The Absentee Meta

[Seele]

It feels a bit ridiculous to talk about metagaming in a strictly* PVE game like Warframe, but a lot of the more recent... strategies that have cropped up have definitely changed the game, and not for the better.

I started playing in 2013, where you got your choice of Excalibur, Volt, or Loki, a Mk-1 Braton, a Lato, and a Skana. Once I had truly come into endgame content, such content was Tower 4 Void, which housed the biggest baddie in the game, Corrupted Vor. Vor was close to unbeatable unless your team was a firing squad of Boltor Primes, in which case he was dismantled in seconds. Tower 4 Survival could be cheesed into infinity with a properly modded Trinity, who at the time could make the whole team invincible forever.

Those times are, clearly, gone. Trinity is no longer the monster she was, defensively (infinite invincibility) or offensively (Link + rocket your feet). Boltor Prime is very far from the best gun now, while at the time nothing could even pretend to compete with it. New mods and new weapons have diversified the primary weapon slot, for which I am grateful. There can actually be arguments and preferences about "The Best" gun, which is a very good thing.

The problem is that "The Best" still exists, elsewhere. Players have devised means of trivializing virtually all aspects of the game.Go into literally any public exterminate / spy / capture / etc. and there will be an Ember, who flips on her 4 and bullet jumps to extraction. The other players follow, doing nothing, as there is nothing to do. Go to a defense and there's liable to be a Banshee Prime who goes onto the cryopod, presses 4, and stops engaging with the game in any meaningful way afterwards. I've even seen this strategy on a Corpus Interception, what I believe to be one of the largest maps for the gametype, and a Banshee had every spawn point covered simultaneously and enough energy/efficiency to channel the ultimate for nigh perpetuity. And while this "strategy" shows up in surprisingly low level content, at high levels there's usually a Volt with Atterax, Guandao, Jat Kusar, or what have you with a slide-attack macro, just flippin' around, one-hitting everything.

My problem with this is not that it makes the game too easy, because Warframe is pretty easy even when you play it "as god intended". My problem is not that I feel I have to conform to this meta, because I don't; I can do pretty much every bit of content I want to with the "garbage" loadouts I enjoy. And I actually love how powerful melee has become, because it was next to useless not so long ago, but doing literally nothing but slide attacks and not even engaging the keyboard to do them is unimaginative and not in the spirit of the game.

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all. And everyone who does "press 4 and walk away" or macro-slide-forever ruins the game for the rest of us who want to actually try. And of this culture of absentee gaming I must ask: what are you building towards? What is the endgame you have in mind? If you trivialize low-level content and high-level content... well what else is there? If you run through your exterminates as Ember, be a puddle for 25 minutes in defense, and tape down your melee macro button for sortie survival, I hate to say it but there's not much more to Warframe. You're just avoiding the gameplay of the game, and to what end?

We can't blame the players for exploiting what the game allows them to do. The devs don't seem to want to remove the mods which make this possible. Hydroid was only recently changed to enable defense-cheese. But something ought to be done. Warframe, more so than other games, becomes boring after so long, but when the game just surrenders to you no matter what content you do, that timer gets cut real short, real quick. I keep taking hiatuses as I run out of things to do, but get pulled back because the game is fun to play. Or, at least, it once was.

[Wakda]

So what prevents you from not joining public games, in which most of people want to complete objective in fastest way posible while spend least time posible? Do you want to remove that way of playing for people who dont want to melee grineer heavy 54times till they kill her, or whats the objective of this thread?

Edited September 23, 2017 by Wakda

[o.0-]

What you describe here are symptoms of the disconnect between players and content.

I've been brainstorming an idea to have a floating Battle Level scaling where static non-scaling missions and say the first five min or waves of scaling missions could provide a more consistent experience across more of the game.

The basic idea is to have enemies and the three other players scale up to the most optimized loadout to have greater consistency in this base experience.

From use of faction damage modifiers and damage reduction and caps, there can be ways to adjust how we relate to the content as intended by the devs.

