De, Why You Need Stronger Enemies And Why Specialization Is Good

[NalkorRN]

Shoot ancient in the foot with a level 30 weapon using decent mods and even up to level 50 ancients will die in seconds.

Or you could just spam charge attacks with a heavy melee weapon to stun them forever.

 

You're failure is due to a crappy player, not any sort of advantage of strengths the enemies had.  Which in no way invalidates anything I've said.

Also thanks for reading too far into my example using an enemy type that doesn't exist and was never implied to be added.  It was a tool to show the usefulness of specializing and the depth it adds to gameplay.

And secondly if you have zero faith in DE why are you playing this game?  I have faith in them which is the main reason I offer feedback, because instead of being complacent with this game and its non existent difficulty I think it can be better.  Players should be challenged, and if they cannot rise to meet it they need to improve.

TLDR : Get gud

You're full of crap, for starters. I've got a few weapons supercharged, my favorite being my LEX and Gorgon, Boltor needs a Catalyst, that'll be the next one getting supercharged. I'm very adept at sniping across large rooms and in packs of enemies to try and blow their right foot off, it's actually a little too easy. It's just that in every other mission type, you get a few Ancients per huge spawn, that's pretty much it. They keep the 'Elite' part of 'Elite Mook' and take priority over everything else while still being uncommon to rare. The higher waves of defense missions and suddenly they're everywhere.

They possess 200% resistance to everything bar a few weapons and I believe are immune to electricity. That right there on top of their (somewhat) absurd hp just screams bullet sponge, hence my use of the Gorgon/LEX or Kunai, to put out as much damage as possible in their weak point to kill them.

I had never even done these new alert missions before today, and since it was on Uranus, I didn't expect the levels of the enemies to climb quite so rapidly when reaching wave 15-20, and Ash was performing well enough at that point. Sure it wasn't like Ember using OH and WOF, but I could still make short work of a couple Ancients moving towards the catwalk I alone was guarding, so it all seemed just fine until suddenly hey, a bunch of bullet sponges all around. Either you hit their weakspots at range and do a lot of damage to them, or the RNG sends your bullet just above and you do much less damage. The awkward crosshair doesn't help too much either.

I've soloed a good number of levels on Pluto using Ash, Excalibur, and Rhino. I can hit running packs of chargers/leapers with the LEX/Latron no problem. In fact, I do better with the Latron and LEX than I do with the Gorgon because I have to make each shot count, weapons with poor aim like the Gorgon are just asking for a few bullets to not connect with the weak spots.

On a final note, you should expect people to read a lot into suggestions of any kind posted here, because for all they know, if they don't read enough into it, you'll come back and yell at them for not taking you seriously. It's the internet after all, I hope for the best when interacting with others, but we all know hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

edit: fixed several awful spelling errors.

Edited June 22, 2013 by NalkorRN

[Ced23Ric]

Last thing I heard, DE is working on difficulty sliders. I have no idea what this entails, but here's to hope. Would appreciate a challenge, too.

[NalkorRN]

Last thing I heard, DE is working on difficulty sliders. I have no idea what this entails, but here's to hope. Would appreciate a challenge, too.

I honestly hope the slider would be mainly for adjusting how good the enemy AI is. I do think Ancients should be rare no matter what mission you're doing since they're you know, Ancients.

[-Kittens-]

I played it for almost a year. With others hundreds of thousands people. And this was a pure PvE game, and also paid one. This fact could tell you something about quality of it, and why DE could use something from it as example.

Also if the part about 2 seconds kill is all you that you understood from my previous post, then you probably must learn how to read more than 5 words at a time.

 

Remember your first 2 weeks ;)

Also, show me, where I used words "copy it" in my post. Please.

 

 

I had an asari adept with a level 5 Carnifex and a Krogan Sentinel with a GPS and Graal within two weeks. Until the Collectors were released the games was never hard again.

 

MEMP was also explicitly blanced around SIlver difficulty. As the guy who put forward the Geth Juggernaut, I can tell you that making everything rdiculously stacked in difficulty will turn off more of your player base than turn it on.

 

DE has already implemented a system of weapon tiering that allows for both difficult and easy play.

