Plains of Eidolon

[(PSN)Silverback73]

10 hours ago, Knight_Ex said:

Ha sorta click bait title, but seriously I watched the angry joe interview that he had with Steve Sinclair and apparently Eyedrion plains content will be available to new players to the game, now these are just my opinions but do you really want to give new players access to this area, observe and do everything that it has to offer before having them go back to the regular grindfest of warframe missions with their closed in environment?  Thats like having them play Horrizon Zero Dawn and then switching the game out to Devil May Cry....you Can't do that and expect new players to remain interested in the linear missions and map designs,  I feel like it should be locked off until the player completes war within, because again if you expose a new player to these open vast area and then throw them into a box after your going to either alienate them from the other aspects of the game or drive them away completely when they realize the rest of the game is linear mission based content,   This upcoming expansion is great, but shouldn't be accessible until the player has already gotten their feet wet with warframe.

The whole point of PoE is to:

1.  Maintain the veteran player base.

2.  Keep up with the Joneses.

3.  ATTRACT NEW PLAYERS.

[Tyloo17]

I want to open this by saying that I love Warframe and bear no hard feelings towards DE for the choices they've made. I was prompted to make this post because of very mixed feelings that I've had regarding Warframe for quite some time. I also want to note that I am not a professional game designer, however I have been involved in the alpha and beta stages and closely interacted with the development of a few indie games and have played games both video games and board games for many, many years.

THESE ARE MY OPINIONS.

When Plains of Eidolon was announced I was, as I'm sure many of you were, very excited. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly came to a bitter end as I realized quickly that this isn't what Warframe needs. I know there are some 3000+ hour Warframe veterans and lovers out there who are going to get angry, but try to hear me out.

For me, Warframe's fast gameplay, interesting concepts and pretty high level of customization have always brought me back to the game. With the release of The Second Dream and The War Within, alongside countless other pieces of lore, Warframe's world is - in my opinion - utterly fantastic, always dynamic and rich. I could go on and on about the good parts of Warframe: procedural generation, diversity, a good community, etc. IN MY OPINION, the problem with Warframe as it is right now and the reason that I have such mixed feelings is in Warframe's "late game" content. Or rather, in my opinion, the lack thereof.

Every time a new quest comes out, or a new prime set comes out, I always come back to the game and I play it for a week or so and then I ask myself: "Why?" For me, getting the newest gun isn't interesting, especially since all that gun really does for me is get me the next prime gun and the next after that, because the only real late game content is grinding for gear. Even Trials / Raids aren't really good late game content, because they generally end up being fairly simple and most enemies are practically too durable to kill anyways. Now, I'm not going to try to say that Warframe's problems lie in the game's grind, because honestly, they don't.

When I think of good late game content, I generally think of traditional MMORPGs. Take something like World of Warcraft, which has a lot of depth to late game dungeon crawls. Huge raids the require strategy and skill. Warframe isn't an MMORPG. It's a very unique RPG/Shooter hybrid and this content isn't ideal for Warframe, however it does illustrate a point. The reason that Warframe doesn't have the same style of late game content as an MMORPG is largely the result of one integral piece of Warframe's design: Mods.

Mods are too powerful. I'm sure there are at least a few of you who have heard stories of players who run around with 8-Forma in their Mk1 Braton and solo all of the highest level content. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. But it's not just that mods are too powerful, it's that many of them are inaccessible (like, say, Argon Scope), difficult to acquire (Rivens), and/or expensive to rank up (Rivens and Primed Mods). The result of this is that a player with a good, solid set of mods that is sufficient for pretty much all content deals magnitudes less damage than a player with the perfectly ideal build. In most RPGs, the difference is noticeable but no where near as distinct as in Warframe. This effect is the result of the exponential nature of mods and the fact that mods like Serration - the MOST BASIC damage mod - increases damage by 165% damage, compounded with the 60% fire rate increase on Speed Trigger, a slight difference in the base damage of a weapon has huge effects on the actual damage of the weapon. The result of this system, in additional to power creep, makes any sort of "damage test" or "bullet sponge" fights extremely difficult for "normal" players and easy for the "best" players. (I'm not even going to talk  as I'd like to about power creep and Riven Mods, because this post is probably going to get mostly negative feedback anyways and it really doesn't matter, because I'm just venting ideas.)

