This screenshot showcases 90 percent of what's wrong with Kuva Siphons at the moment.

[Jackviator]

A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes. And this picture speaks volumes about the problems plaguing Kuva Siphons at the moment:

In this screenshot, the Lotus is telling me to attack the Siphon. So, I shoot the Siphon. And what happens? Well, despite DE recently implementing a system in which things that are invulnerable have GRAYED-out HP bars, the Siphon is taking literally no damage from any of my attacks (as you can tell by the gray zeros) DESPITE the fact that I am being told by every method the game has available that this is, indeed, what I'm supposed to be doing.

For the sake of argument, let's say I'm a player who's never been in this mission type before, and this is my first Siphon mission. This is what I can gather from the information the game is telling me:

• I am inferring from the RED HEALTHBAR that the Kuva Siphon should be vulnerable to physical attacks.
• In addition, I am being straight-up told, by the LOTUS, aka the NPC I trust for accurate tutorial information and mid-mission updates/info, that I am supposed to be attacking the Kuva Siphon's braids, which I am doing in the picture. There's even a fancy little icon in the top left of my screen that shows how many Braids need to be destroyed.

...And yet, the Siphon and Braids are completely invulnerable to physical harm by any means currently present within the game; instead, I am supposed to be in Operator mode, looking for Kuva Clouds that appear from nowhere and Void-Dashing through them, because that makes the Braids combust... _{somehow... I dunno.}

In addition, at the time of writing, this mission type has literally no tutorial present within the game whatsoever; you're just supposed to guess all this on your own, rely on your squadmates for info, or go to YouTube/the wiki for the information, because (as shown here) you certainly can't trust the game itself.

----------------

....I honestly don't think words can describe what an obvious failure this is in terms of game/UI design; not family-friendly words, anyway. Not being told anything is one thing... but lying to the players?! That's on another level entirely.

Long story short, there are a few things that obviously NEED to happen with these missions:

• The Lotus needs to stop misinforming the player, and get accurate voice lines to play mid-mission as to remind you what you're supposed to be doing.
• The Kuva Braids and Siphon need to have GRAY healthbars to reflect the fact that they can't be damaged by your powers or weapons.
• Kuva Siphons should have a replayable tutorial mission that introduces them as a mission type and explains the gameplay in terms that 5-year-olds can understand. This mission also needs to be a prerequisite to running the Siphon missions themselves; no player should be going into them with no idea what they're supposed to be doing.

If these 3 issues are fixed, Kuva Siphons will be on their way to being one of my favorite mission types to play... but as-is, it's frankly kinda shocking and sad that they're in this state. It seems that every 5th PuG Siphon mission or so I go into has at least one player who has no idea what the Hek they're supposed to be doing, because the game has told them nothing beforehand and is actively MISINFORMING THEM in the mission itself.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Jackviator

[Daiwulf]

There is actually a quick tutorial message when you get near a siphon that tells something about pressing 5 to go operator mode,but it's so fast i cant fully read it. Definetly needs a better explanation for begginers.

[Jackviator]

11 hours ago, Daiwulf said:

There is actually a quick tutorial message when you get near a siphon that tells something about pressing 5 to go operator mode,but it's so fast i cant fully read it. Definetly needs a better explanation for begginers.

Yes, but all that does is tell you what button to press to go into operator mode, so I don't really count it as a tutorial... More a quick reminder to jog your memory of what button needs to be pressed to go into OM, and a way of telling when you're getting close.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Jackviator

[Chipputer]

Preach it.

I like the idea of Kuva Siphons but they are needlessly obtuse. Beyond that, you have no idea what the Kuva looks like until you get into the mission and there are plenty of tilesets that make it extremely difficult to see it by virtue of it being red and black.

To add to that, someone with bright red energy can make it hard to see the thing, in and of itself.

They need many improvements.
An actual tutorial mission for it, or at least some way of the game teaching you what's what, as you mentioned, (perhaps a Kuva Siphon mission in The War Within quest, itself, that you need to do solo)
The Kuva having some defining feature beyond, "it makes a specific noise and it floats," (perhaps a white outline that highlights it against the environment, but doesn't allow you to see it through walls)
The siphon following the rules every other invulnerable enemy does, as mentioned

There's also a specific siphon spawn point on Eris that is needlessly obstructive. It spawns in a hallway and then drops enemies into that hallway, blocking your ability to quickly move through said hallway. This isn't a problem in basic siphon missions, but in a Kuva Flood, particularly one where enemies don't stop spawning, you are pretty much constantly stuck between enemies in your attempts to get to the Kuva before it gets sucked into the siphon... and that's supposing you can actually see it against the environmental colors and through all of the enemies that are stuck in such a tiny area.