 

As lovely as a MP SciFi MP Dark/Demon's Souls might be to some, it would be absolute anathema to most, for rather obvious reasons, and the metrics of MEMP prove rather irrefutably. At this time, since launch, more missions failed than succeeded across the player base. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

 

Most of the players I play with in both games listed here do not and will not ever have the amount of time and skill necessary to get to a point where they puposefully take gimped kits to make the game "hard".

 

This game is very wide and not very deep, and the financial and thematic reasons why aren't terribly difficult to justify or figure out.

 

AI is also incredibly hard to do well because it also requires enormous presentation in game terms with animation and effectation in modern titles.

 

What you're asking for is ridiculously expensive to do in both presentation and man hours.

 

 

 

Shoot ancient in the foot with a level 30 weapon using decent mods and even up to level 50 ancients will die in seconds.

 

 

A platinum banshee will die in exactly 1.8 seconds when warped and hit with a Level X Reegar with Incend IV and Shotgun Amp III; a platinum VIP Atlas takes roughly 3  to take out.

 

Your view is subjectively slanted  at best.

Edited June 22, 2013 by -Kittens-

[DiabolusUrsus]

Just thought I'd weigh in a bit... yes, smarter enemies and more specialized team roles would be great... if everyone played Warframe only with groups of people they know personally while making good use of voice communication. The kind of coordination the OP seems to be searching for, the level of tactical decision making and systematic disassembly of more complicated enemies would without doubt be indescribably fun and entertaining.

The problem is that well... that system requires coordination and teamwork. Something which I think for anyone with any sort of experience at any time ever in public matches with random people over the internet in any game ever should know doesn't actually exist. In Warframe there are too many rushers and 'defense heroes' that can't tell the difference between Solo and cooperative play to make more complicated gameplay reasonably enjoyable. It's an unfortunate truth, but an unchanging one.

Even in situations where public teams are more inclined towards cooperation than usual, people are still going to be jumping into matches with their personal favorite loadouts. Which will inevitably lead to teams of snipers, or teams completely lacking snipers, or teams that don't have anyone built to counter a specific type of enemy that may or may not even show up.

I'm all for adding variable difficulty, as well as a bit more of a demanding thought process when it comes to blowing or slicing enemies into itty-bitty pieces. The key is making certain that the introduction of such features doesn't completely destroy the existing game atmosphere, alienating everyone who plays this game to have a bit of mindless fun cutting swathes of destruction through hapless enemies.

[NalkorRN]

I had an asari adept with a level 5 carniferx and a Krogan sentinel with a GPS within two weeks. UNtil the collectors were released the games was never hard again. MEMP was also explicitly blanced around SIlver difficulty. As the guy who put forward the Geth Juggernaut, I can tell you that making everything rdiculously stacked in difficulty will turn off more of your player base than turn it on.

 

DE has laready implemented as system of weapon tiering that allows for both difficult and easy play.

 

As lovely as a MP SciFi MP Dark/Demon's Souls might be to some, it would be absolute anathema to most, for rather obvious reasons, and the metrics of MEMP prove rather irrefutably. At this time more, missions failed than succeeded across the player base.

 

Most of the players I play in both games listed here do not and will not ever have the amount of time and skill necessary tog et to a point where the puposefully take gimped kits to make the game "hard".

 

This is very wide and not very deep, and the financial reasons why aren't terribly to justify or figure out.

DeS/DkS are already the exact opposite of Warframe. In DeS/DkS, you fought one to a few slow moving enemies at a time, they did a lot of damage to you and vice versa, bosses could one-shot you and were tests of endurance and recognizing their patterns. Every time you died in DkS, it was your fault and your's alone (aside from twinked out invaders who have infite Divine Blessings through duping) and you were supposed to man-up and figure out what you did wrong. Hell, the tagline for Dark Souls is "Prepare to Die."

Compare trailers from Warframe/every other game on the market to Dark Souls. In every other trailer, your characters are doing awesome and bad-&#! stuff. In the Dark Souls trailers? It shows your character dying no less than eleven times before even 45 seconds have passed.

