Mirage Revisions Feedback [Post Update 18.13]

[(PSN)adam4213]

42 minutes ago, shootaman777 said:

Mirage and Mag are definitely now on the same tier in terms of usefulness in a squad.  However, Mag still retains its semi-useful Greedy Pull farming uses and Mirage still retains its amazing yet unreliable tanking and damage buff uses, but these are only in solo situations.  I'd contest the notion that Limbo is 'trash', as it can still be very useful, not really as a S#&$tier Frost and S#&$tier Zenurik focus, but with its unique mode of invincibility that makes it stand out.  

We all saw these nerfs coming.  There was no mystery that Mirage was getting nerfed, as DE claimed to be nerfing abilities that can 'trivialise' content, which we all knew that Mirage was capable of.  However, as you've pointed out that you agree with, the only content that Mirage's blinding was used to 'trivialise' is endgame content, which is incredibly difficult in and of itself, and almost demands strategies to 'trivialise' it to the point where it can be farmed as reliably as midgame and easier content, since to get what you want in Grindframe/Warfarm, you have to grind, and the grind has only been made worse, contrary to DE's promises that grinding would be reduced.  Also, nobody in their right mind would farm something that cannot be reliably completed, as then it would not be farming, it would be a neverending S#&$ show.  Yeah, the days of Mirage's blind being useful are over.  But Mirage was only part of the problem here, and the other part of it, being the enemies, has been thus far ignored in terms of actual fixes by DE.  

If you want to not use Mirage anymore, that's your call to make.  However, before you leave Mirage behind, do you have any ideas that could be used to fix Mirage to the point where you would consider using her again (other than reverting the blinding nerf)?  

I used to use him to do Corpus spy missions but I don't bother with him anymore since in comes a Bursa, my powers get disabled, I get killed and then the alarm goes off and I fail the mission. So I just use Loki now instead. I can't think of any other situation where I would ever want to use Limbo so that's why he's trash, at least for me. 

As I said in the Trinity thread, I would be fine with some of these changes if the enemies were balanced to compensate for them but they're not. That's what annoys me. The scaling problems in this game are getting out of control. As H3dsh0t said in his video, what DE have done is remove the wallpaper covering the crack in the wall. Hopefully now that these nerfs have happened, the entire community can now see how bad the scaling in this game is because I'm sick of it getting constantly ignored, or pushed to the side with bandaid fixes like Corrosive Projection, Body Count and Harkonar Scope. 

It's not that I don't want to use her. As I said her 1st and 3rd abilities are still good but Hall of Mirrors destroys the framerate so I have no option but to not use her. As for ideas for Mirage I think Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse are pretty good if only it didn't destroy the framerate. Sleight of Hand just needs to go in my opinion and be replaced with a new power. It's so useless and waste of energy to use. Since Prism now has LoS applied to it I think I would like Mirage to have a new ultimate as well. As for what that would be, I have no idea at this moment in time. Maybe something a bit more exciting like an illusion power or something.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2016 by (PS4)adam4213

[Fifield]

Simple fix to Mirage:
Nerf all the stronger mapwide permaCC abilities more.  Simples.

1 hour ago, (PS4)adam4213 said:

Well RIP MIrage. Sadly you will never be used again and left to rot in the trash pile along with Limbo and Mag. Trinity still has some use, but once EV gets nerfed she'll be joining you too. 

EV is going to need one hell of a nerf for Trinity to be useless, seeing as she's the only frame who can give energy.

Limbo is exceptionally good for 2 things:
Sortie Defence (the operative).
Hive mission.

 

 

[Noey140]

15 minutes ago, Fifield said:

Limbo is exceptionally good for 2 things:

Sortie Defence (the operative).
Hive mission.

 

 

Sad but true...

Main reason im not using him for more is because you can't pickup/interract with the environment while in the rift/cataclysm...

 

 

[Naboolah]

It seems that most reasonable Mirage players will  agree that Prism changes make sense, and it should have been this way from the start. Enemies seeing a disco ball going "ooooo disco" and BAM, getting blinded, should be the mechanic from the start, instead of "I'm blind! How?"

I love playing Blind Mirage and now find myself making just a little more adjustments to where I plan to cast the prism, and enemy radar is invaluable now. No more casting prism and bursting it behind cover and locking down the whole map. That was just quite honestly, a broken mechanic, and again, this should have been fixed earlier.

Not a big change in my opinion, and is just a case of encouraging more tactical positioning of both mirage and placement and activation of disco ball, which is a move in the right direction.

 

Thank you Tenno for being a great community.

[(PSN)JrJester00]

Sleight of hand is still worthless.  It just doesn't seem like it works with the mechanics of enemies.  The only time I ever see it actually useful is on corpus levels with lasers.  Is there code written for enemies AI to actually go up to booby trapped objects when in a fight?

Prism was bound to get the LoS change and was needed.

[(XBOX)Hierophant8565]

On 28/05/2016 at 0:13 AM, OzoneSlayer said:

Prism

62.5m blind

50 energy

No finishers

LoS

Extremely Long Animation that interrupts you

 

Radial Blind

62.5m Blind

50 energy

Finishers

LoS

Extremely short animation that doesn't interrupt you

U wot m8?

 

thx for the info

[shootaman777]

20 hours ago, Fifield said:

Simple fix to Mirage:
Nerf all the stronger mapwide permaCC abilities more.  Simples.

EV is going to need one hell of a nerf for Trinity to be useless, seeing as she's the only frame who can give energy.

Limbo is exceptionally good for 2 things:
Sortie Defence (the operative).
Hive mission.

Your idea to the fix for Mirage has already been done.  However, they problem is that Mirage is now useless in any organised squad (except for Draco-style scenarios with Total Eclipse).  This is what I find to be a problem for Mirage.  Do you agree with me, and why or why not?  

 

Also, Limbo has an essentially impenetrable Snowglobe, in the form of Cataclysm, and as long as the player is careful enough to ensure this (ignoring the random one-shots and AoE environmental damage that even Limbo is vulnerable to in the Rift Plane).  

[Fifield]

2 minutes ago, shootaman777 said:

Your idea to the fix for Mirage has already been done.  However, they problem is that Mirage is now useless in any organised squad (except for Draco-style scenarios with Total Eclipse).  This is what I find to be a problem for Mirage.  Do you agree with me, and why or why not?  

I've yet to get an answer on the front-facing question but being able to permanently disable 90-100% of all enemies that have left their spawn is far from useless.  Mirage isn't weak, just relatively weak.

Prism just isn't as stupidly OP as:

Sound Quake
Bastille
Chaos
Stomp + EV

And no better than Radial Javelin (apart from damage).

So I propose DE nerf all these, particularly in the range dept.  Bastille should be replaced with a configurable turret.  Chaos should go too, with a full Nyx rework.

So no, it hasn't been done.  And this would fix Mirage's relative weakness.

Actually, I've just thought of a better idea for Prism. Require the disco ball to be out for 10s before you can blow it up (needs to build up power).  Make the blind last only 8s.

[shootaman777]

41 minutes ago, Fifield said:

I've yet to get an answer on the front-facing question but being able to permanently disable 90-100% of all enemies that have left their spawn is far from useless.  Mirage isn't weak, just relatively weak.