[fatpig84]

errmmm I fail to see how is it a problem ?

I have told MR 5 to 6s to just go to Operator mode and grab the Kuva mist.
It worked every single time.

[Jackviator]

On 2/6/2017 at 9:49 PM, fatpig84 said:

errmmm I fail to see how is it a problem ?

I have told MR 5 to 6s to just go to Operator mode and grab the Kuva mist.
It worked every single time.

The problem is you shouldn't have to tell them this, the devs should, via tutorials. Because that's just what they're supposed to be doing. It's literally their job.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Jackviator

[DiosGX]

Good post man. My first siphon was a mess due to these trubs.

 

I like DE's policy of "let the community figure it out" while they watch our discoveries on the forums and reddit like a digital ant farm. But something like a basic MISSION TYPE DESIGN FLOW should not have to be one of those things. I get it, devs play it a lot. Tutorial direction isn't on the fore very often and I can respect the team size for overlooking things. But it's awful tiresome to have to explain how to deal with siphons, oft results in lower lvls not being able to contribute because it's easier to just do it yourself most of the time.

[Shade-Nightclaw]

whats the fun of a game if you use a guidebook on absolutely everything? thatd be like taking a big exploration game like zelda or metroid prime and using the players guide cause...i dont wanna look around or try every power to see if it works.. i mean the others are right though a pop up appears every time telling you to press 5 anyway but still

[Jackviator]

1 minute ago, Shade-Nightclaw said:

whats the fun of a game if you use a guidebook on absolutely everything? thatd be like taking a big exploration game like zelda or metroid prime and using the players guide

That's fine and dandy for things like Kuria and Cephalon Fragments. When it comes to an entire new (and frankly somewhat obtuse) mission type, using a newly-introduced game-mode, however... Not so much.

[OniDax]

2 minutes ago, Shade-Nightclaw said:

whats the fun of a game if you use a guidebook on absolutely everything? thatd be like taking a big exploration game like zelda or metroid prime and using the players guide cause...i dont wanna look around or try every power to see if it works.. i mean the others are right though a pop up appears every time telling you to press 5 anyway but still

The game should actually explain to you how to play the game. That is the NORM for games. The game not telling you how a game mode works isn't exploring. It's the devs failing to actually explain their game. It's not too much to ask DE to give the Lotus correct voice lines that actually explain the game mode.

[Azrael]

9 minutes ago, Shade-Nightclaw said:

whats the fun of a game if you use a guidebook on absolutely everything? thatd be like taking a big exploration game like zelda or metroid prime and using the players guide cause...i dont wanna look around or try every power to see if it works.. i mean the others are right though a pop up appears every time telling you to press 5 anyway but still

 

6 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

That's fine and dandy for things like Kuria and Cephalon Fragments. When it comes to an entire new (and frankly somewhat obtuse) mission type, using a newly-introduced game-mode, however... Not so much.

Especially when the siphon breaks the rules set for the rest of the game. Namely, that enemies who are invulnerable have grey health bars, and that lotus doesn't tell you things that aren't actually true.

I think they meant for the "dashing through the kuva" thing to count as "attacking" the braids (since they blow up), but it's a pretty tenuous link. There's no explanation for why it works this way.

[armedpoop]

I dont get how people can argue against this. Warframe needs more explanation in general, and when the tutorials (if you can call them that) actively misguide you, thats a huge issue. 

[Hayabusa97]

And even when you do know what the hell you're doing (It took me a while to figure out where the kuva mist if coming from), it's hard to enter operator mode when you are getting stunlocked by Kuva Guardians or dying in less than a second to Kuva Scorches and Hyekka masters. It's why I just pug it so I can have meatshields

[armedpoop]

1 minute ago, Hayabusa97 said:

And even when you do know what the hell you're doing (It took me a while to figure out where the kuva mist if coming from), it's hard to enter operator mode when you are getting stunlocked by Kuva Guardians or dying in less than a second to Kuva Scorches and Hyekka masters. It's why I just pug it so I can have meatshields

just take a duration Limbo, and even Kuva Floods become a non issue. 

[Jackviator]

4 minutes ago, Azrael said:

Especially when the siphon breaks the rules set for the rest of the game. Namely, that enemies who are invulnerable have grey health bars, and that lotus doesn't tell you things that aren't actually true.

