Major problem in Warframe is challenge (imo)

[SamoussePrime]

Hello,

First of all, I played many hours on Warframe and unlocked a huge content of weapon or warframes. I love this game and the dev are doing a great job with all those updates and provide good contents. 

But sadly in my opinion this game is too easy. Not with farming or getting a full moded warframe, but with fighting. Basicaly, it's One Shot or being One Shot (or One Shot and no care for many warframes). So where is the point to get a perfect moded rare weapon? I love the moding system, it's really interesting and requieres some calculation before get something good (with the warframes it's just a pleasure to adapt/change the gameplay by mods!).

But once again, there is no point to do a perfect stuff with those foes. If I take Nidus with basic mods (vitality + continuity + streamline + intensify) without weapon I'm able to do every mission easly (void T3 or Sedna). Or if I take Loki I can do a mission with no threatening...

Dev started something great with Ambulas, in my opinion, this boss has some mecanics and this is interesting to fight against. I think they should continue in this direction and maybe be inspired by Mass Effect (bosses mecanics) to make something more epic. It's definitly what I miss in Warframe: no epic fight.

In addition, why not increase to resistance of the enemies and reduce their strenght? Fights would be longer and harder (a mob who just OS you is just meh). This game have a awesome theory craft potential but there is no challenge at all to be neat with it. 

Finally, if you guys have some advices to make this game harder or to increase the challenge to improve my game experience I would give you a thanks :-P

Samousse

[SenorClipClop]

10 minutes ago, SamoussePrime said:

this game is too easy

• Players are allowed to choose their own power level and mission difficulty level
• Enemies always act the same way and never adapt to the tricks we figure out
• With all the various tools and customization we have, there is always something available to make any situation quite easy.

Combine all of this on a Co-op vs AI game, and you have yourself an easy game. The best way to make a game challenging is to limit the what the player can do (refer to most horror games, like FNaF or Slender), but Warframe doesn't really set close limitations. I believe it is a conscious choice by the devs, since many want to play this game to relax and aren't really looking to spend their free time on something difficult. Challenge is either got by manufacturing it for one's self in this game, or by playing another game. Let's hope future content provides more challenge.

[_-Malicious-Melodi-_]

I agree that the game is too easy, mostly because DE tends to only want to benefit new players. Things get nerfed too easily, rewards are not rewarding.... People who are MR20+ should not have to do a raid to get any kind of rise in difficulty. 

[polarity]

6 minutes ago, PureIcarus said:

People who are MR20+ should not have to do a raid to get any kind of rise in difficulty. 

I don't.  I grab my MK-1 Paris and go play some Earth:Lith to wave 20, while leveling other weapons, and using my frame powers to carry some newbies through the higher (for them) rewards.

Instead of demanding that other people make you a challenge, try making your own.  If you never use anything other than meta, then of course you're going to find the game easy, and boring.  Play frames/weapons and missions because they're fun.

Edited August 12, 2017 by polarity

[_-Malicious-Melodi-_]

Just now, polarity said:

I don't.  I grab my MK-1 Paris and go play some Earth:Lith to wave 20, while levelling other weapons, and using my frame powers to carry some newbies through the higher (for them) rewards.

Thats not my point. What im trying to say is once you beat your way through the Kuva Fortress and Pluto... the challenge and difficulty just stops. You keep progressing, making your weapons and frames stronger... but nothing can challenge you. A good game is always progressing its challenge.... but Warframe just stopped, and everything new is to benefit new players and not old ones. End Game content is non existent (And dont say raids.... Raids are boring, repetitive and give worthless rewards).

[polarity]

End game content is non-existent in EVERY progression game once you've completed it.

You can't expect to have additional tiers of content, that reward additional tiers of gear, that make that content easier to do, and have it produced at the same rate by the developers as the players can progress through it.

The whole idea of 'end-game' needs to die.  It isn't doing game design any favors.

New players end up trying to start the game at the end, because that's what is newest, despite the fact they won't have played any of the lower level content.  That makes a growing amount of unplayed content, and essentially all developer time put into it ends up as wasted, because while the amount of contributed work on the game grows, the amount of content consumed does not.  That's time that could be put into making more engaging mechanics and other game-wide improvements, instead of what basically amounts to reskinning old content, and putting bigger numbers on it.

DE are making a great game precisely because they don't care for that stupid, pointless progression that goes nowhere.  Instead they are adding great new concepts, and reworking old ideas to improve them.

That makes better games.  Trying to produce endgame content to keep up with its consumption by players DOES NOT.

 

Even in WoW - which is kind of the poster-child for progression games - after they have completed all of the available max level content between major expansions, players either find their own things to do within the game, or they take a break from it and go and play something else.

