Feedback on PoE costs and grind time

[Sunder]

But seriously,

DE's stated many times they wanna cut down on the grind but the amount introduced in this is just....insanity.

Now I'm not complaining about the decorations, the weapons, gene kits and such from the vendors. I understand things need to be earned and this is Grindframe/Warfarm so yeah. But these focus costs...they're crazy. I had 2 nodes left on Naramon. Now I have 4 nodes left, plus I need 2 more points for "Void Hunter"...aaannnd I need lots and lots of more "Pool" points which is just something so random I don't even know why it's a thing. (Plus another 1 million points AND an "Eidolon Shard" to max certain ones)

 

Added to that? I fought my first Eidolon.

The minimal damage you deal to them just makes it feel like you require better focus upgrades as well as the Amp upgrades. But again, focus costs. The progression for the Quills is also something I have issue with. The sentient cores give so little standing for something that's annoying to get and only available at a certain time. That alone is going to burn many folks out trying to max. I want to like this update. I really really do. But to put it lightly, I'm staggered at trying to figure out how much time I'm going to have to grind and farm just to feel as though I've made progress. Something I play Warframe for. Other MMO's and farming type of games have insane costs and not only is it intimidating? But it feels like a chore...

 

Aside from that, I'm just annoyed that the missions for them can only be accepted one at a time and that they're all multi-part. Doesn't feel as though I'm getting as much standing for all the work I'm doing when compared to Syndicates. I can breeze through a mission and get 3k-5k standing. Again, just feels like more grind. A "Filler". Stuffing that is shoved into these missions to make them feel, "alive". I don't know about other players but I'd really prefer to just accept the missions I wanna do, go out into the plains, and have multiple waypoints. So I can approach each situation how I want. Scope bases out, quietly take out snipers, move in and try  to be stealthy with melee until I'm spotted. THAT sounds fun to me. Not escort missions. But with all this....I do love the work that's been put in. I can appreciate the dedication and time it took to make and code, and test all of this.

 

I just hope that in the coming days hotfixes, people speak up. These insane costs have got to go.

[Daiwulf]

I got 2 intact cores and then the game refused to save the progress when leaving the plains so I lost them... Then when I saw what they were worth I didn't care so much that I lost so few of standing... And I tried to fight an eidolon lv20 and as warframe doesn't deal damage, the operator doesn't have energy to destroy its shield, so no-do for a good while...

[DEATHLOK]

Oh, so you have to finght the New Big Bad with the Operator? Oh, my....this just keeps getting better and better!

[JacketUnHoly]

.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Lluminate

[DiabolusUrsus]

Yay! Now I'm super-motivated to grind EVEN MORE for Focus now that Focus is primarily used to buff OPERATORS, these awkward-to-control, less-fun-than-Warframes, still-not-comparable hype gimmicks instead of my Warframe! Not only that, now that Operators have some paltry improvements to their abilities locked behind the Focus grind, I am now super-excited to spend more time running around in Operator mode!

...

Is the /s really necessary?

[Sunder]

2 hours ago, Daiwulf said:

I got 2 intact cores and then the game refused to save the progress when leaving the plains so I lost them... Then when I saw what they were worth I didn't care so much that I lost so few of standing... And I tried to fight an eidolon lv20 and as warframe doesn't deal damage, the operator doesn't have energy to destroy its shield, so no-do for a good while...

It is going to take AGES.

2 hours ago, DEATHLOK said:

Oh, so you have to finght the New Big Bad with the Operator? Oh, my....this just keeps getting better and better!

You need to use them to drain the shields on the Eidolons, then our frames weapons to attack the joints.

Operators simply don't do enough damage to be able to solo it at all. Making the focus buffs feel mandatory.

But that grind....

1 hour ago, Lluminate said:

I agree, but I also feel like we haven't spent enough time in the plains to really get an idea of what the grind is going to be like... but my first impression is also that this is an INSANE amount of grind. Just to get a few pieces of the Zaw is going to take forever, nevermind the new mods, Gara parts, etc.