This way a player with a highly optimized loadout can join a brand new player and provide a far more consistent experience as intended by the devs, while also allowing more possibilities for improving enemies.

Imagine if the original goal was a cell/squad of Tenno fighting squads of enemies that are tougher against us, like how it felt for a newer player just starting out.

We know that the game engine can handle giving us hordes of enemies and also bump them up, so its a matter of finding the best ways to setup a floating scale for this idea.

I can provide more details, but that is the bare-bones idea.

Edited September 23, 2017 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
grammer

[Seele]

Just now, Wakda said:

So what prevents you from not joining public games, in which most of people want to complete objective in fastest way posible while spend least time posible? Do you want to remove that way of playing for pepole who dont want to melee grineer heavy 54times till they kill her, or whats the objective of this thread?

The fastest and most efficient means of playing the game should involve actually playing the game. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Lazy ways to play will exist no matter what, but should only be viable for easy content.

[Wakda]

8 minutes ago, Seele said:

The fastest and most efficient means of playing the game should involve actually playing the game. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Lazy ways to play will exist no matter what, but should only be viable for easy content.

Im not saying that wf isnt one of most boring games i play, i totaly agree with point you made about banshee, she indeed is anoying, but not because she can kill mobs up to lvl 60, but because most of pepole use just her, and about easy content, thta would be games till mob lvl 100, higher even meta wont help you much. And no its not old fashiond view, its just not wanted way of play hen you have to farm thouseds of resources to build just single thing, people dont want to farm for hours and get only quarter of what they would get from meta gameplay.

[Seele]

2 minutes ago, Wakda said:

people dont want to farm for hours and get only quarter of what they would get from meta gameplay.

Absolutely. But you see people farm with... the gear and mods for which one needs to farm. Optimized builds. And you yet see this kind of gameplay in the most difficult content.

In a sense, their reward for absentee farming is slightly more efficient absentee farming, which is not a fault of the players but of the game's design. People are going to gravitate towards whatever works well, I get that. So the thing that works best should at least be a little fun.

[-Temp0-]

Quote

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all. 

All your 'game' once you finished starchat is grind.

Quote

well what else is there?

Nothing. Games like that aren't meant to be "fun" (only addictive) past about 100-500 hours but in WF it's the time where you're just no longer a scrub, hardly even a true veteran. 

You can't have a game where you reach a point where you no longer a n00b so far away without people facing burnout. You can't have weapons like Hema and events that based solely on duration, you can't have things like focus with insane daily cap and insane requirements to level each tree/path without making whole point of gameplay an endless grind.

No matter how much you liked your "inefficient" but fun gameplay that can't last nearly as long as it takes even to  gather all the weapons for example. You can't enjoy squatting on IO for several days because you're too cool or proud to go to Bere. Both things aren't "fun" but at least efficient way is much and much faster. If we actually could do those things and not feel like it's such a drag it wouldn't be half as bad. Not so long time ago there was a sortie eximus condition exterminate (level 70-80, second one). One run gave affinity equal to about 15 levels for a single weapon so it took 2-3 runs to level one. Needless to say, no one fckn would od thinsg like Bere if leveling or obtaining things would be that simple and easy. But that's not in DE's interests.

Quote

And you yet see this kind of gameplay in the most difficult content.

There's no difficult content in warframe. Only annoying one or time consuming one.

Edited September 23, 2017 by -Temp0-

[Wakda]

4 minutes ago, Seele said:

the gear and mods for which one needs to farm

If just that, but most of times they need alot of plat to obtain some mods or gears required for that kind of play, which in some way make, even if weak, but some kind of wall that prevents them from going full meta frm begining. And as they acumulate hours, they start to feel that game miss something, that element of fun, but i wouldnt say thats just fault of meta, it would be more about "been there done that", the dont have need to do it "once again" they are even fedup with some elemnents of gameplay that they forced to do, eg. animtion at start of missions, they seen it milion times, so they dont have need to see it again. Its same with melee weapons why would i slash mob with whip 10 times when one spin kill whole room, thst goes tho casual gameplay. As for fun, try hard gameplay, i would say its better to do it solo or in group of players that want to play it same way, its not good to enforce ot for people who works/go to school for longer time, and yet find sme time to play this game and want to build that weapon that need 30k cryotic ands so.

