Feedback on PoE costs and grind time

[DiabolusUrsus]

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.

I agree with you on principle; play a game because you enjoy it.

But the devs need to sit down and actually FIX all the underlying systems for that to be reasonable. Scaling. Energy. Melee & channeling. Archwing. Warframe is a great multiplayer platform and very beautiful... But its core gameplay falls very flat.

DE's tendency to band-aid things to hell and back instead of actually addressing the root causes of problems doesn't help, either. Focus 2.0 is essentially a giant, ineffectual band-aid for Operators that does nothing to mitigate what made them unappealing from the get-go. Throwing in that it took stuff away from players to do it doesn't help things.

[Gravitus123]

10 hours ago, Sunder said:

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.

Thank you 

[Vladokapuh]

I just left the game once i noticed the ammount of grind.
10% of what it is would be enough, 20% would be high enough to get me tired of it, but i would still consider it doable for those that can and want to play all day.
What it is now? It's something i wont do. It's too much. WAY too much.

This is in eyes of someone who is a "veteran", and has most of evrything he wants unlocked. For new players this will seem impossible.

Focus costs - far too high
Rep gains - far too low
Why is deploying archwing even blocked by a price'y consumable? Just what?

This is a broken update, im sorry.
 

[-Edrick-]

I had over 7 million focus farmed for EACH tree (w/ maxed passives). I could almost complete each tree (in focus 1.0) literally. I thought I was 'overly-prepared' for focus 2.0.  I was terribly wrong.  Focus 2.0 requirements literally slapped me in the face.  Particularly, the passives that require 1 million focus and eidolon shard just to unlock.  Are you serious?!  that is at least another 2-3 million per  tree or ~15 million focus to farm just to max out all the tree passives (again). yep just the passives alone. 

I almost want to say that this grind will be as painful, if not worse,  than the 'hema' grind.  But alas I know this is still in the works...

So here are some suggestions DE:

- Lower costs (generally) and/or Remove passive lock gate requirements 
- Allow vets who 'completed' (or almost completed) ALL the trees in focus 1.0 a similarly equal value in 2.0 (so that their focus can be toward 'the new' skills in the 2.0 tree).  So for example:  Focus 1.0 = 55 million focus = ALL Schools Maxed;  Focus 2.0 = 60 million focus = ALL Schools Maxed 
- Provide the option to reset/respec focus points (w/ platinum even...just give some sort of option)
- Make point allocation more streamline (you did it for endo/mod fusion).

Whatever the resolve is...I hope this gets addressed very soon (tm). 

[Tricky5hift]

I would prefer if those Archwing deployment modules or whatever they're called weren't consumables...

I understand that Archwing is pretty much the ultimate form of mobility for any frame that isn't Titania but it feels pretty weird that they should be consumables.

[BlackCoMerc]

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I agree with you on principle; play a game because you enjoy it.

But the devs need to sit down and actually FIX all the underlying systems for that to be reasonable. Scaling. Energy. Melee & channeling. Archwing. Warframe is a great multiplayer platform and very beautiful... But its core gameplay falls very flat.

DE's tendency to band-aid things to hell and back instead of actually addressing the root causes of problems doesn't help, either. Focus 2.0 is essentially a giant, ineffectual band-aid for Operators that does nothing to mitigate what made them unappealing from the get-go. Throwing in that it took stuff away from players to do it doesn't help things.

Yeah, it's time for DE to admit that supporting mechanics are BROKEN:

energy economy is a mess

Enemy scaling makes most Plains missions tedious and annoying

Locking Archwing behind consumables in the ONE place we WANT to use it? Really? For MONTHS you shoved this godawful mode down our throats. FORCED it's use on Uranus.

Now, you have a chance to get us actually ENJOYING it...and you know what? You just blew it. Utterly, completely blew it. Well done.

It's time to think about just how much encroachment on game play your business model is allowed to have. Because this was a step too far.

And for God's sake, balance your game. Scaling and range and damage are RUINING your crowning achievement. This is what happens when you build castles on a foundation of shifting sand.

Edited October 13, 2017 by BlackCoMerc

[TotallyLagging]

the fact that we have to spend 1 million focus points + a drop from the teralyst just to give our operators the stats they so dearly need to start fighting the teralysts is ridiculous

if you have mils on madurai then gratz, you get an early stat and a working space kid blaster, the rest of the people that don't gets shafted

farming focus is still boring af and cetus standing gain is super slow

 

like i don't mind working for my stuff but this is pretty much months of daily capping focus just to get my operator from trash to not-so-trash. i absolutely adore the plains and for that alone this update is possibly the best update they've done thus far, but good god the numbers they expect us to grind is excessive

[DEATHLOK]

Did I understand this correctly: Focus lenses are now hidden behind a new, massive PoE grind wall?

Focus lenses aren't going to be awarded for Sortie missions. We have to play Crippled Kid Simulator and fight the new Eidolons to get lenses? Greater lenses were already damn hard to get, but now we need mountains of those to make a new, more powerful lens, as all Focus costs have increased exponentially?

