How noble is the Lotus?

[WorldLiberation]

The origin system has suffered long from constant warfare between the corpus and grineer. Plus the infestation. The only hope is the Tenno. And to this day, Tenno fight for power, not honor. Lotus is trying to balance the sides and let no single faction too strong. Why can't she guide Tenno to bring peace? Like peacemaking missions?

 

Harmony, peace, and modesty would be much better than barely safety and balance

[FierceRadiance]

Well, the straight answer is, that could very possibly make for a boring video game.

But the question posed by your post title is really not settled ATM. The Tenno are essentially 'murder hobos for hire' AKA mercenaries, and that isn't widely regarded as a terribly 'noble' profession. It can be, but it too often isn't. And the Lotus leads our merry band, so what does that make her? (The word "pimp" comes uncomfortably to mind...)

I think it's a balance between noble and ignoble that DE is intentionally maintaining right now (and fairly well, IMHO). I mean, most (not all) games portray the player in some kind of heroic mode, so Lotus should be 'noble' more often then not. But from a writing perspective, 'noble' can become 'boring'. Because of the way the scripted Events and Quests have come out, she has sometimes been seen as willing to lie, or at least withhold the truth, for reasons of her own, which is very close to ignoble. So what's her deal? And what else is she hiding, and why?

She poses an interesting enigma...

 

[MadHatHacker]

Do you want edgy Stalker fanboys? Because this is how you get edgy Stalker fanboys.

[PsiWarp]

Well, Sentients so far haven't exactly been known to be a peaceful bunch. Considering that Lotus is a fragment of Hunhow, destroyer of worlds, I'm just glad Lotus hasn't ordered us to destroy Grineer and Corpus occupied-worlds in a "nuke from orbit just be sure" fashion.

[Kusungphak]

Its called Warframe.

Exoskeletal suit controlled by a teenager who was trained in a 'Ender's Game' type school. A school like Madurai literally focused on speed and savagery.

We are the real monsters of this universe. Literally being the grim reaper with a frame like Nekros who desecrates even the bodies to get more 'loot'. Every single enemy is a Pinata which we slice to see what they drop.

Tenno are the most dangerous only driven by pure greed to get the best gear all focused on killing more and faster.

There is no honor or peace cause we are the real monsters.

 

[kyori]

This game is about killing. We kill on festive season to get special reward etc. Peacemaking will be for WarSims 

[(XBOX)TheMadCash]

Truthfully. I'm confused about lotus intentions. We fight the grinder. we fight the corpus. Yet during invasions we get to choose a side to fight for? Why? 

[chainchompguy3]

The lore reason why lotus doesn't:

Lore spoilers:

Spoiler

Lotus doesn't give a crap about the system. Heck, she doesn't really give much of a crap about anything other than her tenno.

The reason being, she is a sentient that malfunctioned halfway through it's "Hijack tenno, Use tenno to kill orokin, Kill tenno, Bring forth the sentient empire" plan.

Her mothering precept overrode her loyalty to her own kind.

This one glitch is the only reason she didn't/doesn't completely kill us all, along with infested, grineer, and corpus alike, to create a sentient-only system.

Heck, she probably still has a "kill all tenno" button in her room somewhere.

 

All hail "space mom".

 

2 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Cash201293 said:

Truthfully. I'm confused about lotus intentions. We fight the grinder. we fight the corpus. Yet during invasions we get to choose a side to fight for? Why? 

In that case, it's a matter of "choosing a lesser of two evils".

Grineer and Corpus fight each other, they don't just fight tenno.

So when they fight, you CAN just ignore it, but if you think "The grineer have gotten really strong recently. I don't want them to be any stronger. While I don't like the corpus, I'd rather let the corpus win this fight then let the grineer get even stronger".

[ShadowStalker]

1 hour ago, MadHatHacker said:

Do you want edgy Stalker fanboys? Because this is how you get edgy Stalker fanboys.

Dude...dont sneak diss :(

:Pjk

Edited April 24, 2017 by ShadowStalker

[ShadowStalker]

54 minutes ago, Kusungphak said:

Its called Warframe.

Exoskeletal suit controlled by a teenager who was trained in a 'Ender's Game' type school. A school like Madurai literally focused on speed and savagery.

We are the real monsters of this universe. Literally being the grim reaper with a frame like Nekros who desecrates even the bodies to get more 'loot'. Every single enemy is a Pinata which we slice to see what they drop.

Tenno are the most dangerous only driven by pure greed to get the best gear all focused on killing more and faster.

There is no honor or peace cause we are the real monsters.

 

No just you

 

[Kusungphak]

9 minutes ago, ShadowStalker said:

No just you

 

I just play Lunaro with my starter Excalibur. I swear. 