An additional problem that Warframe faces in regards to it's late game is a lack of classes and/or roles. Now, I DO NOT want to see all of the Warframes themselves turn into the equivalent of classes in most RPGs, but I think that if we ever want deep and interesting late game content, so one is going to have to be able to do the "tanking" and I don't just mean mash the 3 key on frost and hope that everyone stays inside your snowglobe.

There is never a sense of challenge in Warframe in my opinion, because it always comes down to either: "How well can you kill the bad things?" or "How quickly and safely can you get to the objective?" There isn't a sense of actual challenge that makes me think about squad strategy or anything else other than can I survive long enough to kill something or hack into that console, at least not in my 800 hours of play.

TL;DR - Warframe suffers from having mods because it creates an enormous gap between the most well equipped or skilled players and the least well equipped or skilled players that makes late game content difficult to create.

I am excited for the future of Warframe because I believe it is possible that Plains of Eidolon will be good and that DE will find more creative ways to deal with late game problems without having to rework an integral part of the game. However, for now, I'm going to let pessimism reign because I'd rather expect the worst and be surprised by the best than the other way around.

EDIT: Well, I'd say you guys have done something to renew my faith in Plains of Eidolon. A lot of you have brought up that the issue of Warframe's gameplay loop of grinding for gear so you can grind more gear so you can... well, you get the point. I wholeheartedly agree with this: Warframe needs better content, not more content. And I don't mean harder or longer, I mean more inventive, more interesting, and more engaging. (What happened to Tactical Alerts and Operations?)

And I suppose my original post was not very clear about much, it was mostly just a dumping ground for my ideas and feelings, so sorry about that. But I'm not really trying to say I know the solutions, I mostly wanted to start a discussion about what can be done to help Warframe be the better game I know it can be. Thanks for the discussion everyone.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Tyloo17

[(XBOX)TheMadCash]

So words can't even describe how exciting this is about to be. But there are still some stuff that came up in my mind after viewing the video. 

World Enemies Levels

I don't really like fighting weak enemies at all. I make my frame strong. All my weapons strong to their full potential. To fight already weak enemies? I'm hoping that there will be different level instances of Plains of Eidolon where enemies can be harder

Archwing on Demand is cool but. Being able to actually fly our ships. When??

I was pretty blown away when you was able to actually call in your Archwing. But when will we be able to actually fly our ships? Not only in our loading screens

Exactly how big is the open world?

I really don't want to get excited to jump right into an open world in Warframe only to find out the the open world isn't exactly big as we all want it to be.

Set Mods?

Im excited for this but after carefully modding each and every one of our frames even down to the utility slots. Can we really fit another mod into our builds? This one concerns me. 

Exactly how much a player would spend on Plains of Eidolon vs the nodes we all are used to

How much there is to do in the open world plays a very big part. There should be so much to do that you can stay within the open world in one sitting

Well I just wanted to share some thoughts about what was shown. What are some of you guys questions, concerns, maybe something that caught your eye? Feel free to share

[Miser_able]

Who knows, maybe PoE could add some new system that helps to balance it a little. I say a little because things should be unbalanced slightly, specifically with older players being stronger than new players. That's how all games work and should work, it provides a goal for new players and that's good. And it doesn't matter if new players can't do end game content because it simply isn't their time. You don't boot up a new game, finish the tutorials, and then go straight for the final boss. You have to play through the whole thing to get to the end game. 

[ArielTkx]

1° Daytime is fun, even for new players, night time is end game content, so dont worry

3° According to steve, it is something arround 9km, or 3x3, it is complicated, it is bigger than GTA 3 map i think lol

5° It is impossible to say that now, we may have a lot of things to do when they release PoE, but DE is planning on creating more content and more open world maps for each planet in the future, that said, we will be receiving more updates to PoE anyway, i doubt they will release it, fix some bugs that may (probably will) occur and leave it that way until they decide to release more big maps

[SilvaDreams]

12 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Cash201293 said:

So words can't even describe how exciting this is about to be. But there are still some stuff that came up in my mind after viewing the video. 

World Enemies Levels

I don't really like fighting weak enemies at all. I make my frame strong. All my weapons strong to their full potential. To fight already weak enemies? I'm hoping that there will be different level instances of Plains of Eidolon where enemies can be harder

Archwing on Demand is cool but. Being able to actually fly our ships. When??

