Cinematic Quest Difficulty Choice, Please

[Kayilee]

I'll preface this by saying that I am not a good gamer. I know this. Anytime my friends try to make me feel better and tell me that I am, I laugh at them. I KNOW that they are carrying me. But, they enjoy carrying me. They enjoy getting to play with me, even if that means that I'm running behind them in missions and doing practically nothing because everything is already dead by the time I kill one thing.

So responding to this thread by telling me that I just need to get better is not the point. I know I should be better. I'm not. I have horrible reflexes. This is my first shooter, and I have no desire to try any others. I have a real life, with real responsibilities, that prevents me from getting online to practice more. But, on occasion, I like to try to be a space ninja for a couple of hours with some good friends who can laugh with me when I die for the 18th time in a game that usually supports the ability for them to carry me and us all have fun together anyway.

 

Maybe this means that I shouldn't get to enjoy all the game's content. That's fair. I will avoid raids, higher difficulty missions, PvP, sorties, and whatnot like the plague, and not subject anyone to my horrible gaming "skills" that doesn't want to be. I refuse to play public missions for this very reason. If my friends aren't available to carry me, I won't make someone else do it.

 

I feel like the cinematic quests shouldn't be excluded, though. I want to know the lore too. But I literally CAN'T finish them. I had to make my husband finish Second Dream for me. I tried for over 5 hours on several different days to finish before I finally gave up, screamed at the computer, and swore at my husband and commanded him to finish it for me or throw the computer out the window. He did finish it, thankfully, and let me finish watching the cinematic. But it was not fun. There is nothing about that quest that made me want to play Warframe ever again. I actually uninstalled the game at that point.

I came back to play with my friends, though. And now there's a new cinematic quest. I started it with my friends, and I would love to finish it. Thankfully, (sort of) I got frustrated at the archwing part. I can't make it past the lasers. I used all 4 of my revives, got caught again in (what I hear is) the first hallway, died, and rage quit. I remembered the last quest, and I wasn't up for that level of stress tonight. I spent the next 3 hours in voice chat listening to my friends swearing, pleading for help, swearing some more, one rage quitting, and eventually, all finishing. But they did not enjoy it. I'm glad I quit when I did, because I hear that you can't do anything else until you've finished the quest. And the general consensus was, "that was NOT fun. That was horribly frustrating." My friends aren't bad at the game. They're maybe not the best there is, but they can usually hold their own even in the difficult missions. If decent gamers like them have so many issues, what chances do I have of even completing the first part?

So what I'm looking for is fairly straightforward. Throw those of us that are only playing the game for our friends a bone. Let us suck.

Give us the option to have an easy-mode quest. Let us finish it ourselves, instead of having to make one of our friends sit down and play the game for us.  Give us the options of different difficulty levels. I pretty much want the quest to play itself with minimal interaction from me, because I just want the lore. Give us that, and maybe not much else. Reduce the amount of rewards that we get. But don't drive us away because we can't finish and get locked into the quest until we can.

Give us a moderate difficulty, with a few more rewards. Something closer to normal game play difficulty.

And then give people a hard mode, with the best rewards, and the challenge to complete it at peril of never being able to log in again without having to finish. Some people like that. My husband does. It's part of why he loves carrying me in the game. He loves the higher difficulty that I turn the levels into just by being there and being horrible at shooters. (And no, I'm not joking. We've had this conversation several times before when I've tried to bow out of playing with everyone because I know I suck.) 

TL;DR.

Please give us different difficulty levels for the cinematic quests. Let me and my fellow noobs enjoy the story too without peril of loosing function of our accounts because we're terrible at the game, but let good people still feel challenged and feel the joy of overcoming those challenges. 

I've heard from friends and read feedback from too many people who just found the cinematic quests frustrating, and not fun. Let us try to enjoy ourselves too, please.

 

[TARINunit9]

Easy mode in this game is as simple as one, two, three. The most difficult thing in the ENTIRE Second Dream + War Within storyline is the level 25 Spy mission at the start of Second Dream. And yes, the archwing laser hitboxes in TWW are ABSOLUTE GARBAGE, but there's no penalty for death there other than wounded pride, you can retry with impunity, and there actually IS a visual indicator of the safe zone that you can follow if you look for it

Everything else is tutorial in those quests. I actually ran out of health in Second Dream (don't ask, I got pinned between two conculysts when trying to use the handblast for the first time) and didn't die. My warframe just didn't care. These cinematic quests are really easy

[Kayilee]

Just because you found them easy doesn't mean that everyone does. Over 7 hours of frustration in Second Dream, 5 of that with the ending stalker fight alone, tells me that I'm not on the same playing field as you. I literally could not finish the quest on my own. I had to have my husband do it for me. He tried telling me what I needed to do. He tried standing over my shoulder and telling me what keys to press at any given time. It didn't work. I personally could not complete it.