I'm not asking for that kind of difficulty because the game wouldn't allow it. I'm just asking for a bit of fairness. Grineer and Corpus are a shining example of being fair and challenging, the different types of enemies within the faction have their strengths, weaknesses, attack patterns, and ultimately cover for each other. Infested and Ancients in general are just rushers and no real tactics involved. That's why I'm against the idea of any kind of Super Ancient, even if the post isn't meant to be taken very seriously, for all I know, DE might see the first post in the thread and actually consider a more powerful Ancient to be a good idea and they'd likely end up balancing it all kinds of wrong.

[Nohra]

A platinum banshee will die in exactly 1.8 seconds when warped and hit with a Level X Reegar with Incend IV and Shotgun Amp III; a platinum VIP Atlas takes roughly 3  to take out.

 

Your view is subjectively slanted  at best.

And that was also an exploit that Bioware never got around to fixing for whatever reason. Personally I blame EA's godawful priorities when it came to that final patch, among other things. Also Incinerate + Incendiary was proven to be more effective.

 

Meanwhile, completely legit, I've got an Ogris that has some room for improvement still that can one shot Lv40 ancients. Several of them. At the same time. And the only thing that really makes those level 100 heavy gunners in Orokin towers tough is that their armor has scaled to the point of ridiculousness, since it's far too easy to get behind a wall to reset their Gorgon's wind up, then hit them with a frost effect so they'll never fire another bullet ever again.

[-Kittens-]

And that was also an exploit that Bioware never got around to fixing for whatever reason. Personally I blame EA's godawful priorities when it came to that final patch, among other things. Also Incinerate + Incendiary was proven to be more effective.

 

Meanwhile, completely legit, I've got an Ogris that has some room for improvement still that can one shot Lv40 ancients. Several of them. At the same time. And the only thing that really makes those level 100 heavy gunners in Orokin towers tough is that their armor has scaled to the point of ridiculousness, since it's far too easy to get behind a wall to reset their Gorgon's wind up, then hit them with a frost effect so they'll never fire another bullet ever again.

 

It wasn't fixed because it allowed players with fair aim to deal with bosses with low level weapons, and Incendiary + Inferno grenades was a known thing since before Level IV ammo was even an idea.

 

Warp Ammo IV does the same job as above, as you say "completly legit"  with no ignored glitch, and it will actually do it faster owing to accuracy and weapon bonuses per class, and we haven't even covered Demolishers or classes with Warp and Shockwave whom are able to bust out 7000 points of unilateral resistance-ignoring death by themselves every 4 seconds. 

 

There's a reason why blacks and golds tend to be much the same in slightly different mechanical trapping  or simply weapons in different skins, and the best of each category is actually a gold outside of the Javelin, Harrier and Hurricane.

 

Maxing a character out in ME takes 4/5 gold or 3/4platinum with an average completion time of 15 minutes, maxing a gold weapon takes about 4 arsenal packs since a selected weapon has about 75% skewed chance for duplication once it's assigned by the store for drop.

 

You're not getting a level 30 Ash + Ogris with max multi and serration in an hour, not even close, not even being carred at Xini by BroFrame close.

 

The fact fact you have an Ogris means an absolute buttload of time was spent by quite a bit more players than just you in turning the logistical gears to make it happen in the first place.

 

While the factions could certainly receive tuning in "squad awareness and tactics", it's equally pretty clear that subjective is being used for objective in a rather hamfisted manner in thje above suggested changes.

 

Not everyone is an expert nor should everyone ever be expected to be.

Edited June 22, 2013 by -Kittens-

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

OP I lost all support for you once you unleashed that awful idea of an enemy. Also, stop misusing "literally" there is not a literal elephant in your room.

[Hixlysss]

After reading this, I'm reminding that some clan mates of mine where complaining that the Disruptor "Needs a Nerf" because it drains all your shields and energy with one slow, but powerful, hit. The problem with implementing enemies that are like the "Super Ancient" is that people are already so used to just pressing one button and being able to splatter everything to the point they want stuff nerfed even more so they can just run around and feel like gods.

 

This is where, in my opinion, a choice has to be made. Should the game be a "ZOMG, I are super duper powerful space ninja that kills people with shiny blades in one hit!" Which, I will admit, can be fun. Nothing is more satisfying that after a long day of being able to play a game and just kill EVERYTHING easily, just being able to mow down 200 enemies with like 5 moves just sound so fun.