I was pretty blown away when you was able to actually call in your Archwing. But when will we be able to actually fly our ships? Not only in our loading screens

Exactly how big is the open world?

I really don't want to get excited to jump right into an open world in Warframe only to find out the the open world isn't exactly big as we all want it to be.

Set Mods?

Im excited for this but after carefully modding each and every one of our frames even down to the utility slots. Can we really fit another mod into our builds? This one concerns me. 

Exactly how much a player would spend on Plains of Eidolon vs the nodes we all are used to

How much there is to do in the open world plays a very big part. There should be so much to do that you can stay within the open world in one sitting

Well I just wanted to share some thoughts about what was shown. What are some of you guys questions, concerns, maybe something that caught your eye? Feel free to share

#1 It will be a fairly low level area 20-30s. I believe it was but will require TWW to be finished for the night time.

#2 Never...? Steve has done some fun time experiments on his live stream but that may just be that

#3 It's a 3 square kilometers 

#4 Set mods we'll find out in time.

Edited July 13, 2017 by SilvaDreams

[Tyloo17]

5 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

Who knows, maybe PoE could add some new system that helps to balance it a little. I say a little because things should be unbalanced slightly, specifically with older players being stronger than new players. That's how all games work and should work, it provides a goal for new players and that's good. And it doesn't matter if new players can't do end game content because it simply isn't their time. You don't boot up a new game, finish the tutorials, and then go straight for the final boss. You have to play through the whole thing to get to the end game. 

Oh yes, definitely, sorry if that wasn't clear. It was just sort of brain dump. I still want progression. I think mods are interesting and cool, but I think there should be a better and/or more balanced way to work through the game's progression. Again, just a place for me to collect my ideas into something somewhat cohesive.

[Ninja]

Well let's assume that if you just starting to learn martial arts. It's impossible to jump directly into Black Belt, you should start from the White Belt first and your Belt changes as your skill, power & strengths progressed up.

In other words, everything needs progress

[(PSN)RankRancid]

1 minute ago, Tyloo17 said:

Oh yes, definitely, sorry if that wasn't clear. It was just sort of brain dump. I still want progression. I think mods are interesting and cool, but I think there should be a better and/or more balanced way to work through the game's progression. Again, just a place for me to collect my ideas into something somewhat cohesive.

We all have to go through the same grind to get the mods that are required to be strong. You don't need the ultra rare mods to match damage. You don't even need Rivens to clear content in this game. 

Don't know what we would benefit from DE revamping the whole system. Seems pretty balanced to me so I don't have any issues with the way it works now. Start weak and end strong with time invested.

[Glitch_Kitten]

I'm cautiously optimistic for PoE, because it has the POTENTIAL to solve warframe's biggest issue: Warframe's gameplay is boring, it's difficult to balance potential lategame content for the reasons you've stated AND the current gameplay loop is in such a position in where simple number tweaks or more enemy variety just wont cut it.

Trying to make Warframe fun outside of adding shiny new toys to farm for is like trying to convince yourself mac is a viable alternative to windows when it comes to gaming, it's just not gonna happen. With the introduction of PoE comes the possibility to reinvent the core gameplay loop. It's a giant canvas waiting for interesting events, unique missions and as teased in the cinematic: multi-staged bosses. While I don't expect huge server wide events on the scale of WoW or GW2, I am hopeful that this new open world will give DE some wiggle room to really flesh out the currently mundane gameplay in a way much more significant than a new weapon or enemy type could. 

However I won't put it past DE to not fumble and have some serious missteps, open world is incredibly easy to screw up, sure there might be a big expansive feild for us to explore, but it's going to need to serious work to actually be alive and have purpose, plus it raises serious questions like "How is this going to intergrate with the current gameplay loop?" "If it's vastly successful will the previous gameplay and tilesets become vestigel?" "What will happen to it if it turns into a flop?" "How will it play into progression?"

 

I want to see PoE succeed, because it could breathe new life into Warframe and turn it from a "Get X simulator, kill enemies along the way" to something much more.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Glitch_Kitten

[(PSN)robotwars7]

12 hours ago, Knight_Ex said:

 - Snip -

a valid concern, though another way to look at it is that Eidolon is something to work for, it serves as motivation: if you tell newer players "do enough Tilesets and THIS could be yours", they'll be much more likely to do whatever it takes to get them to Eidolon. yes, new players can always be Taxied there, but trust me they won't be happy about being kicked around at night; they'll want to join the fray as we take on the Sentient, so they'll take on the necessary milestones they need to become stronger and more experienced. newer players only get half the Eidolon experience essentially, which will tempt them to strive for more.

