Solo Is Now Dull , And Not Rewarding Enough . Get A Squad For A Far More Easy Game.

[TheHeraldXII]

True Eris is likely a little late in the scheme of the game that a new player would have given up or have a good collection of mods and weaponry, probably even a few frames.  Many defence missions stand along the paths of progression.

 

Likely the bigest factor I find is scalling.  Based around the total kills of all players I have found (assuming solo is the 100% mark) that duo is often about 150% of solo, while 3-4 players is around the 175%-200% total kills, for a typical mission, so lets go 175% for 3 and 200% for 4.

 

There in lies the crux of the situation.  Assuming all members contribue equally, a single player solo is doing 100% of the work, duo about 75-80%, tripple about 60%-70%, while quad about 50%-60% of the work.  On top of that a cohesive squad likely can get a good 20-50% more effectiveness out of their gear (warframes/weapons/mods) through synergistic playing.  (these arent hard numbers just general observations)

 

Conversly you are getting significantly less mods and affinity solo as well, even though in solo you are going far more work than in a group.  Solo I tend to be lucky to get 5 mods, in groups rarely do I see less than 5 from a single mission, and often break the 10+ mods.

 

Sure it doesnt mean you wont be able to solo stuff eventually (so impossible may be inaccurate term), but at what point is it going to stagnate their progression, or cause a player to get bored with the game.

This is very true and accurate, mainly I'm arguing that none of these issues are new. When I started, back in update 7 I dealt with all these issues, levelling slower than usual, taking more time, seeing fewer mods etc. However it was possible for me to run my way up to and through Pluto without any multishot. Some people will get bored playing Solo in a co-op game, some will thrive. If they get bored, all they have to do is set it to online and give it a shot there. It's no more "impossible" to get to the point where you can fight level 40-45 enemies now than it was then, besides the fact that defense missions are way more difficult for solo players now.

[TheHeraldXII]

Meh I should do the same as you are trying Herald. To see how hard the difficulty has hit.

The main thing you have to get past is that you've likely forgotten how bad the starter weapons are. They are completely terrible and need to be ditched at the first opportunity. This is one of the things I would say needs to be changed about the early-game difficulty, we could do to start with a Braton instead of a Mk-1. The Mk-1 is not satisfying to use at all, effective throughout the first 2 systems, but not satisfying.

[fatpig84]

The main thing you have to get past is that you've likely forgotten how bad the starter weapons are. They are completely terrible and need to be ditched at the first opportunity. This is one of the things I would say needs to be changed about the early-game difficulty, we could do to start with a Braton instead of a Mk-1. The Mk-1 is not satisfying to use at all, effective throughout the first 2 systems, but not satisfying.

 

I level that thing to 30 so it was just "passable" for me.

Level it up and throw it away because it was worse than the Lato which I held on longer till I got Lex.

 

But I could try playing from early again.

Edited July 20, 2013 by fatpig84

[xenapan]

The main thing you have to get past is that you've likely forgotten how bad the starter weapons are. They are completely terrible and need to be ditched at the first opportunity. This is one of the things I would say needs to be changed about the early-game difficulty, we could do to start with a Braton instead of a Mk-1. The Mk-1 is not satisfying to use at all, effective throughout the first 2 systems, but not satisfying.

Mk1 is bad because its a starting weapon.. replacing mk1 with braton is just a silly idea. who would buy an mk1? maybe when you have so much stuff mastered that its the easiest source of mastery points maybe. but past that.. no. its good new players have it to use, rank up, then sell.

[LazyKnight]

The main thing you have to get past is that you've likely forgotten how bad the starter weapons are. They are completely terrible and need to be ditched at the first opportunity. This is one of the things I would say needs to be changed about the early-game difficulty, we could do to start with a Braton instead of a Mk-1. The Mk-1 is not satisfying to use at all, effective throughout the first 2 systems, but not satisfying.

I am wondering how you will get past Eurasia earth. They really changed that map and I am not sure how hard it would be with bad weapons and a low level frame.

