Let's try compile a history of meta Nodes and changes which led to the game today.

[Vali]

Hello everyone! I'm going to attempt to list out some changes that have occurred in Warframe throughout the years which provoked a rework in game balance. Since I've been around only since early 2014, I might miss out on some, so please feel free to pitch in! This list will (hopefully) be in chronological order starting from the most recent events.

 

Nodes:

Akkad Era [Current]: Being the current popular choice in leveling as well as credit farming, this node became the most played map after the launch of SoTR.

- Not much has changed yet, aside the upper beams in the map being removed to prevent AFK.

- Other notable nodes are Hieracon for Relic / Endo farming, Berehynia/Stofler for affinity grinding and Baal as the staple Oxium farm.  

Draco Era: Prior to SoTR, Ceres was the highest leveled Grineer planet and Draco, an interception node at the time, had the largest exp gain per round due to high spawn rates of Eximus units. Post-SoTR, Ceres' level was lowered to the 15 range and Draco still exists as a simple Survival mission.

- This caused Excalibur's Radial Javelin to be restricted to line of sight (LoS) for the second time. Due to this change, Excalibur was revised and gained Exalted Blade which its channeling mechanic later fed into other abilities like Hysteria.

- This caused the change to Mesa's original peacemaker which automatically targeted any enemy in a 50m radius, a literal one button aim bot. After its change to Peacemaker's current form, another addition was later thrown in to allow Secondary mods to effect her Peacemakers. 

- This caused the Greedy Pull augment for Mag to get nerfed. In conjunction with Mesa's auto-aim, Mag was able to pull loot, including energy, to teammates; allowing Peacemaker to be channeled indefinitely. Now, Greedy Pull can only pull resources for Mag. In the time which the augment worked in it's original form, Pull became the most used ability in game, 4 times more than the second most used ability. 

- During this Era. Some less popular nodes were also great affinity farms due to broken spawns in MD missions, notably Kiste and Kappa. Kappa was also a well known Oxium farm when it was taken over by the Corpus via invasion. 

 

E-Gate Era: Being the shortest era, E-Gate is a low leveled excavation which was over-exploited due to enemies not scaling until the first extractor was activated. This allowed Banshee's Soundquake to one shot enemies indefinitely while a Greedy Pull Mag fueled her with energy. AFK-farming went rampant with mass attainment of Mods and Fusion Cores which could be sold for credits or Fusion fodder.

- This caused a change in Excavation mechanics. Previously, there was a scanner object which needed to be fueled with energy to find excavation sites, this scanner was removed and Excavators are now automatically located over time.

- This caused the addition of the AFK timer. Players who AFK for ever a minute will not be able to pick up loot until they start moving again.

Viver Era: Viver currently resides on Eris as a humble Hive node. Historically however, Viver was one of the most lucrative nodes upon the release of Syndicates, allowing players to easily max out their Syndicate standings in just a few days. 

- This caused a momentary change to Energy Vampire, Radial Javelin and Shield Polarize, giving them all the LOS restriction and effectively destroying this farm as well as setting the community to a rage. All these changes were reverted a few patches after. 

- This caused the addition of the Daily Standing cap, which is now also used for the Conclave and Sanctuary. 

- This caused the addition of a limit to the amount of mods and resources which could be present at a time. 

- This added the enemy cap to Vauban's Bastille which previously was able to hold an infinite amount of enemies.

- This node is most likely the reason why the Corpus now have Nullifiers.

 

Xini Era: Being the one of the first 'meta' farming locations, Xini became a great source of rare mods and affinity in the early days of Warframe prior to the release of Dark Sectors.

- Nothing notable occurred in this era.

 

Others:

Law of Retribution: Being DE's first attempt at raid designing, LoR is the biggest cheese fest we have in game, which lead to a few balance changes.

- This caused the LoS restriction to be added to the popular Blind Mirage, which was just a Mirage spamming Prism and detonating it immediately for the blind effect. Prior to this change, Mirage was able to completely stun any enemy in a 50m range for half a minute.

- This caused the second and third change to Blessing, the second being Blessing's damage resistance to be 100-(Average Team Health)² and the third (being it's current form) which is 50% damage resistance base and capped at 75%.

 

Duration Granting Channeling Efficiency: This change caused channeled abilities such as Absorb, Hysteria and World on Fire to have decreased upkeep costs with higher power duration. This was due Fleeting Expertise massively reducing the duration of other abilities, causing a slight disparity in builds.

- This removed the time limit on World on Fire, which made Ember more usable and easier to mod. This also caused the massive increase in the cost of Ember Prime Parts through trading since she wasn't very sought after and got vaulted not long prior to the change.