That has given rise to playstyles like the ironman challenge (self enforced permadeath mode leveling), level 50 raiding (playing the game's original level 60 content with just level 50 characters), and twinking (collecting not just a perfect set of gear for a low level character, but also pets/cosmetics/achievements that can be very hard to get, because they are intended for much higher leveled characters).  We even had an event for one subsection of the twinking community, in an area that's only supposed to be accessible to higher leveled characters with flying mounts, after jumping our way up a mountainside (almost every character in that video is a starter edition/trial account, with a level 20 cap).

Then there's still plenty to do that's provided by the developers, like pet and achievement collecting, and transmogrification (fashion-frame).

Edited August 12, 2017 by polarity

[fakeBOSHI]

Agree with pretty much all feedback here. 

1. Increasing and interesting difficulty are almost impossible to achieve in the game due to the limitations of AI. Without fighting other players it is impossible to be put into a situation that requires you to out think or out perform the enemy.

2. Mechanics that improve difficulty are limited to precision shooting only (ex. Nox/weak spots) because mobility (repositioning) and wf powers (stuns/ignores) are so strong.

"One shot or be one shot" problem is also a complex one. At low levels warframes melt enemies by looking in their direction. At high levels warframe survivability is capped while enemies become impossible to kill. Players then use hard CC and damage amplifying to continue playing making everything a punching bag again. Increasing TTK might keep players in the "sweet spot" a little longer if a hard level cap is introduced but does nothing to fix the first 2 problems.

 

[SamoussePrime]

25 minutes ago, polarity said:

Instead of demanding that other people make you a challenge, try making your own.

I usually play with a friend for Sorties as 2 players. We did "Operator Only" or "Dude, choose my weapon and frame!" modes. But come on it's not how a game is suppose to be build. If there is a strong modding and crafting purpose I wait a decent and adaptative answer from the mobs/bosses.

23 minutes ago, PureIcarus said:

You keep progressing, making your weapons and frames stronger... but nothing can challenge you.

That's exactly the point I wanted to show up. DE still creating sick weapons but for what and who?

15 minutes ago, polarity said:

Even in WoW, which is kind of the poster-child for progression, between major expansions, after they have completed everything possible, players either find their own things to do within the game

I've several friends playing WoW. They log ON to make raid with sick mechanics with no fail allowed from anyone of the party (btw they are full stuff with their "endgame" stuff), even if you completed everything you still have the game that challenge you.

 

25 minutes ago, polarity said:

Instead they are adding great new concepts, and reworking old ideas to improve them.

Yea they do and it's always a fresh content or unexepted one! It's why I'm still up there but all your weapons/frames don't give a f*** about the no difficulty of those.

[SamoussePrime]

5 hours ago, UnKnao said:

challenge cant exist in this game solely for the fact that the community would whine about it to no end

No need to put challenge everywhere. All games need a casual and an hardcore sides. Just  create some sick Trials with interesting mecanics and a strong difficulty should be great!

[MystMan]

2 hours ago, SamoussePrime said:

 Just  create some sick Trials with interesting mecanics and a strong difficulty should be great!

and at this point, whatever is defined as "interesting mechanics" and "strong difficulty" will vary extremely from person to person.

The trials (and sorties) we have now have been called both "too easy" and "too hard" by everybody.  Clearly it is impossible to please even a majority of players to even bother with it.
"It's too frustrating and hard."
"I'm not here to play a puzzle game."
"The game doesn't show me what to do."
"The rewards are terrible."

We've seen it all ad infinitum.

Will the majority of Warframe's player base ever be ready for any dev-made endgame?  Cause the only longtime players who enjoy endgame are those who make their own player-defined endgame goals.

If the devs would ask every single player to write down what they'd like as an endgame, they would be bombarded by hundreds of completely different suggestions that simply would not work for the game. "Epic" for 1 person is "unfair/broken/boring/etc" for the other 9.

Honestly, I don't envy whoever has to make these design decisions in progressive game development. It seems impossible most of the time to even please most people.

[Misgenesis]

Cutting the energy intake in half would go a long way. Its just simply too easy to gain and enables trivializing builds.

[(PSN)fullblast35]

Saying DE makes the game easier for new players is very subjective.  whoever says this right now isn't a new player anymore.  there is no weapon or frame in your load out that can't nuke the whole star chart, so your opinion is compromised by your experience.  Players are still asking for help in region chat for missions you laugh at.  The REAL issue is that LOR and JV are still beta and have a cool down.  Experienced players and veterans are not kept busy with content fitting their experience and put it on DE.  

[Djego27]

On 12.8.2017 at 10:07 AM, SamoussePrime said:

I've several friends playing WoW. They log ON to make raid with sick mechanics with no fail allowed from anyone of the party (btw they are full stuff with their "endgame" stuff), even if you completed everything you still have the game that challenge you.