Mods for me have always been part of the gameplay. They just come eventually. I'll work without them until I get them.

Zaw's are going to take ages simply cause of the amount of standing needed to get them all. Again bringing up my issue of having to only do one mission at a time, and it's always a multi-part mission that takes place across the entire plains and you don't even get much standing for it.

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yay! Now I'm super-motivated to grind EVEN MORE for Focus now that Focus is primarily used to buff OPERATORS, these awkward-to-control, less-fun-than-Warframes, still-not-comparable hype gimmicks instead of my Warframe! Not only that, now that Operators have some paltry improvements to their abilities locked behind the Focus grind, I am now super-excited to spend more time running around in Operator mode!

...

Is the /s really necessary?

It'll be quite some time to max all the schools. Specially with the increased costs.

DE really needs to take a look at them.

[Cleesus]

Im pretty sure they increased focus exp gain and daily cap

[Zanchak]

The grind really is too much though regardless if the "cap is lifted". That just means you can grind more.. really. I shouldnt need to "unlock" anything if a school was maxed... for starters. I was proud of the grind I put in, now I feel slapped.. again. When are the slaps gonna stop hitting people who have already completed things?

[DiabolusUrsus]

7 minutes ago, theclinton said:

Im pretty sure they increased focus exp gain and daily cap

And also moved the bar for players who had completed or nearly completed trees, and added additional lens variants behind extra grinding, and released operator passives that don't actually make operators viable...

Even if amps and the extra augmentations finally do close the viability gap, who wants to bother considering operator gameplay is so much more one-dimensional and  uninteresting next to using a Warframe?

Trying to turn Operators into Warframe knockoffs and putting them into direct competition instead of emphasizing their ability to do neat things with the Warframes themselves was a big mistake

Instead of increasing time spent as the Operator they should have made them more fluid to use (not requiring full separation from the Warframe, better buffs TO THE WARFRAME, etc.).

[Cleesus]

1 minute ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

And also moved the bar for players who had completed or nearly completed trees, and added additional lens variants behind extra grinding, and released operator passives that don't actually make operators viable...

Even if amps and the extra augmentations finally do close the viability gap, who wants to bother considering operator gameplay is so much more one-dimensional and  uninteresting next to using a Warframe?

Trying to turn Operators into Warframe knockoffs and putting them into direct competition instead of emphasizing their ability to do neat things with the Warframes themselves was a big mistake

Instead of increasing time spent as the Operator they should have made them more fluid to use (not requiring full separation from the Warframe, better buffs TO THE WARFRAME, etc.).

Hey I dont disagree with you about operators

[DiabolusUrsus]

Just now, theclinton said:

Hey I dont disagree with you about operators

Noted; though OP's point is that extra grind is not appreciated and an increased daily cap does nothing to alleviate that.

I feel the changes to Naramon and Zenurik were long overdue (as a heavy Naramon user myself), but finding myself farther from completing a skill tree that is less useful than the one before it is... Demotivating.

[Cleesus]

4 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Noted; though OP's point is that extra grind is not appreciated and an increased daily cap does nothing to alleviate that.

I feel the changes to Naramon and Zenurik were long overdue (as a heavy Naramon user myself), but finding myself farther from completing a skill tree that is less useful than the one before it is... Demotivating.

I said increased focus gain too which actually does help

[DiabolusUrsus]

5 minutes ago, theclinton said:

I said increased focus gain too which actually does help

Except that applies only to Convergence, which is still implemented poorly, and it STILL doesn't do anything for the players who were already done with their trees and now have more grinding to do.

Re-weighting the trees to prioritize investment in passives instead of pool increases is understandable.

Increasing the total points required is not. What constructive purpose does that serve? It's not like they made Focus grinding more engaging; it's still just leeching affinity.

(And this is coming from someone who hadn't actually maxed any of the trees.)

