[The Index] General Feedback

[MartianJellyfish]

Right now there's only one thing that bothers me endlessly about this preview event - the way scoring works.

I've gotten over 5k points in Cryotic Front, over 3k in False Profit by helping other players. I've done over 50 waves in Shadow Debt for my clan to get a trophy. You could say I'm only mildly competitive, but the truth is that I just like to challenge myself and see how far I can go, and bring others with me along the way. I'm still a team player at most. That said, I wanted to run the Endurance mission of the Index with a coordinated team again, just to test how long we could last against the timer and the ever-scaling enemies. But then I found out that I can't, and I won't. There's no team play in individual scoring. I have 0 reason to be in a squad. Of course, I can just solo steamroll the enemies to avoid annoyances, but... where's the fun in that? Warframe is meant to be a co-op game, but then it isn't.

That said, I understand this is a 'preview' of the Index and that the full-scale event will come later, but that you're willing to hear our feedback on what you've got so far. And this is my personal feedback: Consider making the point scoring a team goal rather than an individual goal during the match. If someone is being a hoarder and banking all the points, the full squad should be rewarded from it. After all, this is a PvE mode, not PvP.

Otherwise... I guess I won't be caring as much as I thought I would about the full event (or the new game mode) when it comes. I'll just get my points, get my rewards, and be done with it.

[MobyTheDuck]

I'll try to be as calm as possible now.

Jesus @(*()$ CHRIST, who the F*** designed these robotic enemies? Who the F*** thought it would be a good idea to put them all in a SINGLE GROUP, along a Comba?

All of them have instakill attacks, and not telegraphed ones or something you can notice its coming, only BLAM DEAD attacks, along MASSIVE armor/shield/health, and they dont have energy or cooldowns like normal players, so they can just spam and spam and spam and spam and spam...
Even better when the Mag Specter uses her Shield Polorize skill and locks you in place like Jesus on the cross, making you die to anything around you, or when you respawn after 10 seconds, just to die to another instakill attack, since we have no mercy invinciblity here, and the enemies can spawn at the same second they die, usually close to you.

The Bursa has an invicible shield that covers almost 270º of his model, a small hitbox, with a SMALLER weak point, an instakill missile barrage, and because one AoE instakill attack isnt enough, it can raise an instakill laser wall at some points. I had a lot of games where this #@*&$@ just sit on the corridor, behind a laser wall and kept spamming rockets on the wall, instakilling everyone that wasnt a specter (because unlike them, we have penalities to our FIXED health/shields and limited energy)

The Raptor carpet bombs the entire map, even if you can see where the bombs will land, you dont know from where, which could be from ACROSS WALLS. Aside that it gets literally invincible after a few levels, even if its holding 10 points or more, you need to use some cheese strat to stop it, because it will just effortlessly fly into the capture point.

The Proxy has an instakill fireball with insane AoE, sometimes it blows on your face, sometimes it blows 50 meters from you, across 2 walls, it doesnt matters, its an instakill.

And the icing on the cake, there is a Comba enemy too. What, losing % of our shields and health, aside having decaying energy while holding a single point isnt enough? Lets have a Comba with increased range that gives you radiation procs!

I guess its going back to good old cheese strats to get anything here.

[Fatbluck]

These are my 2 cents...well 3 cents actually:

#1: Don't like the trolly play style encouraged with point stealing and individual point requirements. I've had more fun soloing because of this. Ideally, what I would like to see is: Credit reward based on whether your team wins or not. If individual goals still exist, then make everyone's reward affected by them. For instance, if all 4 players achieve the personal goal then it is 4x the credit reward for everyone. If only 1, then 1x. 

#2: The enemy scaling in the endurance portion of the event, seems absurd  to me. Making it difficult is important, but the ramp is too quick and too extreme. Easy enough to fix. Though, I think there should be less emphasis on enemies scaling in heath/damage, and more on AI, enemy abilities, and modifiers to frames.

#3: The event rewards, for me anyway, are hardly a passing thought. This may be a null point, because this is just a preview, and I know when the Index comes for realzies there's probably going to be better rewards. But, when there's no skin in the game, it definitely impacts the enjoyment. I would also like to see secondary rewards that encourage re-playing.

