An Open Letter To Steve Regarding The Creative Direction Of Warframe

[DesecratedPoop]

*Disclaimer: This is just what could think up of at the moment, I will add more issues to this topic as they arise. Think of this as an open version of the community hot topics.

 

Start of the Letter/Questionnaire:

 

Warframe is a great game. It is the fantasy of a lot of gamers come true, something that incorporates elements of RPG's, shooters, fighting games, platformers, and pet simulators all in one. It has everything cool about science fiction games, powered suits, futuristic weapons, evil empires, bounty hunters, space ships, planet exploration etc. It has the potential to be literally the best game in the world, and I was honestly surprised the creators didn't call it that (or something similar but wittier) at first. Warframe is also the only game I know of where players can actually hope to see their ideas realized, where the developers actually listen to players' suggestions. However, perhaps because of this, or some other reason, Warframe's development appears to be constantly stuck in a cycle of "one step forwards two steps back", and then "two steps forwards one step back". Changes that happen one update get instantly reversed the next. New things are introduced that have no larger sense of continuity to them, and numerical values such as enemy scaling and weapon stats are all over the place. Trinity being nerfed has become a running joke. The community's knee-jerk reactions also seem to have carried over to the devs' decisions, with the building pressure between the two eventually leading to the incident known as Vivergate. Some of the community hot topics are about as meaningful as tabloid stories.There seems to be a lack of direction, of certainty. in the decisions of the dev team. Although the community is to blame for a lot of it, ultimately, the devs are the ones who know what they want the game to be. While the community can only guess, or make their own image of what they want the game to be.

 

This is the source of all the arguments and flaming on the forums. People have different views of what they want the game to be, and try to impose their views on others, even though officially there isn't a single, true future for the game.

 

The purpose of the thread is to make the devs come out and say what Warframe is going to be, and if they don't know, then hopefully we will help them find Warframe's identity. It is also partly to help the community to realize that their views, are purely their own and not fact, and that many equally justified, but still unofficial images of the heart and soul of Warframe exist. Few have stood out and asked these questions regarding DE's creative vision, but I know that I am not the only one. For those of you who are so enlightened, I ask for your help in this task.

 

For the readers: If there are any major issues with Warframe caused by ambiguity, I would appreciate if you pointed it out.

 

So, here are the questions that may decide the future of Warframe:

 

1. The Atmosphere: How do you want us to feel when we are playing Warframe?

A. Outcasts, survivors

This is what people claim "old Warframe" used to be. There was a universal sense of loneliness that perforated every aspect of the game, from the main menu, to the lighting and sound in missions. The world was a dark, desolate place, with no hope for the future, with everyone only doing what they can to survive another day, for no reason other than out of fear of the alternative. Some games that do this well are Fallout and Dead Space.

 

B. Profiteers, bounty hunters

This is what the game appears to have become. We Tenno have adopted the doctrines and aesthetics of the Corpus. War rages around us, innocents die, but they do not matter to us. We only fight for the two dominant factions, often switching sides within the course of an hour. Why? Profit. They know that they cannot win the war without us, we are the ultimate machine of war, and they would give anything to not have to fight against us, even more for our services. The world appears shiny and bright, with everything refurbished using our fortunes. This is Warframe now, our spaceships are shiny, our dojos are shiny, our enemies' spaceships are shiny, their armor clean. Hell, just look at our mod cards! They're actually made of silver, gold and platinum! Any fictional setting that does not involve war pretty much looks like this, a futuristic utopia, think the Jetsons.

 

C. Protectors, guardians

The game has never gone in this direction for some reason. We know that the world around us is turning into chaos, but we spend all of our efforts to fight for the remaining good in the world. We have to make choices, sacrifice some for more, but our virtues remain unshaken. At the end of the day, we are just a rag-tag band of vigilantes, struggling with what we have, but we know that we have done good for the world. This is pretty much every MMORPG ever, so it's kind of cheesy, but maybe you can find a better way to do it.