Edited October 13, 2017 by DiabolusUrsus

[Jarcu]

They should have left the focus alone and just added this thing in alongside it or something. Can use focus for your warframe or for your lil operator guy, or both. so if you want to make them better you can, or you can continue to ignore it like you almost always have.

[Mattoropael]

4 hours ago, theclinton said:

Im pretty sure they increased focus exp gain and daily cap

That, in all realistic scenarios, only amounts to either "I'll stand around in Bere/Hydron every day for 2.5x the amount of time I previously did", or nothing at all since the conversion rate is so low, it's almost impossible to max out the old 100k cap through normal gameplay.

[phoenix1992]

4 hours ago, theclinton said:

I said increased focus gain too which actually does help

This may sound a little cynical and rude towards some players but...

I don't log in in order to sit in Bere for 1 hour.

[G8KKO]

4 hours ago, theclinton said:

I said increased focus gain too which actually does help

I'm using Equinox and melee to collect whatever focus points.

Before I got 25-30k, now i get around35-40k. I think the new cap was around 250k, so this means repeating 6 and a bit times the exact same mission where I can only concentrate on gathering focus points. 

 

I know there wont be any changes for the way to collect it but let me say, this ain't fun.

[LSG501]

Getting focus outside of cheesing maps has been a problem since focus 1.0 and rather than address the issue DE went and increased the prices of things in the focus schools so anybody that actually has a real life and wants to actually play some of the game rather than sitting in Bere or similar is basically screwed because the amount of focus from a 'normal' mission is just too damn low. 

If DE want's us to use the 'new and improved' operators we need to be able to afford the stuff that makes it so we can use them.....and don't get me started on the focus pool that needs to be unlocked all the time... why do we even need that, are the prices to unlock each branch tier not expensive enough as it is....

 

I was going to give myself some time to play the levels a bit before commenting on the cetus standing but seeing as I'm struggling to even get standing due to it failing from bugs/randomness I can also say that from first impressions the rewards for the time spent doing the missions is far too low, now I don't expect things instantly but if I'm spending 10-20mins escorting a drone (that in my case keeps failing because it doesn't register at the waypoint), I kind of want a reward that's fair for the time I spent doing it.   It's even worse when they're multipart and you fail because it bugs out on the third bit....

 

Archwing beacon prices are a joke and to be honest some of the other prices are rather high considering the restrictions put in place for earning standing etc.

 

The return from 'sentient cores' is really poor too and due to the usual lack of instructions from DE I have no idea how else to earn standing with them at present....

 

If I was to be completely honest the plains feel like DE forgot that we actually want to have fun playing the stuff they added and stuck everything behind a massive grindwall to 'make us play more'.... we're only going to play something more if we actually enjoy it and I think most people would agree that spending 90% of your time in game grinding away farming stuff is not fun. 

Now farming stuff need to trade would be easier if we could actually find the resources easier, many of us run a radar mod but the range on this is so small that on PoE it's just not even worth running and personally I'd like Helios to get either a mod or a passive that help highlight enemies on the plains because the grass, while visually appealing etc it actually hides them from view, especially when the enemy is taking pot shots at you from 100m's away.

Edited October 13, 2017 by LSG501

[Lost_Cartographer]

It's grindy, sure, but a grind too short has the opposite problem - people sitting around wondering what there is to do.  This is evident in the short term witnessing those individuals that hit the cap for the day in anything.  Consider PoE's bounties: sure there's plenty to collect from them for now, but if you had everything and hit the reputation cap, would you really care to run more bounties until they cap reset?

Long story short, it's cool to have a goal, just don't make obtaining the goal the sole reason you're ever logging in.  Enjoy the ride.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Littleman88

[DEATHLOK]

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yay! Now I'm super-motivated to grind EVEN MORE for Focus now that Focus is primarily used to buff OPERATORS, these awkward-to-control, less-fun-than-Warframes, still-not-comparable hype gimmicks instead of my Warframe! Not only that, now that Operators have some paltry improvements to their abilities locked behind the Focus grind, I am now super-excited to spend more time running around in Operator mode!