Prism just isn't as stupidly OP as:

Sound Quake
Bastille
Chaos
Stomp + EV

And no better than Radial Javelin (apart from damage).

So I propose DE nerf all these, particularly in the range dept.  Bastille should be replaced with a configurable turret.  Chaos should go too, with a full Nyx rework.

So no, it hasn't been done.  And this would fix Mirage's relative weakness.

Actually, I've just thought of a better idea for Prism. Require the disco ball to be out for 10s before you can blow it up (needs to build up power).  Make the blind last only 8s.

As opposed to nerfing everything into the ground so everything becomes as bad as Mirage, why not just improve Mirage herself to compete?  Also, Sound Quake and Stomp are in no way OP, as Sound Quake is RIP energy and no EV allowed, and Rhino is not an endgame viable Warframe to begin with.  

Also, from what you're saying, I do not think that you have used a blinding Mirage effectively, post-nerf.  When I cast Prism with a blinding build, I am lucky to blind the enemy 5 meters in front of me.  The LoS factor of Prism's blind is glitched (this is, of course, ignoring the nearly unbearable casting delay that, even with Natural Talent, is not significantly reduced).  

Well, with a base blind duration of 8 seconds and minimum casting time of 10 seconds, you've essentially made any builds with Blind Rage not viable for Prism.  In addition, the duration of Prism can be reduced to under 5 seconds... so you're saying that that Prism would not explode, at all?

[Enno69]

21 hours ago, Fifield said:

I've yet to get an answer on the front-facing question but being able to permanently disable 90-100% of all enemies that have left their spawn is far from useless.  Mirage isn't weak, just relatively weak.

Prism just isn't as stupidly OP as:

Sound Quake
Bastille
Chaos
Stomp + EV

And no better than Radial Javelin (apart from damage).

So I propose DE nerf all these, particularly in the range dept.  Bastille should be replaced with a configurable turret.  Chaos should go too, with a full Nyx rework.

So no, it hasn't been done.  And this would fix Mirage's relative weakness.

Actually, I've just thought of a better idea for Prism. Require the disco ball to be out for 10s before you can blow it up (needs to build up power).  Make the blind last only 8s.

Of all those abilities, only Stomp could be considered OP, and only with a dedicated range - duration build. Sound Quake locks its caster in place and is hampered by her terrible squishyness, at high level any stray shot fired by a foe that isn't affected could end her. Bastille is a niche ability used by a niche frame, and mostly against infested from what I've seen. Chaos doesn't prevent targets from firing at the squad or the crypod if they are close enough.

I, for my part, would suggest reducing Prism's casting speed and fixing the wonky LoS mechanic, that's it.

BTW Shootaman77, Rhino certainly IS an endgame viable frame, dunno where you get that from, maybe you haven't noticed his reworks (no offense). "Endgame" as defined by the devs of course

Edited June 1, 2016 by Enno69

[Fifield]

4 minutes ago, Enno69 said:

Sound Quake locks its caster in place and is hampered by her terrible squishyness, at high level any stray shot fired by a foe that isn't affected could end her.

You know the map with a central tower used for defense missions?  I had a Banshee squad mate press 4 and lock down & kill every enemy in the Sortie.  Not sure if I left that one or just went AFK.

Is it just me who thinks games should be fun? This ^^ is anti-fun.

 

Edited June 1, 2016 by Fifield

[Enno69]

7 minutes ago, Fifield said:

You know the map with a central tower used for defense missions?  I had a Banshee squad mate press 4 and lock down & kill every enemy in the Sortie.  Not sure if I left that one or just went AFK.

Either you want a space ninja game or you don't.  If you don't, keep that sh1t in there.

Sure, Defense is something special. Most CC powers work exceptionnaly well in this mode, not just Sound Quake.

I hope you're not implying I want that skill gone, certainly not, it's cool, I'm just in favor of toughening the lovely Banshee a bit ;)

[Fifield]

28 minutes ago, Enno69 said:

Sure, Defense is something special. Most CC powers work exceptionnaly well in this mode, not just Sound Quake.

That doesn't make it any better.  It's still anti-fun.

[shootaman777]

2 hours ago, Enno69 said:

Of all those abilities, only Stomp could be considered OP, and only with a dedicated range - duration build. Sound Quake locks its caster in place and is hampered by her terrible squishyness, at high level any stray shot fired by a foe that isn't affected could end her. Bastille is niche ability used by a niche frame, and mostly against infested from what I've seen. Chaos doesn't prevent targets to fire at the squad or the crypod if they are close enough.

I, for my part, would suggest reducing Prism's casting speed and fixing the wonky LoS mechanic, that's it.

BTW Shootaman77, Rhino certainly IS an endgame viable frame, dunno where you get that from, maybe you haven't noticed his reworks (no offense). "Endgame" as defined by the devs of course

I define an endgame Warframe as being useful in a squad in an endgame mission, as endgame missions almost require teamwork.  By the standard of a Law of Retribution raid, I can see no circumstance where bringing a Rhino along in the squad will be largely beneficial to the squad as a whole, save for only occasionally while using that dedicated range/duration build for Stomp that you mentioned.  To see if DE's definition of 'endgame' matches mine, I'll be taking a trip to the simulacrum.  

Agreed on the Nyx, Banshee, and Booben statements.  

I would have to say that I agree with your suggestion to buff Prism's casting speed and to fix the LoS mechanic if blinding is meant to be viable for a Mirage to use in the first place.  However, I would not stop there, and would suggest a rework for Mirage entirely, as she is now not only stuck as being second best to Excalibur as a blinder, but has also effectively had the last of her reliable endgame usage stripped from her.  I described my rework idea in this forum post, if you're interested in it (it's almost a book in length, so if you read it, I'm just apologising in advance): 

 

[Enno69]

1 hour ago, shootaman777 said:

[snip]

I would have to say that I agree with your suggestion to buff Prism's casting speed and to fix the LoS mechanic if blinding is meant to be viable for a Mirage to use in the first place.  However, I would not stop there, and would suggest a rework for Mirage entirely, as she is now not only stuck as being second best to Excalibur as a blinder, but has also effectively had the last of her reliable endgame usage stripped from her.  I described my rework idea in this forum post, if you're interested in it (it's almost a book in length, so if you read it, I'm just apologising in advance): 

 

Ah I see, you meant endgame as in "team support", not as "survive and destroy". Well in this hinsight yes, you are right, although there are certainly worse team players than Rhino : not only is his stomp decent CC but he can straight up double the team's fire power for extended periods of time using Roar. Yes I know, Raids aren't about killing, but I find them to be a broken, frustrating mess anyway (just my experience).

" has also effectively had the last of her reliable endgame usage stripped from her " She is still a DPS-heavy frame, that's how I always played her until people started asking me to blind-cheese through the levels. Wether or not DPS is relevant in endgame depends on the type of mission, on the enemies and on the overall objective as well as the team's mentality - most of this being quite worthy of tweaks and fixes. Concerning your post, I admit I haven't read everything because it looks very complex and I'm tired (I don't understand your new Prism lol), but the idea to let her switch between dark and light through a power that would replace that gimmicky SoH is interesting.