[Auron471]

When you actually put the index into the game keep the endless mode.

in the endless mode enemies scale up WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY to fast. its almost as if the scaling is +50 enemy lvls every time you bank ur points.

the index as of now is both PvE and PvP. instead of having a personal goal of say 100 in the high risk endurance, make a team goal of, idk, 100 + 75(Amount of players -1). whenever  i see my "Teammate" with lots of points (or really any amount of points) i REALLY hope that they die so i can steal all their points.

also whats with the constant energy drain? i dont know if that was a thing in the rathum event.

[Doc-Orange]

Here some other feedback.

I don't think that someone at DE played this before publishing. Warframe is not in a beta phase anymore. It's actually in alpha phase.

 

Edited October 22, 2016 by Doc-Orange

[PanicPrime]

So now I've played it a few times, here are my thoughts:

Point hoarding is anti-cooperative. Is this a cooperative game or competition against team mates? It isn't clear, but it IS annoying.

There isn't much reason to play it. Once I have the few mods it drops, why continue? 35k credits (or even the 75k) isn't enough to justify leaving the dark sectors, which are over quicker AND don't have the risk of loss.

 

And my biggest gripe, and I have a bad feeling it's going to be a "thing" for any new content added: Why does DE feel the constant need to drain or otherwise remove energy use?

This is supposed to be fun. Picking a warframe based on their powers is fun. Being permanently at 0 energy is not fun. I won't play any game mode where I can't use my powers on a regular basis. It just feels like an arbitrary "balance" to a system that's integral to the game itself.

Edited October 22, 2016 by ChasePanic

[_CoRDS_.NP-Hard]

Here's my take:

* Too easy.  I mean, these dudes just aren't challenging to fight.  Part of this is related to...

* Not exciting / not enough contact with the enemy.  And when you do, they don't team up on you.  The one time I ran into a pack of three or four, cutting them up one by one was cake.

* Not enough of a bonus.  I realize you said you'd bump this, but, to be compelling, you need to fix the above two points, and then fix this.  Give me a chance at 1,000,000, but with the real possibility of losing the same.  That's exciting. Anything else and... well, H (any infested D) need EV, Chroma, Nekros, Speedva.

* Those mods... like, why?  Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not going to farm these.  There's nothing in there like, say blood rush/body count or argon scope / whatever the +crit on kill is.

In short, the only real reason for me to do this is to get the badge & adapter.  I don't see myself making this a part of my regular experience as is.

[Insizer]

Aside from getting oneshotted I like the Index.

Frankly, if this were a Conclave mode, then I'd actually play Conclave.

Edited October 22, 2016 by Insizer

[Fuzen_Fujin]

I keep losing connection after finishing the index mission, making me lose whatever potential mod I collected and progress.I'm not sure if the other people on the other team are rage quitting at the end just because i scored 56 out of 60 points or its just bad connection, but it's aggravating that half of the time I play this mission, I end up gaining nothing and wasting my time because of a lost connection. 

[Urlan]

5 hours ago, Insizer said:

Aside from getting oneshotted I like the Index.

Frankly, if this were a Conclave mode, then I'd actually play Conclave.

Agree, besides the wonky scaling on the endurance, the Index seems to be a pretty calm experience. Some rework on the ability negatives should be useful but I would play this as a Conclave mode as is.

[marelooke]

Why do Corpus suddenly have Bombard level armor? Huge armor scaling is a surefire way to suck the fun out of anything. And a huge admission about how useless shields are to boot.

And please get rid of the damn Mag specter. She gets you killed more than she' s helpful.

Edited October 23, 2016 by marelooke

[Doc-Orange]

There is an intersting discussion on reddit about the index.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/58qfxj/the_index_has_brought_back_all_my_favorite_things/

 

 

Quote

• Your team being S#&$.
• You being S#&$.
• Your team being kinda okay but you end up carrying them anyway.
• Hating your team.
• Hating the game.
• Your team stealing your kills, or in this case, points.
• Reskinning the same idea as before with a similarly unfun execution.
• Being instakilled because you were snuck up on.
• Everyone being salty.
• You being salty.
• Really salty.
• Impotent rage.
• Ragequitting.
• Not touching it again once you got everything you wanted out of it, only to realise you didn't really want any of it.

