Update 15.2.0: One Step Forward, Three Steps Back (Easy Solutions Inside)

[Cpl_Facehugger]

So I've been playing some of the new update and I have to say that I'm very disappointed.

 

There's some good things about this last update. The quest helps newbies out with some decent gear and introduces the infested as a faction. It's fun, and generally well suited for an entry level quest. More lore is also always appreciated. It could use some tweaks, but overall it's good for its purpose.

 

The Nyx buff to mind control is also great as well. It really makes mind control not suck.

 

However, I find these beneficial changes eclipsed by the, bluntly, terrible decisions elsewhere.

 

Excalibur is far from a top tier frame even with his recent buff. He's mid rank at best. But then you removed the central change of his recent buff and knocked him right back into garbageframe territory. Enemies are *always* taking cover, except for infested, so making javelins LOS dependent is a meganerf against everyone but infested.

 

Mag's shield polarize is already a highly niche power that is essentially only useful vs corpus and corrupted to a lesser extent. Anti-corpus specialization is Mag's hat, same as how Oberon is best for hunting high level grineer and Ember burninates infested. But making shield polarize affected by LOS means one of the best tools in her arsenal for dealing with corpus just got nerfed, hard. Squishy Mag falls back behind a door to get some protection vs the high DPS corpus? Welp, now she's gotta open the door or pop a crush (which I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't next on the chopping block).

 

The Trinity EV nerf? Why are you nerfing a support frame that has practically no offensive power? Lotus knows that I've met Trinities who drop EV on enemies well out of my LOS because it's hard to know what's in another player's LOS or not.

 

Limbo nerf? Seriously? Practically the only niche Limbo has outside of trolling is as a walking battery by stacking voidwalk/banish and cataclysm! But that's gone now, and with it any real reason to bring Limbo to a mission beyond levelling to 30 or love of his top hat.

 

And if that wasn't all, Interception as a whole was nerfed. And make no mistake, that is terrible. Interception has always been unforgiving for newbies, but this takes it to a whole new level of pain. The enemies now *start* with an advantage and on top of that, the initial tower grab now takes twice as long because of the need to decap and then recap points instead of simply capping the unclaimed ones. It's easy for anyone who's not extremely good at this game to get into a death spiral where the enemy is constantly in possession of as many or more towers than the player - and with the initial four towers starting in enemy hands, this means defeat, frequently, because the enemy starts with a major advantage.

 

I don't have the courage to try the already punishingly difficult Archwing interception missions to see if these changes apply to them, but if so, holy carp DE. :o

Even for a high level skilled player like myself, interception flat out isn't fun any more, even to solo.

 

And all this was clearly to stop people farming Viver, even though Viver farming is just the symptom rather than the disease.

 

We all know that the real issue is the syndicate grind, and all these nerfs have done nothing to affect that. Even if people move off Viver, they'll just migrate to Cerberus or Sechura or find some other low resistance way to farm rep.

 

So, let's talk solutions.

 

1. Revert all frame and interception nerfs. They were ill-conceived hammerblows to frames that are already mediocre. They need to go. The interception nerfs make all interception nodes in the game less fun and much harder for newbies, so these nerfs need to go too. There's basically nothing good about these nerfs. 

 

2. Then, switch Viver to another larger map. This will curtail the Viver farm a bit while you work on better solutions.

 

3. After that, get started on fixing the rep grind. This is the disease that caused Viver farming, not Viver itself. One particularly good idea I've seen is to give major rep discounts for mastery rank; mastery is basically affinity already earned, so it makes sense that syndicates would want to entice highly powerful and reknowned Tenno to their cause. Plus, this will give more meaning to mastery, a system which is very underutilized right now. The rep grind isn't so bad for new players because they are experiencing all content for the first time, while vets are being asked to go back and do all old content over (and over and over) again for lackluster rewards.

 

TLDR: New quest is good. Nyx buff is very good. All the nerfs are ill-conceived hits to already weak frames and a game mode that is newbie unfriendly to begin with. Please revert all the nerfs with this update and instead fix the core cause of Viver farming rather than the symptom: The incredible grindwall of syndicates and the lack of rewards. One elegant way to do this is to give significant rep discounts for mastery rank.

[--Q--JoeTheBanshee]

Viver farming is just the symptom rather than the disease.

Give significant rep discounts for mastery rank.

Both of these are golden

Edited November 13, 2014 by -CM-JoeTheBanshee

[vaugahn]

I agree, with reservations.

 

Line of sight on abilities, especially the more powerful radial ones, should be worked on. It's an easy way to balance out some of those skills by promoting combat rather than spammery, and with some work it could be quite nice. It's not there yet, that's more of a down-the-line thing, but there's no reason to roll those particular mechanics back. 

[Zagrax]

This. Worth the read, for anyone at DE that cares. (starting to doubt that.)

[(PSN)Hollow118]

Archwing on Uranus is more unforgiving than before thanks to the Interception change. You can't claim a tower at the start of a round before a mob of baddies show up blowing up your face half the time.

[hijinks_the_turtle]

Very good feedback. +1  I think it's a great idea that Mastery Rank should be used like this.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

I agree, with reservations.

 

Line of sight on abilities, especially the more powerful radial ones, should be worked on. It's an easy way to balance out some of those skills by promoting combat rather than spammery, and with some work it could be quite nice. It's not there yet, that's more of a down-the-line thing, but there's no reason to roll those particular mechanics back. 