Conversely, just because I found them hard doesn't mean that everyone does. I know that. But that's what I'm asking for, is the ability for us to decide how much we want to be challenged for the cinematic quests. They put a huge amount of time into these quests, and it seems like such a shame to miss out on their hard work because I can't bring friends along to help me when I get stuck. I understand why they aren't multi-player missions. I just feel like those of us that are super casual, bad players (noobs, if you will) are getting punished for wanting to have fun with our friends but experience the lore too.

[Gelkor]

The ship in that AW part has a wonky hitbox that pushes you to the side too much if you are close to it and will bork you with the lasers, it's kinda poorly done. Especially since I was hoping for some real AW combat instead of a minigame. Ironically I did fine the first time, but in later reruns of the quest for recordings I started dying. That's how I noticed it's a proximity to the ship that interferes with moving. My only tip is really back off from the ship while staying abreast of it, since the lasers are radial, there will be more space the further from the ship you are.

No lie, one of the parts in TWW I died too many times for me to be comfortable mentioning.

When I did the Second Dream I recorded it. No joke, when I uploaded it I cut out the literal ten minutes  of me being smacked into a corner by Shadowstalker. After 6 minutes I walked away from the computer and poured myself some wine and sat and watched it for a few minutes until I figured out how to get past it. XD

Edited December 9, 2016 by Gelkor

[Akavakaku]

Yeah, the thing about War Within is it's hard for totally different reasons than the rest of Warframe. So no matter how good you are at the rest of the game, you can still be bad at this quest. I play Sorties but one part of TWW alone took me an hour to beat.

Here's some spoiler-free advice if you do want to try finishing the quest:

• For the Archwing section, stay around the midsection of the ship and don't go too close to it. Too far forward or back and you could be hit by the beams before or after the ship blocks them, and staying farther from the ship gives you more room to avoid the beams. There's no Archwing fighting.
• After this part there's a bunch of regular gameplay at a kinda high level, so bring gear with 'cheesing' powers, like invisibility, invincibility, or widespread destruction.
• Then there will be a part where it seems almost impossible to progress. You will know when you get here because of your frustration. Go to the left, it's the safest way. This part isn't about reaction time, but rather careful planning and timing. Also, look at the HUD map.
• The final part is also hard and not like regular gameplay, and in this part you don't get very clear instructions on what to do. Once you do know or figure it out, though, you will have to have a good reaction time.

[Cyriann]

One of the most important thing to do in the war within is to take your time,one slowly and carefully. 

In the Archwing section, just glue yourself to the ship and turn around in advance so that you are already placed when the lasers come to the ship. You do not need to go fast in this mission and once you are on foot it is just a mobile defense mission. 

The following part of the quest is though very different  from our usual play. First because you do not get any help from the Lotus, then you also face a new security setting that can be very destructive, here moving carefully and studying the rooms you enter are the key to move forward undetected. Also, note that those security cameras are impossible to destroy and that, like any other, a stealth ability can trick them into thinking you are not there. 

What  follows after "Spoiler" is a tad bit more complicated because here Teshin's hints aren't the clearest he could have came up with. Namely, walk on the rocks to be safe, and run from rock to rock when "The Maw" is away. You'll get to figure the rest by yourself, otherwise that would be way too much spoils. 

As for the final missions these will put to a slight test the use of your new found abilities. Without spoiling, try to either avoid the big units attack, press 5, blast away, warm through, press 5 again, now kill the big guy. That's all I'll say, the rest, Teshin and the little game hints are pretty straightforward as to what to do. 

[LuckyCharm]

90% of the issue you're having can come down to weapon/warframe choice. And the other 10% is that sometimes s*** doesn't always work how it should do. Personally I think anyone who's having issue with it should try play through as Loki. And if you're dying too much.. play valkyr. 

TWW is a little bit of a "keep trying till it works" thing since I can tell you.. even after 3+ years playing that maw thing still kicked my a** for at least a good half hour. Purely because there's no explanation of what to do properly. Especially at the start

The best advice I can give you is play things that make your life easier where you can, and when it comes to things like that stupid maw... look for patterns in behavior and places things avoid. And do your best to get there before the things are gonna eat you. 