Please tell me where I'm mistaken, or what else I'm missing.

[Sunder]

On 10/13/2017 at 4:37 PM, DEATHLOK said:

Did I understand this correctly: Focus lenses are now hidden behind a new, massive PoE grind wall?

Focus lenses aren't going to be awarded for Sortie missions. We have to play Crippled Kid Simulator and fight the new Eidolons to get lenses? Greater lenses were already damn hard to get, but now we need mountains of those to make a new, more powerful lens, as all Focus costs have increased exponentially?

Please tell me where I'm mistaken, or what else I'm missing.

Spot on.

These costs need to be cut in half.

[DEATHLOK]

On 10/13/2017 at 4:40 PM, Sunder said:

Spot on.

These costs need to be cut in half.

Oh, damn. I was hoping I was mistaken.

Thanks for telling me, though.

[Railgun]

I personally don't mind using the operator, or having to farm standing, but my largest issue with the plains is how there isn't a bounty board of some sort outside the gates or randomly scattered across the plains. You gotta load in and out of Cetus to get another mission, and you gotta farm these missions for standing and Gara parts. Loading in and out takes about 5 minutes for me and could probably take even longer for others. It really slows down the game for me and it feels like more of a hassle than anything.

[Teridax68]

It feels really sad to say this, since PoE really is a massive achievement and is so well-made in so many respects, but the grind is already making me not want to interact with the Plains anymore. It really is a miniature version of what Warframe does wrong in general, I think: on one hand, the gameplay is, for the most part, immensely fun and varied, mining feels awesome, fishing's fun, exploring feels amazing, combat is smooth and the missions are good, if a little drawn-out. On the other hand, all of this is being forced under a heavy grind wall, which just saps the fun out of it so quickly. It's not even about wanting to max out immediately, either, it's just that the rewards feel so terrible that it's almost like DE tried to revert to the very original Syndicate rewards, which were also in the low triple or double digits.

Personally, I think it would be of major help if killing Tusk Grineer gave standing with each kill, as we also have no sigil to passively rack up standing through affinity. Additionally, the rewards for handing in fish, gems or even completing bounties could easily be multiplied by five (the maximum level bounty missions are practically impossible to solo, last forever, yet only give about 240 standing per mission).

I also feel bounties should let you choose your rewards from a smaller subset of the given selection, or just give one single, definite promised reward from the start, appropriate to the difficulty level. I got lucky and won a Gara Chassis fairly early on, but then I took another, more difficult questline, and my grand prize was Pressure Point. I don't think it's at all respectful of the player or their time to push them to undertake long, difficult missions and pad the rewards table with crap.

I agree as well that the Focus rework is a bit of a letdown, even if it's still an improvement over the old system. I'm not at all happy about the grind, and I think reworking the Focus trees could have been a sterling opportunity to also rework the way focus was gained, which unfortunately did not come to pass. I'm not going to enjoy grinding for Eidolon lenses, and I'm not going to enjoy going through what is essentially extended affinity farming just to max on bonuses that really don't feel impactful.

This might be a bit painful to hear now, considering PoE released literally just a few hours ago and we're still in the honeymoon period, but I think there's an urgent issue with its grind that is going to turn off players very quickly. DE put a ton of work into this and created something absolutely beautiful, but that creation is being bogged down by their old practices of forcing grind into everything, and I fear it's going to burn out players and cost them far more than it will gain them. Plains of Eidolon could be the beginning of a new age in Warframe, but its contributions need to be focused around variety of play and meaningful actions, not more grind.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Teridax68

[DEATHLOK]

42 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

It feels really sad to say this, since PoE really is a massive achievement and is so well-made in so many respects, but the grind is already making me not want to interact with the Plains anymore. It really is a miniature version of what Warframe does wrong in general, I think: on one hand, the gameplay is, for the most part, immensely fun and varied, mining feels awesome, fishing's fun, exploring feels amazing, combat is smooth and the missions are good, if a little drawn-out. On the other hand, all of this is being forced under a heavy grind wall, which just saps the fun out of it so quickly. It's not even about wanting to max out immediately, either, it's just that the rewards feel so terrible that it's almost like DE tried to revert to the very original Syndicate rewards, which were also in the low triple or double digits.

Personally, I think it would be of major help if killing Tusk Grineer gave standing with each kill, as we also have no sigil to passively rack up standing through affinity. Additionally, the rewards for handing in fish, gems or even completing bounties could easily be multiplied by five (the maximum level bounty missions are practically impossible to solo, last forever, yet only give about 240 standing per mission).

I also feel bounties should let you choose your rewards from a smaller subset of the given selection, or just give one single, definite promised reward from the start, appropriate to the difficulty level. I got lucky and won a Gara Chassis fairly early on, but then I took another, more difficult questline, and my grand prize was Pressure Point. I don't think it's at all respectful of the player or their time to push them to undertake long, difficult missions and pad the rewards table with crap.