6 hours ago, Lanieu said:

Better not. Can't stand that clunky mode.

it's pretty much carved in stone already. the War Within completion requirement, the fact it's a Sentient (weak to Void Energy), the added "maturity" mechanics to Operators... surely you must have figured it out from those, right?

question is; in what way will we be using our Operators: will the Sentient be resistant to all damage unless we zap it a few times, or will we need to laser weak points? and will DE improve the somewhat clunky mode with the Eidolon Update?

tune in in about 3 months to find out!

[Xaero]

19 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Cash201293 said:

World Enemies Levels

I don't really like fighting weak enemies at all. I make my frame strong. All my weapons strong to their full potential. To fight already weak enemies? I'm hoping that there will be different level instances of Plains of Eidolon where enemies can be harder

This is one of the reasons DE should get rid of scaling system. Instead, the difficulty should be represented by enemies' mechanics and different tactics. Nox and Kuva Guards are good examples.

Ofc our damage output should be fixed to match this. For example, lower the percentage increase of pure damage mods. The former must-have mods will become replacable and the mod system will finally allow us to make unique builds that suit our playstyles.

[Obviousclone]

exponential scaling both enemy and ally are a problem

 

Small story:

Quote

 

I have 2.5k hours into this game

 

I nearly quit once

 

that was when I was new to the game (like MR 3), I unlocked the jupiter planet (which was a level 10-20 planet at the time with the old star chart).

first enemy I run into:corpus crewman level 10.

my mk-1 braton, with all of it's mods could kill it.

by unloading 250 of my 540 bullets into it.

yeah this game got really grindy and really p2w real fast from my perspective. Also ran into some massive health walls with bossfights (which compared to the usual mooks I was fighting was like 10,000x tankier which is an insane spike in tankiness) and trying to do the level 8 mission where you capture maroo (who was just straight up unkillable to me).

left the game for a week until I figured out how to squeeze the most amount of damage into my mods, and also avoided playing in the higher leveled content sticking exclusively to earth/leeching until I could power up my mods high enough. And then when I did rank up my mods, effectively all of the content I just blew through because there is no linear progression, just constant spiking.

 

and yes, this is a problem. if you play Path of Exile, or any MMORPG for that matter, if you are like 3 levels under the content you are fighting, you can usually still rough it out. if you have a good build you might even find it easy. this game? the difference between 3 levels is like 10x the effective healthbar you need to face. And with limited ammo, yeah you aren't going to get anywhere.

 

Now, plains of eidolon, one of the things I know, is that supposedly it uses a day night cycle- enemies are stronger (endgame) at night, but are do-able by new players if it's day time. so perhaps the new content we face won't be an issue. But I do agree that yes, scaling in this game is stupidly steep especially with how the mods work.

[TheVeiledScion]

I disagree with the premise.  I don't think PoE is designed to address problems with enemy challenge. That's not the primary purpose of the expansion.  The primary purpose seems to be to expand the gameplay within a more lively, freer space.  That is something that Warframe needs, as the content it has is only geared toward the same finite gameplay experience.  Everything you want to see could still be done within the PoE environment.

42 minutes ago, Tyloo17 said:

There is never a sense of challenge in Warframe in my opinion, because it always comes down to either: "How well can you kill the bad things?" or "How quickly and safely can you get to the objective?" There isn't a sense of actual challenge that makes me think about squad strategy or anything else other than can I survive long enough to kill something or hack into that console, at least not in my 800 hours of play.

As for the point above, the solution isn't just changing up stats, but also adding more gameplay options, which requires more tools at your disposal and more tools for enemies to use against you.  Specific case in point, a while back people on here and DE outright rejected the idea of adding some sort of grenade to the game, despite the fact that the grineer and corpus use them. The reason was that it didn't "fit" Warframe. But grenades are perhaps the simplest tactical tool used by modern militaries. Without them, there's a lot less you can do to tackle a threat. I'm not saying grenades specifically should be added, but you'll never get true "squad strategy" unless you have more tactical options. Of course, you also need a greater variety of mission objectives that can accommodate those tools.  PoE's freer environment allows all of this to happen.