Yea they do and it's always a fresh content or unexepted one! It's why I'm still up there but all your weapons/frames don't give a f*** about the no difficulty of those.

The problem is that for a good and challenging content you need to invest a lot of time and resources into game balance. If you look at vanilla WoW(you can do that on a private server if you want) and compare it to the current iteration(or even just TBC, what was the first expansion) you will see a massive leap in overall balance, making spec more viable, all the tanks viable, giving people options and providing more interesting mechanics to deal with.

In comparison Warframe is one of the most unbalanced games ever(weapons, frame powers, cheese etc.) where you can not make a tank check, since tanking most of the time means that your are literally impossible to kill, you can not do dps checks if a old player does hit for over 100k dps solo while a newer player would struggle to kill a L50 armored unit and you can not have healer checks, since everything instantly kills(by the design of the the scaling system and the normal HP pool of Warframes) and your main form of healing is damage reduction what you use 2 times per minute.

If you want challenge(I would like that to) you need balance first, what is something what DE is not really delivering, more so drifting away from it with new frames and weapons in the last year.

[ikkabotz]

Game is a dumbed down version of what it used to be. .I stopped playing awhile ago. .I miss things about it, but they're mostly gone now anyway

[Kimimoto]

On 8/12/2017 at 2:32 AM, SenorClipClop said:

• Players are allowed to choose their own power level and mission difficulty level

Do they though, last time I checked I can't start a mission with lvl 120+ enemies?

[SenorClipClop]

14 minutes ago, Kimimoto said:

Do they though, last time I checked I can't start a mission with lvl 120+ enemies?

Not in a "select your level" kind of way. More like in a "kiddie pool mission with a to-the-nines build"kind of way. We select our difficulty within the parameters of the game, and the mission has no way of balancing around the raw power of what we can bring into a mission.

[k05h]

On 12.8.2017 at 8:14 AM, SamoussePrime said:

But sadly in my opinion this game is too easy.

This is not a souls game and most of the challenge in Warframe is understanding the inner workings of the game (damage 2.0, parkour, trading, ...). It is about mastering the different gameplay modes (spy, moon spy, excavation, evacuation, ... ). And Warframe is about constant grind until you reach a point where you have everything you need to chill through sortie 3. Killing enemies is mostly just a by-product of achieving all those goals. 

And new players struggle hard enough to wrap their heads around all those concepts. And they will hit difficulty walls soon enough with the Raptors fight, the Ambulas fight or the Jordas Golem. 

Seasoned players dont struggle with any of the starchart content because of intended progression. In classical game terms: you beat the game once you are through all nodes of the star chart. 

I can breeze my way through sortie but that is not what I play Warframe for. For me it is chilling with a cup of coffee while mowing down hundreds of foes. I am here for the power fantasy after a long day in the office. And I fully enjoy not being challenged too much after a 12hour day at work. 

And if I am in the mood for a challenge I do 40 waves of Tamu (Kuva Fortress Defense) or 40-60 Mot (Void Survival).

[SethCypher]

The problem is, empowering the player is a major selling point and major thing about Warframe. Its why Warframe is generally regarded as a good game, because it allows for players to have major freedom in not only in aesthetics but also the way they play. This is also why the game is so easy though. So in order to make the game more challenging you either need to introduce mobs that can move and keep up with players or restrict player freedom. Just simply giving mobs more armor, health and damage isn't actual difficulty, its just gear gating at that point.

Edited August 16, 2017 by SethCypher

[Condeangel]

The only thing i can say is I hope that lvl +50 missions will be released as base missions in new nodes, in new planets, while the starchart keeps growning. But im agains anything that changes the actual difficult of the game until sedna or restricts content to new players in such a hardcore way (to beat lv 50 missions, you need 100 hours at least, or PAY, and many people cant do that because of the time/money they have).

And as someone stated before, this is a endless game. There will be no end-game content. Create your own challenges. This game is great because DEvs work and rework many things, and doesnt care about end-game stuff. Because that will make the game finish, and ever more boring because no more content would be added

[TaylorsContraction]

The problem with challenge in this game is that a challenge state is when you are not getting 1 shot, but will die in a few shots. Let's call this a sweet spot.

This sweet spot is DIFFERENT for every Warframe. This is where the problem starts. Depending on their kits or base stats some Warframes take longer or shorter to reach the sweet spot. Furthermore, the sweet spot period is short lived because with scaling soon after you reach it, the enemies will surpass it and go into the 1 shot territory which isn't fun and requires cheese. Additionally before you reach the sweet spot in an endless mission, you're such killing boring fodder.

It's not an easy problem to solve and the solution begins with damage 3.0.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

On 12.08.2017 at 9:32 AM, SenorClipClop said:

Players are allowed to choose their own power level and mission difficulty level

On 12.08.2017 at 10:29 AM, polarity said:

I don't.  I grab my MK-1 Paris and go play some Earth:Lith to wave 20

When you have to come up with a way to make the game entertaining yourself, the game doesn't do it for you. 