[Wakda]

13 minutes ago, -Temp0- said:

There's no difficult content in warframe. Only annoying one or time consuming one.

Thats one of the truest things i heard in long time.

[Fallen_Echo]

This is Grindfr....i mean Warframe.

The content goes from trivially easy to impossible to do extremely fast.

Once you got everything theres nothing much you can do, expect speedlevelling stuff or farming nodes for resources.

The eternal grindis slow as hell so people do everything what they can to speed it up, hell im sure if there would be a mod what decreases your total health and shield to 5 points but grants 500% damage boost people would equip it just to speed up farming even more. We have no time to deal with that pesky grunt who thinks he can take on a max modded Inaros or Ember on earth we just want to get over with it.

[Seele]

13 minutes ago, -Temp0- said:

There's no difficult content in warframe. Only annoying one or time consuming one.

This is either the reason that the game can be trivialized, or the result of the fact. The inherent problem with difficulty being just a number scale is that once the system gets broken, it doesn't matter how much damage the enemies can sponge or crank out, someone will find a way to trivialize it.

[phoenix1992]

My reading procces :

Yes, cool T4 Vor was kinda end game (if we exclude LoR and JV), far cry from you need 4 boltor to kill, but i see your point.
Yes cool some sort of.. wait, HOLD IT!.

1 hour ago, Seele said:

The problem is that "The Best" still exists, elsewhere. Players have devised means of trivializing virtually all aspects of the game.Go into literally any public exterminate / spy / capture / etc. and there will be an Ember, who flips on her 4 and bullet jumps to extraction. The other players follow, doing nothing, as there is nothing to do. Go to a defense and there's liable to be a Banshee Prime who goes onto the cryopod, presses 4, and stops engaging with the game in any meaningful way afterwards. I've even seen this strategy on a Corpus Interception, what I believe to be one of the largest maps for the gametype, and a Banshee had every spawn point covered simultaneously and enough energy/efficiency to channel the ultimate for nigh perpetuity. And while this "strategy" shows up in surprisingly low level content, at high levels there's usually a Volt with Atterax, Guandao, Jat Kusar, or what have you with a slide-attack macro, just flippin' around, one-hitting everything.

 

Are you purposely being daft here?  You are speaking of T4 void that was holding a damage multiplier that was more than able to shred to pieces if you don't watch where you are going and you compare it to... what exactly? Public matcmaking? Mind that you purposely did not say "sorties".
Bruh... you are delusional here. During the "all might Void Towers", kill switch frames also did exist and were rampantly abused, want a memo for that?
"Hosting Hiericorn, LF EV, Saryn, Exca"
"Exca lf Draco"
Please. 

 

1 hour ago, Seele said:

My problem with this is not that it makes the game too easy, because Warframe is pretty easy even when you play it "as god intended". My problem is not that I feel I have to conform to this meta, because I don't; I can do pretty much every bit of content I want to with the "garbage" loadouts I enjoy. And I actually love how powerful melee has become, because it was next to useless not so long ago, but doing literally nothing but slide attacks and not even engaging the keyboard to do them is unimaginative and not in the spirit of the game.

 

God forbid, more obscurity.
You want to take a crap shoot at Meme strike - go ahead, we all know that it has deserve it. But how many people have a mod that showed up only once 2 years ago? Or are able to make this effect on a riven? Come on now. 

 

1 hour ago, Seele said:

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all. And everyone who does "press 4 and walk away" or macro-slide-forever ruins the game for the rest of us who want to actually try. And of this culture of absentee gaming I must ask: what are you building towards? What is the endgame you have in mind? If you trivialize low-level content and high-level content... well what else is there? If you run through your exterminates as Ember, be a puddle for 25 minutes in defense, and tape down your melee macro button for sortie survival, I hate to say it but there's not much more to Warframe. You're just avoiding the gameplay of the game, and to what end?