Yup. It's pretty much breaking the #1 rule of game design, that is to say, obey your game's preset rules. Never break them. EVER. If you establish something to work a certain way in your game (like the red healthbars thing) you follow that rule, or else the players will feel like you're tricking them, as in this case.

And as for Lotus misinforming you... well, going back to the Metroid/Zelda thing that @Shade-Nightclaw brought up, it'd be like if the Varia suit's HUD suddenly informed you that in order to pick up a Missile Expansion or something, you have to shoot it. And when you follow that piece of advice and shoot it, it explodes, leaving you unable to pick it up. How would any player feel in that scenario?

[Chipputer]

17 minutes ago, Jackviator said:

How would any player feel in that scenario?

It's funny because the logical and reasonable response is, "betrayed and upset," but there's that devil's advocate group that seems to think things being needlessly hard and annoying is good game design and would draw a comparison between that situation and something random that happened in Dark Souls that one time and people praised it for being good design (even though they didn't and praised the overall game, as a whole, as a well designed romp with difficult but fair challenges, rather than the one example that they'll cite).

[cittran]

5 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

It's funny because the logical and reasonable response is, "betrayed and upset," but there's that devil's advocate group that seems to think things being needlessly hard and annoying is good game design and would draw a comparison between that situation and something random that happened in Dark Souls that one time and people praised it for being good design (even though they didn't and praised the overall game, as a whole, as a well designed romp with difficult but fair challenges, rather than the one example that they'll cite).

And those people don't get to be game devs.

[SeaUrchins]

I agree, she should be either guiding or keeping her mouth shut, no need to create a mess by misinformation.

[DarkMoonPresence]

Thank you so much for this post! 

Because until I watched some youtube videos, I had exactly no idea what I was supposed to do. The syphon is invulnerable. Kuva guards too, no matter what I did (even void-dashing though them like in the quest changed nothing),  some new jester-like mobs are running around (I still have exactly 0 idea what are they doing and why they are here), I'm surrounded by endlessly spawning 100lvl mobs in the tiniest spot on the map, while the capture target is running away (because in the capture missions you have to chose between kuva and your mission goal) and the only thing that I'm told to do is to go in Operator Mode by pressing 5 and destroy the syphon. 

So guess what happens. I press 5, become a super-vulnerable child with 100 health+0 shields in a tiny-tiny spot filled with twenty 100lvl enemies all shooting me at once, while I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with immortal guards and unbreakable syphon. Obviously, I die without even understanding how it happened or why or who did this. All that without mentioning the fact that sometimes the red-and-black-mist-supposed-to-be-kuva glitches (because of all the 20+ enemies in the same spot) and you have to void-dash through it multiple times to get. 

Like 3rd mission in a sortie is supposed to be a challenge for your fully moded warframes and gear. If sorie 3 is a challenge for warframes.... Man, I don't even know what kuva floods are supposed to be for the operators. This way, it's just... unfair? 

[_Vortus_]

Does it need changed/fixed?  Yes.   Worth getting mad over?  No.

[DarkMoonPresence]

1 minute ago, _Vortus_ said:

Does it need changed/fixed?  Yes.   Worth getting mad over?  No.

Yeah, there's only one problem with that. 

Unless players get mad over something, devs wont realise it's something that is worth fixing. 

[Chipputer]

4 minutes ago, _Vortus_ said:

Worth getting mad over?  No.

Who's mad? Are you mad? Why are you mad?

[BornToDevour]

I get most irritated when Lotus says "Tenno there's no time to explain, you must destroy that thing" (Probably a little off because I'm going by memory) right after allowing the braid to absorb a kuva. When I encountered my first siphon and she said this after I let a cloud through, it would have been really nice for Lotus to explain. There was plenty of time as I had to sit through 7 more kuva clouds being absorbed as I had no idea what I was doing (until I watched a youtube tutorial).

[_Vortus_]

@esgallagh  problem with that is being mad over every little thing means when there is an actual reason its buried under all the rest of the angry posts.  

@Chipputer op is.   I burned my dinner, that was mildly irritating, that count?

[Chipputer]

1 minute ago, BornToDevour said:

Lotus says "Tenno there's no time to explain, you must destroy that thing"

I think the bigger problem with this line and all of them that follow it is that there's no explanation given as to why it's so imperative that we destroy these siphons.

The game gives you a vague explanation through the Queen's dialogue, basically hinting that she'll use the Kuva to revive the other Queen, but other than that, it's pretty much thrown at you like, "hey, Tenno, the Grineer are doing something, go stop them. No, it doesn't matter what they're doing they just need to be stopped. Period."