[RAGEQUIT58]

1 hour ago, Tyloo17 said:

 

TL;DR - Warframe suffers from having mods because it creates an enormous gap between the most well equipped or skilled players and the least well equipped or skilled players that makes late game content difficult to create.

 

The gap between those who have and have not put time in the game is not what is wrong with Warframe. Scaling is not a problem either, give enemies diminishing returns when taking damage or decide damage based on the type of gun (PLX NO MO IFRAMES). TBH I feel like the developers are just not motivated enough to make some scrumptious end game content. I believe raids are partly to blame for this.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

you make some valid points. endgame (or lack thereof) has always been something DE have wanted to address, and we can't blame them for trying: they gave us raids, they gave us Sorties, they gave us Endless modes, but they aren't enough anymore. this could well be because of mods making us a tad too powerful, but whatever it is, it means current content is pretty trivial: Raids only need a decent setup and one or two old-hands to teach any newbies how to do each part, and you've got Youtubers like Zanagoth who can do the raid as an 8 man team all using the same frame. Sorties are easy enough to do with regular gear, it's only certain modifiers that offer a challenge, and they aren't really rewarding enough. as for endless runs, many will argue that the appeal of endless runs died with the old Void Key system's removal. going endless on other maps doesn't appeal as much now that there's no prime parts for doing it.

we can blame mods, we can blame enemy scaling and whatever else, but we can't say DE haven't tried. every time they give us something new and every time we beat it over and over, then we begin to realise how unrewarding it feels without challenge and begin to complain about it, so DE makes another piece of "endgame" Content and the cycle repeats itself.

we need to break the cycle, and I'm hoping that Eidolon, particularly it's night-time gameplay, will offer something unique and challenging for Veteran players. we don't want Eidolon to go to waste, we want it to flourish and be expanded upon as much as possible.

 

 

[Tachibana_Hibiki]

8 hours ago, Rakiss said:

In all seriousness though it's a relief to hear it's a joke. I was a little worried about arbitrary fish-grind.

 

It started as a joke.

[Lakais]

14 hours ago, MrMythic said:

I think that Steve mentioned on his Twitter that while the daytime will be available to everyone, the night time will be blocked until after the war within.  

That makes very little sense since the whole day-night thing is dynamic. It's not like the current earth one where every few hours your missions are either night or day. Unless the game goes "Time for the big boys to play, you need to be this tall to enjoy the spooky content." and kicks you back to town.

I also sort of get why DE wants to make it available from the get-go. It's the next big thing that has a big chance of getting new players to join. And I think it'd be in poor taste to basically go "We got this AWESOME new content! Totes-McGoats must play!" And then turn around "But you need to jump through these thirty hoops and play for a week to get it." 

Some people might get a wee bit salty at that. The wrong kind of people, the ones with reviews people read and communities trust. 

Edited July 13, 2017 by Lakais

[Emolition]

# 3km x 3km  map size 

For the flying part its probebly far off if it will happen as atm it just steve playing around with the idea. But the concept for guild ships to do space combat with and the way he talk about it sound really cool tho. 

[(PSN)bddacres]

2 hours ago, SilvaDreams said:

#1 It will be a fairly low level area 20-30s. I believe it was but will require TWW to be finished for the night time.

#2 Never...? Steve has done some fun time experiments on his live stream but that may just be that

#3 It's a 3 square kilometers 

#4 Set mods we'll find out in time.

In an interview with Angry Joe he stated new players can participate at night they will just be extremely unsuccessful 

[TheGodofWiFi]

2 hours ago, SilvaDreams said:

#3 It's a 3 square kilometers 

Actually it's 9 square kilometres according to Steve.

[StinkyPygmy]

Open world? In MY Warframe? It's more likely then you think.

[SilvaDreams]

4 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Actually it's 9 square kilometres according to Steve.

I'm just going by what was said at TennoCon, I don't go near Twitter.

[TheGodofWiFi]

Just now, SilvaDreams said:

I'm just going by what was said at TennoCon, I don't go near Twitter.

If you want to be completely up-to-date with everything then you should follow Steve on Twitter. Especially if you're trying to give out information that could possibly be outdated.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Tilesets still make sense over landscapes for certain locations. Grineer galleon/Corpus frigate, asteroid - basically anything that isn't an open air outpost tileset.