Are DE creatively prostrated?

[Teloch]

14 minutes ago, Padre_Akais said:

Jury is still out for me...

PoE was a proper first step toward creating the type of dynamic game that this IP can, and will need to, become to compete down the road.

Change is always a journey...And that journey may not always include the players that helped get them here going forward.

For my part, I am interested in seeing what Warframe looks like in February and March of next year...That's when I'll have an idea on whether the direction they seem to be taking with PoE strategy is going to work or not for me.

But right now... The jury is out.

The good news in all this is that Warframe isn't obscure any longer and has other properties entering their niche... Which means they don't get the amount of room for error they have enjoyed in the past and will have to step their game up.

PoE tells me they, at least, mean to compete.

 

 

 

Yeah. A lot of points that are easily forgotten by the heated conversations and multilateral accusations. The very fact of the open-space combat situations is what alone elevates this update, but this also brings out the hard topic: DE can not conceptually improve the "old style" (aka corridor levels) and compete with all those IPs exploiting legit or semi-open worlds. This means the bifurcation point. This means DE will have to choose. This means that if the new game concept would prevail, an entire mountain of the old content will become outdated/obsolete. Anyway, considering how long it takes for DE to produce stuff, the next "landscape" won't arrive sooner than the fall of 2018

I just wonder whether or not DE remember about all those systems and ideas they put into the far shelf to concentrate on PoE

Edited October 16, 2017 by Teloch

[motorfirebox]

6 minutes ago, Teloch said:

Yeah. A lot of points that are easily forgotten by the heated conversations and multilateral accusations. The very fact of the open-space combat situations is what alone elevates this update, but this also brings out the hard topic: DE can not conceptually improve the "old style" (aka corridor levels) and compete with all those IPs exploiting legit or semi-open worlds. This means the bifurcation point. This means DE will have to choose. This means that if the new game concept would prevail, an entire mountain of the old content will become outdated/obsolete. Anyway, considering how long it takes for DE to produce stuff, the next "landscape" won't arrive sooner than the fall of 2018

I just wonder whether or not DE remember about all those systems and ideas they put into the far shelf to concentrate on PoE

Yeah, I really expect that within a year or two at most, the majority of Warframe's content will be open-world maps like PoE. We'll never completely leave the randomized map tiles behind, they have particular strengths that open maps can't replicate. But they'll be used specifically for those strengths, rather than being made to contain nearly all of Warframe's content.

[(PSN)thowed]

I don't even have the PoE update yet and WF is still better than almost all AAA games.  I've been playing since PS4 launched, took a break for a while at one point, but still play all the time.  So new content will just be new fun for me.

[DrProfSirCarmen]

31 minutes ago, Teloch said:

 This means the bifurcation point. This means DE will have to choose. This means that if the new game concept would prevail, an entire mountain of the old content will become outdated/obsolete. Anyway, considering how long it takes for DE to produce stuff, the next "landscape" won't arrive sooner than the fall of 2018

I believe both aspects can exist in Warframe at the same time if they keep Landscapes as a more contained endgame system and have tilesets as a more flexible and easier to implement on while also having more complex objectives, I doubt you could see a landscape version of rescue, spy or sabotage done with the same depth they have in the tilesets, then there can be a balance of having both. Though I suppose being able to keep up with both would be the real challenge but I believe any future landscape will be quicker to create given they'll have gotten over most of the major design hurdles with plains. At the very least even if they do all but abandon creating new tile set content I don't think things like new warframes or weapons would ever be completely sourced by landscapes given we already have Gara and the weapons that came with her so there is already a precedent for keeping the rest of the game important.