- This allowed Nyx's Chaos to be recastable, making it a more reliable form of CC. At the time, Nyx was out-shinned by Loki's Irradiating disarm, making Nyx less desirable. 

 

Nova's Molecular Prime: The oldest version of Molecular Prime in my memory had an instant effect on enemies in range, slowing them and making them take more damage. The explosions from M.Prime would chain instantly, causing a massive explosion which killed frame rates. 

- M.Prime's range was changed to be duration based, it's radius increasing the longer it lasted. M.Prime's slow effect was also changed to be based off Power Strength and capped at 75%, which allowed the current Speed Nova builds using negative Power Strength. 

 

Kohm Series: The energy based Grineer Shotgun, Kohm, went through three different phases shortly after its release mostly due to its projectiles having a flight time and being able to ricochet, causing massive frame rate drops when paired with Mirage.

- Mirage's Hall of Mirrors received a tweak where only 2 of the 4 clones can inflict damage and have their damage multipliers doubled to compensate.

Your input would be most welcomed!

Edited December 18, 2016 by Agentawesome

[Jangkrik]

You forgot the Xini era in 2014 where everyone used Xini to level.

[Vali]

Just now, Jangkrik said:

You forgot the Xini era in 2014 where everyone used Xini to level.

I don't think I had the gear to grind Xini back in 2014, mind elaborating? 

[Jangkrik]

Just now, Agentawesome said:

I don't think I had the gear to grind Xini back in 2014, mind elaborating? 

Well, Xini was one of the best node to level your equipment due to the limited amount of xp earned from other nodes. If I'm not mistaken, using Dark Sector to level equipment weren't popular back then (and Sechura was the most contested node as a credit node).

[Vali]

Just now, Jangkrik said:

Well, Xini was one of the best node to level your equipment due to the limited amount of xp earned from other nodes. If I'm not mistaken, using Dark Sector to level equipment weren't popular back then (and Sechura was the most contested node as a credit node).

Did it cause any significant change in the game such as Warframe/Weapon/Mission balance changes?

[Wevi]

so pretty much anything that needed an actual nerf and was nerfed fairly?
Or anything that needed a nerf, got a nerf and was never improved on?

[Vali]

2 minutes ago, Wevi said:

so pretty much anything that needed an actual nerf and was nerfed fairly?
Or anything that needed a nerf, got a nerf and was never improved on?

I'd say it's a mixed bag of both. Greedy Pull is essentially a useless augment now and Trinity is in kinda a weird spot and less effective in being a tank compared to the original and second versions of Blessing. However other changes were pretty fair and not overdone, especially Excalibur's which was a massive improvement. 

[Jangkrik]

32 minutes ago, Agentawesome said:

Did it cause any significant change in the game such as Warframe/Weapon/Mission balance changes?

Don't remember much other than it being the most popular spot to reach the highest MR possible (19 if my memory's right). Which, I think, is one of the earlier xp spots before vivergate. Almost everyone I knew back then used it everyday.

Then we had Kiste, Ceres. The mobile defense with tons of enemies (literally). It was my favorite spot to level items without using specific team compositions like the one for Draco. Don't know why they nerfed it though.

Also the Dark Sector era, where Sechura was the most contested node. Some big alliances had monopoly on the DS nodes. Probably the reason why DE removed DS conflicts.

[Epilogia]

52 minutes ago, Agentawesome said:

Draco Era: Prior to SoTR, Ceres was the highest leveled Grineer planet and Draco, an interception node at the time, had the largest exp gain per round due to high spawn rates of Eximus units. 

- This caused Excalibur's Radial Javelin to be restricted to line of sight (LoS) for the second time. Due to this change, Excalibur was revised and gained Exalted Blade which its channeling mechanic later fed into other abilities like Hysteria and Soundquake.

- This caused the change to Mesa's original peacemaker which automatically targeted any enemy in a 50m radius, a literal one button aim bot. After its change to Peacemaker's current form, another addition was later thrown in to allow Secondary mods to effect her Peacemakers. 

- This caused the Greedy Pull augment for Mag to get nerfed. In conjunction with Mesa's auto-aim, Mag was able to pull loot, including energy, to teammates; allowing Peacemaker to be channeled indefinitely. Now, Greedy Pull can only pull resources for Mag. In the time which the augment worked in it's original form, Pull became the most used ability in game, 4 times more than the second most used ability. 

