Challenge is Gone, and With It, the Fun

[BlackCoMerc]

Just came off 3 Draco runs and 5 Tower missions and 3 Plato runs. And not a single challenge to be had.

Nova and Frost in co-op negates any sense of challenge even from the tedious and annoying Conculysts. And Mirage, Nova and Ash on Draco equates to sitting around stifling yawns while watching helpless enemies die. This isnt fun.

Hear me out. This. Is. Not. Fun.

Of course, I could gimp myself. Take, maybe, Ivarra to Draco. Or dont wear a Redirection or Steel Fiber. Dont use weapons with Forma on them. Etc. 

But this would result in my getting grapple hooked, knocked down, blinded by flash lights and so on. CONSTANTLY. Over and over again. Which also IS NOT FUN.

So matter how you slice it, the late game missions in this game simply are neither challenging nor fun. Whether you are well geared and bring optimal frames, thereby turning the mission into a cake walk. Or whether you gimp yourself and suffer tedium and annoyance constantly. 

The entire game needs a rebalance. Desperately, horribly NEEDS a rebalance. 

[TheBrsrkr]

Inb4 don't like it don't use it

[DrBorris]

46 minutes ago, TheBrsrkr said:

Inb4 don't like it don't use it

I am assuming you say that in a sarcastic tone...

 

In response to the OP, it is not like it went away overnight. Even two and a half years ago when I started playing the game was relatively easy, it has just gotten ever so slowly easier. And I can't really point my finger to what it is. Powercreep has been there a bit, but even now the vanilla Soma is a hell of a gun and can compete with most "end-game" weapons (except maybe Tonkor, but I don't want to start a Tonkor discussion).

 

DE needs to really think about the kind of game they want this to be, if they want it to be a relatively easy low-stress shooter, they need to embrace it more (and remove the rage inducing stuff). If they want it to require some player skill beyond just knowing meta stuff (like frame combinations, loadouts, modding, etcetera) then they need to do an even bigger rework to scaling and damage (Damage 4.0 because just a 3.0 is not enough to cover it all). Neither option would be wrong, the question is what does DE think fits the vision of Warframe the best.

 

(When I say more difficult, I am not saying to make Warframe an especially hard game, Warframe is and always will be a casual game, but even a casual game could (and arguably should) have some risk to go with the reward)

[Kotsender_Quasimir]

1 hour ago, BlackCoMerc said:

The entire game needs a rebalance. Desperately, horribly NEEDS a rebalance. 

8 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

DE needs to really think about the kind of game they want this to be (...)

my thoughts exactly. we've crept into a corner of one-shot/cc-whole-map or be one-shot, lame or be outlamed. too many shiny things are being added without a clear underlying concept. i'm trying to be optimistic about damage 3.0, not holding my breath tho...

[Burnthesteak87]

Here's my +1.

Warframe is a good game and DE are an awesome developer group.
But.
A good game has precise rules and aim defining it.
Actual horizons are too much blurry and undefined..
The concept of "Ninjas Play Free" is time by time diluting and submerging the game.

Too much freedom is toxic.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[BlackCoMerc]

57 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I am assuming you say that in a sarcastic tone...

 

In response to the OP, it is not like it went away overnight. Even two and a half years ago when I started playing the game was relatively easy, it has just gotten ever so slowly easier. And I can't really point my finger to what it is. Powercreep has been there a bit, but even now the vanilla Soma is a hell of a gun and can compete with most "end-game" weapons (except maybe Tonkor, but I don't want to start a Tonkor discussion).

 

DE needs to really think about the kind of game they want this to be, if they want it to be a relatively easy low-stress shooter, they need to embrace it more (and remove the rage inducing stuff). If they want it to require some player skill beyond just knowing meta stuff (like frame combinations, loadouts, modding, etcetera) then they need to do an even bigger rework to scaling and damage (Damage 4.0 because just a 3.0 is not enough to cover it all). Neither option would be wrong, the question is what does DE think fits the vision of Warframe the best.

 

(When I say more difficult, I am not saying to make Warframe an especially hard game, Warframe is and always will be a casual game, but even a casual game could (and arguably should) have some risk to go with the reward)

This resembles my own thoughts. Not asking for Warframe to become Dark Souls with guns. Very much not. 

On the other hand...its either Cheese or Be Cheesed by the enemies at this point. There is no in between. You either CC whole maps or die in one hit. That's it. DE can do better than this. I hope.