Or maybe it's just me, who knows?

 

Edited October 23, 2016 by Doc-Orange

[Thundervision]

Pt.2, after playing for the past 2 days:

• Hellion syndrome: Enemies loves to jump through ceilings (textures). Got killed by them through textures while i haven't seen them at all.
• Lockjaw seems to be a pet for Sol rather than vice versa: you can counter or avoid Lockjaw's attacks, but it's nearly impossible to just avoid Sol's attack. The moment you show up or appear to be in its LoS is the moment it oneshots you. Its projectile is way too fast and even if it missed, the projectile will bounce around. In additional, they are both tanky as hell having high Armour/Shield values making it's a helluva job to deal with.
• The enemies «see» you through objects/walls, even if they aren't aware of you. Example: I'm 20m away from Corpus guy running after my allies and we don't see each other. I use my Ulti and come after affected mob, at the moment i got him in LoS, he was slowly turning his head on me (thanks to speed debuff). Now back to Sol -- how i get killed most of the time: i come out of the corner to get insta-killed by a 360-oneshot, literally in less than a 1 second.
• Don't care about Risk objectives & rewards at all. Why should i do if i'm surrounded by selfish point stealers? Yet i'm trying to teamplay/support and do i get rewarded for trying to support? No i don't. That guy just got his 100 points, do you think he will stop collecting the points and start to help the othes? No he won't, he will keep killing & collecting. And if you die, he'll take your drops w/o returning it upon your revive. So «fun» and «entertaining». Yay.

upd:

Okay, apparently, enemies not only jump through ceilings, they do it with the walls as well.

Lockjaw jumped out through this wall leaving his Sol inside. Consequences are obvious:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/255969629405391908/D8D3CF8A8D02741DB7D248B2E3FDC3C09C5ECCB0/

Also (this is mostly a bug too), while you perform a ground Slam or a ragdoll attack and Lockjaw gets knocked down, the Sol is still capable to shoot (you down) -- and it will.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Thundervision
upd

[Aekhon]

At this point, I've completed T1 and T2.  I have no plans of ever running T3; at this point I know that the Index is not my jam.  The credit rewards aren't worth the trouble, even when they've been doubled.  I can get more out of Hieracon on Pluto after just one excavation than one round of T2 Index - so it's faster and easier than the Index.

Specifically, I think the energy drain while carrying Indices is over the top, especially when compared against all the other drawbacks there are to playing the Index.  I never really had enough energy to do anything with my frames' powers because as soon as I picked up and index or two, what little energy I had drained away to nothing (which, if that was the effect you guys were going for, why didn't you just disable powers?).  Starting at half health and no energy every time you score is another issue.  I'm not sure if that one is intentional or a bug, though.

My suggestions are to remove the energy drain when carrying indices (or at least delay its start until you're carrying more than 5), and fix starting at reduced health/energy every time you score.

[Corue]

Not exactly a major issue but the point models feel very out of place. I understand they're neon green for the visibility, but they don't feel very Corpus-y.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Corue

[scalledcheramie]

I don't know... Sure the event could've been something more exciting, involving things like actual gambling without having to fight for it, cheating, bribing, neutralizing other contestants, other behind the scenes action; making actual progress and becoming a more infamous broker. Corpus and Perrin stuff, additions to the lore. Something. It just feels like the actual event isn't going to be much different from what there is now — Corpus Rathuum, as advertised, another arena mode. I mean, we already have Conclave AND Rathuum for crying out loud.

The game mode itself is eh, it works, I guess. Feels much more fitting for Conclave though. Raking up a lot of points and dying for them to be picked up and scored by an enemy, thanks to my health decreased by 20 because reasons, isn't fun, it's frustrating. Mag Specter lifting me into the air and incapacitating me for a moment doesn't help much. And why does one team consist of human units and a common moa, and another one, of improved mech bosses? There's no reason in fighting the second one when you can just fight the first. Of course, they're all annoying in a way, but still.