 

Again going on the assumption that everyone has Meme strike and/or rivens that support that.  Assuming press 4 to win works in sorties (after Ash was removed). 


Let me be honest with you, OP - you seem to be in the delusion that only Ember or Meme strike water down content under level 50. 
Let me tell you the story of Ivara the elusive afk-ker with crit head shot modifier that makes you go "the hell".
Or Equinox the annoyance to farm. 
Or Loki the Nerf dodger.
Or Iron Skin Hallway hero Rhino.

But you see... this does not matter. You still think that the Star Chart is your ceiling and power levels should be tuned around it. No, sorry to say but this died around U18-U19.  You blame the players for bringing up the 4-5 forma riven weapons + Frames with corrupted, drifting and primed mods. Do not blame the players for daring to progress in the game. 
Blame DE that for the last 2 years they don't dare to add more actual "high level" content.

[Yargami]

1 hour ago, Seele said:

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all.

   I am often kind of baffled at this as at least half of the reason I play WF is because the pure gameplay is better than basically any other action game I've played. I play WF not just to get the best stuff or grind for prime parts, although I do try to do both of those things, but to have fun. I've also had a recurring thing in gaming that I like to throw out the meta because it's the meta (which makes Rivens weird because now it's the meta to use non meta weapons). I think it mainly started in League of Legends because people would get angry if you didn't meta and I knew I could still devastate them with my own very much not meta builds, but I did it some before that too. I guess it just comes down to I don't see the point in having all your stuff be automated when at least half of the fun is playing the game. I guess I've always been more of a "play the game to play it" type instead of a "play the game to get the best stuff" or "play the game to get recognition" type anyways.

TL;DR: I have never understood the idea of automating something fun either. Sorry for the mini-rant.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Yargami

[Seele]

14 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

You blame the players for bringing up the 4-5 forma riven weapons + Frames with corrupted, drifting and primed mods. Do not blame the players for daring to progress in the game. 
Blame DE that for the last 2 years they don't dare to add more actual "high level" content.

Perhaps you should refine your reading process because I say repeatedly that the players are not accountable for this. Your other "arguments" were also already addressed.

[phoenix1992]

1 hour ago, Seele said:

Players have devised means of trivializing virtually all aspects of the game.Go into literally any public exterminate / spy / capture / etc. and there will be an Ember, who flips on her 4 and bullet jumps to extraction. The other players follow, doing nothing, as there is nothing to do.

 

Sorry you started with that, end followed up with : 

3 minutes ago, Seele said:

We can't blame the players for exploiting what the game allows them to do. The devs don't seem to want to remove the mods which make this possible. Hydroid was only recently changed to enable defense-cheese. But something ought to be done. Warframe, more so than other games, becomes boring after so long, but when the game just surrenders to you no matter what content you do, that timer gets cut real short, real quick. I keep taking hiatuses as I run out of things to do, but get pulled back because the game is fun to play. Or, at least, it once was.

Which says nothing.

You are ranting about a single specific mod and how specific frames are smashing low level objectives. The only thing you are addressing is "I can't play the game as I want it because I am forced to do it in a specific way", which is objectively not true.

Putting aside that some frames from the get go were created with the aim of "excelling at certain tasks" - like Loki and Ivara (Spy), Frost and Hydro (objective defend), Saryn and Ember (AoE DPS), your statement is : 

 

1 hour ago, Seele said:

My problem with this is not that it makes the game too easy, because Warframe is pretty easy even when you play it "as god intended". My problem is not that I feel I have to conform to this meta, because I don't; I can do pretty much every bit of content I want to with the "garbage" loadouts I enjoy

??
So you can don't need to "comfort to this meta", yet

 

1 hour ago, Seele said:

I actually love how powerful melee has become, because it was next to useless not so long ago, but doing literally nothing but slide attacks and not even engaging the keyboard to do them is unimaginative and not in the spirit of the game.

How does this work?
If you don't need to do something, then why are you doing it or making a issue that some random Volt does it? He seems to have fun with that.

 

1 hour ago, Seele said:

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all. And everyone who does "press 4 and walk away" or macro-slide-forever ruins the game for the rest of us who want to actually try.

Again, how does this happen? Random players that are using load outs that are meta (and hell will go loose soon when they wake up and log in to see that Shadowstep is gone) are nothing new in the game. How them using that load out diminishes your fun?  Do they get your kills, are you forced to play with them or what?

You are not blaming the players, yet you are. You are saying that meta existed "back then", but it was "once it was a fun game".  How does this work as argument?

[Seele]

23 minutes ago, phoenix1992 said:

You are ranting about a single specific mod and how specific frames are smashing low level objectives. The only thing you are addressing is "I can't play the game as I want it because I am forced to do it in a specific way", which is objectively not true.

By no means. The crux of my argument is that this trivialization is not limited to low level content.

If you don't need to do something, then why are you doing it or making a issue that some random Volt does it? He seems to have fun with that.

If it was fun he would sit at his keyboard and do it instead of having a macro do it for him. Also, I don't enjoy it when the game wins itself for me.

You are not blaming the players, yet you are. You are saying that meta existed "back then", but it was "once it was a fun game".  How does this work as argument?

The problem is the flaws in the game design which allow players to play like this, or worse yet, encourage them to do so.

I hope I've made myself clear.

[TaylorsContraction]

I can see where you're coming from op but let tell you why this is happening.

Warframe not only lacks end game, high level, difficult and rewarding content, but it also pushes end game players into low level missions.

Alerts, fissure missions and kuva siphons are all on the Star chart.

This forces end game players into trivial missions over, and over and over again.

Yeah I'll bring my wof ember for this nitain exterminate alert. There's no other way to get it, so I have to waste my time in this low level mission before I can get back to my 1 hour fissure survival. Oh look, it expired and only non endless fissures are left, welp I don't even have to unequip my ember.

That's the problem op. When DE provides high level non ending content (1 kuva flood ever 30 minutes NotLikeThis), we can stop going to low level missions and roflstomping them.

[Seele]

8 minutes ago, TaylorsContraction said:

I can see where you're coming from op but let tell you why this is happening.

Warframe not only lacks end game, high level, difficult and rewarding content, but it also pushes end game players into low level missions.

Alerts, fissure missions and kuva siphons are all on the Star chart.

This forces end game players into trivial missions over, and over and over again.

Yeah I'll bring my wof ember for this nitain exterminate alert. There's no other way to get it, so I have to waste my time in this low level mission before I can get back to my 1 hour fissure survival. Oh look, it expired and only non endless fissures are left, welp I don't even have to unequip my ember.

That's the problem op. When DE provides high level non ending content (1 kuva flood ever 30 minutes NotLikeThis), we can stop going to low level missions and roflstomping them.

I feel that we're saying the same thing from different stances. I'm not blaming people for playing Ember in trivial content, I'm blaming the developers for making that play style attractive.

[-Temp0-]

10 hours ago, Seele said:

This is either the reason that the game can be trivialized, or the result of the fact. The inherent problem with difficulty being just a number scale is that once the system gets broken, it doesn't matter how much damage the enemies can sponge or crank out, someone will find a way to trivialize it.

It's the result of playing the game for 500-100 hours. Or the result of being able to play it for so long. Come to think about it - games that have new game + (++++) start to get just as boring and players start to look like gods as well. Even in games like Dark souls that are the slosest to a hardcore ames we have now probably.

Other games just reset your progress when you start a new game. It's a better system but for games you can beat in 6-60 hours. In a game like wf where you barely scratched a surcafe after 100 hours it would be a nightmare.

[DatDarkOne]

On ‎9‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 1:53 AM, -Temp0- said:

It's the result of playing the game for 500-100 hours. Or the result of being able to play it for so long. Come to think about it - games that have new game + (++++) start to get just as boring and players start to look like gods as well. Even in games like Dark souls that are the slosest to a hardcore ames we have now probably.