[BloodForTheBloodGods]

They're too worried about fixing the PvP that no one uses it seems...

But seriously, I've been feeling the exact same about warframe for a while, forever hoping that the next update will show a move in the right direction. Why is DESteve so adverse to a cover system? That could improve so much, because it could open opportunities for change in how we deal with enemies. Snipers might become useful. etc

[Zookes]

Sorties are still occasionally challenging (and fun, imo, even when Corpus are involved), but they're only worth doing once per day.

Personally, I'd like it if nightmare mode missions had similar conditions and difficulty to high level sorties (and maybe a little sparser on the map).
Even better - move the nightmare reward table to a syndicate-like reputation unlock system and introduce a new MR-limited currency that can be earned as a reward for completing nightmare missions.

Why not? It's not like anyone plays nightmare except to grind deception nodes for a chance at a hammer shot or something, and revamping it could add some challenge while the "big-deal difficulty issues" like level scaling are addressed later down the line.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Zookes

[notlamprey]

40 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

This resembles my own thoughts. Not asking for Warframe to become Dark Souls with guns. Very much not. 

On the other hand...its either Cheese or Be Cheesed by the enemies at this point. There is no in between. You either CC whole maps or die in one hit. That's it. DE can do better than this. I hope.

Not saying your concerns aren't valid, because I tend to agree that gameplay all across the far end of the player progress curve is far too often boring in exactly the way you're describing.

Before this is given any real attention, I would like our time in the Void to be made rewarding again. After being away from the game for roughly the space of the last two PAs, I just got back to spending some time in Void missions. I'm immediately being pushed away by insulting across-the-board nerfs to Void rewards that have occurred since Ash's Prime Access.

[(XBOX)CitrusTheNile]

This is a double edge sword I feel. If the game becomes challenging then people may start spamming requests to increase drop rates for things. They would also need to tweak the drop rates if they also changed the late game balance. I do understand the main point that there is two extremes of a cake walk and it being overwhelming. Idk though considering I play on console and there are some TERRIBLE players that end up making the mission challenging and having to go balls to wall. I guess for me it depends on who you play with. Most of the time in my experience people are not that good at late game. 

[Cpl_Facehugger]

2 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Just came off 3 Draco runs and 5 Tower missions and 3 Plato runs. And not a single challenge to be had.

Nova and Frost in co-op negates any sense of challenge even from the tedious and annoying Conculysts. And Mirage, Nova and Ash on Draco equates to sitting around stifling yawns while watching helpless enemies die. This isnt fun.

Hear me out. This. Is. Not. Fun.

Of course, I could gimp myself. Take, maybe, Ivarra to Draco. Or dont wear a Redirection or Steel Fiber. Dont use weapons with Forma on them. Etc. 

But this would result in my getting grapple hooked, knocked down, blinded by flash lights and so on. CONSTANTLY. Over and over again. Which also IS NOT FUN.

So matter how you slice it, the late game missions in this game simply are neither challenging nor fun. Whether you are well geared and bring optimal frames, thereby turning the mission into a cake walk. Or whether you gimp yourself and suffer tedium and annoyance constantly. 

The entire game needs a rebalance. Desperately, horribly NEEDS a rebalance. 

 

Err, Draco is kind of nowhere near challenging content. It's basically the farming zone that people go to in order to mindlessly farm as quickly as possible. Do you still have this problem in sorties and raids? Late duration T4S?

[S0V3REiGN]

Since when has Draco been a challenge? If you had been ranting about level 100+ sortie survivals I would understand but.....

[TheBrsrkr]

3 hours ago, DrBorris said:

I am assuming you say that in a sarcastic tone...

Oh, I am. I just don't like that I actually have to point it out nowadays. 

[HarrodTasker]

I can think of some things that would be good for challenge while waiting for damage 3.0.  Here's some things I would like to see:

Dual objective missions.  These already exist to some extent with spy missions that mandatorily end in an exterminate, but we can do better.  Imagine a Sorty infested spy mission.  Only when you get there, the infestation cut off life support.  You suddenly need to have a party with you, instead of the usual sorty spy solo, to keep up life support while your stealth agent does their thing.  Spy and Survival at the same time.

Spy can also be mixed with defense or potentially mobile defense, requiring a team to split up efficiently.  You could also easily combine rescue and sabotage, and if you have to do rescue and its one of the sabotages where you have to decide fire or ice that makes an interesting choice.  Adding a capture target to a sortie exterminate would be interesting, as it would harder to just run past the mobs.  Make the capture guy get back up if not collected in say 30 seconds though.