...

Is the /s really necessary?

Imagine if the game started this way. If we had to spend half our time running around as helpless little children, instead of engaging in hot sci-fi gun and blade battles, how many of us would have played more than a few minutes?

If Kuva missions were the norm when I first downloaded Warframe, I would never have paid to be a Founder. I would have uninstalled and never played this again.

I want to play Warframe, not Operator. I want to fight, not run and hide.

Operator mode adds a little bit of variety, and is tolerable when not a requirement. Now, DE is doubling down and making constant Operator play a requirement.

Someone is a serious Ender's Game fan. Or they really loved Titan Fall. Or they love Iron Man only when Tony Stark is jumping in and out of the suit.

In all seriousness, THIS UPDATE NERFS EVERY WARFRAME IN THE GAME with new energy starvation. It breaks builds not running at 175% Efficiency. The new Focus/Operator dynamic does not improve combat—it cripples it. And I'm sure the bean counters have everyone convinced higher grind walls generate more sales, without limits. We will see.

Maybe DE will do something to vastly improve the Operator experience. Controlling a hunched, lame child shuffling and limping along while under fire has never been a thrill for me. I don't want any part of it, which is why I never play Kuva missions. I have scores of unveiled Riven mods simply because I hate Kuva missions, and I hate Kuva missions because I HATE playing as the Operator.

Long-term, every planet is likely to have a large, open space like PoE. That part of the update is interesting, which is why ALL marketing focus was on that part, to the exclusion of all the nastiness that came along for the ride.

I've been pissed over big changes before. Some became improvements over previous systems. Some were mitigated by an eventual grind reduction. Some got a band-aid and were tossed back in our faces.

Maybe something will mitigate energy and Operator requirements. Or, maybe the game will become ever more  Operator-centric, with Warframes offering little more than an occasional distraction. Won't that be great?

Edited October 13, 2017 by DEATHLOK

[BlackCoMerc]

9 hours ago, DEATHLOK said:

Oh, so you have to finght the New Big Bad with the Operator? Oh, my....this just keeps getting better and better!

Couldn't make Operators fun, so, like Archwing, they just force it instead.

Bad idea.

[DEATHLOK]

Yeah...

And now we have to fish for fish oil for charges to fly. WTF. That's exactly why I started playing Warframe—because I wanted to catch virtual fish.

I don't remember Robin mentioning the fish oil requirement went touting the newfound "freedom."

I can't wait until we have to buy ammo, too.

Edited October 13, 2017 by DEATHLOK

[Sunder]

6 hours ago, theclinton said:

Im pretty sure they increased focus exp gain and daily cap

Doesn't really help us. Yes it helps you feel like you're making more progress but  just look at the numbers. This is some ridiculous grind.

6 hours ago, theclinton said:

I said increased focus gain too which actually does help

Still a slap to people who already maxed a tree. And increased progression is still just more grind because of the increased costs. I knew we'd have to earn SOMETHING but to need so much? It's just annoying...

3 hours ago, Jarcu said:

They should have left the focus alone and just added this thing in alongside it or something. Can use focus for your warframe or for your lil operator guy, or both. so if you want to make them better you can, or you can continue to ignore it like you almost always have.

From the 2nd dream when I was assigned Naramon? I've gotten some lenses, and made I think 1 greater lens (Bought the rest) and I had put them on my favourite gear.
I was almost done with the tree then this update came out. Now I don't want to even bother...but I feel as though I'm missing out on the entirety of Eidolon hunts and all their rewards cause the grind wall is just so massive.

 

2 hours ago, Mattoropael said:

That, in all realistic scenarios, only amounts to either "I'll stand around in Bere/Hydron every day for 2.5x the amount of time I previously did", or nothing at all since the conversion rate is so low, it's almost impossible to max out the old 100k cap through normal gameplay.

