Does Skill Matter In Warframe ?

[Radford_343]

Asking the forum part of an online game's playerbase about skill.

 

Hmm, I wonder how that will turn out...

 

As expected, most people argue there really isn't much skill involved in the PVE part of Warframe in its current state, and I can see why they would make that claim. Low level PVE missions are generelly speaking pretty easy after you have played the game a bit and gotten a few of the basic mods like redirection and vitality.

 

However, I can still remember how confusing and hard the game was for me in the beginning, I was dying all over the place. The fast paced nature of the gameplay coupled with a pretty complex damage system which I had no idea how worked made for a pretty rough start.

 

Actually I think Warframe had one of the least forgiving new player experiences I've ever played (I started playing Warframe in U9), although that has been somewhat remedied with the new beginner mission and so on.

 

This game is a timesink, plain and simple. A hordemode timesink with some golden bits hidden away behind thick walls of RNG (ofcourse there is also the PVP aspect of the game, which I don't play and thus cannot comment on). Of this, I think we can all agree.

 

As a result, players (atleast most of the people replying to this thread) who invest in Warframe will have to play for a significant amount of time before they experience all that Warframe has to offer in its current version. We all know that the longer you play a game, the easier it gets, because you learn how to play the game over the course of time. Therefore I'd argue that many players have a slightly skewed view on what is actually hard or rather; what requires "skill" in Warframe, simply because they have played it for so long that everything is easy to them.

 

Now I'm not saying that Warframe is a very hard game to master, actually I think its just about right. New players will adjust to the game in a reasonable amount of time. But for the more experienced players who exclusively play PVE, the game is easy, atleast up to a certain point in endless modes where gear, mods and group synergy start to matter more although as stated earlier in this thread, knowledge of game mechanics can also be considered a skill.

 

Do I think Warframre requires "skill"? Ofcourse it does.

 

Do I think Warframe has a high skillcap? No, I think it could, and should be a higher skillcap in Warframe.

 

How do we make the skillcap in Warframe increase? Well there are many ways to go about raising the skillcap for Warframe (tougher enemies, better AI, etc) and I am in no way an expert in either. BUT, I will say this; I played (and still occasionally play) the multiplayer part of Mass Effect 3. That game had three difficulties at launch, ranging from easiest to hardest: Bronze, Silver and Gold.

 

The multiplayer was pretty popular, and not unlike Warframe, the best gear was well buried behind thick walls of RNG. And like Warframe that encouraged many players to play it a lot, so they can get the best shinies. After a while people got very good at the game, because they played it so much, so they decided to let Bioware (the developer of Mass Effect 3) know that they felt the game was too easy.

 

As a result of that feedback, they decided to add a new, fourth difficulty level to the game called "Platinum". This new difficulty catered only to the best equipped, most hardcore players of the game, but had increased rewards and added a whole lot of longevity to a multiplayer that really should have died out a few months after release, but is somehow still going on strong-ish.

 

Maybe something similar could be done in Warframe? It is a constantly evolving game, and I realise that it is nowhere near to being finished, so chances are pretty big that end-game will be changed somehow.

 

TL;DR: In my opninion the skillcap in Warframe is too low because the nature of the game makes players spend so much time in it. As a 10-15 hour single player game, Warfarme is arguably a hard game.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Radford_343

[JoeXyo]

Put it this way.

If I let someone who had never played before sit down on my account and run a T4 with my usual gear, how far do you think they'd get?

Skill is a factor, otherwise any idiot could sit down and do as well as someone with 1000 hours playtime.

Which goes down to what Frame and weapon you use to overcome the enemies you meet, Any idiot can have 1000 hours game time, it doesn't matter.

If you want difficulty to matter i suggest you play something like CHESS. In the end of the day it comes back down to how the game function and what its purpose is. Right now its exactly just that. 

[JoeXyo]

You still need it in a pve game. If you run around like a headless chicken, you won't go anywhere either.

oh please, Skill is just a player level of how good he is, There is tons of games that relays on just that.

pve can be many things but some level of difficulty is required yes. But by using what the game all ready has the answer to that is quite simple.

But to go up against level 150 enemies just ends in a circle where you need endless cc and aoe to over compensate that threat. Which is barely any skill based whatsoever. Which AGAIN Comes back down to which War Frame that is the most powerful for just that. 

Edited October 4, 2014 by R3pin3