You don't need to engineer random derp solutions to artifically conjure difficulty in 99% of other games but you have to do it with Warframe? Because, why? You seriously think this was intentional on DE's side and not just another major accidental screw up because of the lack of first-hand gameplay expierience? C'mon guys. 

[AperoBeltaTwo]

29 minutes ago, TaylorsContraction said:

It's not an easy problem to solve and the solution begins with damage 3.0.

It's not gonna happen m8. With riven system damage system is sealed. There will be no damage 3.0 unless there is a riven 2.0 (all the rivens changed? Oh, boy!). And why do you think it would even solve the problem in the first place, instead of introducing a plethora of new problems as almost every single update before did?

Edited August 18, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[Marthrym]

Challenge has never been a thing in Warframe. It probably never will be. Sure the devs use their beloved broken scaling to put players in "insta-kill or be insta-killed" situations and call that "end-game" or "veteran content", but that's not what most players looking for a actual, challenging content, especially said vets, will be happy about, for the simple reason that it's not challenge. It's not hard. It's all or nothing. It's just punishing. It's boring. There's no counterplay, it's just a DPS race with heavy CC or damage mitigation to inflict the insta-kill before receiving it. It sucks. But the saving grace is that with the sheer amount of stuff you have at your disposal in Warframe, you can create so many situations where the game actually gets challenging without being broken and boring. Sure there's a sweetspot somewhere in this mess, but it's so smothered between the two extremes that finding it is actually more challenging than playing it!

The devs introduce more power creep and widen the gap between the power level of the "early" and "end" game with every passing update, without trying to reduce said gap to at least make things more interesting and less out of control. In a way the problem is that they gave us Godlike powers, and then instead of either reducing their magnitude or giving the enemy some kind of resistance to them, they just outright made some of them completely immune, with the ability to share said immunity, and to disrupt us and prevent us from using our powers in the first place, which becomes problematic when said powers are the only thing that works once enemy scaling goes crosseyed. And the fact that some of our weapons can deal litteraly millions of damage in seconds doesn't help. The "bandaid on an open, festering wound" solution in all its glory.

Basically, do not play the way the devs want you to, or where they want you to, if you want challenge. You'll never get any that way. Create that challenge yourself, it's the only way. And it can be glorious. I know I bash the game a lot for being utterly broken balance wise, but man it still is so much better than so many more balanced games out there. And despite their stubbornness, the devs are awesome people, and they actually try real hard, even if they don't try in the right places. I Only know of a few devteams that show that kind of care and dedication to their work and playerbase.

Edited August 18, 2017 by Marthrym

[TaylorsContraction]

1 hour ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

It's not gonna happen m8. With riven system damage system is sealed. There will be no damage 3.0 unless there is a riven 2.0 (all the rivens changed? Oh, boy!). And why do you think it would even solve the problem in the first place, instead of introducing a plethora of new problems as almost every single update before did?

I disagree with this defeated sentiment. Damage just has to be normalized on both sides, that of players and enemies. This will leave heavily tanky frames at an obvious state of advantage. That's where you begin designing or redesigning enemies to be more interesting. I've never liked the horde shooter play style and it would seem eidolons are going to move away from that very thing.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, TaylorsContraction said:

I disagree with this defeated sentiment. Damage just has to be normalized on both sides, that of players and enemies. This will leave heavily tanky frames at an obvious state of advantage. That's where you begin designing or redesigning enemies to be more interesting. I've never liked the horde shooter play style and it would seem eidolons are going to move away from that very thing.

"I never liked the horde shooter playstyle" = "I never liked warframe". Warframe is a horde shooter with space magic and all Warframe is was designed around hordes of enemies - either fighting them or avoiding them. The reason warframe gameplay right now is so bad is because at least for the year and a half of me playing this game DE completely ignored this simple truth while trying to turn the game into something it is not, culminating in PoE extravaganza. Damage 3.0 as well as most of the more fundamental changes I tend to see on the forums are about leaving what we have because something about it isn't working 100% as we want and designing something else from scratch without a clue of what kind of problems it would bring. Basically, instead of working with what we already have, things like damage 3.0 (which just isn't going to happen, sry dude), and Plains of Eidolon (which is unfortunately happening)... Instead of working with what we already have and trying to improve it, we go off on a quest for "nobody knows what, but it's gonna be better just because".

 By "we" - I mean the community and DE each time they introduce some random addition to the game on top of everything else unfixed, unpolished and unattended for years.

 Damage 3.0 isn't necesseraly would have been better if it ever happend, is what I'm saying. There is no better tomorrow. You work with what you have on hands or you start from scratch.

Edited August 18, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo