DE thought this part through when making melee 2.0 or at least just swept it under the rug for later (never). A simple solution is to make it so jump attacks actually make airborne targets stagger/fall like regular enemies. Another gripe I have about melee, is at first when the Grineer "door traps" were introduced, you could use your new melee block and go through without your energy being sapped. It was perfect. But then the removed it in the next hotfix. So again, another reason I can't melee only (when on the Grineer galleon). I had even made a topic asking for it back and others agreed. Just put it back.

 

-Oxium

A resource being restricted to being dropped by one rare enemy? Really? It was hell trying to farm for Zephyr solo. 5 oxium per mission if I was lucky. I can't really say I was surprised that DE never lowered the costs.

 

- Argon crystals

Having a rare resource being restricted to one area is nothing new. But a timer? Oh, the disappointment. Not only do you have to farm for a resource, you have to do it fast. And then there's that horrible feeling of getting argon crystals when you don't need any and you have to just sit there waiting for them to disappear. There's no reason for them to have a timer.

 

-Seeker damage

Plain and simple, the Grineer seekers do too much damage. Way, way too much damage. Forget the napalm stomping down the hallway, the seeker hiding around the corner can take you out in four shots or less. It's very difficult to not think of DE as being lazy/money suckers when something as simple as this is forgotten.

 

-Specters

As a solo player I was especially excited when I heard the news of specters. Warframes that you can summon to help you? What?! Then they came and I found out they were crazy expensive and they're gone after one use whether they live or die. Disappointment. I've used 2 since released. They're a big help (especially for me) but the cost is a bit too much for me to be able to feel comfortable using. I'd need a lot of them to go to the higher level missions I want to play (for fun) so bad. It's another part of the game where high prices come into play. Either make them reusable (if they live) or lower the prices. It's as simple as that.

 

-Bugs

Too many. There's just too many. And a lot of them are real old. Something small that still really annoys me is when you capture a target sometimes you can rotate your warframe around instead of staying locked in place. Oh, and the ridiculously simple bug of boltor's bolts not matching colors. It's especially bad since Djinn's stinger's bolts have matching color. DE should stop pumping out the content and go back over what they have. More stuff means more bugs, which would be fine except they haven't fixed the bugs from the stuff they put in before.

 

-Regrettably…

…More things need to be completely redone than just improved.

 

 

To stay-

 

-The look

Aesthetically, this game dominates all others. The colors, effects, models, textures, animations are all amazing. This is definitely the one game I love to look at while I play. Getting Loki Prime was a big treat in that respect.

 

-The ship

Having a little ship to walk around in instead of having the bland starmap was a pleasant change. Some customization would be welcome, but as a whole, I was very satisfied with how it turned out. It's so good I actually don't have any gripes about it at all. U14 favorite.

 

-Quests

The prologue quest was a bit enjoyable with the narration and objectives. Rescuing Darvo was probably the best part, as it had an actual character. As an RPG fan, more of this is definitely welcome, as long as it has been refined and not hashed together.

 

-Sadly…

…That's pretty much it for what I'm happy with. Everything else seems to be getting worse.

 

 

*   *   *

To DE

 

Remembering how the game was when I first joined Warframe (April or May sometime last year), it was much more about improving the game than it is now. Now it seems that it's just about pushing out new content and forgetting about the bugs. Kinda like "Hey, DE, did you fix that bug where--" "Oh look, we have something new and shiny!". For example, as Steve said, U14 is the most ambitious update yet… Which means there putting more in than they ever have before. I really hope that I'll be proven wrong in the future.

Something that I have seen again and again when coming back to the game is all of the things that are still not done or unfinished. Where's Frost's coat with physics? That was back when Oberon came out. Don't know what happened there.

People say Warframe is different than other games because DE listens to the players. I agree, they do. But the reason for that has changed. It used to be to improve the game and enhance the player's experience, but now… Now DE is listening to the players to find out what shiny new things they can add to coax the players to pay them for it.

My advice to DE… To make a better game and be different (in a good way), forget about the money and just polish the game while keeping a clear vision of what the game will become. Listen to what the players like and dislike (separating the useful feedback from the useless) to enhance the game. The way it was at first was better than it is now, the kubrows being a prime example.