Edited July 20, 2013 by LazyKnight

[Rottae]

I just did a start over with my unranked Excal, Skana, Braton and a lato. The first 3 maps are fine, but after that the difficulty just spikes up, alot.

I'm not using any mods i've previously collected and I haven't found anything to use on any of my things except rush and 3x Blunderbuss. I think the problem here is not difficulty as much as DE relying on ppl having basic mods. From now on, I support making starting content easier, make it become a actual difficulty curve in this game and not just Walk in the park for three missions and all of a sudden brickwall. I've 300 hours or so in this game and I've had to pop 2 revives past the first 7 maps.

This game got so much stat requirements it's crazy. Gonna do 8 mission now with Cold. Wish me luck :)

[TheHeraldXII]

I am wondering how you will get past Eurasia earth. They really changed that map and I am not sure how hard it would be with bad weapons and a low level frame.

Defense mission, mobile and otherwise are pretty much impossible solo now, I don't even have to play through to say that. If there's anything that needs fixing as far as difficulty goes, it's solo mobile/defenses.

 

I just did a start over with my unranked Excal, Skana, Braton and a lato. The first 3 maps are fine, but after that the difficulty just spikes up, alot.

I'm not using any mods i've previously collected and I haven't found anything to use on any of my things except rush and 3x Blunderbuss. I think the problem here is not difficulty as much as DE relying on ppl having basic mods. From now on, I support making starting content easier, make it become a actual difficulty curve in this game and not just Walk in the park for three missions and all of a sudden brickwall. I've 300 hours or so in this game and I've had to pop 2 revives past the first 7 maps.

This game got so much stat requirements it's crazy. Gonna do 8 mission now with Cold. Wish me luck :)

I agree that they rely on having basic mods far too much when expanding their difficulty, but in the playthrough I did above, I didn't find a single damage mod until mid way through Venus, and upgrading to the Braton at that point is basically like getting 2 ranks in Serration. Mercury should be fine for the whole playthrough, everything dies if 5-8 shots from an unranked weapon.

[arch111]

To all playing reruns, what of the spawns and heavys?

Do you rush past mobs, or do they spawn less?

If you are doing fine in Merc and venus, they must have adjusted the difficulty rights?

I played merc recently and got instakilled by a lancer. That never hapened before.

[Rottae]

I had some problems with enemies hitting for truckloads on venus, but merc was fine. Didn't meet a single heavy there either so I think that is fixed.

Gonna keep trying tomorrow most likely, but as it looks right now, there is no basic mod drops and to make a last note, If a player with 300 hours into the game pops revives in the first 7 missions. It's to hard.

 

[Destro6677]

[Anyone notice it's level 57? You know, where all your gear caps out at 30? Know what that means? Your suppose to have a patato in all your gear for it if your going to solo it so your technically 60. How is that hard to understand? Is it doable without it, probably : are you suppose to? No!

 

If your absolutely determined to do EVERYTHING solo your going to have to go back to places you've already been and grind out levels, find mods that gear toward your goal. It's entirely possible, but by no means 'easy' and that's perfectly fine. The game wasn't designed for you to be rushing to every single high end boss while also being so stubborn as to not even befriend anyone along the way to help you.]

 

I've brought this up in the past, but I think continuing to make noise about this is relevant.

 

Potatoes do not drop in-game from anything but alerts. With the random nature of alerts, they reward players for being in the right place at the right time and having the right planets unlocked.

 

This is hardly fair to players who clock in x number of hours and should deserve to get a potato for their hard work.

[Destro6677]

True Eris is likely a little late in the scheme of the game that a new player would have given up or have a good collection of mods and weaponry, probably even a few frames.  Many defence missions stand along the paths of progression.

 

Likely the bigest factor I find is scalling.  Based around the total kills of all players I have found (assuming solo is the 100% mark) that duo is often about 150% of solo, while 3-4 players is around the 175%-200% total kills, for a typical mission, so lets go 175% for 3 and 200% for 4.