I agree as well that the Focus rework is a bit of a letdown, even if it's still an improvement over the old system. I'm not at all happy about the grind, and I think reworking the Focus trees could have been a sterling opportunity to also rework the way focus was gained, which unfortunately did not come to pass. I'm not going to enjoy grinding for Eidolon lenses, and I'm not going to enjoy going through what is essentially extended affinity farming just to max on bonuses that really don't feel impactful.

This might be a bit painful to hear now, considering PoE released literally just a few hours ago and we're still in the honeymoon period, but I think there's an urgent issue with its grind that is going to turn off players very quickly. DE put a ton of work into this and created something absolutely beautiful, but that creation is being bogged down by their old practices of forcing grind into everything, and I fear it's going to burn out players and cost them far more than it will gain them. Plains of Eidolon could be the beginning of a new age in Warframe, but its contributions need to be focused around variety of play and meaningful actions, not more grind.

Nicely said.

I, for one, do not want to fish, farm, mine, or bake cookies. I can do all that in real life. I don't need a video game to simulate fishing for me. I play video games to do the things I can't do in real life.

I don't want to play Crippled Kid Simulator. Maybe DE will improve it one day, so it's not so damn frustrating and counter-intuitive, but until that day comes, I'm not playing Crippled Kid Simulator. Shove that part of the game where the sun doesn't shine, as far as I'm concerned.

We've all been screwed over with the Focus refund, having it locked into schools that may now be entirely worthless to us. Focus only benefits Operators, and I'm not interested in playing an Operator half the time. And everything I've read tells me the lens and Focus grind is utterly insane. Hiding lenses behind a new, nearly insurmountable grind wall? People are freaking out when realizing the time and energy involved here.

I remember the grind associated with the initial version of Fissure missions. There were no endless missions, so a lot of time was wasted between tedious battles with minuscule rewards. Those missions sucked, and having to run back and forth between Cetus and PoE will be a hundred times worse. Add in long, drawn-out missions and  the Crippled Kid Simulator, and, well—Didn't someone think this all through?

The bean counters claiming this level of grind will be embraced are dead wrong.

[BlackCoMerc]

1 hour ago, DEATHLOK said:

Did I understand this correctly: Focus lenses are now hidden behind a new, massive PoE grind wall?

Focus lenses aren't going to be awarded for Sortie missions. We have to play Crippled Kid Simulator and fight the new Eidolons to get lenses? Greater lenses were already damn hard to get, but now we need mountains of those to make a new, more powerful lens, as all Focus costs have increased exponentially?

Please tell me where I'm mistaken, or what else I'm missing.

Oh good. Another reason to never, ever use the Operator.

I bought a couple of Greater Lenses. If it takes multiple of those to make ONE Lens now...that's like stealing my money for nones.

[BlackCoMerc]

19 minutes ago, DEATHLOK said:

Nicely said.

I, for one, do not want to fish, farm, mine, or bake cookies. I can do all that in real life. I don't need a video game to simulate fishing for me. I play video games to do the things I can't do in real life.

I don't want to play Crippled Kid Simulator. Maybe DE will improve it one day, so it's not so damn frustrating and counter-intuitive, but until that day comes, I'm not playing Crippled Kid Simulator. Shove that part of the game where the sun doesn't shine, as far as I'm concerned.

We've all been screwed over with the Focus refund, having it locked into schools that may now be entirely worthless to us. Focus only benefits Operators, and I'm not interested in playing an Operator half the time. And everything I've read tells me the lens and Focus grind is utterly insane. Hiding lenses behind a new, nearly insurmountable grind wall? People are freaking out when realizing the time and energy involved here.

I remember the grind associated with the initial version of Fissure missions. There were no endless missions, so a lot of time was wasted between tedious battles with minuscule rewards. Those missions sucked, and having to run back and forth between Cetus and PoE will be a hundred times worse. Add in long, drawn-out missions and  the Crippled Kid Simulator, and, well—Didn't someone think this all through?

The bean counters claiming this level of grind will be embraced are dead wrong.

Destiny 2 will be out in weeks.

Warframes new level of grind will be embraced. By Activision and their bank account.

[Eldnacpeek]

Agreed on everything. I am in disbelief just how much I have to painfully farm Sentient Cores and how little each does. Creating a new Amp sounds like an impossible goal.

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

I love the grind! Cannot wait for console! So much to do, so much to work towards! 

[Naaya]

Love the grind, doing 4 missions for a 4000 credit bounty reward - so satisfying 

[Hayzemet]

They should buff operators

[MayssonFairbanks]

My issue with that grind thing is that there is NO other way to get these items. For some reason, none of these new items are available for sale on the market. No Amps, no Zaws, no Eidolon lenses, no masks, nothing. Can't even buy the new stuff for pets. As far as I know, the only stuff we can buy on the market are the new items described in the Gara bundle as well as a couple of new clothes for the operator. I don't want to, and I cannot afford to waste so much time grinding, so DE should allow us to buy at least some of these items for platinum.

Edited October 14, 2017 by MayssonFairbanks