 

2. The Enemies: What are we fighting against?

A. The horde

An unyielding armada, unstoppable seas of soldiers. This is what we are facing now. The enemies' soldiers are weak individually, and they know that. But they are also cheap, so they throw as many at us as possible. Flooding entire rooms with soldiers in a futile attempt to stop the whirlwind of death that is a Tenno. For a game that does this extremely well, look no further than Left4Dead with its mix of cannon fodder and heavy special infected. Is this what combat in warframe is really supposed to be?

 

B. The elites

This is what Warframe used to be like back in closed beta. Each soldier sharpened by years of experience, each having felled hundreds of foes to get where they are. They know how to fight, and their weapons are the best in the galaxy. To survive one of these soldiers is an accomplishment, to kill one is to become a legend. And what are we, the Tenno, if not legends? Combat is slow paced, and strategic, a single misstep could cost you your life. The game that does this most definitively is F.E.A.R. with its advanced AI and horror elements.

 

3. The Frames: What do we fight like?

A. Gods

With every step the ground beneath us trembles. Our enemies' armadas are akin to ants. With every step we take, a dozen of their soldiers fall. We destroy armadas on a daily basis. Our enemies fear us, and also revere us, for we are a source of seemingly unstoppable power. We know this as well, for we make no effort to be stealthy or tactical, we seem to have turned mass murder into a performance, augmenting our powers with bright colours for a morbid display of explosions and blood. This is Warframe right now, if everyone was a Mirage with a Phage and Castanas. This design philosophy means that our abilities become our weapons, with all of our abilities being heavily polarised towards being offensive like Ember and Nova. Under this system, players should be able to complete missions (and wreak mass destruction) using only their abilities if they wished.

 

B. Ghosts

Our enemies fear us, but they do not know what we are. They have never seen our faces, for we do not leave a single survivor. We complete missions tactically, sneaking through the ships to obtain our objective, and when necessary, we silently assassinate everybody on the ship, leaving only a vessel full of bodies as evidence of our existence. This is what the stealth lovers want Warframe to be, to basically have the Tenno act like Predator. This design philosophy means that our abilities are mainly supportive and change the way we fight. Every Warframe's abilities should have a similar role in combat as those of Loki and Nyx.

 

C. Soldiers

We are small in number, and only slightly more powerful than our enemies, but we are resourceful. We can attack with either stealth or charge in with guns blazing. Or, we can hack into the enemies' ship and turn off artificial gravity, leaving our enemies hopelessly floating while we stroll into the ship's control room. The game is challenging, as we are still ultimately outnumbered, but we have a wide array of tools at our disposal to turn the tide of the battle on our side. The abilities we have right now are the closest to this design philosophy, with them augmenting our normal combat. Players can play through without using abilities at all, but abilities can make our lives significantly easier. The other two design philosophies would require drastic changes to the functionality of all frame abilities, but this can be achieved by simply tweaking the few useless ones. This is the hardest to balance, but also the most fun. I think that a relatively good difficulty (enemy damage, enemy health, ai etc,) can be found in the Heroic difficulty of Halo.

 

4. Weapon balance: Where the hell is it?

This question is specifically to address the balance issues in the game, and not gameplay/aesthetics like the rest. Ultimately, the mod system is still broken as it is, and the banishment of Zamboni did not show that the devs liked talking about this. However, it is still a large part of the game as equipment sales are directly linked to the devs income and the economic stability of the game. Below are some possible ways that weapons can be balanced:

 

A. The classic RPG way.

Some weapons are direct upgrades of each other, and perform exactly the same apart from damage. Basically, we're looking at something like LV1 BRONZE SWORD -> LV5 IRON SWORD -> LV20 MITHRIL SWORD where each weapon performs exactly the same, and the difference is only in damage values and colour scheme. This method ensures that here will be tonnes of trash weapons and mastery fodder, however everyone will accept them as such and not ask for a LV1 weapon to be buffed to LV50 damage or something like that. However, this systems ultimately makes it impossible to have unique weapons at any level but the max, since they would be trash otherwise.

