Akkad In the crosshairs; a look at powerlvling

[SquireAngel]

So, first off, I'm not real salty about the beams/rafters being removed from Akkad. They were nice for when you had a squishier frame and wanted to rank up guns safely. Now, you just gotta bounce around a bit to avoid the Mutalist spoog puddles, which isn't too bad (although annoying when someone faints in one and you have to revive them ¬_____¬). However, Draco was in the corsshairs of DE, and that got flatout removed with the new Starmap. So, as one who uses such locations to power level through the endless slog of reranking forma, I'm concerned for what may be coming for our grind location. To be honest, the newer Wf players have this odd obsession with getting to higher MR asap, and I can get DE trying to reign in these players, as higher MR in no way =/= more power. However, the fact remains that If DE is looking to fix this, removing/nerfing Akkad is not the answer. 

[John89brensen]

Go to Bere, is the new Draco.

 

[That1Cactus]

Survival Draco is still pretty useful.

[(XBOX)josh11770]

3 minutes ago, John89brensen said:

Go to Bere, is the new Draco.

 

berehynia? ye but i never see anyone there they at akkad and other defense missions...

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

But it is certainly part of the solution. 

Exciting and engaging gameplay is not sitting in a single location and spamming abilities or explosives without the single risk of being damaged, and allowing one's playerbase to craft their meta around these locations makes for poor progression, the nullification of game mechanics, and the inability on the side of the playerbase to engage high-level content underneath different scenarios.

Loot caves aren't inherently bad. There will always be a location that grants the best loot the most often, it is simply how these locations are approached by players and whether or not they are the intended progression. 

I would argue that sitting on some beams is likely not the way the devs want progression to be handled.

[John89brensen]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)josh11770 said:

berehynia? ye but i never see anyone there they at akkad and other defense missions...

Go to recruit chat, Bere is a mission for organized people, just like Draco was.

[John89brensen]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

But it is certainly part of the solution. 

Exciting and engaging gameplay is not sitting in a single location and spamming abilities or explosives without the single risk of being damaged, and allowing one's playerbase to craft their meta around these locations makes for poor progression, the nullification of game mechanics, and the inability on the side of the playerbase to engage high-level content underneath different scenarios.

 

I have to disagree, at least partially.

The solution would be addressing the powercreep in the game, or the constant new layers of grind added every few months.

Sure camping a mission with a specific squad and spamming abilities is as exciting as drinking coffee in the morning. After a while Draco could become a very toxic thing, i mean for the player himself. But tell me, how is the solution releasing mods that trivialise content, or warframes with powers than can obliterate dozens of enemies in a single strike, or worse, afk builds that require little to no input from the player. And this is not exclusive of xp farming, this is endemic in a lot of missions.

9 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

Loot caves aren't inherently bad. There will always be a location that grants the best loot the most often, it is simply how these locations are approached by players and whether or not they are the intended progression. 

Yes, there will always be a location where the loot is great, and people will gather there to farm what they need, be it resources, or xp. And while you make some fine points about camping in Akkad (and the same could be said of Draco) didn't DE also nerfed Cerberus? A mission that had both a nice level of challenge and was a great oxium farm. So its not like DE has only nerfed XP loot caves.

Edited September 24, 2016 by John89brensen

[Takkov]

The worst decision imo was adding the affinity sharing range to the frames in interception missions, because if you want to play those, you dont get any affinity from other players, as the cpature points are sometimes far more than 50m away from each other, resulting in a situation where a spammer in the middle is the only possible solution.

Though I like the affinity range for the most part, its just ridiculous how much xp for doing interception like its meant to be was nerfed with this decision

[SquireAngel]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

But it is certainly part of the solution. 

Exciting and engaging gameplay is not sitting in a single location and spamming abilities or explosives without the single risk of being damaged, and allowing one's playerbase to craft their meta around these locations makes for poor progression, the nullification of game mechanics, and the inability on the side of the playerbase to engage high-level content underneath different scenarios.

Loot caves aren't inherently bad. There will always be a location that grants the best loot the most often, it is simply how these locations are approached by players and whether or not they are the intended progression. 