[jfhsanseiIII]

Undecided.   

 

It's not a very exciting answer, but it's the reality thus far.  

[321agemo]

Last time we “wiped” out 2 races, we got the grineer and corpus.

 

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

[SilentMobius]

3 hours ago, WorldLiberation said:

The origin system has suffered long from constant warfare between the corpus and grineer. Plus the infestation. The only hope is the Tenno. And to this day, Tenno fight for power, not honor. Lotus is trying to balance the sides and let no single faction too strong. Why can't she guide Tenno to bring peace? Like peacemaking missions?

 

Harmony, peace, and modesty would be much better than barely safety and balance

Firstly what you you mean by "noble"? It's a pretty wishy-washy term.

The fact is that the Grineer and the Corpus are human, sure, they are generically modified, brainwashed, sci-fi hellscape evil from our perspective, but they are the inheritors of the Origin system that the destruction of the Orokin left behind.

There is an argument that if they hadn't rapidly grown to be the totalitarian arseholes we know then some other group would have under the constant resource pressure and the threat of the Infestation.

The Lotus isn't human, she does want to protect the Tenno but, really, for her to direct the wiping out of the Grineer and/or Corpus is no different to what the did to the Orokin as Natah and she has stated quite convincingly that she is done with all that.

[Teloch]

3 hours ago, MadHatHacker said:

Do you want edgy Stalker fanboys? Because this is how you get edgy Stalker fanboys.

*Battlehorns of edgy stalker fanboys trumpet at the distance*

[BornWithTeeth]

The Lotus is well intentioned but terribly flawed. She cares about the Tenno more than she should, in truth, and her decision making is at times questionable. That said, it's not a situation of 'overthrowing' the Lotus so much as renegotiating the Tenno relationship with her, and growing more independent.

 

 

As for the state of perpetual constant war with no end in sight, that's a gameplay conceit, really. If you look at Quests and Events, there's a vaguely coherent plot line in which the Tenno wake up, the other factions attempt to wipe them out or control them, the Tenno exterminate the leadership of the other factions in response, but before everything can collapse, Hunhow awakens. The Tenno confront a part of their own past, the Grineer queens are revealed, and....here we are.

 

Sooner or later, DE are gonna have to wrap things up with a final quest line, and that will allow closure.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

not gonna lie, system-wide peace would be very boring for us Void-powered killing machines. if there were peace, we'd just be walking around like the Guards in the relays.

besides, it's all gonna hit the fan once Hunhow brings some mates back from Tau, or Ballas wakes up from Stasis and wants to start Orokin Empire 2.0.

[SeaUrchins]

Destroy Orokin and bring chaos to the system and then kill other factions to restore the balance... she is not too smart. If Tenno were not just ignorant kids, they could tell her how stupid her efforts essentially are.

[(PSN)PadMar777]

We're Edo-clad mercenaries. There's no question about it - the Tenno are feared and respected by even those we're supposed to be protecting. I must admit I never felt that more than the first mission of The Glast Gambit; pacing through the colonists', hearing those hushed, awed whispers of: 'look, it's true; they're here' - probably the most badass, in-sync with the Lore I've felt since TSD.

[Teloch]

1 hour ago, SeaUrchins said:

Destroy Orokin and bring chaos to the system and then kill other factions to restore the balance... she is not too smart. If Tenno were not just ignorant kids, they could tell her how stupid her efforts essentially are.

 

 

And that's the point: break the existing status-quo only to pretend to maintain it later, giving a "calling" to "her" pseudo-kids and so getting an artificial excuse to stick with them forevermore. 

Basically, we keep the system in stagnation by sowing unrest and violence, stuck inside this artificial "Groundhog day" that was engineered by the maniac also known as the "space mom".

Marvelous, isn't it?

Edited April 24, 2017 by Teloch

[BornWithTeeth]

1 hour ago, SeaUrchins said:

Destroy Orokin and bring chaos to the system and then kill other factions to restore the balance... she is not too smart. If Tenno were not just ignorant kids, they could tell her how stupid her efforts essentially are.

 

1 hour ago, Teloch said:

And that's the point: break the existing status-quo only to pretend to maintain it later, giving a "calling" to "her" pseudo-kids and so getting an artificial excuse to stick with them forevermore. 

Basically, we keep the system in stagnation by sowing unrest and violence, stuck inside this artificial "Groundhog day" that was engineered by the maniac also known as the "space mom".

Marvelous, isn't it?

