Tactical Alerts Punish Players Rather Than Create Challenge

[Sonicbullitt]

The intentions behind these alerts was good they were supposed to vets a challenge atleast i am guessing thats what they were supposed to d,o but the implementation of these alerts are more annoying and a punishing than they are hard. so far it seems that these are just another version of nightmare missions. I have already seen a few people make a few posts about these problems however I decided to make a post of my own, anyway let me explain why in a few bullet points.

 

* Conclave rating limitations. Really now I should not have to bring this up , This was supposed to give higher rank and geared players a challenge right ? Nope! All this serves is to punish players that worked hard on constantly re leveling their weapons via forma to maximize the full potential of their weapon just to create artificial difficulty by taking away player agency ( we already have enough of that bs we don't need more). The purpose of these events is to push our ourselves to the limit is it not ? So how are we supposed to do that if we can't even bring a full loadout ?

 

* Ridiculous amount of energy drain. Speaking of the removal of player agency, enemies that have a huge range energy drain is never fun especially for warframes balanced around their abilities rather than stats, ie frames that have very low durability but to make up their abilities are very useful. A lot of a warframe's survivability is heavily dependent on energy but by removing it your are basically telling the player to only bring high armour, hp warframes therefore removing player choice For example even my Valkyr can't survive without lifestrike if she wants to melee which also requires energy therefore forcing me to play at range and limiting my choices on how to approach the situation. Unlike normal disrupting ancients which can be dodged (albeit there are bs ones that have an aoe) this massive range aoe drain is completely unavoidable and the player can do nothing about it besides stay out of its range which is almost impossible you are bound to get within its range a few times. To be honest energy drain should be completely removed from the game all it serves to do is create frustration out of the player.

 

*Enemies that give other enemies invincibility. Man where do I even begin with this one.Who In their right mind decided to create nimble quick moving enemies that are not only tanky as hell but can also grant invincibility to enemies if they are not killed first ? Oh and it gets better, someone at DE decided to give the hostages not one not two but three of these pain in the asses not to mention the hostages are no joke themselves with those supras and knockdowns.

 

*Getting stuck because there is no hack panel. This one is the only one that doesn't seem intentional and not really the tactical alerts fault but nonetheless is still infuriating and frustrating. Really next time they need to make sure there is always a hack panel nearby after you get locked out so your are not forced to abort a mission, but man I guess this is the difficulty of developing for randomly generated tilesets. I guess I should cut them some slack here.

 

Seriously if you have to handicap your players just to make the content "hard" for us rather than improve the enemy and game mechanics that's just poor game design and it makes the designer seem either incompetent, lazy ignorant or all three . If you guys want to make the game genuinely harder and not punishing for starters do not make the player weaker and limit their freedom of choice. You should never have to make your player weaker just to create the illusion of difficulty. If you want to create and enemy that can do this create a way to avoid such things if the player has the skill to do so.

 

You guys at DE I love what you have created but sometimes you guys need some tough love and constructive criticism to fix these problems. Finally I will leave a link to a video here by extra credits they do an excellent job of explaining the difference between punishing and challenge, you should check out their channel if you have not already they do some awesome videos on the gaming industry.

 

Link: 

 

Edit: Fixed some spelling and grammar mistakes

Edited November 18, 2014 by Sonicbullitt

[Sitchrea]

Um... No?

 

They aren't supposed to be, nor can they be, forced to completion through DPS races and Invincibility.

 

The events have been a cinch so long as the player simply thinks about what he's doing before he does it. Picking the correct Frames and weapons for the job is neccessary.

 

For example, I was able to complete Cold Revenge with ease with a Trinity+Vauban combo; we didn't even need guns, honestly, it was so easy.

 

Strategy and Team Synergy always trump brute force.

[Hixlysss]

The conclave rating I have to admit is annoying, considering I don't have multiple levels of my mods because I don't have the time to grind for those really hard to get mods and the fusion cores to level them up, nor do I have the plat or the desire to spend plat to purchase extra copies of the mod at what ever level or for fusion cores.

 

The energy drain thing....eh look at nightmare missions. *Shrug.*

 

The invulnerability things are annoying as all heck, I agree to that one. I don't like bullet sponges, I like enemies like Ruk, though honestly I'd prefer if Ruk just had a massive damage reduction rather than invulernability to all but a few spots.

[direcyphre]

Conclave rating is meant to force a player into building a loadout within certain limitations. Really not that difficult to circumvent, easier still when we know the enemy types beforehand to properly spec out elements. The challenge isn't to push ourselves to the limit, but overcome circumstances due to limitations. Most every vet has a maxed out build, so that is really not a challenge in itself. It's not really nerfing the players, it's simply forcing someone to think more about their build in order to overcome higher leveled content. Whether or not you feel it is punishing is relative, as others found it challenging.

