Returning Player

[Shadowcrusnik]

Hello! As the title suggests I am a returning player. I can't remember when I last played (If there is a way to check, please let me know!) but the last thing I remember being the "newest" was that weird yellow cube guy that asked everyone to take pictures for SCIENCE and a new PvP system along with it.

WARNING! LOTS OF SALT FROM (HOPEFULLY) OLD PROBLEMS

 

Spoiler

The main reason I return is to check and see if the game has changed for the better. I left because I didn't like the combat system, its very bland and 2-dimensional. You shoot your weapon and either kill them ridiculously quick or very, very slowly. Switching weapons was almost always unnecessary, really only ever done because I felt like watching my guy do acrobatic swipes with a weapon pointed at no particular enemy yet still be deadly instead of watching him sit there and fire a gun.

I always wanted stealth to be better because of this cruddy combat system, running and gunning was the only effective way to make progress in anything, because the entire game relied on non-stop grinding the same missions over and over again for materials and money so you can get the next upgrade or improvement to unlock the ability to grind the next level up for the materials to get the next upgrade and so on. There was no real reason to play other than grinding for gear. I never played because it was fun to, the game's basic mechanics simply weren't that enjoyable. There was very little satisfaction in doing anything, because if I did anything other than fly around abusing movement mechanics to rush the objectives as fast as possible, I was gimping myself in the long run. Even when I didn't rush objectives, there was no real point to slowing down. What could I do? Stand still and shoot/swipe at an enemy? Walk towards them? That was literally against the point of the game, inefficient and wasting of time, and far more dangerous than constantly moving around super quickly. I could always slow all the way down and attempt to stealth, but the stealth mechanics were so god damn poor that there was no real way to do it effectively. Especially since damned near every single mission objective required exposing yourself to the endless supply of patrolling guards, and if you were ever spotted even once the entire damn ship went on permanent alert and the enemy would then always know exactly where you where, ready and waiting at the next door if you were lucky enough to stop the guy from popping a terminal. The level design was also S#&$, because there was always only ever 1 path to the objective, paths very very rarely twisted and connected at multiple intersections, and never were there secret or alternate pathways people could take if they happened to know the next door was being watched. So not only was stealth next-to-impossible without just insta-killing every guard on site with a silent weapon to minimize chances of being spotted, it could take 10 to 20 times longer than blazing through a level and yield next to no additional reward. It was complete and utter trash.

 

So not only was the normal combat boring and unenjoyable, there were literally no feasible alternatives to it. The game literally forced you to engage in a constant, pithering, un-fun grind so you could min-max, potato, forma, and whatever the F*** else the devs slapped on to give players a false sense of progress (yay, lets add more guns because THAT will fix the underlying issues! Nope.) The level design, though "randomly generated" always felt like I was going through the same S#&$ over and over and over again, and the developers showed no intention whatsoever of actually improving any of these core issues that made the game totally unplayable for me. Whats the point in putting myself through a horribly painful grind? Just so I can get the opportunity to engage in an even more painful grind as the enemies slowly turn from twigs into bullet sponges? So I can get the next new fancy item or collect them all? Games are meant to be fun to play inherently, if they weren't noone would @(*()$ play them.

 

In short, the game's core combat was boring and 2-dimensional, there were no feasible alternatives to a single dominating mode of play, and there was little to no significant variation between levels, creating a "same-y" feel to every single mission. I am here to ask if any of this has improved, because if it hasn't this game is a waste of my time and my already rather strongly founded suspicions that the developers are just repeatedly beating a dead horse and milking this game as much as possible by forcing players through this slow, slogging grindfest whilst offering expensive ways to advance quickly as well as constantly adding more "content" in the form of items for the players to continually grind for yet again without ever actually spending their resources trying to make the game fun will be strengthened even further until I check back in 1 or 2 years down the road again in the off chance that the devs actually got off their &#! to fix their game.

 

 

Wew, with that torrent of pent up salt, toxicity, and rage at a game that should've been better than it ended up, has any of the aforementioned issues been fixed? I really hope so because this is a game I want to be able to enjoy playing, but can't because of the aforementioned issues.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Shadowcrusnik

[Jhaelen]

Even though grind is still central, I personally like the changes that have been made in the combat system. However, your post is so salt loaded in that you are giving yourself reasons NOT to play, I think the only person who can make the judgement is yourself :) Have a go, play some of the lore quests and see what you think. It certainly won't take you long to discover whether you would like to continue. Hope you enjoy it:)

[Anshii]

I agree with Jhaelen. If you do not enjoy the type of progress the game has to offer then it might just not be for you. If you only enjoy getting the best warframe/weapon at the time and doing the same mission over and over because it is efficient then you are only doing yourself a disservice. The game revolves around grinding out affinity, resources, and parts. Those are the staple to at least give you something to work towards. It also sounds like you mainly played the game solo or just did drop in/drop out public games. This game, as with most multiplayer games, is best played with friends. That way you can work towards what everyone needs and enjoy playing it together.

The levels are built pretty much the same as Diablo 2/3. Random mish mashes of specific tilesets put together to get you to the objective. I feel that with some of the changes that have happened to some of the mission types it does play better than it use to play.