I'm pretty sure that Greedy Pull was nerfed when the excavation spawns were changed because of E-gate. People were using Mag's Greedy Pull to pull energy orbs to Banshees.
E-gate also caused the nerf to energy gain, after not moving for dunno how much seconds, you will be "AFK" and you won't receive energy or loot. So Banshees couldn't get their energy from anything unless they moved. This was not enough change and people still used E-gate, so they changed the Greedy Pull to affect Mag's loot only so even if the Banshees moved, they had to run around to get energy. And then the spawn change came.

[ChuckMaverick]

1 hour ago, Agentawesome said:

Draco Era: 

<snip>

- This caused the Greedy Pull augment for Mag to get nerfed. In conjunction with Mesa's auto-aim, Mag was able to pull loot, including energy, to teammates; allowing Peacemaker to be channeled indefinitely. Now, Greedy Pull can only pull resources for Mag. In the time which the augment worked in it's original form, Pull became the most used ability in game, 4 times more than the second most used ability.

4 times more than the second most used ability? Including Desecrate which wasn't toggled at the time and had to be spammed quickly before corpses decayed?

Is this an official statistic that DE published/mentioned? A source would be good.

If true this just shows how horribly broken and abused this setup was. So much for all the people claiming that Draco wasn't used this way by the majority of players.

1 hour ago, Agentawesome said:

Viver Era: Viver currently resides on Eris as a humble Hive node. Historically however, Viver was one of the most lucrative nodes upon the release of Syndicates, allowing players to easily max out their Syndicate standings in just a few days.

<snip>

 

- This node is most likely the reason why the Corpus now have Nullifiers.

You haven't given any reason why you're drawing that conclusion, I don't see the logic behind the connection you're making.

1 hour ago, Agentawesome said:

Duration Granting Channeling Efficiency: This change caused channeled abilities such as Absorb, Hysteria and World on Fire to have decreased upkeep costs with higher power duration. This was due Fleeting Expertise massively reducing the duration of other abilities, causing a slight disparity in builds.

- This allowed Nyx's Chaos to be recastable, making it a more reliable form of CC. At the time, Nyx was out-shinned by Loki's Irradiating disarm, making Nyx less desirable.

Two questions here:

1. Why would Fleeting Expertise massively reducing the duration of other abilities lead to a change so duration affected channeling? I can understand Fleeting Expertise itself being the cause, but the reduced duration of other abilities? I just don't see it.

2. As far as I am aware, Nyx's Chaos has never been a channeled ability, so why would changes to channeling allow it to be recastable? That was a completely independent change that had nothing to do with the channeling changes.

[Heckzu]

You've forgotten one of the most important nodes in the history of Warframe: 

The Dojo, where trade was first implemented in the game.

Prior to the addition of the Dojo, trade did not exist. Platinum was limited to the 50 platinum you began with and the platinum that you purchased. This meant that potatoes were a luxury for the paying playerbase.

 

[Nazrethim]

6 minutes ago, ChuckMaverick said:

You haven't given any reason why you're drawing that conclusion, I don't see the logic behind the connection you're making.

DE introduced Nullifiers to the Corpus shortly after reverting the nerfs to the frames during Viver. Nullifiers exist to counter power spam. Hence why it's theorized DE will finally remove them when they remove the power spam, which is unlikely.

[Jiminez_Burial]

55 minutes ago, Jangkrik said:

Don't remember much other than it being the most popular spot to reach the highest MR possible (19 if my memory's right). Which, I think, is one of the earlier xp spots before vivergate. Almost everyone I knew back then used it everyday.

Then we had Kiste, Ceres. The mobile defense with tons of enemies (literally). It was my favorite spot to level items without using specific team compositions like the one for Draco. Don't know why they nerfed it though.

Also the Dark Sector era, where Sechura was the most contested node. Some big alliances had monopoly on the DS nodes. Probably the reason why DE removed DS conflicts.

I think the main change that came from the Xini era was the introduction of a target limit to Vaubans Bastille.  Before this it could hold an unlimited number of enemies making it nearly impossible to fail via pod destruction.

Also because of this people started to rely on vortex which would cause a glitch with ancient toxics where the gas cloud they used to create on death wouldn't show.  I think this is why they removed the gas cloud from ancient toxic deaths.

[Shaonia]

2 hours ago, Agentawesome said:

Viver Era: Viver currently resides on Eris as a humble Hive node. Historically however, Viver was one of the most lucrative nodes upon the release of Syndicates, allowing players to easily max out their Syndicate standings in just a few days. 

- This caused a momentary change to Energy Vampire, Radial Javelin and Shield Polarize, giving them all the LOS restriction and effectively destroying this farm as well as setting the community to a rage. All these changes were reverted a few patches after. 