Please, just focus on the game. It's your game as well as the players.

 

 

TL;DR (Summary)

I'm a solo player. The Dark Sectors are no fun for me. Kubrows are too much frustration with little satisfaction or relief. The Grineer "hazards" need to be tailored to be more like Corpus security. There is too much RNG in the game, with the void having the worst of it. Weapons are poorly balanced with too many outliers. Playing solo isn't fair compared to online. Too much random crap is in the game without order. There's no way to melee airborne targets and the Grineer "door trap" should be able to be blocked by melee. Oxium is too rare. Argon crystals have a timer for no reason. The seekers deal too much damage. The specters would be better without the costs or with reusability. Too. Many. Bugs. The game looks great, the best even. The player's ship is my favorite addition of U14. Quests are promising. DE needs to bring the focus back to the game.

 

 

It's a relief to get this all off of my chest. Now I expect there to be some (a lot of) people who want to tell me how wrong I am. Or that it's not supposed to be played solo (remember what I said at first). I don't want to read senseless stuff in the replies. I want to see a discussion and not a battle, as I'm sure others do too. Thank you.

 

Also, I'd love a response, whether it's a letter or just a comment, from one of the DE staff to explain to distraught players like me what's really going on. Otherwise I don't know what think of the game anymore and might end up reposting this.

 

P.S. I typed this at 2 a.m. so there may be errors.

 

~Vitras

[DAFIRE]

OMFG you actually have a tl:dr section :O

 

i will edit this post with my personal opinion on what you said :D

Edited August 1, 2014 by DAFIRE

[Krjal]

I think you're mostly right. A little exaggerated in places but that's understandable given the passion we have for the game.

 

My guess is the team is stretched a little thin. There are a lot of bugs and gameplay issues to get figured out but in this industry without constant content flowing games dwindle quite quickly. I hope that as U14 stabilises a lot of the issues you're talking about here get a looking at.

 

I don't have time for an essay to do your post justice but I will add: that Seeker damage has gotta be a bug :p

 

Edit. There's a DEv stream on in like 15min. Maybe you'll see a couple of answers there? http://www.twitch.tv/warframe

Edited August 1, 2014 by Krjal

[Surtur]

 

 

 

 

too much text too read,i would like to read what you wrote,but i can't,sorry OP

Refer to his TL;DR summary section. 

Yes, he actually has one.

[Deidaku]

A lot of truth in this post OP

 

But I have to disagree on some points

 

About the too much.

 

these should be mentionned by the game itself in a pseudo tutorial or shown better in the codex

 

It's not that complicated 

 

For oxmium , Kappa Sedna   you'll have at least 25 per run

 

The grineer doors are fine , they're pretty easy to bypass but yeah I too hate arc traps so very much/( why do they hit you when cloaked????)

 

 

 

 

on the rest  totally agree.

 

The rng part is being discussed constatnly so it's nothing new

 

But holy sh*t you're right about the seeker damage  they're disproportionately strong compared to the other units

[Xerdn]

As of the past week or so, hot fixes have been relatively frequent, so I'd imagine some of the issues you are talking about will be resolved at some point, but like you said, there are some that should've been resolved ages ago. Overall, I think if they take a break after U14 to do some patching, that'd be amazing. Some of the additions are really cool (infested ships on Eris, Rescue 2.0, etc.) and I'd imagine how great they would be if they were cleaned and polished.

 

 

EDIT: Also, I agree, arc traps are quite annoying. I'm fine with their damage so long as they only active when you trip security.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Xerdn

[_Raiklar_]

I agree with you whole heartedly But, thought that I'd add that one of the major reasons as a majority of the time solo player is the constant nerfing of frames abilities and the increased buff to enemies, makes it by far more and more difficult to play solo. I mean my take is if your not going to scale down the difficulty of solo mode. Why even offer it as an option.

 

 

on another note We the players were told in a past Dev stream by DE Steve, as we aquired our ships that part of the new quest system there would be missions to fix it up not just add modules to allow us to do stuff (ie. the foundry, codex, market, incubator, arsenal. etc.) but real customization. But, alas there has been none of this as of yet. I'm hoping as are a few other player that this will be part if not the main part of the next quest line as there is a blank quest slot in the codex as we speak. As well I hope that it will be very soon and sooner than later.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Ookami_Nihonto

[notlamprey]

These problems may persist because of how quickly Warframe grew early on, and has been since.