 

[Noteybook]

On 5/28/2016 at 4:31 PM, Nomen_Nescio said:

You ...  forgot that nightmare raids even exist and that blessing was annihilated as well. I saw once that blind already couldn't save Mirage in nightmare in a split second when bless ran out and napalm spawned from the closed hangars' door behind her basically one-hit killing mirage, and saying gg to the raid since at this exact moment she was on the pad and the core was on the electrified part of the rail. Fcn shade didn't help because it takes forever for it to even notice that there's an enemy near you. It literally took one second to fail the whole raid even with the blessing, even with the shade and having quick thinking on the frame. And there was no human factor because you can't possibly do anything to a napalm that hides behind the null's field , you can't move from the button, can't do sht at this point just die and fail.

I'm going to quote this so it can be emphasized again. These recent nerfs were nerfs for players to beat endgame content. Even though people called Prism and Bless a crutch, the timing was so important in Raids and ESPECIALLY NM raids that if there was one second screwup, it would be over.

We need more CC abilities that can deal with the BS that is high level enemies. Especially with how many different units with CC abilities are being thrown at you anymore.

[RealPandemonium]

It's crazy to me that people are saying that Mirage is useless now because you don't have a free win button.  Mirage still amplifies weapon damage and AOE (which are already excessive with many weapons) to a ridiculous degree, and is very safe when both buff powers are activated (don't forget the more responsive rolls.)  

Re: Prism vs Radial Blind, don't forget that Prism is also a wide-range damage dealer (with a useful damage type and a powerful close range maxcase,) can be cast remotely for safety, and costs as much or less than RB when activated quickly.  

Re: "Prism was dangerous to cast before the nerf," that's bull.  Prism could be chain-cast in total safety before, and it's almost as good now with some gameplay adjustments.  I imagine people will start abusing Rhino instead anyway, though.  

12 hours ago, Noteybook said:

I'm going to quote this so it can be emphasized again. These recent nerfs were nerfs for players to beat endgame content. Even though people called Prism and Bless a crutch, the timing was so important in Raids and ESPECIALLY NM raids that if there was one second screwup, it would be over.

We need more CC abilities that can deal with the BS that is high level enemies. Especially with how many different units with CC abilities are being thrown at you anymore.

Those enemies need to be fixed, and shouldn't be at that level in the first place.  Game systems break down at those levels and cheese is the only recourse; it's time they were removed from regular content for good.  

[shootaman777]

8 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

It's crazy to me that people are saying that Mirage is useless now because you don't have a free win button.  Mirage still amplifies weapon damage and AOE (which are already excessive with many weapons) to a ridiculous degree, and is very safe when both buff powers are activated (don't forget the more responsive rolls.)  

Re: Prism vs Radial Blind, don't forget that Prism is also a wide-range damage dealer (with a useful damage type and a powerful close range maxcase,) can be cast remotely for safety, and costs as much or less than RB when activated quickly.  

Re: "Prism was dangerous to cast before the nerf," that's bull.  Prism could be chain-cast in total safety before, and it's almost as good now with some gameplay adjustments.  I imagine people will start abusing Rhino instead anyway, though.  

Those enemies need to be fixed, and shouldn't be at that level in the first place.  Game systems break down at those levels and cheese is the only recourse; it's time they were removed from regular content for good.  

When people say Mirage is useless, that is now half true.  The true part of it is that Mirage has now been replaced by Excalibur in terms of being the best at blinding enemies.  To begin with, Mirage has only had two uses in organised squads, the first of which was as a TE buffer, which are not used in endgame missions.  The other was the potentially OP power, her blinding capability.  That was nerfed out of the game, since if one wants a blinder for an organised squad, they will look for the best blinder, which is now Excalibur, not Mirage.  As such, in an organised squad, Mirage no longer has a place in any mission other than ones where being a TE buffer is useful, which is limited to affinity farms on small maps that do not require movement.  Draco would be a prime example of a scenario where a TE Mirage would be useful.  

As such, the most efficient usage of Mirage now comes in the form of soloing, with Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse.  

Now, Mirage has not only one, but two useless abilities.  For a build to make the use of the Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse combo useful, it requires high power strength and power duration, making the power range of Prism's blind useless and the energy drain of Prism too much for Mirage to handle.  We already have known that Sleight of Hand was useless.  From day one of Hidden Messages, we all knew it.  This is due it currently facing the same problems that Volt's former Overload had to face - a lack of objects in the environment to use to make the ability useful, and a lack of the ability to reuse the majority of them after a single use.  

However, even the Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse combo still faces a large problem - a lack of reliability.  Any Mirage player who has brought her to a sortie or raid with a Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse build can tell you that even while using the combo: 

a) the lack of constant lighting in many areas of many maps makes it difficult to know whether at any given moment, Mirage is capable of tanking due to being in the darkness, or is ready to dish one out due to being in the light.  This can lead to ineffectual shooting and dying on a fairly often basis, as guessing wrong about whether where you will land is dark or light can be quite a volatile and lethal game, especially to the Mirage.  

b) they are still constantly vulnerable to any AoE and/or homing attacks.  Hall of Mirrors' weakness in damage reduction to Mirage is in that it reduces enemy accuracy by making them aim at Mirage's mirrors.  However, the mirrors do not block bullets from hitting Mirage - they merely draw them away to a meter or two away from Mirage, which in the case of homing attacks and/or AoE damage, does not help, as the explosions still hit Mirage from that range.  If this happens during a moment of Eclipse giving Mirage a weapon damage buff, then that's gg for the Mirage, in anywhere from midtier missions and upwards.  

c) If Mirage is in motion, or even standing still, bullet travel times can make bullets that were aimed at mirrors hit Mirage, or the non-perfect accuracy of some enemy weapons can still enable said enemy to shoot Mirage.  This can still result in Mirage's death, and is a problem with dodging enemy fire at any range, particularly with hitscan weapons shooting at Mirage.  Given that Mirage's tankiness is unreliable, it is still a problem, even with Eclipse activated.  

I've already elaborated on these ideas and made and entire rework plan in a forum post I made several days in the past.  I'll link it here: 

In other words, people are not complaining about losing their 'free win button', as you phrased it.  People are complaining about one of their favorite Warframes (presumably, or they could have just enjoyed the feeling of power from just blinding enemies and making them helpless for a change in endgame missions, as opposed to being a Tenno flailing around trying not to die and dodge hitscan one-shotting weapons) losing its value in any squad that they would use it in, and that the general difficulty of endgame missions that they do has risen dramatically due to this lack of a useful Mirage in the squad.  

Also, unless a Mirage was flying through the air and casting Prism while aim gliding, Mirage was a sitting duck for up to 3 seconds while casting Prism.  In endgame missions, this can result in being sniped by the enemy 63 meters away from the first blind in a chain (with a maximum range of 62.5 meters of blinding being possible).  All it takes is one bullet to kill the Mirage, in that case.  

Also, radiation is not that useful of a damage type, given that it never proc'ed and the damage numbers were low, even with a max strength build which would not be on a blinding build, especially in comparison to endgame enemies.  

If the enemies of an endgame mission are nerfed to the point where frames with no bulk can survive reliably, then how could the mission be called challenging?  This would then demand that other things be necessary to stay alive, such as CC abilities.  In addition, it would defeat the purpose of endless missions, such as survival, defense, interception, and excavation.  