 

B. The competitive shooter way.

Sidegrades, every weapon has the same killing potential as the other, with some having more situational uses. Look no further than Team Fortress 2 to see how this is done. Every single benefit that a weapon receives is balanced with a drawback, unless the benefit is so small that the price of the weapon itself is enough to offset its power. Any straight upgrades in this system should be very difficult to obtain. The benefit of this system is that players can choose any weapon they want and do well with it, and not have to worry about their favourite weapon being made obsolete by new ones.

 

C. The tiered way.

This is the method that the Mastery System was supposed to accomplish, but isn't doing a good job of right now. Weapons are put into tiers based on their lethality and how easy it is to obtain them, which are balanced against each other. Every weapon is unique, but some basic characteristics will be present in each tier (sniper, shotgun etc.) The ultimate problem with this system is that some people may really love a weapon in a low tier due to its appearance or the quirks of its function. In order to remedy this, and satisfy these players, there must be a way to raise a weapon above its tier in terms of performance. However, one also runs the risk of players using these tier raisers on already top performing weapons, thus making them OP. I suggest that the tier-raising item be instead limited to pay only, in order to discourage players from cramming as much power into their weapons as possible if this were implemented.Nvm. I know nothing about economics.

 

5. The Movement: Parkour or freerunning?

A.Unrealistic, but efficient movement

At its heart, Parkour involves getting from point A to B as quickly as possible. In real life, this is exemplified by people running on walls and jumping between rooftops. However, this is ultimately a pointless limitation in the virtual world. Instead, the movement abilities in a virtual world that can be considered parkour are far more diverse. Some of them started as exploits. Things such as Quake's strafe-jumping, Tribes' skiing, Unreal's dive-roll/wall-jumping are what video game parkour should be. They should be things that require skill, but are tailored to perform well in the game that they are in, and some end up defining the playstyle of the game. This is the potential of Zorencoptering, if it were expanded upon, given a proper animation, having set limitations, a tutorial, and equipment affected one's ability to copter. Of course, the levels would also have to be designed with coptering mind. Instead of wall-jumping up a 100 foot wall Mario style, we would have to copter between pillars to reach void treasure rooms.

 

B.Assassin's Creed movement

Freerunnin, on the other hand, is all about performance. It's not about speed, but rather about finesse and beauty. It's basically break-dancing while jumping between rooftops. This is what movement in Assassin's Creed is like in a lot of ways. The levels were designed so that you really wouldn't need to go on rooftops at all as the movement controls are clunky and unintuitive, unintentionally prompting people to take the easy way on the streets below. It's what's happened to Warframe as well, the levels have been changed so that wall-running and such are not necessary at all to complete a mission. Is this the path that you want Warframe to go down? Where advanced movement is only optional and mostly for show?

Edited December 29, 2014 by DesecratedPoop

[WarOverlord]

+1 for TF2

[Morgax]

I just finished reading the entire letter, it is spot on.

 

I miss the atmosphere the most, the dark ambience.

[immolator1001]

We have 40+ hours of the Devs telling us what they want the game to be.

I do think that it's lost the atmosphere and it needs to work on balance, but I think we have a pretty good idea of what they want Warframe to be like.

Edited December 28, 2014 by immolator1001

[NaniteCircuit]

I just finished reading the entire letter, it is spot on.

 

I miss the atmosphere the most, the dark ambience.

As do I.

[Jahadaya]

This is honestly the best and most accurate thread I've ever read, ever. Especially for some guys 4th post xD

 

Here's the direction I think Warframe should go in.

 

1 - C: Protectors/Guardians. Even though OP doesn't want it, it's the most fitting considering how most of the choices we make (lore-wise, because every choice the players actually make are based on rewards) have been to protect innocents, or restore peace to the System. We pretty much are protectors/guardians of the solar system, and I don't think we should try and change it -  but we should try to expand on it. 

 

2 - I think a mixture of both A and B could be good. We fight more hordes of enemies early in the game, since we are weaker Tenno and they think they can just take us out with sheer numbers. Then around the middle of the game, we start fighting more squadrons of elites - thinking their skill can take us out. And in late game, our enemies are so fed up and want to take us out that they start fighting us with hordes of elites.