 

2 hours ago, phoenix1992 said:

This may sound a little cynical and rude towards some players but...

I don't log in in order to sit in Bere for 1 hour.

Which is why this stuff needs to be addressed.

1 hour ago, LSG501 said:

Getting focus outside of cheesing maps has been a problem....

Agree pretty much wholeheartedly.

1 hour ago, Littleman88 said:

It's grindy, sure, but a grind too short has the opposite problem - people sitting around wondering what there is to do.  This is evident in the short term witnessing those individuals that hit the cap for the day in anything.  Consider PoE's bounties: sure there's plenty to collect from them for now, but if you had everything and hit the reputation cap, would you really care to run more bounties until they cap reset?

Long story short, it's cool to have a goal, just don't make obtaining the goal the sole reason you're ever logging in.  Enjoy the ride.

Oh I didn't expect a short walk. And I see that DE tried to make the bounties something that could be repeated.

You get your standing, but you also get rewards. And the bounties are excuses to go out into the field to farm fish/minerals/etc.

But as it is, the grind is massive, and it's not fun.

6 minutes ago, DEATHLOK said:

Yeah...

And now we have to fish for fish oil for charges to fly. WTF. That's exactly why I started playing Warframe—because I wanted to catch virtual fish.

I don't remember Robin mentioning the fish oil requirement went touting the newfound "freedom."

I can't wait until we have to buy ammo, too.

If I recall they said when they were showing it off that they were going to have a different way to launch Archwing, instead of a gear wheel item.

Whatever happened to that?

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Yeah, have to admit there's quite a lot here that is infuriating.

1 - Extremely high focus costs to get focus 2.0 abilties... And DE expects you to delve in all tress now, even though trophy and achievement show like 0.02 percent of the playerbase had unlocked all nodes in an old focus tree. Doesn't help that most of these "focus updates" feel like band aid solutions to core issues about operator (that they are slow, have low hp, have low energy pools, kinda suck as default).

2 - Once again , double dipping for everything... Want abilties, buy focus capacity update first ,then buy these expensive as hell abilties (400k for a mid tier update when I get like 1000 standing on average per mission). Want all those expensive things the vendors in town sell, well stat by farming like 300000 standing with them just to unlock the ability to buy the most expensive stuff.. Sick and tired of that crap.. Paying twice for essentially nothing.

3 - A bounty system that gives a random reward after multiple missions again... After all the complaints about the sortie system... And yet again, you guys put crappy rewards like 4000 credits, vitality, point strike to infuriate people.

4 - No way to trigger cetus bounties from the plains. The loading times from plains to town are really long... And you give us the ability to join free roam, yet when we get there, we still have to go back in town to activate the bounties.

5 - Multi step bounties which you can fail if you mess up a single part of said bounty... Especially hate those stupid "protect the drone" things... They take ages as the drone moves really slow, and in most low-tier mission levels, these drones have very small shield and hp pools, meaning they often get killed by enemies offscreen and hidden by bushes shooting 360 degress. I also had a couple instances of the stupid target unable to reach it's return point, in that case it walks back up to cetus door and nothing happens... Meaning you broke your quest chain.

6 - No periodical autosaves after each mission / every x minutes. And only four lives. Had two crashes in a row just now after spending like an hour each time in the plains... All the loot , resources and xp I had is gone since there are no mid-time saves. Had similar issues with the harder bounty... Completed 4 out of the 5 bounties solo only to run out of lives, get a mission failed message and I only get standing, gone are the hundred or resources I had farmed in the last hours. This isn't a mission based game anymore, adapt the save system to aknowledge that.