- This caused the addition of the Daily Standing cap, which is now also used for the Conclave and Sanctuary. 

- This node is most likely the reason why the Corpus now have Nullifiers.

Viver was also the cause for the current cap of 50-ish loot objects on the ground. After a round of Viver you could walk around and pick up 5 sets of Oberon along with hundreds of mods. The official patch stated that it was for 'performance reasons' but it was exactly around the time when Viver was extremely popular for fusion core and syndicate standing farm, so it isn't a stretch to assume that the nerf might have been for a different reason...

[eksby]

5 hours ago, ShadowFox14 said:

I'm pretty sure that Greedy Pull was nerfed when the excavation spawns were changed because of E-gate. People were using Mag's Greedy Pull to pull energy orbs to Banshees.
E-gate also caused the nerf to energy gain, after not moving for dunno how much seconds, you will be "AFK" and you won't receive energy or loot. So Banshees couldn't get their energy from anything unless they moved. This was not enough change and people still used E-gate, so they changed the Greedy Pull to affect Mag's loot only so even if the Banshees moved, they had to run around to get energy. And then the spawn change came.

Nope, Greedy Pull was nerfed because of Draco. I still have some videos of G-Mag being used on Draco, after the E-Gate fiasco.

As for E-Gate, people wouldn't just use Banshee though, any warframe that could reliably kill would work. I recall the team composition was typically a G-Mag, Nekros (for desecrate), Hydroid (for pilfering), and some nuker (Banshee, Saryn back when she had press 4 to win miasma, etc). Although Banshee was the most common, if I recall correctly. People would also literally use macros, especially for Mag and Nekros, because pressing 1 and 3 respectively thousands of times was boring. That's when the afk timer was put into the game, even though to be honest it doesn't really prevent afking anymore at all, and is more annoying for normal players. 

A bit off topic but why do we even need an afk timer in SOLO missions or INVITE ONLY or FRIENDS ONLY? If we're playing by ourselves or with friends I'm pretty sure no one cares if someone goes afk.

4 hours ago, Shaonia said:

Viver was also the cause for the current cap of 50-ish loot objects on the ground. After a round of Viver you could walk around and pick up 5 sets of Oberon along with hundreds of mods. The official patch stated that it was for 'performance reasons' but it was exactly around the time when Viver was extremely popular for fusion core and syndicate standing farm, so it isn't a stretch to assume that the nerf might have been for a different reason...

Haha, yeah this is correct. At least this change wasn't too bad. 

[Voltage]

you forgot Berehynia with Akkad. Akkad is a meta credit farm with decent XP for FRAMES. Weapons are easily leveled 1-2 rounds of Berehynia depending if you have a booster. It is also a meta focus farm since DE killed Adaro.

[Jackviator]

3 minutes ago, -Voltage- said:

you forgot Berehynia with Akkad. Akkad is a meta credit farm with decent XP for FRAMES. Weapons are easily leveled 1-2 rounds of Berehynia depending if you have a booster. It is also a meta focus farm since DE killed Adaro.

Also Hieracon, which is the meta node for most Relics and Endo farming at the moment.

[Voltage]

2 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

Also Hieracon, which is the meta node for most Relics and Endo farming at the moment.

I consider it meta, but it is not the only good relic farm. Kala Azar and Berehynia IMO are much easier because all you need is banshee with zenurik and arcane energize and u can INFINITELY stay solo. Hieracon scales and excavators don't so it is much harder vs going interception with Quake. 

PS you get relics every rotation for the most part aside from a few mods.

Edited December 18, 2016 by -Voltage-

[Rakosta_Kai]

17 minutes ago, -Voltage- said:

you forgot Berehynia with Akkad. Akkad is a meta credit farm with decent XP for FRAMES. Weapons are easily leveled 1-2 rounds of Berehynia depending if you have a booster. It is also a meta focus farm since DE killed Adaro.

 

12 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

Also Hieracon, which is the meta node for most Relics and Endo farming at the moment.

 

I think the OP's goal was to catalog the changes to meta that rippled outward as fundamental changes to the game or specific frames.

 

To that point, I would say that OP neglected to account for DMG 2.0.

That was a change to the way everything was modded and nerfed a number of previously tier 1 weapons/frames/abilities. In the process it created a meta all it's own.  

And, of course, the Void and pretty much everything associated with it:

• credit nerfs,
• initial lack of transparency
• added transparency of item location but reduced drop rate transparency,
• Key accrual
• Rotation C and 2X Rotation C drop scenarios

All of the above ratified the min/max modding standard that is considered meta now.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Padre_Akais
Coffee made me do it.