Also, endless missions are meant to become endlessly difficult.  If a player does not use a 'cheesy' (to use your terminology) strategy, then they have no chance of survival, especially when enemies with levels in the thousands appear.  You can argue that players are not meant to go this far in a mission, but if players were not meant to go this endlessly far in endless missions, the rewards would stop being given after a certain cutoff in said endless missions.  As endless missions' rewards are not cut off at any point, the definition of farming a single endless mission for rewards would be to farm the single endless mission, endlessly.  

[RealPandemonium]

8 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

When people say Mirage is useless, that is now half true.  The true part of it is that Mirage has now been replaced by Excalibur in terms of being the best at blinding enemies.  To begin with, Mirage has only had two uses in organised squads, the first of which was as a TE buffer, which are not used in endgame missions.  The other was the potentially OP power, her blinding capability.  That was nerfed out of the game, since if one wants a blinder for an organised squad, they will look for the best blinder, which is now Excalibur, not Mirage.  As such, in an organised squad, Mirage no longer has a place in any mission other than ones where being a TE buffer is useful, which is limited to affinity farms on small maps that do not require movement.  Draco would be a prime example of a scenario where a TE Mirage would be useful.  

As such, the most efficient usage of Mirage now comes in the form of soloing, with Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse.  

Now, Mirage has not only one, but two useless abilities.  For a build to make the use of the Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse combo useful, it requires high power strength and power duration, making the power range of Prism's blind useless and the energy drain of Prism too much for Mirage to handle.  We already have known that Sleight of Hand was useless.  From day one of Hidden Messages, we all knew it.  This is due it currently facing the same problems that Volt's former Overload had to face - a lack of objects in the environment to use to make the ability useful, and a lack of the ability to reuse the majority of them after a single use.  

However, even the Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse combo still faces a large problem - a lack of reliability.  Any Mirage player who has brought her to a sortie or raid with a Hall of Mirrors/Eclipse build can tell you that even while using the combo: 

a) the lack of constant lighting in many areas of many maps makes it difficult to know whether at any given moment, Mirage is capable of tanking due to being in the darkness, or is ready to dish one out due to being in the light.  This can lead to ineffectual shooting and dying on a fairly often basis, as guessing wrong about whether where you will land is dark or light can be quite a volatile and lethal game, especially to the Mirage.  

b) they are still constantly vulnerable to any AoE and/or homing attacks.  Hall of Mirrors' weakness in damage reduction to Mirage is in that it reduces enemy accuracy by making them aim at Mirage's mirrors.  However, the mirrors do not block bullets from hitting Mirage - they merely draw them away to a meter or two away from Mirage, which in the case of homing attacks and/or AoE damage, does not help, as the explosions still hit Mirage from that range.  If this happens during a moment of Eclipse giving Mirage a weapon damage buff, then that's gg for the Mirage, in anywhere from midtier missions and upwards.  

c) If Mirage is in motion, or even standing still, bullet travel times can make bullets that were aimed at mirrors hit Mirage, or the non-perfect accuracy of some enemy weapons can still enable said enemy to shoot Mirage.  This can still result in Mirage's death, and is a problem with dodging enemy fire at any range, particularly with hitscan weapons shooting at Mirage.  Given that Mirage's tankiness is unreliable, it is still a problem, even with Eclipse activated.  

I've already elaborated on these ideas and made and entire rework plan in a forum post I made several days in the past.  I'll link it here: 

In other words, people are not complaining about losing their 'free win button', as you phrased it.  People are complaining about one of their favorite Warframes (presumably, or they could have just enjoyed the feeling of power from just blinding enemies and making them helpless for a change in endgame missions, as opposed to being a Tenno flailing around trying not to die and dodge hitscan one-shotting weapons) losing its value in any squad that they would use it in, and that the general difficulty of endgame missions that they do has risen dramatically due to this lack of a useful Mirage in the squad.  

Also, unless a Mirage was flying through the air and casting Prism while aim gliding, Mirage was a sitting duck for up to 3 seconds while casting Prism.  In endgame missions, this can result in being sniped by the enemy 63 meters away from the first blind in a chain (with a maximum range of 62.5 meters of blinding being possible).  All it takes is one bullet to kill the Mirage, in that case.  

Also, radiation is not that useful of a damage type, given that it never proc'ed and the damage numbers were low, even with a max strength build which would not be on a blinding build, especially in comparison to endgame enemies.  

If the enemies of an endgame mission are nerfed to the point where frames with no bulk can survive reliably, then how could the mission be called challenging?  This would then demand that other things be necessary to stay alive, such as CC abilities.  In addition, it would defeat the purpose of endless missions, such as survival, defense, interception, and excavation.  

Also, endless missions are meant to become endlessly difficult.  If a player does not use a 'cheesy' (to use your terminology) strategy, then they have no chance of survival, especially when enemies with levels in the thousands appear.  You can argue that players are not meant to go this far in a mission, but if players were not meant to go this endlessly far in endless missions, the rewards would stop being given after a certain cutoff in said endless missions.  As endless missions' rewards are not cut off at any point, the definition of farming a single endless mission for rewards would be to farm the single endless mission, endlessly.  

Feedback like this is what lead Warframe to become a soulless grindfest where progression is toward non-gameplay in a false "endgame."  

Reducing everything down to "in an organized squad it's only good for X" mentality defeats the purpose of playing a fun action game.  Approaching design discussion as if max-efficient farming is the only thing that ever matters will lead to a soulless grindfest and not a fun game.  

These posts ultimately boil down to "we need cheese to fight level XXX enemies, and we need to fight level XXX enemies to be challenged, but cheese allows us to make them non-challenging, but level XXX is the only thing that matters so we need cheese."  It's a myopic view that assumes that Warframe could never be anything else (when it has shown in the past that it can be.)

[shootaman777]

7 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

Feedback like this is what lead Warframe to become a soulless grindfest where progression is toward non-gameplay in a false "endgame."  

Reducing everything down to "in an organized squad it's only good for X" mentality defeats the purpose of playing a fun action game.  Approaching design discussion as if max-efficient farming is the only thing that ever matters will lead to a soulless grindfest and not a fun game.  

These posts ultimately boil down to "we need cheese to fight level XXX enemies, and we need to fight level XXX enemies to be challenged, but cheese allows us to make them non-challenging, but level XXX is the only thing that matters so we need cheese."  It's a myopic view that assumes that Warframe could never be anything else (when it has shown in the past that it can be.)