 

There in lies the crux of the situation.  Assuming all members contribue equally, a single player solo is doing 100% of the work, duo about 75-80%, tripple about 60%-70%, while quad about 50%-60% of the work.  On top of that a cohesive squad likely can get a good 20-50% more effectiveness out of their gear (warframes/weapons/mods) through synergistic playing.  (these arent hard numbers just general observations)

 

Conversly you are getting significantly less mods and affinity solo as well, even though in solo you are going far more work than in a group.  Solo I tend to be lucky to get 5 mods, in groups rarely do I see less than 5 from a single mission, and often break the 10+ mods.

 

Sure it doesnt mean you wont be able to solo stuff eventually (so impossible may be inaccurate term), but at what point is it going to stagnate their progression, or cause a player to get bored with the game.

+1 for you Loswaith, a good summary of the situation.

 

I for one think that making things an easy pubstomp for people playing in a group of 4 actually defeats the purpose of having 4 people. If everyone can press 4 and nuke everything as usual, what need is there of strategy or revives?

 

In solo, you actually have to worry about dying. In a team? 'Nah, we'll just do what we've always done, press 4 and faceroll everything'.

[TheHeraldXII]

To all playing reruns, what of the spawns and heavys?

Do you rush past mobs, or do they spawn less?

If you are doing fine in Merc and venus, they must have adjusted the difficulty rights?

I played merc recently and got instakilled by a lancer. That never hapened before.

I fought all the mobs, some missions had weird spawn rates, I had some missions spawn under 50 guys but on the rescue mission closest to Fossa I encountered a romm with about 20 Moas right behind the door. It wasn't an issue actually, they're so inaccurate that if you take any steps to avoid damage you can survive even 20 Moa charging you.

Mercury is as difficult as it always was as far as I can tell, I never saw anyone beyond level 4, which was the previous level cap for Tolstoj. I also haven't seen a heavy, special Moa or ancient, so if that happened I'm pretty sure it's a bug. This is notable actually more forgiving than old Venus which drowned me in shockwaves last time I was here.

Instakilled by a Lancer? Were you playing a nighmare mission? That might be the issue, they scale with level which means if you rocked up with even a level 20 weapon you forgot to change out they might have been scaled beyond your means. As an additional note about nighmare missions, they weren't available until you completed the entire map and scale with level, meaning that experienced players got a nasty surprise but new players would have been mostly unaffected.

 

@Destro6677, I agree that if Catalyst/Reactors are going to be part of the standard level progression they should be available through time and effort. As for the facerolling with a full team, that is actually one of the biggest flaws in this game, the mechanics are solo-oriented but you get kicked in the nuts for playing solo. I'm an avid solo player, I spend 99% of my time playing solo because I don't like defenses and the other missions are a kill stealing contest.

[Destro6677]

Ok first of all really fun reading all posts, and I agree that Solo must be looked at if it is to be a choice in the future.

 

 

I remember all to well running out of ammo after U8, and now after U9 I still do. But now its the enemy count that gets me, along with that it seems all enemies have got more HP then before. It does not help that they

 

1. Spawn from nowhere

2. Stab me in the back

3. Have got me on their radar

4. Can kill me with 2 blows

5. Can knock me down

 

This is not only Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Mars are all much harder now.

 

Add to this that in order to progress you need better weapons. To get weapons you need

1. Rescources

2. Time

3. Patience

4. Better weapons

 

At least thats how it feels like. I feel my Braton is to weak for Saturn and Earth, ESPECIALLY mobile Defence! But all players MUST farm these planets to get Salvage and the stuff you get from Infested.

 

To many vets have stated they run with starter frames and good guns. Well duh, I still cant get Hek since its Mastery 3, and in order to build any of the Blueprints I got, must farm planets that are just to hard. The solution could be to make these mats available in Venus so new players have a better chance, as well as a reason to grind there. Or nerf Saturn.

