The Second Stream Podcast #16 - TennoLive Speculation, Devstream 94, Sorties, and more! ft. M.C. I.K

[Zendadaist]

#2 Big no to randomised equipment, as that would punish you severely for owning any weapon, frame (or having a config) that wasn't fully potato'd, forma'd and sortie-worthy. Sure that's fine for folks like me who have all the frames and most weapons potato'd and forma'd, and can just power through whatever the sortie is because my gear is OP, but for the players who aren't there yet that would be an absolute nightmare.

There is already a randomise button for people who desperately want to do this.

 

#3 KUVA! Swap 4k endo for 4k Kuva please. I absolutely despise farming Kuva in its current form. It's tedious, boring and when it bugs out its frustrating as all hell. I've more or less abandoned my Rivens because I have grown to detest farming Kuva so much.

[AdunSaveMe]

Just now, Faulcun said:

Oh thats right. I forgot that was during a time when people didnt know how to do anything but press 4 and spam simulor.

Has anything changed?

Friendly fire will always be terrible.

[Faulcun]

Just now, AdunSaveMe said:

Friendly fire will always be terrible.

Maybe thats why it should be in a sortie

[AdunSaveMe]

4 minutes ago, Faulcun said:

Maybe thats why it should be in a sortie

...Sure, why not.

[Skaleek]

I dunno about other vets, but all the ones that I know don't need nitain.

Stuff I need/want as rewards ingame: Rivens (melee), Endo, Kuva, Forma, New Relics, good focus farm, resource boosters, exp boosters.

[Trichouette]

4 hours ago, AdunSaveMe said:

It's a bit much to assume DE doesn't want to add difficulty. But in the game's current state, it's not easy to come up with a challenge that's enjoyable, and not subject to cheese. This is what modifiers aim to do. Sorties are on par with raids in that enemy level is not the only obstacle you face, but where raids do it with some puzzle-like or endurance mechanics, sorties do it by changing the rules of the game.

Until DE puts in the tremendous amount of work to change the game's foundations (enemy scaling, powers, mods etc.) you can't expect them to just magically make the game hard in a way that's fair and interesting, in any other way than this. It's the best option, but it's not just the best option because it's the least bad alternative; it's the best option because it has more potential to make the game interesting.

DE does want challenge, and they do have a reason to try and do it. This is currently one of the best ways to accomplish that. The only other options are gimmicky, bland limitations, and just increasing enemy level.

Well sorties condition aren't making the game more difficult and they aren't really helping anything, especially since there is no real reason to run sorties. They're just making them more tedious (along with the amount of endless mission there are) especially considering the ones we currently have. (and with the current state of general unbalancen, there isn't a single sortie modifier that can't be ignored)

 

And yeah you pretty much repeated what I said about "the game can't be challenging until they start balancing it", which is obvious and somehow not their priority.

I'm just assuming they don't want to add difficulty because that's not really what they're working on, also because (as we said) they can't do that until they balance the game, and because the game is providing them with enough players and money without them having to worry about "replayability".

Edited June 22, 2017 by Trichouette

[OniDax]

9 hours ago, Chroia said:

I don't think that multiple (static, mission) objectives will help (see: Kuva Assault), and not sure that mastery is a good reward for gameplay, but aside from that, yeah.

In pretty much all other games, experience points (XP) are the reward for gameplay. It is not an odd concept for gameplay to award you experience points. In Warframe, that's basically mastery points, since in other games, experience points are the thing that progresses you through the game; it's how you gain rank. Progression shouldn't just be tied to collecting items, imo. It should be tied to gameplay, and I think Warframe needs to promote gameplay, not just collecting and maxing out rewards. If DE does that, then they don't have to worry about coming up with new reasons for players to revisit a reworked tileset, because there will always be a reward for going to any tileset in the game, that reward being mastery points.

 

I always think of it like this: a good game is its own reward. If the gameplay is good - if it's satisfying and immersive and it brings you back again and again and again - then that is the primary way in which the game is rewarding. Tying all ingame actions (again, all types of kills, console hacks, parkour, etc) to mastery points, thereby tying progression (i.e. mastery rank) to all ingame actions, is the way to encourage and support gameplay. DE should want players to play their game for the gameplay, and not just the reward, because if that happens, then even when DE runs out of rewards to give, players will still want to play the game - because they enjoy the gameplay, not just getting the reward. Again, when you have a situation like that, then DE won't need to figure out what new reward items to add to entice players to revisit a reworked tileset.