Just so that we're clear on this, you guys are aware that what you're complaining about is literally a game mechanic, right? That for long term players, the term 'groundhog day' is quite appropriate because the state of the game in between Quests and Events is effectively a timeless snapshot? Your complaint here is about as insightful as insisting that the player characters of a Final Fantasy game are responsible for the complete, utter, and total collapse of their planet's ecosystem because they've roamed the wildlands killing everything for EXP. I.e. you're insisting that literally everything which happens on the screen is completely canonical to the setting's events. By that metric, every single boss in the game is some kind of quantum-souled god who is in a permanent state of simultaneous life, death, and rebirth because the Tenno kill them on average once per minute for the blueprints that the mission rewards.

 

 

That's not to say that there aren't good reasons for being suspicious of the Lotus. It's that "she makes us kill billions and billions of Grineer and Corpus every day" is not one of those reasons, because the fact that the system is stuck in a permanent status quo is basically just an artifact of how the game model functions. The Lotus probably should care more about peace, but if she did then the game would end.

 

 

Try thinking about the new player experience, as they move through the Quests over a couple months.

 

The new player wakes as a Tenno in a warframe. They have no idea what's going on. A voice calling herself the Lotus helps them escape the planet, and they have precisely bugger all for resources other than their basic weapons and a damaged naval carrier.

The system is in a state of all out warfare between strange factions. The newly awakened Tenno moves through the gates, intervening in various battles along the way, gathering the resources they need to rebuild their power, practicing their forgotten skills. Several prominent figures among the Grineer and Corpus leadership threaten the Tenno, and the Lotus guides the Tenno to kill them. By doing so, the newly awakened Tenno attracts the attention of the Stalker, and gains new enemies. The Tenno still does not know much about the Lotus, and their own memory is still in pieces.

On Uranus, the Tenno encounters a piece of Sentient technology which the Lotus encourages them to investigate. The Lotus is revealed to be Natah, and the Old War is revealed to have never fully ended. At this point, if the player is an inquisitive and observant type they'll have gained access to the lore fragments of: Codex scans, Cephalon Fragments, and Synthesis entries, giving them a picture of the Orokin power and the Old War.

 

The Lotus tells them that Hunhow and the Stalker are gunning for them. Second Dream happens and the Tenno discovers who they really are.

 

By now, the player has carved a big hole in the Grineer leadership, and the Kweens send Teshin to lure the Tenno into a trap. The Elder Kween dies.

 

 

 That's the story so far. Not "And then we spent two straight years grinding Draco, killing nine billion Grineer in the process." Your complaint would make no sense to someone who started the game a few months ago and only just finished the War Within last month. You have this perspective because you've been grinding too long.

Edited April 24, 2017 by BornWithTeeth

[Teloch]

12 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

By that metric, every single boss in the game is some kind of quantum-souled god who is in a permanent state of simultaneous life, death, and rebirth because the Tenno kill them on average once per minute for the blueprints that the mission rewards.

 

 

Worse - there's even the Schrodinger's Alad V, who exists in THREE forms at the same time.

Although, all your post is but a proof of how poorly the single-player-game-like plot fits the online game. 

Anyway, that's all offtopic. This is the topic where we're predominately edgy and suspicious people are grilling the space Machiavelli and tossing tinfoil hats at everyone willing :)

Edited April 24, 2017 by Teloch

[Evanescent]

As long as DE doesn't go for a sappy super good thing I'm fine with whatever turns out to be the case. I'd like her to be ambiguous. 

[BornWithTeeth]

5 minutes ago, Teloch said:

Worse - there's even the Schrodinger's Alad V, who exists in THREE forms at the same time.

Although, all your post is but a proof of how poorly the single-player-game-like plot fits the online game. 

Anyway, that's all offtopic. This is the topic where we're predominately edgy and suspicious people are grilling the space Machiavelli and tossing tinfoil hats at everyone willing :)

Well, yeah. My point is that "the single player quest plotline does not seamlessly fit into the MMO gameplay and the lines of what is 'canonical' or not are poorly defined" is a very different complaint from "the Lotus is evil because she doesn't tell the Tenno to make peace".

 

Quite literally any time they want, DE can write a quest in which the Tenno wipe out the worst leaders in each faction, and then drag the survivors to the negotiating table to hammer out a peace. Then, the game ends and you have to stop farming the Grineer and Corpus for mods.

 

Now gentlemen, return to your regularly scheduled edgelording.

Edited April 24, 2017 by BornWithTeeth

[Teloch]

4 minutes ago, Evanescent said:

As long as DE doesn't go for a sappy super good thing I'm fine with whatever turns out to be the case. I'd like her to be ambiguous.

Lotus in one phrase: "Let it all burn, but I want my babies!"

Doesn't look very virtuous or diabetes-inducingly-sweet, really.