 

As for frames, I need rubedo, salvage and control modules right? Wich is even harder to do after U9.

 

I played the Alert with a group and died hopelessly along with several others. I saw the vets doing fine most of the time, and felt utterly useless.

 

Add to this list Nightmare mode, increased mob count making the screen a mess of colors and shapes where I am just clicking, hoping I hit something and dont die.

 

To sum up: The original players that are now hardcore, bored, thinks its to easy need their own system. It needs to become unlocked through events, alerts, killing all bosses or something along those lines.

 

The others, me included, have Sol System. Make it more accessible, less demanding and more fun. It was more fun for me before U9, but I never played Pluto, Xini. I have never seem the Void for myself.

I've been here since closed beta and I agree with this.

 

It's so annoying with the new enemies that spawn behind you, in front of you, heck, even above and below you.

 

You're stuck in a corner with no shields, desperately trying to reload, when suddenly some lone lancer walks up to you, says hi, and proceeds to kill you in 2 seconds.

 

I've been there.

 

And although I can handle the new difficulty level on most things except mobile defense, I agree that weapons overall have become more important. If you play warframe as gears of warframe, it's basically like playing halo on legendary. It becomes an all out gun battle where the bigger guns win. And your starter frames can tank 2 hits until you reach the next bit of cover.

 

We should pay more attention to how important weapons are right now in U9.

[arch111]

Another thing in my way are the mobile defence maps i MUST do to progress.

i cant skip them, well i can play with vets and hide. But thats no fun.

I dont see any skill involved.

Another thing i found weird, was i got invited to War. This now means i can play war, but only war.

The path back is still locked

Is this intentional, or a flaw in design?

[WhateverISayisRoyalOcean]

Played Solo for a while with a brand new Ash to test Continuity and Constitution on Smoke Screen.

 

Hate to hate on casuals, but you could do better.

[Tyrael2k3]

In this update , the stakes are higher than before. if you lose, you dont lose only the resources or experience you have gathered with so much care, but your TIME. If you happen to die after 30 minutes of surviving a colossal mass of enemies you will understand how much of your precious TIME was invested in vain. IN A LVL 27 mission.

 

+1

[Parias-Ilota]

just to add a little sidenote. i got attacked by the stalker. 

you know what i did ? i ran. i ran past the horde of enemies (they were Corpus and i got extremely lucky). and they raped the stalker.

 

THE STALKER. THE DUDE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BIGGEST BADASS IN THE GAME IS NOW A PIECE OF USELESS S#&$.

[TheHeraldXII]

just to add a little sidenote. i got attacked by the stalker. 

you know what i did ? i ran. i ran past the horde of enemies (they were Corpus and i got extremely lucky). and they raped the stalker.

 

THE STALKER. THE DUDE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BIGGEST BADASS IN THE GAME IS NOW A PIECE OF USELESS S#&$.

That's how I beat him for the first time back in update 7, this is not news, calm down,

[arch111]

Does the game scale with the level and tyoe of fun?

Ill have to play with no mods and test.

And mastery, does it scale to?

[Notso]

Sorry, I can't hear your post over the sound of me soloing Raptor on Nightmare mode.

[arch111]

Sorry, I can't hear your post over the sound of me soloing Raptor on Nightmare mode.

Be sure to report how it was. Challenging enough?

[Azamagon]

Here's a little story about how i had my first true "rage" moment in Warframe (which was yesterday):

 

I prefer to do most things on solo in this game (just the kind of guy I am). So, a Banshee helmet alert pops up on Eligor, Europa. I see that it is Corpus Defense. Hmm, ok, let me grab Frost just for safety (Snow Globe). Let's also grab some of the better gear i have, Latron, Kunai and Gram. Frost and all weapons are all potatoed except Gram. They are quite decently modded too btw. Time to try and solo that mission!