Edited June 22, 2017 by A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n

[AdunSaveMe]

1 hour ago, Trichouette said:

Well sorties condition aren't making the game more difficult and they aren't really helping anything, especially since there is no real reason to run sorties. They're just making them more tedious (along with the amount of endless mission there are) especially considering the ones we currently have. (and with the current state of general unbalancen, there isn't a single sortie modifier that can't be ignored)

Because the ones we have aren't good.

[Kinetos]

1 hour ago, A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n said:

I always think of it like this: a good game is its own reward. If the gameplay is good - if it's satisfying and immersive and it brings you back again and again and again - then that is the primary way in which the game is rewarding. Tying all ingame actions (again, all types of kills, console hacks, parkour, etc) to mastery points, thereby tying progression (i.e. mastery rank) to all ingame actions, is the way to encourage and support gameplay. DE should want players to play their game for the gameplay, and not just the reward, because if that happens, then even when DE runs out of rewards to give, players will still want to play the game - because they enjoy the gameplay, not just getting the reward. Again, when you have a situation like that, then DE won't need to figure out what new reward items to add to entice players to revisit a reworked tileset.

Agree with this so much. Warframe is one of the most loot centric game I have played, most games I have played do not have any loot, or loot is only *marginal* stat increases or cosmetic, with the entire gameplay in the character class. I mean, I played Jedi Academy all the way through like 8 times, it has no loot, no xp grind. Just a decent story, and great gameplay. I could play it again but I have other games that I want to play too. Currently about to burn out on Warframe again because gameplay is either "slaughter everything with impunity" or "knockdown and nullifier spam". There's no interaction. My timing isn't great with Harrow and Tennolive approaching but to make sure I thoroughly enjoy the thurible, I gotta take a break for a few months probably.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Kinetos

[OniDax]

6 minutes ago, Kinetos said:

Agree with this so much. Warframe is one of the most loot centric game I have played, most games I have played do not have any loot, or loot is only *marginal* stat increases or cosmetic, with the entire gameplay in the character class. I mean, I played Jedi Academy all the way through like 8 times, it has no loot, no xp grind. Just a decent story, and great gameplay. I could play it again but I have other games that I want to play too. Currently about to burn out on Warframe again because gameplay is either "slaughter everything with impunity" or "knockdown and nullifier spam". There's no interaction.

Well said.

[Trichouette]

11 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

Because the ones we have aren't good.

Well it's not like sorties have anything good in them... Unless the higher level enemies which make them a bit less boring.

From the gameplay to the reward it's quite a disappointment.

[JackMcRain]

1. How often do you complete Sorties?

It actually depends more than what I can even say. I do enjoy sorties (expect when they are way too hard to do) and usually I prefer to do whenever I feel like it and depending on the situation I mostly go public to make things easy. I only go solo if it's at least exterminate with Octavia or with someone else who can kill enemies in a matter of seconds. However there's one reason why I do sorties and for that ask youself this: What is the only way for players to get a Focus Lens or even a great version of it? Exacly, throught sorties. In fact, like I once mentioned in another post I mostly prefer to have Focus Lenses rather than Riven Mods as they, uh... I don't know they just feel so out of place especially due the fact of those suckers requiring the player to complete something in order to vield it and even after all of that work you might end up with a mod that only works on a weapong that you don't have and, not only that, it's even restricted to an extremely high Mastery Rank. Being the reason why I prefer having Focus Lenses than riven mods, assuming that you guys can rework the Tenno Schools in order to make them better. Maybe making them synergice when playing in the Operator mode.

2. What new Sortie Conditions would you like to see?

I choce Randomized Weapons as it seemed to be the most interesting to me. As long as it doesn't mess with the builds of the players. I mean as long as it works in a similar way as some managed to do in one server of TF2 where the loadouts of the characters are completely randomized, creating some pretty insane results. PLUS, it could be something interesting for someone who likes to do missions with a completely randomized loadout like DKDiamantes.

3. What new rewards would you like to see from Sorties?

I can't exactly tell, cosmetics sounds interesting but who knows?

4. What do you think the watery teaser was about?

Well, when I saw it I imediately thought that it could be that Hydroid is going to have a prime version of him. Sure it's probably not but even so I'm not surprised since that all warframes will get their own primed version, but primed stuff isn't a thing that interests me that much, they are nothing more than just the same things with different stats. That's not to say I hate them, I currently have Hikou prime and it's quite good. It also seems that many peopel are actually hoping that it involves the Excalubur Umbra, I have to say that it quite sounds interesting in a way, like the Primed versions are the light and the Umbras are the darkness. How awesome that will be? Regardless there are still a lot of warframes needing reworks like Hydroid, you should think about that when you get the chance.

5. How often do you visit low-level planets like Earth?

Not that much, it depends if there are alerts but it feels really bad that those lower level missions feel rather forgotten. I still like those places but they are just too easy and that's understandable since that they are the very first places where new players go. Aside for that it seems like that some people were talking about the possibility to choose the difficulty when playing missions, I mean yeah that sounds great as long as you make it work in a different way that doesn't break anything. In fave I've seen many games on the internet which gives you a set of difficults to choose from before playing any mission and that sounds interesting for warframe, at least if it works in a way that people may like.

[Noabettiet]

What new Sortie Conditions would you like to see?

In general, i sort of wish there were more fun driven conditions & challenges.
Such as :

• Enemies being in high alert, requiring us to complete the mission undetected (for missions that are possible, like extermination or whatnot)
• Enemies having impenetrable armor, but being extremely weak to finishers (non endless missions too)
• Assassination duo/ team - with existent npcs
• Special Assassinations of known grineer/corpus enemies but with randomized skills and weapons. Maybe team of enemies to kill.
• Enemy horde charge, with enemies spawning in bulks and charging at you at high speeds with really harmful melee, whom can stunlock. 
• permanent magnetic proc, where the hud, alarms and even health pads/ items don't work.
• hunted mode, where we are hunted by a particular boss(es) through out the mission
• multiple missions mode. Sort of like in open beta, where we'd have the missions branch out to different missions.
• speed run mode, which depending of how quick you were to complete the mission, you are offered increased rewards. 

What new rewards would you like to see from Sorties?

Cosmetics were a really good idea, but i'd love rather that there was a shorter reward pool and more meaningful one.
I love the current rewards, but i can't be the only person who finds some of them meaningless.

Like having the entire focus lens drops there, is painful. It doesn't feel like a reward, it feels like a "better luck next time" champ.. or a medal of "you've tried".
I wish you guys rather made it that it drops a bundle of sorts that we can chose what to get. So that, it is still random, but you at least have more control and less chaos in the type of rewards you get.

FOCUS LENS OF CHOICE
GREATER LENS OF CHOICE
Orokin potato blueprint of choice
3 day booster of choice
cosmetic blueprint of choice

So on..

Maybe for COMMON REWARDS, make it reward stuff like those ENDO statues, something that we can have infinite numbers of, like 10x resource of bundle* of any particular thing and keep the rivens obviously.

*25x resource bundle as...

Uncommon / rare resources, like polymer bundles which drop in quantities of 500 or so. This reward would give 12500. These are generally easy to get, if you farm for half a hour and even faster with a booster. Hence why they'd be great to have, right beside getting endo and rivens.

 

i suppose these would be going against what DE wants of their game, but since we are given only once per day, i'd say they are balanced. And this is, if they do drop.

What do you think the watery teaser was about?

A teaser to tenno con, without spoiling too much of the main surprise to the player base. 

How often do you visit low-level planets like Earth?

Almost never, i don't like the map and endless missions there are generally something i avoid. Specially the defense mission, where enemies sometimes get stuck somewhere and we have to go searching for them, or else the mission never ends. It is a stressful and boring map to traverse too.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Noabettiet

[Faulcun]

6 hours ago, AdunSaveMe said:

...Sure, why not.

Well, why not indeed. God forbid anybody learn to work as a team without attempting to nuke the map every 5 seconds. Who would have thought the hardest challenge in the game would be to stop spamming 4.