Here's the problem with that [your] kind of feedback.  It is just as myopic (shortsighted and narrow-minded were the closest words that dictionary.com could find for it, and I thank you for that little insult, as it has expanded my vocabulary of insults) of a point of view to only consider an idea for the game that you consider to be 'fun' to be a viable option for the game, without considering reality.  Here's some reality for you: 

a) DE has been increasing the difficulty of grinding with many nerfs to strategies that made grinding easier.  

b) Either RNG is being a complete and total #$&(% to the Warframe community, or there has been a massive dilution of prime part drop lists per mission, or a reduction in the drop chances for rare items, making farming them *that* more difficult.  

c) Remember the Sibear and Vauban Prime building requirements?  A grand total of 39,000 cryotic (puts the cry in cryotic, needing 390 excavators completed to even acquire this much cryotic, at best), 20 nitain extract (which, depending on when you can log onto Warframe, may result in you only getting one nitain extract per day at maximum), and originally 14,000 oxium that had to be lowered to 7,000 oxium because of such a massive uproar by the Warframe community.  

d) Arcane enhancements have to be obtained in sets of 10 to have their full usage.  That includes even the most rare arcanes.  As such, farming a LoR, NM LoR, and JV raid every day in order to obtain these enhancements can turn into an even worse grindfest than anything else in the game.  

e) Sorties.  As I always say; "Sortie is best core farm".  I've had times where I'll go on a streak of receiving only 25 r5 fc's, for up to 15 days in a row, for completing the sorties, even when I have plenty of items on the list of rewards that you can only receive once per sortie season that I have yet to obtain.  

f) You have yet to come up with any constructive feedback on the matter (when you said 'fix the enemies' does not count, it is just a complaint, not an idea, as you did not propose any way to go about doing so).  And yet you are so quick to criticise when I come up with a solution that takes the way things are into account, as opposed to your ideals in regards to how things should be.  And then I'm the one with the myopic views?  If my views are myopic, then I do not see how yours are any less so.  As such, it turns into a situation of 'the pot calling the kettle black', assuming that you were at least right somewhere in your reply to my response.  

g) This kind of feedback does not 'lead Warframe to become a soulless grindfest where progression is toward non-gameplay in a false "endgame"'.  This kind of feedback deals with the problems that Warframe players currently face.  If you'd like to bury your head in the sand here and ignore reality, while failing to address the majority of my post with any specific criticisms or feedback, then be my guest.  I'd love to hear your feedback, but I would also like to politely request that you please make it constructively critical, as opposed to giving blanket criticism with no examples of how my post is so bad.  I'm here talking to you so that we can both improve in the quality of our opinions and ideas so let's put our best foot forward towards that goal!  

Warm regards, 

Your (somewhat, on occasion) friendly neighbourhood shootaman777

[Enno69]

5 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

  Here's some reality for you: 

a) DE has been increasing the difficulty of grinding with many nerfs to strategies that made grinding easier.  

b) Either RNG is being a complete and total #$&(% to the Warframe community, or there has been a massive dilution of prime part drop lists per mission, or a reduction in the drop chances for rare items, making farming them *that* more difficult.  

c) Remember the Sibear and Vauban Prime building requirements?  [snip]

d) Arcane enhancements have to be obtained in sets of 10 to have their full usage.  That includes even the most rare arcanes.  As such, farming a LoR, NM LoR, and JV raid every day in order to obtain these enhancements can turn into an even worse grindfest than anything else in the game.  

e) Sorties.  As I always say; "Sortie is best core farm".  I've had times where I'll go on a streak of receiving only 25 r5 fc's, for up to 15 days in a row, for completing the sorties, even when I have plenty of items on the list of rewards that you can only receive once per sortie season that I have yet to obtain.  

g) This kind of feedback does not 'lead Warframe to become a soulless grindfest where progression is toward non-gameplay in a false "endgame"'.

a) You see it that way but making the grind more painful was not DE's intent, just a consequence. They nerfed some cheesing abilities with the global aim of finally fixing balance in this game, to make it more fun. Problem being, they implement one change at a time, very slowly, so in the meantime before they fix enemy scaling and so on, all that some will think will be "we are less powerful, and since everything is about the grind, they just want to increase it so people have to pay !".

b) RNG and grind sucks, it always has, and it always will be, that's true. But apart from newer players who don't have anything, nobody has to suffer through it, there are enough frames and weapons that are more or less easily available for us to enjoy the game normally.

c) Same thing. You don't need those items. Don't want to farm for them, don't. They might come to you eventually though - as we know RNG is perfectly willing to give you all the cool stuff as long as it's not what you are currently looking for.

d) Same thing. Raids, as of now, are horribly broken, convoluted clusterf*cks that I for my part would not touch even for plat, so arcanes ? Screw them.

e) Just do Sorties when it looks like you would enjoy the daily one and don't do them otherwise.

g) No indeed, player mentality does that. Now, it's partially the game's fault, I am absolutely not denying its flaws. Simply, one can make his/her own fun ! As Shay Cormac may say if he was playing Warframe.

 

To sum it up : yes, the game has issues, serious ones. But nobody is forced to make them worse by doing unfun "chores" for the sake of it.

Have a nice day

[shootaman777]

3 hours ago, Enno69 said:

a) You see it that way but making the grind more painful was not DE's intent, just a consequence. They nerfed some cheesing abilities with the global aim of finally fixing balance in this game, to make it more fun. Problem being, they implement one change at a time, very slowly, so in the meantime before they fix enemy scaling and so on, all that some will think will be "we are less powerful, and since everything is about the grind, they just want to increase it so people have to pay !".

b) RNG and grind sucks, it always has, and it always will be, that's true. But apart from newer players who don't have anything, nobody has to suffer through it, there are enough frames and weapons that are more or less easily available for us to enjoy the game normally.

c) Same thing. You don't need those items. Don't want to farm for them, don't. They might come to you eventually though - as we know RNG is perfectly willing to give you all the cool stuff as long as it's not what you are currently looking for.

d) Same thing. Raids, as of now, are horribly broken, convoluted clusterf*cks that I for my part would not touch even for plat, so arcanes ? Screw them.

e) Just do Sorties when it looks like you would enjoy the daily one and don't do them otherwise.

g) No indeed, player mentality does that. Now, it's partially the game's fault, I am absolutely not denying its flaws. Simply, one can make his/her own fun ! As Shay Cormac may say if he was playing Warframe.

 

To sum it up : yes, the game has issues, serious ones. But nobody is forced to make them worse by doing unfun "chores" for the sake of it.

Have a nice day

a) I'm going to have to call BS on that.  DE knew exactly what would happen to the grind after their nerfs.  That is not arguable.  They knew that the grind would be more difficult due to these nerfs.  And, do you know what they did not do?  Test the nerfs themselves before releasing them into the game for everyone to be stuck with.  Because now, we're the guinea pigs being used to determine the margin by which us and our enemies should be nerfed.  As opposed to DE recruiting some of their staff and maybe a few veteran players to test out the nerfs in advance to see how hard the enemies would need to be nerfed, which would have resulted in both nerfs to us and the enemies coming out at the same time to the players, they essentially released them into the game with a big declaration of 'f**k you, players!  You get to be screwed while we analyse how screwed you are and maybe, might eventually, get around to fixing the real problems.'  Or at least DE would have had some decent idea of how to fix the enemies if they had tested it out before nerfing us, that could have been implemented at the same time to not make the nerfs as painful.  But they didn't.  But, they gave us players no indication that they had any decent idea of how to fix enemies.  So, we can only assume that they also have (or had, as of the moment that Update 18.13 was released) no decent idea of how to fix enemies.  