Not with indoor maps having as much LOS blocking clutter as they do. (And not with LOS detection being as buggy as it is now either, for that matter). Radial powers that cost oodles of energy should be powerful, IMO, and not blocked by thin railings or the like. Particularly in context of frames which are generally reliant on those powerful radial powers to compete with better frames.

The fundamental issue was that Mag, Excal, and Trin were all generally mediocre to begin with. Decent in a special niche, but far from Rhino/Loki/Nova/Mirage/Valkyr master race. Anything that makes them even weaker has no real benefit since it just drives people away from those frames.

 

 

 

Archwing on Uranus is more unforgiving than before thanks to the Interception change. You can't claim a tower at the start of a round before a mob of baddies show up blowing up your face half the time.

 

I was afraid of that. Uranus interception was already a nightmare, this just makes it worse. :(

Edited November 13, 2014 by Cpl_Facehugger

[fatpig84]

Great feedback as usual.

And yes, Uranus is unforgiving now.

[Ninjamander]

Kinda hope DE will read this honestly .-.

[4ever4gotin]

I would also like to see Syndicate points rewards that are far better for non-endless missions.

 

You know. Missions that no one ever does anymore and no i would not consider daily alerts the solution. They got to get people off the survival, interception, defense and ?excavation? binge.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

I would also like to see Syndicate points rewards that are far better for non-endless missions.

 

You know. Missions that no one ever does anymore and no i would not consider daily alerts the solution. They got to get people off the survival, interception, defense and ?excavation? binge.

 

That's a pretty good idea too. Giving non-endless missions more rep bonus to entice people off of endless missions would finally get people to do other missions beyond the current favorites. +1!

[ReneClaw]

I strongly agree with these.

 

So can someone set this straight for me because I have not tried interception and now I am a bit weary of it.

 

Enemies start with control points at the beginning of the round, is that true?

[Educated_Beast]

Completely agree with the post.  Unfortunately it has all been said before.  If DE doesn't change thier attitude and continue to punish the players customers; there will be an exodus.  I've seen so many good games fail for similar reasons. 

 

Instead of humbling themselves and admitting them really screwed up big time, they stick to thier guns and blame the customer.  If Viver was such a problem, its because of the reputation system.  Viver has been there for a long time and these techniques were always available. 

 

Ask yourself DE, why did it become popular?

[Bambiiiiiiii]

I can't upvote this enough. The nerfs to the frames were too much. Do what you will to Viver, but ruining people's favorites isn't a solution.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

I strongly agree with these.

 

So can someone set this straight for me because I have not tried interception and now I am a bit weary of it.

 

Enemies start with control points at the beginning of the round, is that true?

 

Yes, that is true. Where as before all points started unowned, now they start in enemy hands. Problem is, enemy points take twice as long to cap as neutral ones since you have to decap them then recap them. And since all it takes to block a player capturing a tower is one enemy nearby, the net effect is that it's a lot easier to get overwhelmed because enemies have more time to block the initial Tenno grab for control points.

[ReneClaw]

Yes, that is true. Where as before all points started unowned, now they start in enemy hands. Problem is, enemy points take twice as long to cap as neutral ones since you have to decap them then recap them. And since all it takes to block a player capturing a tower is one enemy nearby, the net effect is that it's a lot easier to get overwhelmed because enemies have more time to block the initial Tenno grab for control points.

I can't tell you how hard it is to type with my palm pushing against my face so hard. Why would they do this?

[JapariBun]

Honestly, why nerf Excalibur at all. His abilities, if they were even OP to begin with, were already offset with a very long cast time. I really don't understand DE's decision at all. Also, Mag's ability basically worked on one faction in particular. These decisions are egregiously bad, not thought through at all, and make no sense whatsoever.

 

I looked at their situation for 5 seconds to come up with an easier solution; change the tileset. Then I got an even better solution; finish the half made game-mode. The spawns in interception make no sense relative to the points' locations, as well as interception now being borderline impossible to solo, since the enemies now start with all points and can instantly capture if you can't carve a swath through a horde of enemies to get to a console, only to realize another one is being taken. There are some missions where the enemies spawn almost on top of the points as well, which is also very annoying.

 

A third point; this entire game, at this point, basically revolves at flying around a room and helicoptering whilst throwing things at the enemy units. Having to keep sight of fellow Warframes is a very short sighted decisions by DE, and an inane one at that. Excalibur's javelin being LOS is just crazy. It's called RADIAL javelin. I mean, come on DE. That was the point of the ability.

[kurohelios]

One thing i could count in 60+ min survival was that if I continue to roam, I won't loose most of the mod drops and Rares can be marked for others also. I was disappointed when the cap was set to 50. Now, I just don't have words.

 

And all of this could have been prevented if DE decided to take community feedback before adding these changes. You guys have an awesome community that'd love to make this game more balanced and IF we were asked to give some kind of feedback on these changes maybe a more palatable decision that would've agreed with most of us could've been made.

Edited November 13, 2014 by kurohelios

[GeneralArmchair]

I've read through the OP and I agree with OP's message.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Bumping this in response to DE's response to the Viver message, in hopes that DE will see it and maybe consider reverting the changes.

[MichaelSD]

I agree, with reservations.

 

Line of sight on abilities, especially the more powerful radial ones, should be worked on. It's an easy way to balance out some of those skills by promoting combat rather than spammery, and with some work it could be quite nice. It's not there yet, that's more of a down-the-line thing, but there's no reason to roll those particular mechanics back. 

 

Actually the LOS mechanic promotes spamming as with LOS the enemy is effected less reliable so I have will to use the power on the few not effected. LOS was a bad idea and should go out of the window.