If you enjoy stealth play there is an actual bonus to stealth killing enemies with silent weapons or stealth kills. You get an affinity bonus that stacks up to 5 times giving you 100% more affinity per stack. So if you can one shot enemies with your bow or silent weapon you can get upwards to 25k with an affinity booster in just one kill.

They also put in a system for leveling and forma'ing anything. Basically it takes your mastery and gives you a mod capacity up to that level. So if you just built a new weapon and you are mastery rank 12, then your new weapon starts at level 0 but has the mod capacity of a rank 12 weapon along with any polarities it might have. If you have a potato in it then it doubles that capacity just like it normally would. Allowing you to more easily level up weapons and not making them totally useless when you first get them or start forma'ing them.

You still mainly shoot things, use warframe powers, and hit things with melee weapons as far as the combat, but like I said at the start, if your only goal is to get the most powerful stuff and do the same mission over and over then the game will not be fun. The same goes for any game though. If you create your own rules about what you will and won't do because it is inefficient instead of trying to have fun any game will be boring.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Anshii
make it more readable

[Shadowcrusnik]

Little more calm now can elaborate further.

 

It wasn't so much because of inefficiency but because of the self-pain that was involved in doing the inefficient thing.

 

Stealth at the time was super slow, it could take 30 minutes or more for one mission, and gave you less of everything than just running through the map, which itself could take 5 minutes or less. It wasn't the difference of a few percent efficiency or some per hour amount, it was the difference between playing call of duty normally, or playing it by only crouching the entire time while blindfolded and facing away from the tv.

Not Stealthing but still actively fighting enemies without necessarily rushing the point was also much slower, it could take 15 minutes or more for 1 mission, but didn't make you enough extra stuff (And risked you dieing and losing everything anyways) to mean much. That would be the difference of some per hour amount, and I usually chose this because rushing through levels was horrendously boring. But likewise it slowed me down to the point where I felt like I was barely progressing at all. But even this style of play wasn't much better, because the enemies pretty much always bumrushed the S#&$ out of you, only very rarely actually using thing like cover or tactics, resulting in the best answer always being bumrushing them right back with guns or melee. Melee was lackluster to me because it was a repetitive series of swings, over and over and over again with little to no variation whatsoever and very little control over what you do with you weapon, you either swung, charged a swing, or shot your gun instead. The "stance" system was a step in the right direction by adding combos, but the fact that that ended up being just another way to buff mod capacity rather than something you actually did for the power of the combos (which ended up not being that powerful anyways) really smothered that potential to a great extent. The mod system was perhaps the best part of the game, and even then it was also the main reason why the game turned into a non-stop grindfest where the only thing you have to do is grind. Even you said, Anshii the game is best played with friends "So you can all work together to get everyone what they need". Not because it was fun to cooperate and beat a hard level, or because playing your way was easier with friends, but because it made the grind go by faster.

 

Any good game dev should know that using a grind as the main reason for people to play is a bad idea, because once people run out of things to get they stop playing, it puts a hard cap on how long any given player can play when ideally they'd be playing for a very very long time. The core reason a player should play is because the basic core mechanics of the game are fun to play with. In warframe's case that would be the missions, the PvE. Thats not to say grind is bad, but it shouldn't be the only reason. Grinding should be a side-thing, something players do so they can progress to a new level. Not just for the sake of progress but because they want to play that new level to see what its like, because the core mechanics, even when very fun and enjoyable, will always get stale and every new level should spice things up a bit to add a fair amount of variation. And once you run out of levels the end-game stuff needs to be super hard so players go through that very slowly, and have reasons to grind out the previous levels.

Basically, I want to be able to WANT to grind. I don't want it to feel like a chore I have to do just so I can progress to the point where playing the game is fun. That's way I left WoW so early because I didn't want to grind through (at the time) 60 levels just for the opportunity to play the *actual* game. That aspect of WoW has only gotten worse over time.

 

My main hope is that stealth mechanics improved because as it stands, unless they make drastic changes to the core combat mechanics through massive improvements to melee, massive improvements to AI, and massive improvements to level design, stealth is the only real way to insert variation among the repetition. Because the kinds of patrols guards take and the number of guards in a given room are usually always different, even if the level generates the same, providing a different challenge every time.

 

If what you said about the affinity thing is true, then stealth has improved slightly. Stealth kills generate more affinity for weapons, but do you still get no bonus whatsoever for going through an entire mission unseen or without alerting the enemy? The main reason why stealth was so unviable and very rarely if ever done by anyone was because if you needed a specific rare component or just a metric assload of other components or needed to farm mods so you could level up other mods, you had to rush through levels and slaughter as many enemies as possible on the way. Stealthing through drastically reduced the number of enemies killed, and thus drastically reduced the amount of stuff that dropped, not to mention the longer mission times made it even slower than level rushing. Stealthing offered literally nothing. What I'm saying is, people should choose between stealth or open combat or rushing because its their preferred style of play, not because one is the only real way to progress through the game and the others will cause you to sit pretty on what you have now pretty much forever as long as they are all you do.