 

OR! Do we want a game where we have to be "I am space ninja! But these guys are super duper powerful and I must learn their weaknesses so I can strike them down easily!" Which is also fun and adds challenge to the game. Some days we are bored, want something to make us think. Getting our group of friends together for a void run, one guy decked out to handle the moa's, another ready to take on the ancient healer, then another guy for the mobs, leaving the last guy as a healer or some such.

 

Right now, the game feels more like its a "ZOMG, I are super duper space ninja cyborg that kills everything with one move!" which is fine, for some people. But, there is a way for BOTH options to work together, and it's in the game. Void keys and Alerts. The general "Go to planet A, do 20 missions" would be the "Yay! Space ninja kill everything in one shot, woohoo!" missions. Where as the "Must prepair for the coming storm" missions would be the alerts and void keys, which would require you to plan things out, specialize your warframe to handle certain enemies, and be smart.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

After reading this, I'm reminding that some clan mates of mine where complaining that the Disruptor "Needs a Nerf" because it drains all your shields and energy with one slow, but powerful, hit. The problem with implementing enemies that are like the "Super Ancient" is that people are already so used to just pressing one button and being able to splatter everything to the point they want stuff nerfed even more so they can just run around and feel like gods.

 

This is where, in my opinion, a choice has to be made. Should the game be a "ZOMG, I are super duper powerful space ninja that kills people with shiny blades in one hit!" Which, I will admit, can be fun. Nothing is more satisfying that after a long day of being able to play a game and just kill EVERYTHING easily, just being able to mow down 200 enemies with like 5 moves just sound so fun.

 

OR! Do we want a game where we have to be "I am space ninja! But these guys are super duper powerful and I must learn their weaknesses so I can strike them down easily!" Which is also fun and adds challenge to the game. Some days we are bored, want something to make us think. Getting our group of friends together for a void run, one guy decked out to handle the moa's, another ready to take on the ancient healer, then another guy for the mobs, leaving the last guy as a healer or some such.

 

Right now, the game feels more like its a "ZOMG, I are super duper space ninja cyborg that kills everything with one move!" which is fine, for some people. But, there is a way for BOTH options to work together, and it's in the game. Void keys and Alerts. The general "Go to planet A, do 20 missions" would be the "Yay! Space ninja kill everything in one shot, woohoo!" missions. Where as the "Must prepair for the coming storm" missions would be the alerts and void keys, which would require you to plan things out, specialize your warframe to handle certain enemies, and be smart.

Did you like, snort pixie sticks before writing this? Either way you can't, or at least shouldn't, try to mix two opposing gameplay styles. As you mentioned this game goes for a very quick instant-gratification action game. Fast, cheap one hit kills and lots of them. DE shouldn't try to turn it halfway into a survival horror, that'll just make both sides of it lackluster as they try to waffle around and balance it. If they want the game to have any modicum of quality they should pick the path they want (the path its taking as is, most likely) and refine it and make it as damn good as they can.

 

 Trying to turn it into dark souls will just drag the entire product's quality down. If you want to play dark souls, go play dark souls. It's a fine game, but it doesn't belong in warframe.

[NalkorRN]

Did you like, snort pixie sticks before writing this? Either way you can't, or at least shouldn't, try to mix two opposing gameplay styles. As you mentioned this game goes for a very quick instant-gratification action game. Fast, cheap one hit kills and lots of them. DE shouldn't try to turn it halfway into a survival horror, that'll just make both sides of it lackluster as they try to waffle around and balance it. If they want the game to have any modicum of quality they should pick the path they want (the path its taking as is, most likely) and refine it and make it as damn good as they can.

 

 Trying to turn it into dark souls will just drag the entire product's quality down. If you want to play dark souls, go play dark souls. It's a damn awesome game, but it doesn't belong in warframe.

There, I fixed that for you, bolded parts. DE did make a survival horror game using Tenno, it's called Dark Sector where the main character was Hayden Tenno. Warframe is what it is, any mixing of genres right now would be very bad for the game, something we both acknowledge.