Lesser Assassination Targets as normal enemies at higher levels - Remember the Jackal?  How you had to kill it so it didn't go into full production?  Well, throw full-on Jackals at you in 60+ corpus missions every once and again.  Maybe Heyena members or Ambulas as well.  Don't give them boss drops, or boss immunities.  This is just a more interesting way at doing the kind of thing Bursa do now.

Give Grineer / Infested an enemy that is as much of an 'aw poops' reaction as nullifies - I'm not crying nullies are OP.  But I will say that their existence has a large impact on the game's strategy dealing with corpus/corrupted, and there's nothing grineer or infested have that really is as strategically meaningful.  Grineer mostly do or withstand extreme amounts of damage or bring half a zoo with them, but their most interesting dudes are a portable snowglobe and an annoying knockdown fire aoe.  Get these guys up to speed.

Corrupted enemies in sorties? What makes corrupted stronger than any other faction is you can't simply drop one hoser aura and make everything suck it.  And if we can assassinate Lephantis why can't we go after Corrupted Vor?  Or have Stalker-Senpai be the antagonist for a void-themed sortie day.  I realize Stalker isn't corrupted but its a reasonable enough reach.

I got a million ideas, but I stopped myself before saying anything that I suspect is already somewhere in the forums a hundred times already. I bet if I looked the above ideas are something like only 5 times each.

[(PSN)aiptekfanboy]

16 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Just came off 3 Draco runs and 5 Tower missions and 3 Plato runs. And not a single challenge to be had.

Nova and Frost in co-op negates any sense of challenge even from the tedious and annoying Conculysts. And Mirage, Nova and Ash on Draco equates to sitting around stifling yawns while watching helpless enemies die. This isnt fun.

Hear me out. This. Is. Not. Fun.

Of course, I could gimp myself. Take, maybe, Ivarra to Draco. Or dont wear a Redirection or Steel Fiber. Dont use weapons with Forma on them. Etc. 

But this would result in my getting grapple hooked, knocked down, blinded by flash lights and so on. CONSTANTLY. Over and over again. Which also IS NOT FUN.

So matter how you slice it, the late game missions in this game simply are neither challenging nor fun. Whether you are well geared and bring optimal frames, thereby turning the mission into a cake walk. Or whether you gimp yourself and suffer tedium and annoyance constantly. 

The entire game needs a rebalance. Desperately, horribly NEEDS a rebalance. 

Jordas Verdict is a better challenge but the problem with being well geared is that theres no reason to play warframe once you have the good stuff in good amounts.

i.e. oh look! theres a new prime warframe for 200? platinum soooo instead of farming for parts its much easier for me to sell a full ember prime set for 600p in trade chat then just buy the new prime warframe from market and still have a profit.

 

[BlackCoMerc]

Why do so many equate larger health bars with additional challenge? All this talk of "you aren't talking about late game until Sorties or level 100" is frankly ridiculous. That isn't challenge, it's tedium.

I want to see enemies of a level that we can actually engage them, in realistic time frames, be dangerous enough to present a challenge. The only reason T4 enemies are tough, is that their obscene damage boost, is paired with their spngy nature, allowing to swarm you before you can kill them. 

The solution to which is to hard CC the whole room. Again. Which is the problem with the game now: high levels REQUIRE cheese. The entire game is built around interacting as little as possible at higher levels, which is terribly unfun.

[DeadlyPeanutt]

18 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Just came off 3 Draco runs and 5 Tower missions and 3 Plato runs. And not a single challenge to be had.

the missions you describe are mid level missions at best.  most people can solo these missions without a team.  i regularly solo T4 S missions and have fun doing it, although it is not particularly challenging.   and I don't consider myself a high end player. 

are you doing solo sortie and raid missions and finding them boring? if not... your conclusions suspect.

 

that said, WF's idea of difficulty is throwing more mobs of bots with half formed AI with more health at players while subtracting the players' health/shields/energy.   i understand that WF is designed to work on low powered computers... but I find murdering mobs of bots with exaggerated health to be rather boring, so i don't go into high level missions at all. 

 

Edited April 16, 2016 by DeadlyPeanutt

[HarrodTasker]

I'll tell you one thing that I'm glad I don't see, in the attempt to make a challenge.  Enemies who you can use your best guns on and unload clip after clip into their critical spots and they have so much health they shrug it off.  This was a big issue for me in the Borderlands series, where your guns can get to the point of doing less harm than a pea shooter.  THAT is tedium.

High level challenges boil down to how quickly and efficiently you can clear mobs rather than make each mob so tough they need 8 hits a piece, and that's a good thing.  I got sick of picking up on-level purple shotguns and point-blank range unloading multiple clips just to kill moderate B.A.'s.  Sometimes this wouldn't be good enough to clear mooks.  Its infantile to have a game where gun damage varies so wildly; that a high level shotgun can sabotage-target mining equipment from 100 meters out and a low-tier shotgun can hit an unarmored Grineer in the eyeball with the force of a spitball.

So what constitutes challenge, as opposed to tedium?  Its not health and damage any more.  The best answers to this question, to my mind, are to throw new spins on existing scenarios such that the familiar strategies are inviable or unoptimal.  Sorties are doing a good job of this, on the whole, but there's always room for improvement.  I'm definitely glad that once you get top tier gear the base planet nodes are not a challenge to solo or duo as the case may be, because you can't reliably find a full party for all of them.  The endgame challenge then should reside in Sorties, tatical alerts, higher-tier void, and raids.

[BlackCoMerc]

A valid concern: what constitutes a fair, engaging challenge? 

I would venture: enemies who do enough damage to be dangerous, have enough health to require engagement without so much that it becomes tedium, and that use and require new tactics.

I think the Nightwatch Grineer, and the Corpus Mini boss alert event, are two cool events to begin with as foundations.

Nightwatch hit hard, but they weren't sponges. Except their melee dudes, who were just rare enough, and tough enough, to add a cool challenge as opposed to frustration. Take these Elite Grineer, add a smidgeon more health, and give them diminished returns resistance to hard CC, including Loki only jamming, and removing, their guns. It's a start.

For Corpus: let them use their tech. Slightly - and I do mean slightly - increase shields on all units, and Armor on robotics. SLIGHTLY. then, add in mini bosses like Hyena at higher levels. And while we are at it, introduce a new Commando Moa: tougher, with both short and long range weaponry, as well as either a Scramba or Comba generator equipped. Range Commando Moas from grunt (no generators) to mini boss, Hyena equivalent, Scramba/Comba equipped soldier bots. Again it's not perfect, but it's a start.

Though honestly, the OP frames NEED to be reigned in. Map wide hard CC and EV pretty much negate any hope for balance.

[Sovyul]

On the defending side:

Learn the difference between optional and main content. Anything above rotation C is optional.

You can cap yourself, who said you have to use end-game tier level equipment? DE is not mommy and daddy who must do everything for you, including difficulty, because at the moment the player can decide if the game is easy or difficult by his or her own actions. And this is a lot of liberty.

 

On the attacking side:

Yes, the combat is not well designed, in the sense of x attacking y.  One shotting is clearly a problem in the optional content, which forces the player into cheesing mode. This could be prevented by the enemies dealing x% damage to shields and health instead of a flat number, while the AI's health will still continue to increase (or should it? inb4 24h world record run?).

What I'd really love to see implemented is the leaning out of cover to fire, like in Mass Effect.

 

[(XBOX)RVN World News]

When they fix the insane enemy scaling and damage output after a certain level, maybe then these op/nerf/unfun threads will disappear. Until then though, welp, cheesy crowd control is needed. 

[HarrodTasker]

5 minutes ago, (XB1)Onyx Guarrd said:

When they fix the insane enemy scaling and damage output after a certain level, maybe then these op/nerf/unfun threads will disappear.

Nah, they could 100% fix any problem and there'd still be forum threads complaining about it.  Its the nature of forums.  I mean, I agree the scaling thing needs to be at some point addressed, which will be damage 3.0.  I hope the solution isn't to just take away +damage and multi shot mods and call it a day; I hope that scaling is adjusted in some manner along with whatever they do.  But for now, we must wait.

[(XBOX)iTzblockyy]

19 hours ago, TheBrsrkr said:

Inb4 don't like it don't use it

I agree with this guy and frown on this topic and all topics like these...

[P0TAT0CANN0N]

Draco isn't high level or hard.

And which tower?

Seriously, you state things that are easy and yet disregard what is actually hard.

[Heliopata]

So any idea of how to balance the game? What people mean when they say fix the scaling?