I would argue that sitting on some beams is likely not the way the devs want progression to be handled.

Part of the solution? Sure, I can see that. I will never be against the progression of the game, and if DE can come up with a solution, I'm all for it. However, when a problem is multifaceted, hitting it from the same angle over and over again doesn't fix it. It can take an hour or more trying to rank new weaponry to max, and then an hour or so for every forma, and with primed mods and the like, it can take 4-7 forma on some builds just to be able to slot in a complete build. 

When i get my hands on a shiny new toy, I want to play with it. When the Synidcate melee weapons dropped, it took me about...oh, 30ish Akkad runs to get them all maxed and forma'd to hold more than 4 mods, this including potatos. I'm not saying that allowing players to use Akkad in an AFK fashion is healthy, and that's why I'm not real concerned about the rafter removal. I'm more concerned that DE will keep hitting the nail on the head, when there are many more parts that need addressing in addition. 

7 minutes ago, John89brensen said:

Go to recruit chat, Bere is a mission for organized people, just like Draco was.

This is why we can't have nice things. Bere groups are boring as all hell, and I don't want to spend my time sitting picking my nose on a bock, or pole, as I believe the new location on Bere is?

[John89brensen]

1 minute ago, SquireAngel said:

This is why we can't have nice things. Bere groups are boring as all hell, and I don't want to spend my time sitting picking my nose on a bock, or pole, as I believe the new location on Bere is?

Yup, hard to believe its even more boring than Draco. I mean the map is great, i really like how its laid out, except for that giant stream of toxic waste/mucosa. But you dont actually experience anything of the map, thanks to Saryn's spore build, or Banshee's Quake build (the most afk of the 2)

For me the problem is that DE doesnt address this, the powercreep. The map is inconsequential, i mean Akkad has other places where you can easily camp. 

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

4 minutes ago, John89brensen said:

I have to disagree, at least partially.

The solution would be addressing the powercreep in the game, or the constant new layers of grind added every few months.

Sure camping a mission with a specific squad and spamming abilities is as exciting as drinking coffee in the morning. After a while Draco could become a very toxic thing, i mean for the player himself. But tell me, how is the solution releasing mods that trivialise content, or warframes with powers than can obliterate dozens of enemies in a single strike, or worse, afk builds that require little to no input from the player. And this is not exclusive of xp farming, this is endemic in a lot of missions.

6

I believe this a problem with not being able to decide where the endgame is going to cap players. The story is still underway, content is slowly rising in difficulty, and players are becoming more powerful. Most damaging abilities fall off greatly at mid to endgame, some of the CC abilities used past that point received nerfs and buffs and nerfs again.

While builds designed around AFK is also a problem, just that DE redesigned Snowglobe so as to allow the Frost player more freedom of movement, as well as reducing Mesa's Peacemaker, points at development toward a reduction of AFK behavior.

12 minutes ago, John89brensen said:

Yes, there will always be a location where the loot is great, and people will gather there to farm what they need, be it resources, or xp. And while you make some fine points about camping in Akkad (and the same could be said of Draco) didn't DE also nerfed Cerberus? A mission that had both a nice level of challenge and was a great oxium farm. So its not like DE has only nerfed XP loot caves.

3

There are 'good' and 'bad' loot caves. 

A 'good' loot cave is one balanced around the idea that it is a loot cave. The location awards the player greatly but also brings forth a healthy layer of challenge to compliment it, also known as a 'risk for reward' system.

A 'bad' loot cave is one that doesn't offer anything in the way of risk or very little risk, and goes straight to the reward. These loot caves are often found as the playerbase learns how to cheese certain mechanics and missions, and are never intended.

Akkad, for example, wasn't nerfed in the sense that there is less of an Affinity gain, as this Affinity gain hadn't been ridiculous, it was just the way the Affinity was being gained was nerfed. Weapons can still be leveled, as well as Warframes, just as well, there is now risk involved, requiring the player to plan and mod accordingly. A team focused around the idea could still use this location just as effectively.

Cerberus certainly lowered the reward and increased the risk, at least depending on how you look at it. I would guess the reward was considered too great for the risk involved.