b) And then are newer players, once they've acquired gear, supposed to stop their hunt for better gear and do the same missions over and over and expect them to keep on being fun?  No.  Your idea that players don't have to try to grind for more gear is true, but however, is impractical and ignores reality - without the search for items, this game will get boring, and very quickly.  That, I imagine, is why DE tries so hard to pump out new content on a regular basis, as opposed to fixing all of the holes in their current content - as that is the only thing keeping veteran players in this game, other than being a part of one of those massive endgame clans that fight over dark sectors, which is just a big clusterfuck to begin with.  

c) I'm going to have to call BS on that.  RNG does not give you nitain extract (the wiki says that they drop in reactor sabotages, but they don't.  Period.  Farm those sabotages, search for every cache, and tell me that nitain drops in reactor sabotage.  If so, then tell me how many runs you ran before you got one of those (the number of runs should be in double or triple digits).  Or better yet, tell me about those Xiphos parts, that are supposed to drop in the same mission.  They don't.), cryotic (you farm for every bit of cryotic that you have, there is no RNG factor other than making your life harder if a stray bullet destroys an extractor that an RNG determined could exist), or oxium.  

d) why say 'screw arcanes'?  they can sell for hundreds of plat each, if you get the right ones

e) same explanation as b).  Also, if people found endgame content to be fun, they would do the missions mre than once daily.  I don't see much of that going on.  

f) where's your point f)?  

g) the mentality changes nothing.  and the mentality derives from the game.

If a player played Warframe entirely by making their own fun, it'd be pointless.  Sure, people can bring all their maxed gear and kill the same kind of enemies in the same way over and over again, and that may be fun for them, and if so: more power to them.  However, the point of this game is to acquire more things, and more platinum to acquire more things.  If a player focuses on anything other than that, they will get very bored with Warframe, and very quickly.  

Actually, yes.  People are forced to do unfun chores for the sake of it.  It's called acquiring gear so that you can acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear until there's nothing left and now, what's the fun of it?  Having your gear become useless after you sink a few forma into them, and a potato, and after going through the trouble of ranking up rank 10 (sometimes primed) mods?  Doing the same missions with that same gear, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?  

Can you see why a player would be frustrated with the game because of the game, and not just because of their own 'mindset'?  

[RealPandemonium]

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

a) DE has been increasing the difficulty of grinding with many nerfs to strategies that made grinding easier.  

 Some examples?  This is also moot because organized meta farming is thriving more than ever and game-trivialization is readily available even to solo players more than it ever has before.

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

b) Either RNG is being a complete and total #$&(% to the Warframe community, or there has been a massive dilution of prime part drop lists per mission, or a reduction in the drop chances for rare items, making farming them *that* more difficult.  

 Game-trivialization is part of this problem.  When every mission is a guaranteed success, actually participating in the mission is a mere formality, and many missions are just races to extraction with no meaningful gameplay in between, DE will dilute reward tables due to the ease and rapid frequency of mission completions.  If the game wasn't so trivial, perhaps DE could make more fair drop tables where we earn the reward instead of just sinking time without an actual game component.  

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

c) Remember the Sibear and Vauban Prime building requirements?  A grand total of 39,000 cryotic (puts the cry in cryotic, needing 390 excavators completed to even acquire this much cryotic, at best), 20 nitain extract (which, depending on when you can log onto Warframe, may result in you only getting one nitain extract per day at maximum), and originally 14,000 oxium that had to be lowered to 7,000 oxium because of such a massive uproar by the Warframe community.  

 I don't think anyone agrees with Sibear's cryotic cost and that only feeds into the meta farming aspect of the game by assuming that everyone has just been spamming Triton/Hieracon for the past 18 months.  Vauban Prime's costs are an attempt to try to make Prime Access more desirable, though making his parts easier to acquire RNG-wise would be a fair trade-off IMO.  The Nitain thing is polarizing but is a similar deal with Sibear's cryotic cost (not everyone spams alerts and sabotage caches are rarely hunted by pubs.)  Nitain should be more freely available besides as a resource that is unpopular to farm and also locked behind steep RNG.  

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

d) Arcane enhancements have to be obtained in sets of 10 to have their full usage.  That includes even the most rare arcanes.  As such, farming a LoR, NM LoR, and JV raid every day in order to obtain these enhancements can turn into an even worse grindfest than anything else in the game.  

 Arcanes and the Trial/Raid system have been flawed and a poor addition to the game IMO since day one, and I have railed against them from that point to the present.  Raids lack real gameplay, instead institutionalizing the cheese that before was merely the easy way out in an unregulated economy of options.  The puzzles that raids include could work in normal gameplay (without inflated enemy levels) with some degree of randomization and a novel challenge like minibosses or sortie-style handicaps instead of just LOL WAVES OF LEVEL 100 GRINEER.

The grind for arcanes is ridiculously steep and the missions that you have to grind in to get them are frustrating and require cheese that invalidates core gameplay.  Raids have totally failed as an "endgame" option IMO, and sorties are only marginally more successful (at least you can get cores/credits from them and solo them.)

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

e) Sorties.  As I always say; "Sortie is best core farm".  I've had times where I'll go on a streak of receiving only 25 r5 fc's, for up to 15 days in a row, for completing the sorties, even when I have plenty of items on the list of rewards that you can only receive once per sortie season that I have yet to obtain.  

Sortie reward system has worked as advertised for me, personally, but I have heard horror stories from others.  

Again, main problem with Sorties is the non-gameplay that they encourage.  

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

f) You have yet to come up with any constructive feedback on the matter (when you said 'fix the enemies' does not count, it is just a complaint, not an idea, as you did not propose any way to go about doing so).  And yet you are so quick to criticise when I come up with a solution that takes the way things are into account, as opposed to your ideals in regards to how things should be.  And then I'm the one with the myopic views?  If my views are myopic, then I do not see how yours are any less so.  As such, it turns into a situation of 'the pot calling the kettle black', assuming that you were at least right somewhere in your reply to my response.  

The ways to fix enemies have been discussed to death: keep enemy levels within a standard range and balance around that, and fine-tune specific enemies (Napalms, Seekers, etc) as needed.  My viewpoint is informed by 3 years of history in this game and observing how things went sour over time.  Treating Warframe as if it always has been the way it is now and always will be in the future is what I labelled as a myopic viewpoint; my perspective incorporates a previous precedent in the Warframe of late 2013 through early 2014, when the game was much more balanced than it was now and game trivialization was the exception rather than the rule.  Perhaps this is nostalgia, but is it not myopia.  

10 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

g) This kind of feedback does not 'lead Warframe to become a soulless grindfest where progression is toward non-gameplay in a false "endgame"'.  This kind of feedback deals with the problems that Warframe players currently face.  If you'd like to bury your head in the sand here and ignore reality, while failing to address the majority of my post with any specific criticisms or feedback, then be my guest.  I'd love to hear your feedback, but I would also like to politely request that you please make it constructively critical, as opposed to giving blanket criticism with no examples of how my post is so bad.  I'm here talking to you so that we can both improve in the quality of our opinions and ideas so let's put our best foot forward towards that goal!

Two main points in my post.

1 is that if your feedback is stuck in the present and the present is FUBAR, then you're only going to keep bandaiding the broken system instead of reforming it for the better.  Without a wider or more imaginative frame of reference, you will not be able to champion the kinds of changes that can truly heal the underlying problems, or at least get close to doing that.  