 

Energy drain I can agree with to a point. The AOE drain is a little silly and definitely reduces the overall effectiveness of using any frame that relies on abilities to survive (primarily CC).

 

The drones I think had something wrong with their hitbox in general, not necessarily tanking. Sometimes it made me quirk a brow and wonder why there weren't damage numbers showing up, especially all lined up in a row with over 2.0 Punch Through.

 

I didn't quite understand the hack panel thing because it shouldn't have gone off so early for everyone. The lack of a panel is just a level design oversight, and I believe Scott already posted a response to someone who brought it up.

 

 

Oh goodie, an Extra credits video. We certainly all haven't seen that before...

[--MZez--]

It gives people a boost to play the game so im happy with it

[Anatolius]

I think the drones were doing something that made it impossible to do damage to the captive when they were around. I mean I had fun. I never got stuck, I stopped relying on energy. Just gun

 

Valkyr + Orgis

 

no side/melee/sentinel/kubrow

 

still worked like a charm

[Sonicbullitt]

Um... No?

 

They aren't supposed to be, nor can they be, forced to completion through DPS races and Invincibility.

 

The events have been a cinch so long as the player simply thinks about what he's doing before he does it. Picking the correct Frames and weapons for the job is neccessary.

 

For example, I was able to complete Cold Revenge with ease with a Trinity+Vauban combo; we didn't even need guns, honestly, it was so easy.

 

Strategy and Team Synergy always trump brute force.

 

 You guys are missing the point. I myself have completed the alert . Its not that it is unbeatable its the fact that it is cheap and poorly designed did you even watch the video ?

[Janzer]

The intentions behind these alerts was good they were supposed to give us vets a challenge but the implementation of these alerts are more annoying and a punishing than they are hard. so far it seems that these are just another version of nightmare missions. I have already seen a few people make a few posts about these problems however I decided to make a post of my own, anyway let me explain why in a few bullet points.

 

* Conclave rating limitations. Really now I should not have to bring this up , This was supposed to give higher rank and geared players a challenge right ? Nope! All this serves is to punish players that worked hard on constantly re leveling their weapons via forma to maximize the full potential of their weapon just to create artificial difficulty by taking away player agency ( we already have enough of that bs we don't need more). The purpose of these events is to push our ourselves to the limit is it not ? So how are we supposed to do that if we can't even bring a full loadout ? Seriously

 if you have to make your players weaker just to make it "hard" us thats poor game design and plain lazy

 

* Ridiculous amount of energy drain. Speaking of the removal of player agency, enemies that have a huge range energy drain is never fun especially for warframes balanced around their abilities rather than stats, ie frames that have very low durability but to make up their abilities are very useful. A lot of a warframe's survivability is heavily dependent on energy but by removing it your are basically telling the player to only bring high armour, hp warframes therefore removing player choice and even then my Valkyr can't survive without lifestrike which requires energy. Unlike normal disrupting ancients which can be dodged (albeit there are bs ones that have an aoe) this massive range aoe drain is completely unavoidable and the player can do nothing about it. To be honest energy drain should be completely removed from the game all it serves to do is create frustration out of the player.

 

*Enemies that give other enemies invincibility. Man where do I even begin with this one.Who In their right mind  decided to create nimble quick moving enemies that are not only tanky as hell but can also grant invincibility to enemies if they are not killed first ? Oh and it gets better, DE decided to give the hostages not one not two but three of these pain in the asses not to mention the hostages are no joke themselves with those supras and knockdowns.

 

*Getting stuck because there is no hack panel. This one is the only one that doesn't seem intentional but nonetheless is still infuriating and frustrating. Really next time they need to make sure there is always a hack panel nearby after you get locked out so your are not forced to abort a mission, but man I guess this is the difficulty of developing for randomly generated tilesets. I guess I should cut them some slack here.

 

Seriously if you have to to nerf your players just to make it "hard" for us that's just poor game design and plain lazy it shows incompetence in the designer. If you guys want to make the game genuinely harder and not punishing for starters do not make the player weaker and limit their freedom of choice, this is your base. You should never have to make your player weaker just to create the illusion of difficulty. If you want to create and enemy that can do this create a way to avoid such things if the player has the skill to do so.

 

You guys at DE I love what you have created and the hard work you put into your game but sometimes you guys need some tough love to correct your mistakes. Finally I will leave a link to a video here by extra credits they do an excellent job of explaining the difference between punishing and challenge, you should check out their channel if you have not already they do some awesome videos on the gaming industry.