 

3 - A: Gods. Most definitely. This is the most accurate considering our history and our abilities. I think the whole "stealth" and "space ninja" forced theme should be taken out of the game, as it isn't representative of us at all. We have just 2 ninja-like frames (Loki and Ash), while the rest just border on full-out Gods. We should follow the God theme more, but also have the option to play with stealth. I think the difficulty thing you said about soldiers should also apply. But we are most definitely Gods at heart. 

 

4 - C: The tiered way. However, we should have a huge amount of equal variety in each tier. 

 

5 - A: Unrealistic, but efficient movement. This would be good, if DE expanded on it and polished it. Which we know they will early next year (Parkour 2.0!!)

Edited December 28, 2014 by Jahadaya

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

(quote)

Fantastic work!

[vaugahn]

I just finished reading the entire letter, it is spot on.

 

I miss the atmosphere the most, the dark ambience.

That atmosphere is gone because of how long you've been playing, not because the game has changed.

I'm really beginning to get tired of this whole "Warframe isn't dark" anymore thing. Not only is lighting on most tilesets identical to how it was around U7-9, but that old game everyone loves to reminisce about wasn't even all that dark, except in a few places.

Take off the damn rose-tinted glasses. The atmosphere hasn't gone anywhere, it's the player that's changed.

[Vanadium]

I'm definitely getting bored with hordes (ha! HAHA! RHYMED! IT'S FUNNY NAO!).

 

Take a break from Warframe? Play Payday 2. What's there? Hordes. Get bored of that, go to Killing Floor. More hordes (MOAR RHYMES IS MOAR LIKE IT!).

 

Point is, I want to play a game where I feel challenged by squads of tough enemies, not hordes. I miss the ruthless AI of FEAR and HL2, or constantly feeling threatened by enemies in Thief (old Thief, not new Thief) and requiring stealth to survive. It's cool to feel like an estranged elite warrior caste, but the godhood we've attained is starting to get a little stale. G3 is probably the only challenging enemy and they show up once a blue moon.

 

I know I'm whining and I know good AI isn't easy, but I really hope 2015 includes Enemies 2.0. Just sayin'.

[TheFatalFrame]

That atmosphere is definitely still there if you unequip all your mods, buy a mk1 braton and do a sabotage on mercury (seriously give it a go).

 

The atmosphere blends into the background once all your mods kick in and you become a walking god. Ever since survival introduced large horde mechanics as the best way to farm and level a huge slew of mods and warframe powers came into play to assist that kind of playstyle.

 

Taking these mods back into something like an exterminate mission makes the gameplay a joke - if you can deal with a room of grineer, what's challenging about 4 or 5 grineer in a small space?

 

Either...

 

Tune the modding system for these non swarm gamemodes with one option being you could reduce max power efficiency/ power damage cap on these missions via a global debuff (The Grineer have deployed a Warframe Power Jammer in this mission that reduces the effectiveness of our Frames).

 

Or...

 

Make enemies in these missions the Elites as mentioned by OP above with each mission. In my opinion, capture, spy and deception gamemodes can be rolled into exterminate missions as optional mission tasks. Add resource caches into the mix and you have missions that will actually have me looking forward to hanging around and spending a little more time in game.

Edited December 28, 2014 by TheFatalFrame

[matrixEXO]

A. B. C. C. B.

 

I prefer the old ways (CBT ways). Back then, things were more fun and scary at the same time. Mastery tiers were easier to balance because of the fact that there weren't a lot of weapons then. As for movement, I do like skill and would gladly have it in there for the skilled players but non-skilled players should have the option to be able to move around without needing those skills.

 

 

EDIT: Two ways to get A and B to work out again. One is to remove mods, simple and clean. Every power that the player has is every power that they have in general. There isn't any more power boosting through mods. The second is to shift their functionality from major impact to minor impact. Small, inconsequential but useful in general because each and every mod changes the feel of your weapon.