[traybong111]

7 hours ago, Jangkrik said:

Then we had Kiste, Ceres. The mobile defense with tons of enemies (literally). It was my favorite spot to level items without using specific team compositions like the one for Draco. Don't know why they nerfed it though.

Kappa and Kiste would always live in my heart, I miss them so much. Mobile Defense in general needs to have spawn rates similar to pre-nerf Kappa/Kiste. 

Also I'd contribute the cause of credit nerf to both Void and LoR. The credit nerf comes shortly after the period where the game kept letting an 8-man squad into normal, non-raid missions and consequently gave out more credit awards than usual. Since missions like Void Capture and Exterminate had the highest credit reward for the shortest time, I remember a lot of LoR squads going there right after formation or LoR for 80K+ credit rewards per 30-second run (even more if the rare crates in LoR yielded credit boosters). I admit it was fun while it lasted, not just the credit rewards but 8 people rampaging across Void missions. 

Edited December 18, 2016 by traybong111
grammar

[Vali]

9 hours ago, ChuckMaverick said:

4 times more than the second most used ability? Including Desecrate which wasn't toggled at the time and had to be spammed quickly before corpses decayed?

Is this an official statistic that DE published/mentioned? A source would be good.

Two questions here:

1. Why would Fleeting Expertise massively reducing the duration of other abilities lead to a change so duration affected channeling? I can understand Fleeting Expertise itself being the cause, but the reduced duration of other abilities? I just don't see it.

2. As far as I am aware, Nyx's Chaos has never been a channeled ability, so why would changes to channeling allow it to be recastable? That was a completely independent change that had nothing to do with the channeling changes.

1. I believe that statistic was mentioned in a Devstream, not sure which so its kinda a bother to search it out.

2. Fleeting Expertise was pretty much needed for a max efficiency channeled ability (eg. Chaos, WoF, Hysteria) however it reduced the duration of other abilities such as Chaos, Accelerant and Warcry. Because this change would cause people to use high duration builds, they made Chaos recastable.

[ChuckMaverick]

6 minutes ago, Agentawesome said:

Fleeting Expertise was pretty much needed for a max efficiency channeled ability (eg. Chaos, WoF, Hysteria) however it reduced the duration of other abilities such as Chaos, Accelerant and Warcry. Because this change would cause people to use high duration builds, they made Chaos recastable.

Ah, I get what you mean now.

It wasn't that the change allowed Chaos to be recastable, but that the duration changes meant that DE had to make it recastable or it would have been effectively nerfed.

[DrBorris]

Viver was the first true "meta" farm. Before then was a combination of random survivals, defenses, and mobile defenses. 

And if you go back even farther you get Xini, but that is a time long past for Warframe. 

 

Once upon a time meta farms didn't exist as they do today, so people who spout "there will always be Viver"  are ill informed. 

This time that I personally experienced was between U11.3 and U14.5. 

 

[Vali]

1 hour ago, DrBorris said:

Viver was the first true "meta" farm. Before then was a combination of random survivals, defenses, and mobile defenses. 

And if you go back even farther you get Xini, but that is a time long past for Warframe. 

 

Once upon a time meta farms didn't exist as they do today, so people who spout "there will always be Viver"  are ill informed. 

This time that I personally experienced was between U11.3 and U14.5. 

 

I suppose the reason why a proper meta farm didn't exist before is because the entire player base was still trying to overcome the first hurdle in Warframe, namely mods, fusion and Forma. Once players overcame it and had a reason to grind for affinity (syndicate standings), only then the meta farms had a purpose and were sought after. 

 

5 hours ago, traybong111 said:

Kappa and Kiste would always live in my heart, I miss them so much. Mobile Defense in general needs to have spawn rates similar to pre-nerf Kappa/Kiste. 

Also I'd contribute the cause of credit nerf to both Void and LoR. The credit nerf comes shortly after the period where the game kept letting an 8-man squad into normal, non-raid missions and consequently gave out more credit awards than usual. Since missions like Void Capture and Exterminate had the highest credit reward for the shortest time, I remember a lot of LoR squads going there right after formation or LoR for 80K+ credit rewards per 30-second run (even more if the rare crates in LoR yielded credit boosters). I admit it was fun while it lasted, not just the credit rewards but 8 people rampaging across Void missions. 

I don't think this LoR situation should be listed since it seems more like a bug than an intended feature similar to how having Chroma's Effigy active on extraction used to cause all credit mission rewards to double. 

Edited December 18, 2016 by Agentawesome

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

So what I learned from this topic is that Mirage needs to be buffed again.