 

 

On Conclave rating limitations:

 

I think they did the Conclave ratings in order to make the alerts an option for more people. It's not an easy balance trying to appeal to both older and newer players. Your point is assuming this alert was intended "to give higher rank and geared players a challenge right".

 

Rather than requiring even heavier gear, more gear, higher conclave (which would definitely limit who could play) they went the other route and made high mastery players work without all of the tools they normally have.

 

A person that goes mountain climbing without gear is creating more of a challenge than someone fully geared. It's more of an accomplishment. While it's not for everyone, it is what it is. It's a challenge. I think you want just more game mechanics to enhance the challenge perhaps. I can understand that. You should probably focus on the things you would suggest, rather than being insulting and calling developers "lazy".

 

On energy drain:

 

I saw a few different vids of players skirting around this issue. A Mag build, a Mirage build, and I did it with my Volt build. Once again, it's a challenge created to say, can you do this without the things you rely on the most? I didn't find it terribly horrible, it was just another stipulation placed as part of the alert. Yeah it was slightly annoying, true.

 

On Enemies that give other enemies invincibility:

 

I guess you didn't find out that if you keep the capture target at a distance, and this tile set seemed to be made specifically for long range sniping, that you could just....get the attention of the flying gnats and they would leave the target to chase you, leaving the target open to all attack. I did this solo, and I'm guessing it would have been much easier with a team.

 

On the rest of your comments:

 

I think you could have stopped at the point were you said "that's just poor game design". The rest of that sentence is just insulting for no reason. If you expect to be taken seriously, why would you do that? There's no basis to give your feedback with insult. None.

 

Insulting the developers and then saying you love what they have done, after calling them lazy....well you're definitely passionate. Maybe just try to be less, insulting to the people that are trying to entertain you.

 

Tough love doesn't need to be name calling. I just did it with you, without insulting you with names.

 

On to the actual topic other than the other stuff, I was able to solo this with my Volt and at first melee, and then a Tiberon up to the 3rd set. During the Endurance run, I did it with my Volt and a Torid. I had to change up my tactics and gear. It created a challenge for me.

Now I actually agree that this alert was kind of a strange one in that it was more punishing than challenging. The rewards, I didn't even care about honestly, not that they are bad, but I tend to look for challenge rather than reward items. I had mixed feelings about this. It definitely frustrated me, but that only occurred initially because I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, meaning, I wasn't changing my loadout or tactics at first. Once I got over my stubbornness, I was able to come up with creative solutions to the problem.

 

[Kuro]

Thing Is, I only have ember - and that basically relies on energy. So The Energy drain thing is to much of a pain for me

[Donnell]

The way I see it.. the "Veterans" have gotten too greedy with power and have forgotten how to survive without the Press-4-to-win button.

Take what you need, stay together and take your time. It was up for like 3 days yeah?

 

I did like how they put in a little bit of story behind an otherwise normal alert :>

[SlightVect]

The way I see it.. the "Veterans" have gotten too greedy with power and have forgotten how to survive without the Press-4-to-win button.

Take what you need, stay together and take your time. It was up for like 3 days yeah?

 

 

>Looks at what little press 4 to win frames there are

>Only sees Ash and Nova.

>Wonder how that's even an argument

>Demands fistycuffs. 

[Noble_Cactus]

Um... No?

They aren't supposed to be, nor can they be, forced to completion through DPS races and Invincibility.

The events have been a cinch so long as the player simply thinks about what he's doing before he does it. Picking the correct Frames and weapons for the job is neccessary.

For example, I was able to complete Cold Revenge with ease with a Trinity+Vauban combo; we didn't even need guns, honestly, it was so easy.

Strategy and Team Synergy always trump brute force.

Glad to see this forum's collective reading comprehension hasn't improved in the slightest.

The OP isn't saying the missions were hard. Heck, he even put "hard" in quotes because they provide the illusion of challenge. I didn't think the event was particularly difficult either; the only times I went down were because the team I was with was horriboy disorganized and all over the map (and I didn't die once). What the OP is saying is that they were more annoying than actually difficult because they take away everything that defines a veteran player - a player who needs a challenge. They don't reward the fruits of his or her labor, which includes maxed weapons and thoughtful builds. Instead, they take those fruits away and impose boring challenges like not being able to use your abilities.

I actually didn't mind the design of the Targets themselves. Then again, I was using Oberon with a maxed Vectis, so I was able to one shot the drones when I got a crit (and 1-2 shot him on headshot). Everything else, though, I can agree.