Edited December 28, 2014 by matrixEXO

[Morgax]

That atmosphere is gone because of how long you've been playing, not because the game has changed.

I'm really beginning to get tired of this whole "Warframe isn't dark" anymore thing. Not only is lighting on most tilesets identical to how it was around U7-9, but that old game everyone loves to reminisce about wasn't even all that dark, except in a few places.

Take off the damn rose-tinted glasses. The atmosphere hasn't gone anywhere, it's the player that's changed.

Well here is a thing, tileset variety improved that is awesome, their color palette is a bit bright and too spry for my taste.

I'm refering to the fact that you had no idea how vast the grineer armies are or what corpus is exactly they had indoctrination temples (that never got explained maybe even scrapped).

 

Tenno were not poweful gods, but more of elite units like commandos, tenno fought for survival while still trying to make difference.

Now we are gods, building up relays blowing up femorians with pair of wings and gun.

 

This event almost had that old impact showing that we are pretty much sand grains in grineer warmachine, few grains will not stop them but hinder them. Alas the relays were not unique, there were no emotional attachments to them.

 

In conclusion, we are goofy looking power armored boyscouts running around carefree with weapons capable destroying entire bataliions with a single trigger squeeze. The new units added frustration not counter balance to anything.

 

It feels like endgame of Civilization game, upgrading everything just for fun while your opponont is stuck in dark ages.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Morgax

[VentiGlondi]

+1 for your comments on coptering.

It makes me absolutely furious that they just called it a feature and did absolutely nothing with it. It's still a goddamn bug with sprinkles on top of it.

[vaugahn]

-snip-

 

Here's the thing, though. The reason why your enemies feel so powerless now, and why you feel so powerful is because of you, not the game. 

 

Think about a new player, playing the game for the first time. 

 

The Grineer are a vast army of half-dead clones, working their legions of slaves to death to fuel their conquest of the Origin system. The Corpus are hiding out in their fortress-factories, not caring at all what happens to the Origin system and selling weapons to anyone who asks. Automated security systems built by the long-dead Orokin steal the free will of anyone who enters their domain. And all the while, a horrific zombie plague is spreading out of control. And you're facing all of this with a space shuttle and whatever crap you can find on the ground. 

 

The reason why you feel like "goofy looking power armored boyscout" is because you've made yourself into one. Game balance targeted towards endless modes has allowed you to scale out of control, and like any reasonable person you've not said no to that. As usual, endless modes are to blame here. 

 

And don't act like things were perfect back then either. Or do you not remember charge attack and Hek rainbow builds instagibbing anything you looked at funny and nuke abilities wiping whole maps at once?

Edited December 28, 2014 by vaugahn

[Cybernetix]

.....I suggest that the tier-raising item be instead limited to pay only, in order to discourage...

I liked it all but this. This is not something Warframe needs. If someone wants to take a weapon, put the effort in and make it their own personalised murder machine then they should be able to without having to pay.

[Repligon]

A. B. B/C. C. B.

 

I really liked the atmosphere of old CBT warframe. The feel of how out of place Tenno was in this world. A shadows of the past that came to world completey alien for them just to join it's eternal and meaningless war.

 

I really liked those old days when I was low rank volt with mk-1 braton. How enemies were few and I had to be careful, How heavy grineer was a threat. I feel like I the game lost all the challange and balance and went to extremes where either I oneshot enemies or they oneshot me.

[Jahadaya]

A. B. B/C. C. B.

 

I really liked the atmosphere of old CBT warframe. The feel of how out of place Tenno was in this world. A shadows of the past that came to world completey alien for them just to join it's eternal and meaningless war.

 

I really liked those old days when I was low rank volt with mk-1 braton. How enemies were few and I had to be careful, How heavy grineer was a threat. I feel like I the game lost all the challange and balance and went to extremes where either I oneshot enemies or they oneshot me.

That's simply because you're not a low level anymore. Simple as that. You have changed, not the game. 

[grillv20]

That's simply because you're not a low level anymore. Simple as that. You have changed, not the game. 