 

We're talking about the difference between "liking a game even more" and "even more people liking a game." It seems that DE has ultimately come down in favor of the second option.

 

The end results of their design process make it seem like they want to keep hanging ornaments on the tree before they think about whether those additions do anything to turn the game into a harmonious whole.

 

I really, really don't like that. I'm also not sure there's anything that can be done to change it.

[Vitras]

I'm very pleased to see there's no flaming going on here. Might be because of the the magnitude of my post, haha.

 

A lot of truth in this post OP

 

But I have to disagree on some points

 

About the too much.

 

these should be mentionned by the game itself in a pseudo tutorial or shown better in the codex

 

It's not that complicated 

 

For oxmium , Kappa Sedna   you'll have at least 25 per run

 

The grineer doors are fine , they're pretty easy to bypass but yeah I too hate arc traps so very much/( why do they hit you when cloaked????)

 

 

 

 

on the rest  totally agree.

 

The rng part is being discussed constatnly so it's nothing new

 

But holy sh*t you're right about the seeker damage  they're disproportionately strong compared to the other units

For the too much: I agree with you on that. I just mean there's a whole mess of stuff without much introduction or coordination. If they had information more available in game, that would be great. I'm still not sure about the whole scanner thing; I never do it anymore.

 

For oxium: That's more like when played online. I did a couple of kappa missions online (probably some of the most lag you've ever seen) and got that much. The one time I managed to solo it with Frost I got maybe 12. There's a long explination for why that is, but it's boring and a mess so I'll just leave it at that. Besides, my point isn't that there isn't a way, there's just no point. Oxium is totally random and you need large amounts of it when it's a rare resource. Other than oxium, the highest rare resource cost is 10 orokin cells for primes.

 

And the grineer traps would be fine if they just made it so they had to be triggered, that's all I'm saying.

 

But yes, it's been quite a long while that seekers have been doing tons of damage. No DE response to it and I've personally made a topic on it before. (Not impressed.)

 

I agree with you whole heartedly But, thought that I'd add that one of the major reasons as a majority of the time solo player is the constant nerfing of frames abilities and the increased buff to enemies, makes it by far more and more difficult to play solo. I mean my take is if your not going to scale down the difficulty of solo mode. Why even offer it as an option.

 

 

on another note We the players were told in a past Dev stream by DE Steve, as we aquired our ships that part of the new quest system there would be missions to fix it up not just add modules to allow us to do stuff (ie. the foundry, codex, market, incubator, arsenal. etc.) but real customization. But, alas there has been none of this as of yet. I'm hoping as are a few other player that this will be part if not the main part of the next quest line as there is a blank quest slot in the codex as we speak. As well I hope that it will be very soon and sooner than later.

Totally true. The online player experience is acknowledged but the solo experience is just trashed. Decided to play a low level mission (lvl 2-3) with unmodded weaopns (skana, kunai, paris), just like the prologue, and even as an experience player I died three times. Once from being one-shotted by a seeker.

 

I remember them saying something too. I'm thinking it'll be like with how long Vor's Prize took... Forever. Or "soon".

 

These problems may persist because of how quickly Warframe grew early on, and has been since.

 

We're talking about the difference between "liking a game even more" and "even more people liking a game." It seems that DE has ultimately come down in favor of the second option.

 

The end results of their design process make it seem like they want to keep hanging ornaments on the tree before they think about whether those additions do anything to turn the game into a harmonious whole.

 

I really, really don't like that. I'm also not sure there's anything that can be done to change it.

That's it exactly. Pleasing the crowd hasn't done the best for this game thus far. I really hope they turn things around and go back to how they were. I remember them being a lot more upfront with things and actually told the players what they were working on and how the progress was. Now new things kind of just pop in everywhere unexpectedly, which could be why they are so ill received.

 

 

If any DE staff sees this: though some opinions slightly vary, all who have replied seem to agree things need to be fixed. Please acknowledge.