 

Heres another idea:

#2 - other - Disable a random power

Edited June 22, 2017 by Faulcun

[JatMuadDib]

4.Umbra !

[Vedlom]

What I would like to see in sorties is lenses getting removed.
3x Nitain was fair enough, and the forma should be bumped up to 3x at once, not only one.
Otherwise sorties are mostly a waste of time.

[Vedlom]

15 hours ago, Zendadaist said:

#3 KUVA! Swap 4k endo for 4k Kuva please. I absolutely despise farming Kuva in its current form. It's tedious, boring and when it bugs out its frustrating as all hell. I've more or less abandoned my Rivens because I have grown to detest farming Kuva so much.

Oh no.
Not 4k Endo unless we get 6k or more.

[BerzerkFrost]

3: Sortie reward pool needs clan special decorates like cephalon suda music box 

Edited June 23, 2017 by ULTRAnumb

[Lalaef]

Sortie rewards? Cosmetics. Maybe tennogen (if Tennogen skins addition will be reworked).

Watery teaser? Umbra. Too obvious.

[brawler58]

On 6/23/2017 at 9:46 AM, Vedlom said:

What I would like to see in sorties is lenses getting removed.
3x Nitain was fair enough, and the forma should be bumped up to 3x at once, not only one.
Otherwise sorties are mostly a waste of time.

Give this man a cookie

[Efro_D_Siac]

4- Eluding to an upcoming change in the focus system/operator mechanics

5- Testing weapons/frames or resouces

[-EGSplendidfun-]

I want all of the Nightmare Condition and Rathumn Condition mixed. Base sortie ye'll get 2 condition. And higher up Conditions Increased by 1 or 2. Example Energy drain with No Shield mode & Timer. Sorties are meant to be hard and challenging.

And Bring back Arcane helmet make em as a rare Reward And put just 165% Primed Elemental damage mods (Primed jagged edge, Primed Shocking touch & etc.) into the table. 

For earth, There is no reason to g. Except for Excavation runs for lith relics.

And waterly part i think umbra

[-EGSplendidfun-]

On 6/23/2017 at 1:49 AM, Vedlom said:

Oh no.
Not 4k Endo unless we get 6k or more.

no, I want to keep the 4k endo. 4k endo is really useful in this game. And kuva is fine where it is

Edited July 1, 2017 by -EGSplendidfun-
fixing some errors

[Vedlom]

12 hours ago, -EGSplendidfun- said:

no, I want to keep the 4k endo. 4k endo is really useful in this game. And kuva is fine where it is

That's what I said. 4k Endo shouldn't get removed lest we get a larger amount in replacement.

[TANTO_17]

2. Randomized equipment would be dope. I also think "Unmodded" or "Random Mods" would be a cool sortie challenge but maybe not for sortie 3 (lvl 100). "Head shot only" would be cool: no dmg anywhere but the head and give the head an insane damage multiplier. I also think a "Gungame mode" would be cool, cycles to a random weapon every few kills. Could do an "Oldshcool mode" too: start with only a pistol then go and find weapon pickups (they would be modded from your arsenal). I think overall more emphasis on cool gunplay and movement over power spamming would make a lot of people happy since it is fun and sometimes more engaging. 

3. I don't really want to dilute the sortie reward table any more. I think if people want more rewards some new challenge should be implemented. Sorties can't just be the one stop shop in warframe. Right now ppl play em for a shot at rivens and that seems to be working.  

4. I was never on the umbra hype train but the chains of harrow quest and the the clear demonstration of penumbra in the watery trailer has me a little curious. 

5. Once you reach a certain point, low lvl content is just not fun. I have the most fun in warframe when fighting lvl 150+ enemies. I like feeling punished when I do something stupid...met a lvl 200 Eximus Nox the other-day and he knocked some sense into me... I love that feeling of pushing back against enemies on equal or disadvantaged footing. Honestly if I was able to select the lvl at which to start a mission I would play lvl 100+ even if it meant I got the same rewards as someone playing the same mission at lvl 15. If I were able to do that I would visit a lot more of the star chart more often. I understand lvl select would completely mess up matchmaking although I think something along these lines would definitely help. It kinda sucks to have to play a mission for an hour before starting to have that fun fighting feeling as opposed to just completely dominating low lvl minions.

Thanks DE