 

I keep seeing this posted constantly but there is something that actually happened that DID make us stronger. That was damage 2.0

 

When damage 2.0 came out the game suddenly got a lot easier and tons of different weapons got a whole lot stronger. Tenno did not actually used to be this strong and there have been rebalancing according to this whole new system but a lot of things fell by the wayside as the trade-off for more damage meant that a lot of the enemies were still just...whatever and not threatening anymore. Suddenly weapons were doing x2 the amount of damage than before and we got new cop-out enemies that made us bleed and poison us through our shields. That sure wasn't very fun. lol

Edited December 28, 2014 by grillv20

[Gahrzerkire]

Bring back the old ways. Bring them back. I miss those days.

[oinkah]

This is a very solid thread which raises valid questions. Would love to see an actual poll on this, preferably in hot topics.

 

But ultimately, it's up to developers to pick the right answers.

[zoboso]

I think DE's actions have spoken on where the game is going, so having DE come and personally answer the questions would only matter if the DE's answers are different than what we now have.

 

Atmosphere

Lore says we are protectors, yet the mechanics and the actions of the players are mercenary. The easiest way of reconciling this is that the lotus is intentionally restricting us from actions that are not leading to the protection of the system. Also modding has made being a survivor too easy for A to even be viable anymore without drastic change.

 

Enemies

our enemies are endlessly numerous minions with elites like stalker to spice things up.

 

Warframes

We are "warrior gods" to quote DE from a devstream I barely remember, and any stealth is gods working in mysterious ways.

 

Weapon's balance

nothing that restricts the players from paying money to get new shinies, which are usually mastery fodder or power creep

 

Movement

parkour, because optimizing movement for optimizing rewards is a thing in warframe.

[(PSN)KaxMcc]

Here's the thing, though. The reason why your enemies feel so powerless now, and why you feel so powerful is because of you, not the game.

 

I don't really think its fair to blame the player for not feeling the atmosphere. After all the whole point of atmosphere is to make the player feel a certain way in the first place. If the player isn't feeling it, it's probably because it's implemented in a way that is easily ignorable or it is contradicted by gameplay(which is what I think happened with warframe).

 

Think about a new player, playing the game for the first time. 

 

The Grineer are a vast army of half-dead clones, working their legions of slaves to death to fuel their conquest of the Origin system. The Corpus are hiding out in their fortress-factories, not caring at all what happens to the Origin system and selling weapons to anyone who asks. Automated security systems built by the long-dead Orokin steal the free will of anyone who enters their domain. And all the while, a horrific zombie plague is spreading out of control. And you're facing all of this with a space shuttle and whatever crap you can find on the ground. 

 

The thing is, the game introduces these concepts and then they barely matter for the rest of game. There isn't a story to follow that continues to give depth to these factions. Throughout the majority of gameplay there are no facts to uncover, no stories waiting to be told, no characters to get attached to, no world to discover. On the contrary, the game encourages the player to ignore what little story there is in favor of farming continuously to get their next reward.

 

 

The reason why you feel like "goofy looking power armored boyscout" is because you've made yourself into one. Game balance targeted towards endless modes has allowed you to scale out of control, and like any reasonable person you've not said no to that. As usual, endless modes are to blame here. 

 

And don't act like things were perfect back then either. Or do you not remember charge attack and Hek rainbow builds instagibbing anything you looked at funny and nuke abilities wiping whole maps at once?

 

This is basically you saying that it is the players fault for playing the game in the way that is most encouraged by the developers. If the devs wanted the atmosphere to matter they should not contradict it with gameplay.

 

 

 

-snip snip dawg-

 

As far as the tiered weapons system goes, first of all I don't think it should be pay only. After all its a matter of balance and players shouldn't need to shell out extra cash to have a balanced game. Second, I think it would work best if each individual tier could only be scaled up to the effectiveness level of the maximum available tier.

 

For example, starter weapons would be in T1 and when the player unlocks T2 weapons they could then go through a process to upgrade any T1 weapon into its T2 version so on and so forth. At the end of the line the player would end up with a top tier version each weapon as well as greater variety overall due to the additional weapons per tier.