14 minutes ago, SquireAngel said:

Part of the solution? Sure, I can see that. I will never be against the progression of the game, and if DE can come up with a solution, I'm all for it. However, when a problem is multifaceted, hitting it from the same angle over and over again doesn't fix it. It can take an hour or more trying to rank new weaponry to max, and then an hour or so for every forma, and with primed mods and the like, it can take 4-7 forma on some builds just to be able to slot in a complete build. 

When i get my hands on a shiny new toy, I want to play with it. When the Synidcate melee weapons dropped, it took me about...oh, 30ish Akkad runs to get them all maxed and forma'd to hold more than 4 mods, this including potatos. I'm not saying that allowing players to use Akkad in an AFK fashion is healthy, and that's why I'm not real concerned about the rafter removal. I'm more concerned that DE will keep hitting the nail on the head, when there are many more parts that need addressing in addition.

9

For sure. I can't disagree there. All relevant issues need equal attention.

[John89brensen]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

The story is still underway, content is slowly rising in difficulty, and players are becoming more powerful. Most damaging abilities fall off greatly at mid to endgame, some of the CC abilities used past that point received nerfs and buffs and nerfs again.

Yeah but cmon, for 3 years we got by with barely any story, one event every few months bringing a few pieces of lore. Now we get one piece of lore every half a year it seems. Im also gonna have to disagree with the rising difficulty, i mean i just dont see it anywhere, sorties dont really count as rising the difficulty since they were introduced a year ago, and we have nothing new since then. And yes, we've kept becoming more and more powerful, without a minute to  balance all that power.

As for the abilities i agree, most damaging abilities have severe damage fall off after a certain threshold, the problem is that there is very little of that content locked beyond that threshold.

9 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

While builds designed around AFK is also a problem, just that DE redesigned Snowglobe so as to allow the Frost player more freedom of movement, as well as reducing Mesa's Peacemaker, points at development toward a reduction of AFK behavior.

Sure, but at the same time we got a Banshee augment that (properly supported) can reduce a map to ashes, an Ash that can wipe out an entire room in seconds, an Ivara that no longer needs to maneuver around laser barriers, an Ember that turns every exterminate mission into a "sprint to the exit".

17 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

A 'good' loot cave is one balanced around the idea that it is a loot cave. The location awards the player greatly but also brings forth a healthy layer of challenge to compliment it, also known as a 'risk for reward' system.

Agreed, but in Warframe that only lasts until the next update. If we are using that concept to define a loot cave then there are no loot caves in Warframe, or at least no good loot caves.

 

18 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

A 'bad' loot cave is one that doesn't offer anything in the way of risk or very little risk, and goes straight to the reward. These loot caves are often found as the playerbase learns how to cheese certain mechanics and missions, and are never intended.

Akkad, for example, wasn't nerfed in the sense that there is less of an Affinity gain, as this Affinity gain hadn't been ridiculous, it was just the way the Affinity was being gained was nerfed. Weapons can still be leveled, as well as Warframes, just as well, there is now risk involved, requiring the player to plan and mod accordingly. A team focused around the idea could still use this location just as effectively.

Funny thing is that Akkad wanst anything new, i was running missions there camping those rafters when Draco was on its prime. And sure affinity wasn't great, but it was one of the best palces to speed level a non draco frame, alone. Challenging? Not at all, just like Draco, just like Bere. 

But just nerfing that spot in Akkad, seems of little importance, considering how many other camping spots are in the same map, or how people can use even more specific builds to completely cheese the map.

This is just like when DE nerfed those big columns in ODD, used to be you could climb pretty high, well above danger and just rain death in the most absurd way. But even after the nerf you can still climb high enough that you can avoid most forms of danger. 

25 minutes ago, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

Cerberus certainly lowered the reward and increased the risk, at least depending on how you look at it. I would guess the reward was considered too great for the risk involved.

So, less reward and more risk than before, instead of the same reward and more risk. The mission was challenging enough that made it inpractical to stay more than 3/4 rounds, but still, sounds like a nerf to me, and a big one at that.