[MoyuTheTrinity]

I would like to see enemys have player limitations

they have everything but potatos  our mods and everything lower the hp count the weapon damage make every number point count

then balance maybebuff up the ai

this will allow more things that arnt jsut stacking damage to be just as good

and a few badguys get some powers like ours? hey a medical greneeir! oh no a ninja corpus he might thro shuriken!

holy crap a ironskin charger!!!!!

bosses get potatos and forma depending on how high level they are and lore

it would allow real skill base challanging combat that has no powercreep keep it at a limit

Edited June 22, 2013 by MoyuTheMedic

[Mhak]

+1 from me OP.

 

I think the biggest flaw with this game right now is the lack of challenge. Even solo on t3 endless defense I can last a longass time, and clear solo t3 voids with little difficulty. This is not because I am a gamer god, this is because these things which are supposed to be the hardest parts of the game are just way too easy.

 

We need some SERIOUSLY high level missions, with individual enemies that take quite a bit of strategy and work to kill. We need to be forced to retreat and regroup more often because the enemy is just too strong to try to steamroll through. We need smart enemies who know how to fight the Tenno - specialized Corpus and Grineer ship defenders specially trained and equip to ward off Tenno intrusions. Lets face it, if the solar system is plagued with Tenno incursions f***ing up Corpus and Grineer operations, they're going to try their best to come up with much better counter-Tenno forces.

 

I want to fight those forces. I want a good fight, and I want to beat them just by the skin of my teeth and feel like I *earned* my damn victory.

[Kickboxing_Banana]

Try to play those new alerts with random teams, suddendly everything is harder. I hate it when people only play with private parties and then they complain there is no challenge.

[Mhak]

I'm in a two-man clan and the other dude is never on. I always play in random pugs, or completely solo.

 

This game is not a challenge.

[Trylobyte]

If this game isn't a challenge, maybe you can carry my level 10 Trinity with under-ranked weapons, no potatoes, and mid-level mods through the new defense missions so I can get my artifacts?  I mean, hey, if it's that easy for you...

[Mhak]

I missed the part where it not being a challenge meant I enjoyed doing pointless busy work for other people. I don't think you know how to properly challenge another person's opinion; you're not drawing any sort of link between those two points. Buy a Braton and hold down left trigger on random pug low level defense missions for about half an hour and then you should have more than enough mods and ranks contribute to an artifact defense mission and be valid.

 

*Edit*

That said when I get home from work I'd be glad to do so because I'll be doing more of those runs hopefully, and you're welcome to join me. Add me in game, Mhak is the tag. I've completed artifact defense runs with 3 other mags in the group on my Nyx, it *really* isn't a challenge and you're welcome to come see.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Mhak

[Enot83]

Last thing I heard, DE is working on difficulty sliders. I have no idea what this entails, but here's to hope. Would appreciate a challenge, too.

 

This could be implemented very intelligently that the tradeoff in difficulty could result in better rewards.   Unfortunately problems also arise from, events like the Fusion Moa one, why would anyone play with the difficulty slider in locations that didn't maximize the occurrence of event mobs with the minimum health value possible.

 

As you said, without knowing what it entails, hard to say.  Just wanting to point out, that some things like that come with a very large bag of problems, and for myself, after seeing U8 and how things were overlooked and not even considered or thought about until it blew up after implementation... I hope that better thought is put into things in the future to avoid glaring problems.

[Trylobyte]

I missed the part where it not being a challenge meant I enjoyed doing pointless busy work for other people. I don't think you know how to properly challenge another person's opinion; you're not drawing any sort of link between those two points. Buy a Braton and hold down left trigger on random pug low level defense missions for about half an hour and then you should have more than enough mods and ranks contribute to an artifact defense mission and be valid.

 

*Edit*

That said when I get home from work I'd be glad to do so because I'll be doing more of those runs hopefully, and you're welcome to join me. Add me in game, Mhak is the tag. I've completed artifact defense runs with 3 other mags in the group on my Nyx, it *really* isn't a challenge and you're welcome to come see.

 

Was (mostly) joking to see how you'd respond to it - A lot of people would flat-out decline, then I'd laugh at them for saying there's no challenge then turning a challenge (carrying a hopeless noob through a hard mission) down because it's, well, hard.  I do have some decent mods and another frame at max level (albeit no potato), and I've already finished one defense mission with the help of a Frost and a very competent Saryn.  However, once the higher levels start coming down I'm next to useless because I don't have all the high-end stuff yet (but I can still make some account of myself at least).