-

Part of me still believes this alert, as well as Gate Crash, are little experiments to see how players react when they can't use their abilities. If so, they serve a dual purpose: They create extreme limitations on abilities to try to reveal at which point limiting abilities is acceptable, and they serve as foreshadowing for players for these ability changes.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Sonicbullitt]

On Conclave rating limitations:

 

I think they did the Conclave ratings in order to make the alerts an option for more people. It's not an easy balance trying to appeal to both older and newer players. Your point is assuming this alert was intended "to give higher rank and geared players a challenge right".

 

Rather than requiring even heavier gear, more gear, higher conclave (which would definitely limit who could play) they went the other route and made high mastery players work without all of the tools they normally have.

 

A person that goes mountain climbing without gear is creating more of a challenge than someone fully geared. It's more of an accomplishment. While it's not for everyone, it is what it is. It's a challenge. I think you want just more game mechanics to enhance the challenge perhaps. I can understand that. You should probably focus on the things you would suggest, rather than being insulting and calling developers "lazy".

 

On energy drain:

 

I saw a few different vids of players skirting around this issue. A Mag build, a Mirage build, and I did it with my Volt build. Once again, it's a challenge created to say, can you do this without the things you rely on the most? I didn't find it terribly horrible, it was just another stipulation placed as part of the alert. Yeah it was slightly annoying, true.

 

On Enemies that give other enemies invincibility:

 

I guess you didn't find out that if you keep the capture target at a distance, and this tile set seemed to be made specifically for long range sniping, that you could just....get the attention of the flying gnats and they would leave the target to chase you, leaving the target open to all attack. I did this solo, and I'm guessing it would have been much easier with a team.

 

On the rest of your comments:

 

I think you could have stopped at the point were you said "that's just poor game design". The rest of that sentence is just insulting for no reason. If you expect to be taken seriously, why would you do that? There's no basis to give your feedback with insult. None.

 

Insulting the developers and then saying you love what they have done, after calling them lazy....well you're definitely passionate. Maybe just try to be less, insulting to the people that are trying to entertain you.

 

Tough love doesn't need to be name calling. I just did it with you, without insulting you with names.

 

On to the actual topic other than the other stuff, I was able to solo this with my Volt and at first melee, and then a Tiberon up to the 3rd set. During the Endurance run, I did it with my Volt and a Torid. I had to change up my tactics and gear. It created a challenge for me.

Now I actually agree that this alert was kind of a strange one in that it was more punishing than challenging. The rewards, I didn't even care about honestly, not that they are bad, but I tend to look for challenge rather than reward items. I had mixed feelings about this. It definitely frustrated me, but that only occurred initially because I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, meaning, I wasn't changing my loadout or tactics at first. Once I got over my stubbornness, I was able to come up with creative solutions to the problem.

 

It seems you too are also missing the point -.- . It is not about how unbeatable or "hard" the mission was it is about how it punishes the player rather than creating true challenge. It is poor design if you need to create a system and enemies that need to limit your choices as a player and weaken you heavily not mention making some of these things unavoidable just to create the illusion of difficulty. This much is true whether you like it or not sir white knight.

 

About the matter of conclave rating. I was not saying they should let you have a higher conclave rating to enter the mission what I was trying to say was that on a whole conclave rating limitations are in essence well limiting. All conclave limitations do is to punish player progression. It is a lose a lose situation, too high and to keep out low geared players too low and you keep out the high geared players all it serves to do is punish a player regardless of their gear.This system causes more harm than it does good.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Sonicbullitt

[Mastikator2]

I was easily able to brute force this with Mirage + Ogris and nothing else. The AOE and sheer damage meant I could easily kill all the guardian eximus osprey in a single rocket, then proceed to murder the capture target in the next rocket.

 

It was no challenge. The conclave limit wasn't a challenge or even an annoyance, the energy drain didn't do much since I could just activate HOM in advance. The flying eximuses weren't a big deal either.

 

Though I have to admit the lack of control panels to hack was a big annoyance. Backtracking several tiles just to hack didn't make the mission harder, only more tedious.

[Sonicbullitt]

I was easily able to brute force this with Mirage + Ogris and nothing else. The AOE and sheer damage meant I could easily kill all the guardian eximus osprey in a single rocket, then proceed to murder the capture target in the next rocket.

 

It was no challenge. The conclave limit wasn't a challenge or even an annoyance, the energy drain didn't do much since I could just activate HOM in advance. The flying eximuses weren't a big deal either.

 

Though I have to admit the lack of control panels to hack was a big annoyance. Backtracking several tiles just to hack didn't make the mission harder, only more tedious.

sheesh is everyone blind ? Did you even read the whole post or watch the video in the link ? It is not that you cannot complete the mission or it's too hard. The difficulty is not what I am talking about please re read the post and watch the video. I am talking about how these things punish players and their progression . @(*()$ hell -.- , so far only Noble_Cactus has understood what I am trying to say

Edited November 18, 2014 by Sonicbullitt

[BrazilianJoe]

I don't see conclave limit as punishment, it's a limit for the player to pick and choose the right tools for the task at hand. Calling it 'punishment' is just opinion, not fact. I see it as a challenge.