And I still hope the event will bring the Sergeant rework, like it was with Kela, but seems it likely won't. Hope it will bring at least something besides The Index itself.

[k05h]

I also want to add my view on The Index preview. 

Positive: I like the enemies and the enemy variety. Even with massive CC overkill I still find it managable to beat them outside of the endurance mission. 

Neutral: The maps are underwhelming when compared to the Rathuum arenas. They are not particular bad but they feel empty most of the time. 

Negative: Picking up other Tennos orbs turns this coop game into a VS-game. Many of my orbs were picked up by other players that were essentially scavanging. Once I realized that I started to play solo. This problem is especially visible in endurance where you get your "profit". In five pug matches I played no player got 25 orbs needed for the mission requirement. And here again playing solo is the best solution. 

Bonkers: Enemy scaling in endurance. When you have a lvl 167 one-shotting the whole pug team after less than 5 minutes you know something is wrong. 

[Very_Melon]

Getting instantly killed by some shot you couldn't even see is such a fun game design guys.

Another event highlighting everything wrong with the basics of Warframe's gameplay design.

[Iceheart125]

with all the issues with collecting points, im just not gonna do this event. im sick of trying it, over and over, and failing to net points due to people running and grabbing them. it's just not fun, even compared to rathuum.

[DarkOvion]

18 minutes ago, Iceheart125 said:

with all the issues with collecting points, im just not gonna do this event. im sick of trying it, over and over, and failing to net points due to people running and grabbing them. it's just not fun, even compared to rathuum.

Then Solo it.

This is really not a difficult event. I literally slept through it.

[Iceheart125]

2 hours ago, DarkOvion said:

Then Solo it.

This is really not a difficult event. I literally slept through it.

Or, or, I'm gonna sit it out, take a break. That's an option too, right?

[DarkOvion]

23 minutes ago, Iceheart125 said:

Or, or, I'm gonna sit it out, take a break. That's an option too, right?

That's up to you, but sounded like you were trying to complete.

Play with an actual group, or play solo if you're doing the challenge - pugs means you're fighting the players more than the mission.

Edited October 24, 2016 by DarkOvion

[Iceheart125]

12 minutes ago, DarkOvion said:

That's up to you, but sounded like you were trying to complete.

Play with an actual group, or play solo if you're doing the challenge - pugs means you're fighting the players more than the mission.

I think I'm gonna just take a break from the game in general. Too many busted and unfinished systems, I spend so much more time getting into a match than playing anymore. Maybe tww will be decent, and justify the burnout from being hyped in July about it. I doubt it, but, we'll see. 2016 has given some nice things, here and there, but the anticipation for months of something more has killed it for me.

[p3z1]

(+) Themed enemies, finally.
(+) M-WAM is a good example of good design IMO, having multiple weapons for multiple occasions.
(+) Enemies stick together, which is a good thing

(-) Robotics division are tough to kill, most noticeable in endurance. Suggestion is to reduce armor scaling of robotics in the Index
(-) Credit buy-ins are ignorable for vets, but good for new players. Suggesting that players are allowed to set their own buy-in, up to a cap.
(-) "Cashing in the bank" keeps your health low. Recommending that after cashing in, players recover how much health they lost from holding points, and not damage received from enemies.
(-) AI jumping mechanics should be fixed, because them popping out of nowhere is just irritating at some times, especially on higher levels.
(-) Endurance scaling seems off.
(-) Dual Heks.
(-) No specter variety :(

Edited October 24, 2016 by p3z1

[CrogenitorSeims]

Suggestions so far:

• The mods really need to be auto-marked. If you're playing solo, the specters make it very easy to miss them, since they tend to go off on their own.
• It can be very annoying when index points fall off cliffs. I'd be nice if the teleported back up, like with mods and resources.
• When you're teleported back to spawn after banking points, you should maintain the same percentage of max health, rather than keeping your previous health.

Edited October 24, 2016 by CrogenitorSeims