 

Well played sir.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Trylobyte

[Mhak]

Just stay slightly away from the cryopod behind cover to draw some fire (not enough to get yourself killed) and snipe with your braton. All I really need people to do is distract the enemies from attacking the cryopod for a very short amount of time before Chaos solves all problems.

 

Enemies attacking the cryopod? Chaos. Someone died and needs a rex? Chaos. Snowglobe/Bastille go down and the frost/vaubeard forgot? Chaos. Double-slit Experiment yet to be understood by even the world's best physicists? Chaos solves ALL PROBLEMS.

 

Seriously though I'd be happy to get you your artifact although be forewarned all 3 news ones are mostly crap. I have all 3 and still prefer my Energy Siphon at all times.

[Enot83]

Just stay slightly away from the cryopod behind cover to draw some fire (not enough to get yourself killed) and snipe with your braton. All I really need people to do is distract the enemies from attacking the cryopod for a very short amount of time before Chaos solves all problems.

 

Enemies attacking the cryopod? Chaos. Someone died and needs a rex? Chaos. Snowglobe/Bastille go down and the frost/vaubeard forgot? Chaos. Double-slit Experiment yet to be understood by even the world's best physicists? Chaos solves ALL PROBLEMS.

 

Seriously though I'd be happy to get you your artifact although be forewarned all 3 news ones are mostly crap. I have all 3 and still prefer my Energy Siphon at all times.

Some info being done on the armor reduction one, that could show at least if true, that it is incredibly useful.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/68022-rare-artifacts-overrated-pit-ponies/page-3#entry725641

 

Vetting still needs to take place on some of the information, but we have at least an expected range within that it functions.

 

And staying true to how amazing chaos is.  This will make chaos work incredibly well, so much so that energy siphon stacking may not be "best"

 

As to others needing help etc, if I'm around usually I'm willing to give a hand.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Enot83

[Mhak]

I didn't know there was that much work being done but I did have the armor reduction artifact pinged at about 10%ish, and figured it could stack like energy regen. Shield disruption seemed minimally useful for Corpus since you can just kill the shield drones pretty easily, and infested impedance might be useful if it weren't for the plethora of CC skills (like Chaos) that make it marginally useful at best.

 

But I use a forma'd lvl 30 Boltor and Kunai when I'm doing endless defense so the armor reduction one is meh for me, and I don't have a clan to group with so I only take mods that I know are useful to me. Maybe if I could be in a group with 3 stacking armor reduction artifacts and one energy siphon it could be awesome, but alas 'tis not so.

[Enot83]

I didn't know there was that much work being done but I did have the armor reduction artifact pinged at about 10%ish, and figured it could stack like energy regen. Shield disruption seemed minimally useful for Corpus since you can just kill the shield drones pretty easily, and infested impedance might be useful if it weren't for the plethora of CC skills (like Chaos) that make it marginally useful at best.

 

But I use a forma'd lvl 30 Boltor and Kunai when I'm doing endless defense so the armor reduction one is meh for me, and I don't have a clan to group with so I only take mods that I know are useful to me. Maybe if I could be in a group with 3 stacking armor reduction artifacts and one energy siphon it could be awesome, but alas 'tis not so.

 

Right, the new armor reduction mod thankfully makes none armor pen/ignoring weapons much more powerful than they were before, depending on be it the 5%, 5% applied twice or 10% will determine if it is actually better than energy siphon's utility and rifle amp with armor pen/ignoring weapons.  It is nice to see the potential of diverse new choices.  Out of the three it is potentially the better, followed by the infested, the shield one needs obvious changes.  But perhaps this is discussion for the other thread.

 

The notion holds true somewhat to this thread though, and to argue against definitive modding for particular mobs.  Having options the allow for a broad spectrum of viable play is imho a better route to take, within that route, increasing difficulty or introducing mobs that take perhaps more specified strategies to deal with works, but requiring item X to do so, is as arbitrary as 2 person doors.  This style of design, is very basic, and rather insulting.

[Caernarvon]

Agree with buffs to enemies. Not so much to resilience mind you, because they tend to be sturdy already, but to AI and abilities.