Ultimate Balance Issue: Efficiency vs. Fun

[ZENCHOU]

I fear that there is an exponentially widening gap with the amount of time spent playing and reward to be earned. What do I mean by this? I mean that as prizes and sense of achievement have noticeably diminished many of us, myself included, have begun to sacrifice our sense of "fun" in exchange for increased efficiency in completing tasks. One of the biggest examples being endless missions which do not offer sufficient incentive to stay for extended periods of time, which drives many of us to instead elect to do as many quickly-completed mission modes while spending as little time as possible in them. This is especially apparent in Void fissure missions, where the majority of players treat them as though they had a time-limit to finish.

This shows in players' choice of weapons, Warframes, and mods as well. Players will, more often than not, take what is most effective for the task at hand rather than their preferred or favorite loadouts. I can give a personal example: since the beginning my favorite frame has been Excalibur, but he is one of my least-used frames because I feel like I get nowhere fast by using him. Taking time in missions and actually "playing the game" feels like it comes at the cost of getting anything accomplished. I end up, like many people do, defaulting to my cheesiest loadouts to obliterate everything with as little effort and skill as possible. Why bother cutting up all the baddies when I can bladestorm them all with max-efficiency Ash or hoover them all up with Mirage and simulor? I usually have to listen to podcasts in the background to save me from the tedium of going through missions on autopilot and it is still an Odyssey to get anything done. At this time DE's only solution is to nerf these loadouts, exacerbating the issue and infuriating the players as evidenced by countless threads complaining about the constant nerfs.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

Fun is fleeting.  Efficiency will always win in the end as you chase the high you once had.

[haloamted]

Sounds to me like you're not playing a fun game, but doing a tedious chore.

I am the other type of player ^{(I guess)}, that'll run as Trinity with a Vectis prime in a exterminate mission if I feel like doing some running sniping on a high ceiling pipe, bullet jumping between walls, and going in hot from the air with a neon blue Bo Prime, because its fun for me, the game I mean. But I know there's that cookie, I could have tried my chances, 3 times rushing thru a fissure mission for parts I wanted instead of doing that exterminate.

And even if I did the fissures instead of the exterminate, and got the parts I wanted, there's always other parts, for another thing I want. In the end, I'll have all the things I rushed to get, in a game I don't enjoy just playing in.

And I guess that sounds silly to say with the game being Warframe, the entire game is focused around collecting parts and building new things. What I am saying is that, if you can't find the fun without being rewarded, when you've rushed thru everything and have what you want, you'll have nothing. So, if you can't find the fun without being rewarded, maybe this game isn't for you.

About DE and "nerfing", some frames needs a change. As a Trinity lover from first mission played, the 99% dmg reduction needed to change, but I would've prefed that change came after a fix on enemy scaling. And I don't want that fix tomorrow, I wanted it 8 months ago. But that's another topic. 

I hope people understand that we really, really need frames that excels others in every aspects of the game. If you removed a frames ability that makes them more efficient to said aspects of the game, we'll all play as basically the same warframe with the only thing different about us is the skin and name of it. We definitely need frames that's more efficient than another one, but, we can and should however manage how much it is.

Nyx for example, is one of those warframes I pick on Sortie missions if there's a mobile d/defense mission and I really don't got the time, but I want the daily reward. As it is right now, I press 3 for a 62m range Chaos and we're golden. If they changed Chaos from affecting all enemies to 60% of them ^{(obvious easy example)}, seeing Nyx join your sortie will still be a nice and very helpful as that still excels most frames on that mission type, but not a press 3 and 'we're done lads' frame.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Well, what can we do, they basically killed endless missions, leaving us only with "complete as fast as you can" types of missions where you get your payoff at the end of mission reward screen and are pretty much penalised for spending more time to achieve the same result.

It DE wants people to take their time and complete missions, they need to bring endless missions back from the grave. They probably also need to work on adding more stuff akin to syndicate marks, cephalon fragments, synthesis targets and orokin vaults and treasure rooms, to actually motivate players to explore the maps... And they probably need to add more incentives to actually kill enemies, since now they drop the same old mods over and over and pay little to no XP or cash anyway. Why bother clearing rooms in missions other than exterminate and survival when I can just rush the objective and be done with the mission in five time less.

Edited August 15, 2016 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[LuckyCharm]

Sadly I have to agree here. I slice and dice my way through everything as fast as possible in void runs since it doesn't feel like it offers anything new. 

However if I want to mess around and have fun... well then.. Lock n load bby, I'll whip out my stug or penta or castanas or whatever other fun weapon I feel like using at the time and run some ODD solo and see how high I can go with just my guns

[TaylorsContraction]

Sounds to me like that's your personal choice. I bring my favorite frames and load outs to every mission so long as they can get the job done. Plus I know at least two if the players in my group will be people like you who if anything can carry me to victory though I'd like to think my performance is never so subpar.

Yes occasionally I have to farm neural sensors or argon crystals and will dust off my hydroid, but I rarely used mirage and don't even own either simulors. They were just mastery fodder for me.

[Tizodd]

I've said it once, and I'll say it again...it's the Mission Summary screen.

The Mission Summary screen is what causes people to rush through missions trying to get more kills than their teammates.

The Mission Summary screen is the reason someone can get downed in a mission and no one will bother to revive them because they don't want to miss out on a few kills.

The Mission Summary screen has no positive impact on co-op play.

The stats in the Mission Summary screen should be kept private, so people can play and enjoy the game rather than being so concerned with getting the highest numbers on the Mission Summary screen.

The Mission Summary screen is a pvp tool in most games...a pvp tool that should stay in pvp.  Co-op gaming shouldn't be about competing with your teammates, it should be about cooperation.  But thanks to the Mission Summary screen, most players view their teammates as competition.