First thing i notice is that the enemies start at level 50 on wave 1, and i had 15 waves to go through. Ok, that's unusually high, i mean Europa is more or less level 40 now, but nevertheless i guess i can handle this. To make things a little worse though, i get one of the toughest of all defense maps too, the courtyard one (they attack from all angles on that one). As i progress through the waves all i keep thinking is "Wow, this would've been absolutely IMPOSSIBLE without any other Warframe than Frost! Snowglobe is seriously a MUST for defense missions, at least when soloing!"
So, im doing quite nicely, getting LOADS of mods, even 2 new ones! Final wave. Well, what happens? A single piece of sh!t Shockwave MOA manages to knock me out of the Snow Globe, and thus out of the range from the artifact im defending. Oh crap, the snowglobe fades a second after that too! Not good. Ok Frost, get your &#! up and put a new Snow... emm WTF?! The artifact broke just as i managed to get up from the knockdowned state?? But the artifact was just at 100% shields and health?! Oo

... A minor rage happened right there, slamming my fist in the table with full force, scaring the crap out of my wife. All those mods... lost. The time... wasted. This map took about an hour, which also meant i had no chance in trying it again either... But yippie, i get to keep the XP i don't need -.-

If i could've at least been able to keep the mods i wouldn't had been NEARLY as angry. But why can't we keep them when we fail? I think that change was the worst change to Warframe so far (not keeping mods when you fail/forfeit a mission). As a (mostly) solo player, it totally sucks!

 

I mean seriously? This game is just WAAAY too punishing for solo players, especially if you wanna try a higher level defense map with non-Infested enemies. Seriously, this is a little this of how i think the game feels in a few regards:

 

* Wanna do high level defense solo? Bring a Frost, otherwise get lost!

* Enemies are now also more aggressive towards the artifact/cryopod you are defending since the last update, making Frost and his Snow Globe even MORE necessary! This pod-aggression really needs to go asap, in solomode at least!

* Why do you get a map, when fighting solo defense against non-infested, that has more than two attacking directions? Just two directions are tough enough. Or if more angles are to be kept, at least reduce the insane amount of enemies swarming in! Or make the pod/artifact a lot more durable or something...

* And regarding not being able to keep mods when failing... is it because potential abuse of voidkeys otherwise? Just make it so that if you fail a mission, you keep all mods, XP and credits, but, if it is a voidmission, you lose the key instead (opposite of now). That seems like a more fair punishment to me. If this change gives the problem with bosses (someone doesn't get a blueprint, and thus instantly leaves the game), just also make it so that warframe blueprints are given to you when you finish the map instead, similar to like how it is handled in the void...

 

So yeah, in short: Soloing, at least high level defense missions, are WAY too hard >_<

Edited July 20, 2013 by Azamagon

[fatpig84]

Alright as quickly promised.

I ran Phorid without a potato weapon and unpotato mag.

But feel free to rag at me, my only non-potato available level 30 side arm at that time was the Kunai.

 

 

No focus

 

Again no damage mods above level 7.

Because realistically anyone that reach that far in Eris or Pluto can attain this.

 

 

Braton

 

 

Kunai. Barrel diffusion not inside.

 

 

Gram. Non charged you say ?

Consider this, killing blow takes 11 points, reflex coil another 7, Fury another 9.

That leaves you without the fire damage that hoses down infested.

 

 

 

The whole idea is to slow him down.

Edited July 20, 2013 by fatpig84

[fatpig84]

The start

 

 

Staying behind him all the time

 

 

Switch to kunai once a while

 

 

He goes down

 

 

And get out.

 

 

I can't screen shot the melee parts because it was too frantic spamming press E.

But yeah it can be done.

 

 

Now I will proceed with a new character run.

Edited July 20, 2013 by fatpig84

[EirikAura]

Alright as quickly promised.

I ran Phorid without a potato weapon and unpotato mag.

But feel free to rag at me, my only non-potato available level 30 side arm at that time was the Kunai.

 

You know, I've never seen over half of those mods, let alone at those levels (the ones that are equipped). Certainly don't drop in early levels 

Edited July 20, 2013 by EirikAura