[MillbrookWest]

1 hour ago, Kayilee said:

-snip-

Have you tried using a controller? They can be easier to control since the button mapping tends to be more 'together' since they lack many buttons, meaning you don't need finger gymnastic skills to pull off certain things. Of course, you sacrifice some of the expandability of a keyboard, and speed of the mouse, but those don't seem like they are particularly of use to you? This may help with the 'Operator' segments - But it doesn't sound like you've gotten that far yet.

I've also seen some people giving advice on the Archwings. No one seems to be mentioning that you can make them go straight up, or straight down using 'space', and 'ctrl' respectively. This helps since you dont need to mess about with archwings orientation problems. Just strafe left or right, then move up or down as warranted. So all you really need to do, is move forwards, or left and right. No mucking about wasting time looking here and there, just pick a spot, and move forward with he transport.

Additionally, you may find some love from Kubrows (or shade, but kubrows are better). Specifically the Huras breed. The huras Kubrow will cloak you without your input. I run a Banshee (which is like a glass hardhat), and on more than one occasion it has stopped me from dying by putting up its cloak. On occasion, you can run through the level fast enough and it will never drop its cloak (assuming you dont attack). Invest some time into one (i put 6 forma into mine) and it should help you stay out of trouble. Watch out for sapping ospreys though, the derpy AI sends often sends your kubrow straight to hell with these things.

 

[Leahzar]

Very well-written thread. You didn't let your frustration influence the overall feel of the writing but still conveyed the level of your frustration very well. Kudos for that! Very few people take the time to write something worth reading.

Personally, I did not find The Second Dream or The War Within particularly frustrating or difficult, but I have many years of gaming experience and I've played Warframe for going on 3-years now. That said, I completely support the idea that a difficulty level should be added for Cinematic or progress-stopping quests. 
Many people posted threads of being frustrated during their playthrough of TWW, and I was saddened because the overall experience about the lore happening around them was lost in trial-and-error. 

About you avoiding sorties and harder content, please don't! There are some of us out there that don't mind carrying "noobs" at all :) 
I'll send you a friend-request, and if there's a "hard" mission that you'd like to do but can't because your friends aren't online, please please feel free to message me and I'll help you out! 

Take care, fellow Space Ninja!

Edited December 9, 2016 by Leahzar

[MillbrookWest]

15 minutes ago, Leahzar said:

About you avoiding sorties and harder content, please don't! There are some of us out there that don't mind carrying "noobs" at all :) 

I'd second that. At the end of the day, Warframe is a game, and games are best enjoyed with other people ;)

[Forcereborn]

31 minutes ago, Leahzar said:

Many people posted threads of being frustrated during their playthrough of TWW, and I was saddened because the overall experience about the lore happening around them was lost in trial-and-error.

I totally agree! The Archwing part got me a few times at the beginning because I couldn't understand what I had to do, but after that, it went smooth; the "Maw" part, on the contrary, has been an ocean of sadness and frustration (by the way, good job DE, you really made TWW an unforgettable experience: I'll remember that part forever). Not to mention I felt it really far from what Warframe should be: the 3rd person shooter I enjoy playing became... a platformer? Please, I would play Super Mario if I wanted to play a platformer. The difficulty should have been indeed toned down so that it was a tutorial on how to use *spoiler*, rather than a situation already requiring experience on it. For the latter, they could have added a few separate missions available after finishing the quest. Which I would have never played alone.

[DawnThade]

So essentially DE should have done this,

Easy - You watch the entire quest play like a movie with very, very minimal interaction(not even character movement).

Normal - You're only given control of your character when you're in a none threatening scenario. If any reaction-based puzzle or combat is required, the game takes back control.

Hard - Essentially what we have in-game now.

[Kayilee]

13 hours ago, MillbrookWest said:

Have you tried using a controller? 

No, but I do have a gaming mouse my husband bought me when we had our daughter. I wanted a way to let her nap on me but still be able to play with one hand, and the mouse, while not the most elegant solution, works nicely. I have all the basic commands programmed into it (sprint forward, jump, interact with object, powers 1-5, melee, and obviously left and right click shooting/aiming) and use it exclusively for my powers. It's easier to move with my left hand on the keyboard, but I'm not completely unfamiliar with using my left hand for movement from the other games I play (primarily World of Warcraft). 