I have to completely agree with this.  With the possible exception of PvP based games, I can't think of one game since the end of Arcades where this hasn't been the case.  It has happened in almost every single RPG, MUD, MMO, and Action/Adventure game that I've played over the years.  This is including Ninja Gaiden series (one of my faves) , Dragon's Dogma, and the very recent Nier: Automata.  

In all honesty, I don't think there is any game in the past, present, or future that will be able to hold a players attention past a certain point.  That most definitely is including Warframe. 

[Seele]

8 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

I have to completely agree with this.  With the possible exception of PvP based games, I can't think of one game since the end of Arcades where this hasn't been the case.  It has happened in almost every single RPG, MUD, MMO, and Action/Adventure game that I've played over the years.  This is including Ninja Gaiden series (one of my faves) , Dragon's Dogma, and the very recent Nier: Automata.  

In all honesty, I don't think there is any game in the past, present, or future that will be able to hold a players attention past a certain point.  That most definitely is including Warframe. 

Different strokes for different folks. Some people still play Super Smash Bros. Melee for hours a day and the game is 16 years old. I see it firsthand.

I don't feel that I'm done with Warframe. Ostensibly, neither do these absentee players, or else we would simply not play.

[DatDarkOne]

2 minutes ago, Seele said:

Different strokes for different folks. Some people still play Super Smash Bros. Melee for hours a day and the game is 16 years old. I see it firsthand.

Not saying that you're wrong at all in your views.  But you kinda reinforced  my point just a little bit as Super Smash Bros is a PvP based game. Which is one of the exceptions I mentioned.  :D

[BlackCoMerc]

On 9/23/2017 at 3:22 PM, Seele said:

It feels a bit ridiculous to talk about metagaming in a strictly* PVE game like Warframe, but a lot of the more recent... strategies that have cropped up have definitely changed the game, and not for the better.

I started playing in 2013, where you got your choice of Excalibur, Volt, or Loki, a Mk-1 Braton, a Lato, and a Skana. Once I had truly come into endgame content, such content was Tower 4 Void, which housed the biggest baddie in the game, Corrupted Vor. Vor was close to unbeatable unless your team was a firing squad of Boltor Primes, in which case he was dismantled in seconds. Tower 4 Survival could be cheesed into infinity with a properly modded Trinity, who at the time could make the whole team invincible forever.

Those times are, clearly, gone. Trinity is no longer the monster she was, defensively (infinite invincibility) or offensively (Link + rocket your feet). Boltor Prime is very far from the best gun now, while at the time nothing could even pretend to compete with it. New mods and new weapons have diversified the primary weapon slot, for which I am grateful. There can actually be arguments and preferences about "The Best" gun, which is a very good thing.

The problem is that "The Best" still exists, elsewhere. Players have devised means of trivializing virtually all aspects of the game.Go into literally any public exterminate / spy / capture / etc. and there will be an Ember, who flips on her 4 and bullet jumps to extraction. The other players follow, doing nothing, as there is nothing to do. Go to a defense and there's liable to be a Banshee Prime who goes onto the cryopod, presses 4, and stops engaging with the game in any meaningful way afterwards. I've even seen this strategy on a Corpus Interception, what I believe to be one of the largest maps for the gametype, and a Banshee had every spawn point covered simultaneously and enough energy/efficiency to channel the ultimate for nigh perpetuity. And while this "strategy" shows up in surprisingly low level content, at high levels there's usually a Volt with Atterax, Guandao, Jat Kusar, or what have you with a slide-attack macro, just flippin' around, one-hitting everything.

My problem with this is not that it makes the game too easy, because Warframe is pretty easy even when you play it "as god intended". My problem is not that I feel I have to conform to this meta, because I don't; I can do pretty much every bit of content I want to with the "garbage" loadouts I enjoy. And I actually love how powerful melee has become, because it was next to useless not so long ago, but doing literally nothing but slide attacks and not even engaging the keyboard to do them is unimaginative and not in the spirit of the game.