 

It's too easy to complain and say 'I don't like it, it's sloppy', but offer no suggestions on how you think it should work. 

[AnonymousArmadillo]

OP. I don't really think tactical alert are supposed to push you to the limit. I believe the point of this one was to limit the most-used options and force the players to find different approaches. If you look at it like that, the energy drain combined with the conclave limit makes a lot of sense.

 

There where plenty of weapons, mods and abilities that could counter the osprey's invincibility or kill them outright. There were ways to play around the energy drain (although not as much). Things like radiation, toxic, chaos, energy restores etc.

 

The video you posted also says that (part of) good difficulty is "giving the player enough tools to work with" and "allow players to approach problems in different ways". I believe warframe did this well because I was surprised at the amount of different solutions that where posted.

[Mastikator2]

sheesh is everyone blind ? Did you even read the whole post or watch the video in the link ? It is not that you cannot complete the mission or it's too hard. The difficulty is not what I am talking about please re read the post and watch the video. I am talking about how these things punish players and their progression . @(*()$ hell -.- , so far only Noble_Cactus has understood what I am trying to say

I understood that you are upset that Cold Revenge does not cater to your progress. I do not agree that it is a problem and I do think there should be a place where players are not able to take full advantage of everything at their disposal, like Cold Revenge.

 

And I do also disagree that your arsenal and mod collection is your most precious thing as a veteran, game mechanic knowledge also matters.

 

And I absolutely think players should be punished for failing to work together.

 

 

I see these kind of topics every so often, complain about "poor game design" and lack of "true challenge" and not once, NOT ONCE has anyone ever even hinted at an idea about what good game design is or what a real challenge is. Having your hands tied behind your back is a veteran challenge, whether you like it or not.

[Sonicbullitt]

OP. I don't really think tactical alert are supposed to push you to the limit. I believe the point of this one was to limit the most-used options and force the players to find different approaches. If you look at it like that, the energy drain combined with the conclave limit makes a lot of sense.

 

There where plenty of weapons, mods and abilities that could counter the osprey's invincibility or kill them outright. There were ways to play around the energy drain (although not as much). Things like radiation, toxic, chaos, energy restores etc.

 

The video you posted also says that (part of) good difficulty is "giving the player enough tools to work with" and "allow players to approach problems in different ways". I believe warframe did this well because I was surprised at the amount of different solutions that where posted.

First of all I would like to say thanks for actually watching the video as some of these condescending A******s purposely avoided it ignored while others might have missed it, anyway thing is that they did remove most of those tools. One of the only ways to to this alert was shoot from range so you don't aggro the hostage and even then that was not a 100% chance of working . While you could use different weapons to do this it still is doing the same thing. Even if there were some other ways of doing the alert it doesn't change the fact that they removed most of these "tools." 

I understood that you are upset that Cold Revenge does not cater to your progress. I do not agree that it is a problem and I do think there should be a place where players are not able to take full advantage of everything at their disposal, like Cold Revenge.

 

And I do also disagree that your arsenal and mod collection is your most precious thing as a veteran, game mechanic knowledge also matters.

 

And I absolutely think players should be punished for failing to work together.

 

 

I see these kind of topics every so often, complain about "poor game design" and lack of "true challenge" and not once, NOT ONCE has anyone ever even hinted at an idea about what good game design is or what a real challenge is. Having your hands tied behind your back is a veteran challenge, whether you like it or not.

while yes I will agree with you that you need good knowledge of in game mechanics however in this instance there are no specific game "mechanics" you need to use skillfully to win. All you need to do is shoot the drones from range its just a cheesefest it involves no skill whatsoever and removes your choice on how to approach the mission forcing you to only play one way. These events are not a challenge they are the illusion of difficulty they make your character weak to make it seem like it's hard. The event should be challenging without having to handicap your character. I may not have some suggestions at the time I started this thread but nonetheless what I said is true it IS poor game design. This is not about my personal opinion on whether I struggled to complete the mission or not. Lets not make it personal and keep this debate a debate please.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Sonicbullitt

[Mastikator2]

while yes I will agree with you that you need good knowledge of in game mechanics however in this instance there are no specific game "mechanics" you need to use skillfully to win. All you need to do is shoot the drones from range its just a cheesefest it involves no skill whatsoever and removes your choice on how to approach the mission forcing you to only play one way. These events are not a challenge they are the illusion of difficulty they make your character weak to make it seem like it's hard. The event should be challenging without having to handicap your character. I may not have some suggestions at the time I started this thread but nonetheless what I said is true it IS poor game design. This is not about my personal opinion on whether I struggled to complete the mission or not. Lets not make it personal and keep this debate a debate please.

Here's a few ways to make a game harder:

- Smaller/faster moving hit boxes on enemies to challenge your aim.

- Enemies do more damage/you have less hp, to be less forgiving of you failing to dodge/take cover.

- Enemies have more hp/you do less damage, to make you spend more of your attention on doing damage (and less on everything else).

- Take away abilities you previously had and relied on to force you to make due with the remaining abilities

- Make the challenge timed so if you take too long you'll fail.

- special weaknesses in enemies that force you to rely on in-game mechanical knowledge

- hints about special weakness that force you to pay attention to the bigger picture and look for clues

- limiting your in-game resources so you have to be more economical about them

 

Feel free to add to this list

This is how you make any game, in fact, every game harder. Tell me a game that doesn't do any of the above and still makes the game harder. The only way a game is ever made harder is in some "artificial poor game design lazy designer way". Feel free to prove me wrong, point out a game that makes a game harder without any of the above.

 

Guess what, they created fast moving tiny-hitbox enemies that were the weakspot in an otherwise invulnerable enemy (nobody seems to have a problem with this when it's any boss), they added lots of strong enemies so any failure on the players end has more severe consequences and they limited your conclave rating forcing you to play with fewer resources and limited abilities. Yes, you were handicapped, that's the challenge.

[Jokubas]

I appreciate the idea of Tactical Alerts, but so far they've almost been the definition of artificial difficulty. The worst part is that the primary reason for introducing something like this is to bring down min-maxers, that bust the harder content, down to everyone else's level, but pretty much by definition, min-maxers are the ones most suited to avoid the issues in such content.

 

* Conclave rating limitations.

I have a million problems with Conclave Rating Limitations. Not only does it tell you that you can't use all the neat things you've earned throughout the game (pretty much the opposite of the feeling you want to generate for long-term interest), but it's pretty arbitrary and awkward. The first time a Tactical Alert came up, I tried it once, had a horrible time, and gave up. I had never had to pay attention to Conclave Rating before, so I had no idea any of what contributed to it, so I made a really awkward build. As I read more up on it for the next Tactical Alert, I still found it extremely cumbersome to lower, since you have to do it all manually. Having multiple builds you can switch between now helps, but it's still so awkward it feels completely unintended.

 

I felt like I had a pretty decent build this time, but the other points really messed me up. I got yelled at for not destroying the Guardian ospreys twice (same guy, he aborted the mission and we both ended up in the next one), even though I was trying (and did destroy one), but my build was not prepared for such a thing. In a mode like this, it makes sense that not every build will be perfectly effective, but there's a problem when it's so hard to make a build due to the arbitrary limitation, that it's more of a metagame balancing act than a "tactical" challenge. This is where a min-maxer will easily be able to find a way to squeeze out the Conclave Rating while still blowing everything away, while the average players have an even harder time than normal.

 

* Ridiculous amount of energy drain.

I feel like the game in general has a weird relationship with energy. Its often either very stingy, or handing it out like water, and that just doesn't work with the variety of Warframes we have. I heard someone say these all or nothing challenges are what makes it tactical. I say tactics is about figuring out how to confront the challenge with what you have. Telling you there's only one option isn't tactical or challenging, it's metagaming, telling you to just look up a guide on how to make it not impossible.

 

*Enemies that give other enemies invincibility.

I actually think this idea was pretty clever in theory, but all of the elements together just made it ridiculous. Having to take down a shield before you can assault your target is a fairly standard concept, but putting multiple shield generators, making them nigh-indestructible themselves (it seemed like they were shielding each other as well), making their target pretty offensively powered themselves, and sticking this all in a place with tough enemies was often an impossible choice (at least later on). When you can't get to the shield generators without going through the deadly enemies, but you can't kill the deadly enemies until you've gotten the shield generators, the only option you have is to die. Making an encounter so strict is not challenge, it's artificial difficulty, because what makes it hard are things out of your control, like who you end up being matched with.

 

*Getting stuck because there is no hack panel.

I never got literally stuck, but this was annoying. I have to assume it's just because the map has never been used for a gamemode that can lock you out before and will get fixed at some point.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Jokubas

[Taranis49]

I see these kind of topics every so often, complain about "poor game design" and lack of "true challenge" and not once, NOT ONCE has anyone ever even hinted at an idea about what good game design is or what a real challenge is. Having your hands tied behind your back is a veteran challenge, whether you like it or not.

 

I've heard this claim before, and it's not really true, hell, the Extra Credits video on when "Difficult is Fun" posted right in the OP is a decent primer on what we're looking for.

 

Incidentally, it touches upon the issue of handicapping the player in this case - consistency. For good or ill (depending upon your viewpoint), one of the primary things to do in the game is to acquire new weapons and mods, rank them up and become more powerful. It's horribly inconsistent that after spending a good chunk of their time getting that gear, building it up, etc. the player's then required to just leave a good chunk of it at home.

 

Same applies to the E-Drain auras which are basically impossible to avoid and the apparent popularity of basically denying the player access to their frame's abilities in general. The main thing that differentiates how frames play is their abilities - indeed, to the extent they're actually advertised as providing new playstyles.

 

In the case of the alert itself, the video likewise touches on an applicable issue, telegraphing and denial of information the player may need to progress without trial and error (a good chunk of the game suffers from this problem). As problematic as the other issues are, this falls right into the lap of one of the main categories of Fake Difficulty.

[DSpite]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapping.

 

Multi Forma Frames with multi Forma Guns would be to say, the car racing industry, a Spaceship with FTL engines.

 

And you all wonder why DE does not want you racing with the other normal cars?

 

You did not "progressed" you "min-max'ed", and because of this, DE can only make Tactical Alerts weird as a result, so that everyone can still bring something along and finish the missions, as long as they switch on their brain.

 

Here is a free tip:

 

The future Alerts will, most likely, be more like this. So if you are all ALREADY THINKING of complaining again because "not real challenge", maybe this game mode is not for you?

Edited November 19, 2014 by DSpite

[Sonicbullitt]

Here's a few ways to make a game harder:

- Smaller/faster moving hit boxes on enemies to challenge your aim.

- Enemies do more damage/you have less hp, to be less forgiving of you failing to dodge/take cover.

- Enemies have more hp/you do less damage, to make you spend more of your attention on doing damage (and less on everything else).

- Take away abilities you previously had and relied on to force you to make due with the remaining abilities

- Make the challenge timed so if you take too long you'll fail.

- special weaknesses in enemies that force you to rely on in-game mechanical knowledge

- hints about special weakness that force you to pay attention to the bigger picture and look for clues

- limiting your in-game resources so you have to be more economical about them

 

Feel free to add to this list

This is how you make any game, in fact, every game harder. Tell me a game that doesn't do any of the above and still makes the game harder. The only way a game is ever made harder is in some "artificial poor game design lazy designer way". Feel free to prove me wrong, point out a game that makes a game harder without any of the above.

 

Guess what, they created fast moving tiny-hitbox enemies that were the weakspot in an otherwise invulnerable enemy (nobody seems to have a problem with this when it's any boss), they added lots of strong enemies so any failure on the players end has more severe consequences and they limited your conclave rating forcing you to play with fewer resources and limited abilities. Yes, you were handicapped, that's the challenge.

 

It seems you still don't fully understand the problem, however I can agree with some of your suggestions like making use of in game mechanics to win or giving an enemy a unique weakness, but any of the ones that remove the players "tools" is a terrible idea. While yes other countless games too have done this it doesn't make them any more right. It is still fake difficulty that serves to frustrate the player rather than create a fun challenge. I will say this again, if you have to make the player weaker to create "difficulty" it's punishing and not real challenge. Please watch the video if you have not already it helps explain the point of this thread. You dying or failing should be your fault because you made a mistake and did something wrong not the game's.

 

I appreciate the idea of Tactical Alerts, but so far they've almost been the definition of artificial difficulty. The worst part is that the primary reason for introducing something like this is to bring down min-maxers, that bust the harder content, down to everyone else's level, but pretty much by definition, min-maxers are the ones most suited to avoid the issues in such content.

 

* Conclave rating limitations.

I have a million problems with Conclave Rating Limitations. Not only does it tell you that you can't use all the neat things you've earned throughout the game (pretty much the opposite of the feeling you want to generate for long-term interest), but it's pretty arbitrary and awkward. The first time a Tactical Alert came up, I tried it once, had a horrible time, and gave up. I had never had to pay attention to Conclave Rating before, so I had no idea any of what contributed to it, so I made a really awkward build. As I read more up on it for the next Tactical Alert, I still found it extremely cumbersome to lower, since you have to do it all manually. Having multiple builds you can switch between now helps, but it's still so awkward it feels completely unintended.

 

I felt like I had a pretty decent build this time, but the other points really messed me up. I got yelled at for not destroying the Guardian ospreys twice (same guy, he aborted the mission and we both ended up in the next one), even though I was trying (and did destroy one), but my build was not prepared for such a thing. In a mode like this, it makes sense that not every build will be perfectly effective, but there's a problem when it's so hard to make a build due to the arbitrary limitation, that it's more of a metagame balancing act than a "tactical" challenge. This is where a min-maxer will easily be able to find a way to squeeze out the Conclave Rating while still blowing everything away, while the average players have an even harder time than normal.