7 - Lack of tutorialisation on pretty much everything - I know warframe was never particularly good at introducing new features, but we get no inbox messages for anything, we get dropped into cetus not knowing about the secret operator room, no clear reminder about the focus rework and how to get back into fighting shape... The Glass Frame quest only seems to start at night and after doing a bounty if I get this right, and getting to the eidolon hunter room requires completion of the quest, but it's not mentionned anywhere. Focus tree talk of quills without telling you what they are, no tutorialisation on how to defeat eidolons or sentients in the plains, no explaination on how to mine and fish, leaving you to figure it out by yourself... Basically nothing is tutorialised. Weren't you trying to attract new people with this update ?

8 - Slow performance when loading cetus, frame drops, extremely long load times to go between cetus and the plains.

9 - The whole twich unlock fiasco where people have not gotten any rewards for watching streamers doing the achievements... I myself have only gotten the syndana for linking the acccounts so far.

10 - Putting Archwing charges on a 3 day clan reaserch and requiring you to fish to make charges for it.

11 - The overall grindyness of it all. From farming focus, standing, materials, fishes , animals, rocks, feels like 95% of what you do is farming.

12 - The actual missions in the plain are kinda .... Meh... That's the part that hurts the most, we get this huge cool gamespace but the tasks we do in them kinda suck, and due to the bad loot tables, feel kinda unrewarding (I mean , yeah , people will run them for a while until they get their glass frame parts and new stances, but afterwards, it'll be just grinding for standing....

 

[DiabolusUrsus]

46 minutes ago, DEATHLOK said:

Imagine if the game started this way. If we had to spend half our time running around as helpless little children, instead of engaging in hot sci-fi gun and blade battles, how many of us would have played more than a few minutes?

If Kuva missions were the norm when I first downloaded Warframe, I would never have paid to be a Founder. I would have uninstalled and never played this again.

I want to play Warframe, not Operator. I want to fight, not run and hide.

Operator mode adds a little bit of variety, and is tolerable when not a requirement. Now, DE is doubling down and making constant Operator play a requirement.

Someone is a serious Ender's Game fan. Or they really loved Titan Fall. Or they love Iron Man only when Tony Stark is jumping in and out of the suit.

In all seriousness, THIS UPDATE NERFS EVERY WARFRAME IN THE GAME with new energy starvation. It breaks builds not running at 175% Efficiency. The new Focus/Operator dynamic does not improve combat—it cripples it. And I'm sure the bean counters have everyone convinced higher grind walls generate more sales, without limits. We will see.

Maybe DE will do something to vastly improve the Operator experience. Controlling a hunched, lame child shuffling and limping along while under fire has never been a thrill for me. I don't want any part of it, which is why I never play Kuva missions. I have scores of unveiled Riven mods simply because I hate Kuva missions, and I hate Kuva missions because I HATE playing as the Operator.

Long-term, every planet is likely to have a large, open space like PoE. That part of the update is interesting, which is why ALL focus was on that part, to the exclusion of all the nastiness that came along for the ride.

I've been pissed over big changes before. Some became improvements over previous systems. Some were mitigated by grind reduction. Some got a band-aid and were tossed back in our faces.

Maybe something will mitigate energy and Operator requirements. Or, maybe the game will become ever more  Operator-centric, with Warframes offering little more than an occasional distraction. Won't that be great?

I was saying in a different thread that they went the wrong direction with Operators. Instead of contorting them into knockoff Warframes in direct competition for player attention, they should have emphasized the void powers bit while preserving the image of weak children who could barely walk. Like having the Operator pop partially out of the WF's back to blast off a quick beam or unleash some other awesome void magic shenanigans instead of full separation from the frame. Frail-but-powerful Operators were actually interesting.

On a less serious note, you mean every Warframe but my Despoil + Health Conversion Nekros was nerfed by the Overflow change. I still have infinite energy as long as I kill things quick enough. Kek.

Instead, I was nerfed by the removal of Shadow Step (fair enough; it was broken). What I'm actually upset about there is that they are continuing to band-aid the combo system instead of making it viable at baseline, and they took up a passive node to do it.

Edited October 13, 2017 by DiabolusUrsus
Typo