It, and the other hints and suggestions though, and great, and I'll definitely keep them in mind and/or give them a try when I do inevitably try to do TWW quest. :)

13 hours ago, Leahzar said:

Very well-written thread. You didn't let your frustration influence the overall feel of the writing but still conveyed the level of your frustration very well. Kudos for that! Very few people take the time to write something worth reading.

...

Many people posted threads of being frustrated during their playthrough of TWW, and I was saddened because the overall experience about the lore happening around them was lost in trial-and-error. 

About you avoiding sorties and harder content, please don't! There are some of us out there that don't mind carrying "noobs" at all :) 
I'll send you a friend-request, and if there's a "hard" mission that you'd like to do but can't because your friends aren't online, please please feel free to message me and I'll help you out! 

Take care, fellow Space Ninja!

Thank you! I try to let my rage simmer before posting on public forums. Tantrum-throwing worthy of my toddler doesn't get the kind of attention that I hope to achieve when I actually take time to post things. ;) I'm glad to see that I succeeded at making a legible and coherent post despite my frustration. 

I honestly don't remember much of the Second Dream quest aside from the last fight with the stalker, and I only remember that because it was so frustrating. I have a vague memory of being in awe at the cinematic parts once I got to them, but don't remember too much about them because I was so frustrated from what I had to do TO get there. That's not the way that I want to remember games that I play. I have so little time to actually get online and game anymore that I want to enjoy my experiences with whatever I choose to pick up that night. 

I also want to thank you for your kindness. I will definitely accept your friend request once I get logged back into the game. :) I'm usually not online unless my friends are, but I do occasionally get to play during the day when everyone else is at work. I'll definitely ask for help then, if you are online. :) 

12 hours ago, DawnThade said:

So essentially DE should have done this,

Easy - You watch the entire quest play like a movie with very, very minimal interaction(not even character movement).

Normal - You're only given control of your character when you're in a none threatening scenario. If any reaction-based puzzle or combat is required, the game takes back control.

Hard - Essentially what we have in-game now.

No, not quite, though I suppose my original post did maybe sound like I just want a free pass. I'm not looking for the whole thing to just be a cut scene. I'm looking for more forgiving mechanics in an easier difficulty that I could choose so that it also won't take away from the people that love to be challenged. It's a video game. I expect to play it. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would do that instead. I just want there to be more accessible options for everyone of all gaming skill levels. 

I can't give specific examples for TWW, obviously, since I haven't finished it. I've barely even started it. But maybe something like give the Warframe a smaller hit box on the easier difficulties, or make the enemies attack less often. Maybe make the times you do get hit less traumatic (part of my problem on Second Dream was that I would make it almost all the way across the room and then in one hit the stalker would have me back in the corner that I'd been stuck in for the last hour). Maybe give more hints, make it more tutorial like. perhaps have the operator give you hints, "Maybe if I avoid the bones, the monster can't see me," after dying so many times. Again, I haven't finished the whole quest. I'm only going off of the things I heard my friends talking about last night while they were doing the quest themselves. I can come back and give other suggestions after I finish (or watch my husband do it for me, if worst comes to worst). 

I would love if they could make it less punishing to not get past the quest, and don't lock down what we can play until after we've finished the quest. Part of what makes me so apprehensive about trying to start the quest again in the first place is that I know if I can't do it, I can't play normal warframe with my friends again unless my husband takes pity on me and finishes the quest for me. When the Grustrag Three caught my frame, I couldn't use her to her full capacity until after I'd finished crafting something, but I could still use her or any of my other frames. Or with Zanuka Hunter, if you fail, that frame is gone until you finish the quest, but you could still use the others if you wanted to so something else before you finished that mission.

Without playing TWW all the way through, I know it's not fair to just demand that it be easier than what it is currently. That's not what I'm asking for. I know there are people that love challenges, or didn't find this challenging at all. I applaud their gaming skills, and want them to still enjoy the game at the level they currently are. I'm just not on their level, and still want to be able to enjoy myself too. 

This game is normally fairly forgiving (in most modes) of one or two team members that aren't as skilled. That's part of what makes these more difficult, different game modes that can only be done solo so frustrating. I love playing this game with my friends, but suddenly I'm faced with solo missions that are far beyond my ability to complete them. It just makes it harder to accept without complaint because the rest of the game is so friendly for me. 


I want to thank everyone for your suggestions and kind manner that you gave them to me in. I woke up this morning expecting a lot of trolls telling me to just get better and quit crying. Thank you for reminding me that the Warframe community is better than that. :) Your suggestions make me actually want to try to do the quest tonight instead of just dreading it. ;)