 

* Ridiculous amount of energy drain.

I feel like the game in general has a weird relationship with energy. Its often either very stingy, or handing it out like water, and that just doesn't work with the variety of Warframes we have. I heard someone say these all or nothing challenges are what makes it tactical. I say tactics is about figuring out how to confront the challenge with what you have. Telling you there's only one option isn't tactical or challenging, it's metagaming, telling you to just look up a guide on how to make it not impossible.

 

*Enemies that give other enemies invincibility.

I actually think this idea was pretty clever in theory, but all of the elements together just made it ridiculous. Having to take down a shield before you can assault your target is a fairly standard concept, but putting multiple shield generators, making them nigh-indestructible themselves (it seemed like they were shielding each other as well), making their target pretty offensively powered themselves, and sticking this all in a place with tough enemies was often an impossible choice (at least later on). When you can't get to the shield generators without going through the deadly enemies, but you can't kill the deadly enemies until you've gotten the shield generators, the only option you have is to die. Making an encounter so strict is not challenge, it's artificial difficulty, because what makes it hard are things out of your control, like who you end up being matched with.

 

*Getting stuck because there is no hack panel.

I never got literally stuck, but this was annoying. I have to assume it's just because the map has never been used for a gamemode that can lock you out before and will get fixed at some point.

 

 

I've heard this claim before, and it's not really true, hell, the Extra Credits video on when "Difficult is Fun" posted right in the OP is a decent primer on what we're looking for.

 

Incidentally, it touches upon the issue of handicapping the player in this case - consistency. For good or ill (depending upon your viewpoint), one of the primary things to do in the game is to acquire new weapons and mods, rank them up and become more powerful. It's horribly inconsistent that after spending a good chunk of their time getting that gear, building it up, etc. the player's then required to just leave a good chunk of it at home.

 

Same applies to the E-Drain auras which are basically impossible to avoid and the apparent popularity of basically denying the player access to their frame's abilities in general. The main thing that differentiates how frames play is their abilities - indeed, to the extent they're actually advertised as providing new playstyles.

 

In the case of the alert itself, the video likewise touches on an applicable issue, telegraphing and denial of information the player may need to progress without trial and error (a good chunk of the game suffers from this problem). As problematic as the other issues are, this falls right into the lap of one of the main categories of Fake Difficulty.

 

Thank you guys for also watching the video it helps explain my point better. It's not just warframe with this problem removing a players tools and forcing them to play one way is never fun. Thats why dark souls two was not as good as the first one as more of the deaths are less of the players fault and more of the games.

 

You see these guys get it

Edited November 19, 2014 by Sonicbullitt

[Taranis49]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapping.

Multi Forma Frames with multi Forma Guns would be to say, the car racing industry, a Spaceship with FTL engines.

And you all wonder why DE does not want you racing with the other normal cars?

You did not "progressed" you "min-max'ed", and because of this, DE can only make Tactical Alerts weird as a result, so that everyone can still bring something along and finish the missions, as long as they switch on their brain.

Here is a free tip:

The future Alerts will, most likely, be more like this. So if you are all ALREADY THINKING of complaining again because "not real challenge", maybe this game mode is not for you?

That claim doesn't really pass muster, on multiple fronts.

The idea that forma'd gear's some anomaly or outlier is the opposite of credible - note the fact it's consisently in the "popular" section of the market, even through multiple updates and that it's hardly unheard of for players to end up with dozens of blueprints for it (even when they're not searching for it) since it's one of the most common rewards from any and every void mission.

Further, the claim that using it, expending the time to re-rank gear, etc. doesn't qualify as progression is false on its face. Progress is literally defined as the process of improving and developing over time and advancing toward a desired objective.

The notion that people just "min-maxed" doesn't pass the smell test either and kinda suggests a lack of understanding about what min-maxing actually is. Hint, note the "min" in "min-max", as in minimizing traits the player doesn't care much about to maximize the ones they want.

Nevermind that the entire Raison d'être of stuff like the Corrupted mods is to min-max, that's the sole purpose of their existence - to allow the player to maximize the attributes they find most desirable with the trade being that they minimize others. Hell, even the tactical alerts themselves incentivize min-maxing since the easiest/most effective way around the restrictions is to simply remove the least useful/important gear and pile everything you can onto the frame and a single weapon... So, even if we assume that "oh, people just min-maxed", you run into the unfortunate reality that the game actively encourages it.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Taranis49