My problem is that the most effective and efficient ways to play the game seem to be not playing the game at all. And everyone who does "press 4 and walk away" or macro-slide-forever ruins the game for the rest of us who want to actually try. And of this culture of absentee gaming I must ask: what are you building towards? What is the endgame you have in mind? If you trivialize low-level content and high-level content... well what else is there? If you run through your exterminates as Ember, be a puddle for 25 minutes in defense, and tape down your melee macro button for sortie survival, I hate to say it but there's not much more to Warframe. You're just avoiding the gameplay of the game, and to what end?

We can't blame the players for exploiting what the game allows them to do. The devs don't seem to want to remove the mods which make this possible. Hydroid was only recently changed to enable defense-cheese. But something ought to be done. Warframe, more so than other games, becomes boring after so long, but when the game just surrenders to you no matter what content you do, that timer gets cut real short, real quick. I keep taking hiatuses as I run out of things to do, but get pulled back because the game is fun to play. Or, at least, it once was.

Said it before: until we reign in Waframe powers, we will never have a balanced game wherein enemies are fair challenges intended to be engaged.

Right now, mid and late game enemies are binary: you shut them off, or they shut you off (knockdowns, grapples, staggers, power canceling, etc). There is little to no engagement to be found.

And this is all in response to complaints regarding lack of challenge. Problem is, most of those complaining first tricked put Warframes, then obtained Corrupted mods and finally, trivialized content. As you say, OP, the AFK Meta.

So we got the mess we have now: AFK players still aren't challenged. Meanwhile, anyone considering Actually engaging the enemy is effectively punished for doing so by one shot death dealing damage sponges who treat Warframe like ping pong balls unless we use meta level, cheat code tier powers to Literally turn off their base AI first.

It's not engaging game play. It hasn't been for some time. And Sorties serve only to showcase the issue to an even greater degree.

Damage 3.0 and a balance pass are needed at this point. The has become a parody of a game.

[BlackCoMerc]

On 9/23/2017 at 6:01 PM, TaylorsContraction said:

I can see where you're coming from op but let tell you why this is happening.

Warframe not only lacks end game, high level, difficult and rewarding content, but it also pushes end game players into low level missions.

Alerts, fissure missions and kuva siphons are all on the Star chart.

This forces end game players into trivial missions over, and over and over again.

Yeah I'll bring my wof ember for this nitain exterminate alert. There's no other way to get it, so I have to waste my time in this low level mission before I can get back to my 1 hour fissure survival. Oh look, it expired and only non endless fissures are left, welp I don't even have to unequip my ember.

That's the problem op. When DE provides high level non ending content (1 kuva flood ever 30 minutes NotLikeThis), we can stop going to low level missions and roflstomping them.

Endless Missions helped create the Problem we have now though.

People kept pushing. Wanting to go longer. Fueling the demand for gradually more power. And they got it.

And the rest of us got a game that punishes anything short of a cheat code with special effects attached to it.

Imagine joining a public group in, say, Borderlands. Then slowing enemies by 85%, turning off their ability to attack players and taking away their guns.You've just literally turned off the game play for your group. It's an absurd proposition.

And yet, this is the power level end game is BASED ON in Warframe. Such that players who DONT use it suffer constant knockdowns, one shots, have their more reasonable powers negated, etc.

The catering to the AFK/OP meta had ruined the Experience for anyone who is not part of it. And the demand for ever more power that created this, began with the substitution of endless missions for Actual content.

[DatDarkOne]

2 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

The catering to the AFK/OP meta had ruined the Experience for anyone who is not part of it. And the demand for ever more power that created this, began with the substitution of endless missions for Actual content.

Interesting observation.  I can see how that would/has come about.  Nicely put Tenno. 

Things like this make me wonder if DE was more considering solo based play than group play dynamics.  What I mean is that if you look at each frame's kit they all seem to be designed with the "Lone Tenno" idea in mind.  As much as some players try to say that Warframe is a team based game, in a lot of ways it looks to be the opposite with just a little bit of observation.  Just think about it.  Warframe actually has a fairly solid solo/single player game/aspect.  

This is just me theory crafting here and I could be completely wrong.  :D