2 is that boiling every frame down to being a cog in the meta farming machine presupposes that the point of Warframe is to grind in the most efficient way possible and that having a fun, engaging action game doesn't matter as long as the rewards flow in uninterrupted.  This defeats the purpose of playing a game; there are plenty of resource management and slotmachine cellphone/facebook games that fill that role, but Warframe should not be among them.  Warframe used to be about tailoring your experience with a wide variety of equipment choices, gear customization for further variation, and having fun (grinding or otherwise) in a fun game engine that fuses third-person action and MMORPG elements in a harmonious way.   The current incarnation of Warframe is a race to game-trivialization, absurd DPS/AOE, and unengaging farming that is repeated a nauseating number of times due to unfair drop tables (all so we can farm next month's new trinket using this month's trinket.)  I advocate a return to the previous environment, and that starts with fun gameplay and balanced equipment options that don't turn off gameplay more as we get stronger.

[Enno69]

7 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

a) I'm going to have to call BS on that.  DE knew exactly what would happen to the grind after their nerfs.  That is not arguable.  They knew that the grind would be more difficult due to these nerfs.  And, do you know what they did not do?  Test the nerfs themselves before releasing them into the game for everyone to be stuck with.  [...]

b) And then are newer players, once they've acquired gear, supposed to stop their hunt for better gear and do the same missions over and over and expect them to keep on being fun?  No.  Your idea that players don't have to try to grind for more gear is true, but however, is impractical and ignores reality - without the search for items, this game will get boring, and very quickly.  That, I imagine, is why DE tries so hard to pump out new content on a regular basis, as opposed to fixing all of the holes in their current content - as that is the only thing keeping veteran players in this game, other than being a part of one of those massive endgame clans that fight over dark sectors, which is just a big clusterfuck to begin with.  

c) I'm going to have to call BS on that.  RNG does not give you nitain extract (the wiki says that they drop in reactor sabotages, but they don't.  Period.  Farm those sabotages, search for every cache, and tell me that nitain drops in reactor sabotage.  If so, then tell me how many runs you ran before you got one of those (the number of runs should be in double or triple digits).  Or better yet, tell me about those Xiphos parts, that are supposed to drop in the same mission.  They don't.), cryotic (you farm for every bit of cryotic that you have, there is no RNG factor other than making your life harder if a stray bullet destroys an extractor that an RNG determined could exist), or oxium.  

d) why say 'screw arcanes'?  they can sell for hundreds of plat each, if you get the right ones

e) same explanation as b).  Also, if people found endgame content to be fun, they would do the missions mre than once daily.  I don't see much of that going on.  

f) where's your point f)?  

g) the mentality changes nothing.  and the mentality derives from the game.

If a player played Warframe entirely by making their own fun, it'd be pointless.  Sure, people can bring all their maxed gear and kill the same kind of enemies in the same way over and over again, and that may be fun for them, and if so: more power to them.  However, the point of this game is to acquire more things, and more platinum to acquire more things.  If a player focuses on anything other than that, they will get very bored with Warframe, and very quickly.  

Actually, yes.  People are forced to do unfun chores for the sake of it.  It's called acquiring gear so that you can acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear to acquire more gear until there's nothing left and now, what's the fun of it?  Having your gear become useless after you sink a few forma into them, and a potato, and after going through the trouble of ranking up rank 10 (sometimes primed) mods?  Doing the same missions with that same gear, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?  

Can you see why a player would be frustrated with the game because of the game, and not just because of their own 'mindset'?  

a) I get your point, and you're partially right, but I'm still convinced that if DE had managed to implement all the changes they have envisionned within a few days after U18.13 (for instance), we would not be having this conversation ; imo the issue is not that they don't have the ideas, but that for whatever reasons, they implement them veeery slowly (like how we waited for over a year to get a decently fun Rhino rework). Maybe coding the stuff is a really slow process, I dunno. Proof is, most of what they have released since I joined apart from new weapons has been interesting content, including a better UI, lore quests, cool frames etc. Yeah, sometimes the execution is flawed - trials, sorties, archwing...- but they can still fix it. You are free to disagree.

b) I said "they don't have to suffer through it". The pain can be circumvented. I have grinded a lot in the past, of course, but I usually made it so that the hunt was enjoyable in itself. Having a good team with which you can talk and laugh helps a lot. Farming Ivara was exciting and made me much better at spy, for ex. And when something I wanted seemed unobtainable, I traded for it. You claim " without the search for items, this game will get boring, and very quickly. " I disagree, imo the real point of this game is not to acquire every single piece of gear there is, but to upgrade what you enjoy using, be it cosmetically or otherwise.

Now, if by your original comment you meant that there has truely been a reduction in the drop chances for rare items or a massive dilution of prime part drop lists per mission, or both, then you have a point, as it would be an unnecessary and d*icky move by DE that would go against their previous statements about reducing the grind. Dunno how we could prove that this is the case, though.

c) Hadn't checked the requirements for Vauban prime, sorry. You are right, 20 Nitain is indeed excessive. After Wukong I used to gain enough of this ressource from the random alerts to craft all there was to craft, but that amount way too much. For now it's just one frame, though - hopefully not a new trend.

d)-e) Yes, screw them. Plat can be obtained otherwise. You admitted that trials were horrible, and Real Pandemonium who answered to you gave details ("  Arcanes and the Trial/Raid system have been flawed and a poor addition to the game IMO since day one [...]"). So why bother with them ? If we all show we don't agree with the way they are, maybe the devs will look into it in priority. " if people found endgame content to be fun, they would do the missions mre than once daily. ", that is very true, but it's not the case right now, so I'd rather NOT play them than do something unfun. But that's just me :)

As for the sorties, they were a welcome addition in the sense that they provided a way to play against level 70+ right from the start. They are not great, but they can be improved - with more random events and diversity and the token system for rewards.

f) That was between you and Pandemonium.

g)" If a player played Warframe entirely by making their own fun, it'd be pointless. " Still better than do boring things in what is suppoed to be a game. And it's not "entirely", there are still cool stuff like events and quests, or sorties once they'll be fixed. Hopefully more meaningful content is coming in the future.

" the point of this game is to acquire more things " That's just one aspect. Or, it's supposed to be just one aspect. And you tools do not just "become useless" like that, as you said.

" People are forced to do unfun chores for the sake of it. " No, they are not. Who cares about all the gear ? Focus on earning the frames, weaps and mods that look most attractive to you, try them out, experiment, power them up, and then there is still FashionFrame XD. Then, just play, you know. It's possible. Run with your clan, take part in hardcore (more or less) alerts and events, self-impose challenges, organise competitions with dojo duels, stroll through the relay and contemplate the vast nothingness of space... There are stuff to be done, even with WF's current issues. I would not still be here if there wasn't.

Yes, I can see why a player would be frustrated by the game. In this case, they can simply take a break and come after the next update. I have done it, it works well against burn-out.

 

I'll end up by quoting RealPandemonium, because he/she described the situation really well : " boiling every frame down to being a cog in the meta farming machine presupposes that the point of  Warframe is to grind in the most efficient way possible and that having a fun, engaging action game doesn't matter as long as the rewards flow in uninterrupted.  This defeats the purpose of playing a game; there are plenty of resource management and slotmachine cellphone/facebook games that fill that role, but Warframe should not be among them.  Warframe used to be about tailoring your experience with a wide variety of equipment choices, gear customization for further variation, and having fun (grinding or otherwise) in a fun game engine that fuses third-person action and MMORPG elements in a harmonious way.   The current incarnation of Warframe is a race to game-trivialization, absurd DPS/AOE, and unengaging farming that is repeated a nauseating number of times due to unfair drop tables (all so we can farm next month's new trinket using this month's trinket.)  I advocate a return to the previous environment, and that starts with fun gameplay and balanced equipment options that don't turn off gameplay more as we get stronger. "

[shootaman777]

7 hours ago, Enno69 said:

I'll end up by quoting RealPandemonium, because he/she described the situation really well : " boiling every frame down to being a cog in the meta farming machine presupposes that the point of  Warframe is to grind in the most efficient way possible and that having a fun, engaging action game doesn't matter as long as the rewards flow in uninterrupted.  This defeats the purpose of playing a game; there are plenty of resource management and slotmachine cellphone/facebook games that fill that role, but Warframe should not be among them.  Warframe used to be about tailoring your experience with a wide variety of equipment choices, gear customization for further variation, and having fun (grinding or otherwise) in a fun game engine that fuses third-person action and MMORPG elements in a harmonious way.   The current incarnation of Warframe is a race to game-trivialization, absurd DPS/AOE, and unengaging farming that is repeated a nauseating number of times due to unfair drop tables (all so we can farm next month's new trinket using this month's trinket.)  I advocate a return to the previous environment, and that starts with fun gameplay and balanced equipment options that don't turn off gameplay more as we get stronger. "

 

14 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:Two main points in my post.

 

1 is that if your feedback is stuck in the present and the present is FUBAR, then you're only going to keep bandaiding the broken system instead of reforming it for the better.  Without a wider or more imaginative frame of reference, you will not be able to champion the kinds of changes that can truly heal the underlying problems, or at least get close to doing that.  

2 is that boiling every frame down to being a cog in the meta farming machine presupposes that the point of Warframe is to grind in the most efficient way possible and that having a fun, engaging action game doesn't matter as long as the rewards flow in uninterrupted.  This defeats the purpose of playing a game; there are plenty of resource management and slotmachine cellphone/facebook games that fill that role, but Warframe should not be among them.  Warframe used to be about tailoring your experience with a wide variety of equipment choices, gear customization for further variation, and having fun (grinding or otherwise) in a fun game engine that fuses third-person action and MMORPG elements in a harmonious way.   The current incarnation of Warframe is a race to game-trivialization, absurd DPS/AOE, and unengaging farming that is repeated a nauseating number of times due to unfair drop tables (all so we can farm next month's new trinket using this month's trinket.)  I advocate a return to the previous environment, and that starts with fun gameplay and balanced equipment options that don't turn off gameplay more as we get stronger.

I've been developing a few ideas for directions that the game could go in.  Mind giving me some feedback on them?  The main point of disagreement that I seem to have with the two of you is that I think I'm focusing on the game as-is too much, and I think that the two of you are focusing on the game as it should be too much.  This should be a way to make the game challenging, regardless of what build is brought to a given mission.  

"

Also, a bit of a nice tidbit for people who want this game to be skill-based, here’s a proposal for a whole new leveling/scaling rework for the Tenno.  The Conclave rating system for weapons and Warframes would be essentially thrown away, or massively modified to be useful.  This would be done as follows: 

-Mods would be rated on their individual relative usefulness, and ratings would vary per mission type used in, on what they are equipped, and the difficulty of the mission they are brought to in terms of enemy level. 

-Mastery rank increases give another added config per increase, up until mastery rank 26 (config z). 

-The current mod drain system would continue to exist. 

-To make all content equally as challenging, missions will have a conclave cap based on enemy level (probably by intervals of 10)

-If a combination of mods of a build with a higher conclave rating than the conclave of a mission allows is equipped, the build can still be brought to the mission.  However, mods will take effect in order from first to last, left to right, top row to bottom row, until they go over the conclave limit of the level that they are being used in.  The first mod that breaks the limit will not be effective, nor will the ones after it. 

-Endless missions: mods on a build would unlock as the enemies scaled.  In essence, as the enemies increase in difficulty, your modded capabilities increase as well, but enemies will still endlessly scale even after all your mods have been unlocked. 

-After something has been forma’d once, all polarities currently on mod slots would function the same as mods – it would be optional to equip them, allowing for many configs to be made by being able to equip or not equip polarities that are pre-forma or post-forma, allowing for many more builds to be made with fewer forma, and the capability of forma’ing an item up to 60 times (covering all 10 slots of a Warframe with the 6 potential polarities) to cover being able to reduce the drain of by half, of every permutation of mods that exists to equip on said item.  Different polarities, after a forma, would be able to be equipped in different places on different configs, in essence. 

-Endgame missions would have no conclave limits to begin with. 

-Conclave rating would be calculated individually and separately for each individual weapon and the Warframe currently being used, not added together for a combined conclave rating, otherwise this system could be easily exploited. 

-This would require someone to sit down and redefine mod values as per usefulness, as well as relative to rarity, maybe on a scale of 1 – 10 of usefulness ranks, based on the most used mods being a 10 and the least used ones being a 1. 

" 

Also, this is a semi-practical idea I proposed to go along with my other idea, in the Trinity 'Rework' (nerf) feedback thread.  Do you think the two would work together?  

"

The only problem I see with that is that nobody has mentioned exactly how to go about making enemies scale, with numbers or calculations.  I suppose that's kinda almost impossible for an individual to do, but I'll present something that I thought could conceptually work, here.  These are just a few quick sketches I made while responding to this post:  

<Also, how do I insert images here?  If I can figure that out, I'll put them here.>  

This is more or a concept sketch, just to say in advance.  Essentially, the idea is that, with level on the x-axis as the independent variable, enemy difficulty is on the y-axis as the dependent variable, and the graph ends up looking like a Euler's method approximation of the enemy scaling graphs we see on the wiki as smooth curves, composed of secants connecting the enemy difficulty linearly every 10 levels, but with a twist (jumps in difficulty as enemies cross each 10 level boundary).  

On a graphing calculator (https://www.desmos.com/calculator), it should look like the piece-wise function: 

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/barbxff0ig   Nevermind, I put it together and it let me save it and give a link to what I made!  Thanks, Desmos!  

Essentially, consider using x/10 as the enemy difficulty rating from levels 1-10 of enemies { x | 1 < or = x < 10 }, and 2x/10 or x/5 as a difficulty rating for enemies from levels 10-20 { x | 10 < or = x < 20 }, and repeat the pattern for all other multiples of x/10, and f(x) = x would determine the enemy relative difficulty from levels 90-100 { x | 90 < or = x < 100}, and so on.  This is the general idea of what I had in mind.  If anyone has some ideas to add to this, or revise this, that'd be great.  

" 

I've been typing up a long post of ideas for entire game reworks, and this is a part of it.  How does it look?  Am I wasting my time on it, or could these ideas potentially be useful?