Edited December 29, 2014 by (PS4)KaxMcc

[vaugahn]

I don't really think its fair to blame the player for not feeling the atmosphere. After all the whole point of atmosphere is to make the player feel a certain way in the first place. If the player isn't feeling it, it's probably because it's implemented in a way that is easily ignorable or it is contradicted by gameplay(which is what I think happened with warframe).

 

I think it's very fair. Not necessarily to blame the player, but just to acknowledge that the player is the source.

 

If you've ever played Skyrim, you know what I'm talking about. I've played that game to death, and it wouldn't at all be fair of me to claim that the sense of wonder is gone, because that sense of wonder was there when I first played it and I've just seen everything so many times I'm hardly amazed anymore. The same applies here. When you're first starting out Grineer are these menacing, hulking figures, but after you've seen (and murdered) thousands of them, they're not nearly as intimidating. 

 

The thing is, the game introduces these concepts and then they barely matter for the rest of game. There isn't a story to follow that continues to give depth to these factions. Throughout the majority of gameplay there are no facts to uncover, no stories waiting to be told, no characters to get attached to, no world to discover. On the contrary, the game encourages the player to ignore what little story there is in favor of farming continuously to get their next reward.

 

I'm not going to disagree with you there, more story is something we need. The quests are a good start, but more is required.

 

However, the setup is there. All of those concepts hold true. 

 

This is basically you saying that it is the players fault for playing the game in the way that is most encouraged by the developers. If the devs wanted the atmosphere to matter they should not contradict it with gameplay.

 

No, that's not what I'm saying. Don't put words in my mouth. 

 

What I am saying is that no amount of atmosphere will ever be able to overcome experience. The balance issues are entirely secondary to that, and while they do contribute to it, even if they were fixed that would still be true. This game could be the most awesomely atmospheric game ever created, and after a thousand hours people would still complain there's not enough atmosphere. No amount of game design will ever be able to overcome that.

[DesecratedPoop]

snip

 

 

snip

 

You two, stop arguing, you're derailing the thread.

 

We are here to talk about Warframe's potential, not debate over whether something in the past truly existed or not. While a game cannot survive on atmosphere alone, if done well, atmosphere will allow a game to remain stimulating for a long time, hopefully past its lifetime. Just ask someone who is a fan of stage shows. Despite having seen the show dozens of times, they are still moved by the performances, and walk out enjoying the show.

[Laeviathan]

I think the profiteers atmosphere is tied to the weapon balance in a way. Many people just want the best gear and so they farm it.

The gear that people want is found in specific places, so other places aren't interesting as the aren't "profitable" to play.

This is a vibe I get sometimes.

 

I've never liked the farm element in any game, it kills the immersion IMO.

If I had my way there would be no drop tables, you just get random prime parts on Tower mission :D

(Maybe DE will make this optional for those who want it some day?)

 

One last thing.

I don't think the Tenno should be seen as protectors or guardians. At least not from the start, because if you read the codex description of the stalker it's pretty clear the Tenno's role as guardians took a turn for the worse at some point.

CODEX

Some have walked these desolate worlds while you have slept. Some like me. I remember what you did. I remember the day.

The Tenno appeared at the Terminus, gleaming and victorious. Our cold and gold Emperors, breathless, bathed you in savior's silk. Then came the sound. Across all our worlds, all at once, the ceremonial Naga drums. A royal salute to the honored Tenno. Ten solemn beats to declare the suffering was over. I watched from a distance, with the rest of the low Guardians. With each beat terror began to crush my throat. The Tenno were not stoic and silent. They were waiting. They were poised. I tried to call out but only a strangled whisper escaped.

When the ninth beat rang a torrent of blood filled the stadium, loosed by Tenno blades. The drums, the Empire, fell silent forever.

Now I hunt, dividing your numbers. Watching from that dark place, cataloging your sins, I am the ghost of retribution. You may forget but you are not innocent.