Edited October 16, 2017 by DrProfSirCarmen

[(XBOX)Hundo8180]

1 hour ago, Teloch said:

Yep. And in my case, many people dislike me for the "brick-to-the-face" manner of discussing

Yeah, if everyone who had a problem with any part of this game then it wouldn't have as large of a fanbase as it does now and DE wouldnt have developed the game and kept pushing out hotfixes and updates if all people were gonna do when they have a problem with the game is leave it

 

[BETAOPTICS]

Also keep in mind that previously and again reminded in the latest developer livestream that there is more to come to PoE as some doors are closed off so who knows what the future looks like? I agree that the Terralyst fights are not the most creative ones ever but I also figured they are prototypes for what is to come. They are early adaptations and experiments to find out how players experience these changes and in what ways they can evolve those combat aspects to the future and existing content. I'd imagine that in the next plains (likely Jupiter as they speculated) would have other creatures and mechanics involved. What is clear though is that they are preparing the players to take on the Sentients and these are the early steps toward something much bigger.

[PnOyLeeT]

How can u really balance a world with 1 tenno own 30+ frames and million of guns and other misc things..arcane..riven..things u think that buffs u are things slowing down the game...the only balance in this game is that fishing...to bad they forgot to corporate fishing with platinum spending...could have been a big hit and money maker ..2¢ right there

[TotallyLagging]

They never really got bossfights right in this game. I would say that Teralysts is a step in the right direction since you could control when it's vulnerable by shooting it instead of waiting around for it to be vulnerable, but it's still badly executed due to operators being, well, operators. They're weak, and now they're extremely costly, and I've already complained about their crappy progression which I hope will be addressed in a patch that we'll be getting soon.

Point is, as long as they're still unsure on what to do to make operators useful while still trying to put them on future contents we're gonna have this problem for a while. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I still like the update. I love the plains, and the plains alone makes it the best update this game's ever gotten in my opinion. It's just that the things that revolves around it that's just lacking in many ways. Quills, Cetus, Eidolons... You name it.

[Lost_Cartographer]

19 minutes ago, Pnoyleet said:

How can u really balance a world with 1 tenno own 30+ frames and million of guns and other misc things..arcane..riven..things u think that buffs u are things slowing down the game...the only balance in this game is that fishing...to bad they forgot to corporate fishing with platinum spending...could have been a big hit and money maker ..2¢ right there

The answer is you don't.  One of Warframe's unique aspects is that it wants the player to go on a power fantasy.  One enjoys it most in trying to make their own fun.  We do have the tools to mitigate our own power output (though people feel they must throw every damage mod ever onto everything) it's just largely guess work how much is too much or too little.  Armor scaling exacerbates the differences in squishy Grineer and tanky Grineer though, making this process much less accurate.  But mostly, customization in the modding system happens when we have so much excess power output we can afford to drop an elemental or even multi-shot mod to put in something else that's "fun" but not so much "efficient," like fast hands on the Soma.  You don't really need a fourth elemental mod if you're already one-shotting whatever it is you're fighting.

Other games lack a modding system, or have a simplistic "pick a barrel attachment, scope, magazine type, etc."  Warframe just embraces the space magic.

 

[CanIbiteU]

I think many veterans are burned out on the game, but can't let go for few month, the expectations cant meet reality and the new (truly overwhelming) grind takes away the feeling of the current achievement. It all results in negative reception from veteran players. I obsessively played PoE for 3 days and I guess I share my thoughts. 

In my opinion the PoE update is a very classic new foundation update like DE did it many times before - we get the groundwork, a new fundament, a direction in which the game is heading from now on. But the balance is not there yet, in many aspects of the new update, not to mention the bugs. Keeping this in mind, to the points you made Teloch:

The biggest part first:

1) Focus 2.0. feels way more fluent, I use my operator more often, I am curious about how several schools will work together, I see a clear pattern of growing in power combining various passives. I am looking forward to level my operator, thats a new thing. I am looking forward to gear up the operator - the vey first gun feels interesting and i see many new interesting mechanics behind void energy as damage type. For example the amp gun almost instantly kills nullifiers or stalker takes more damage from it since he has no resistatnces vs void energy - all of this are new mechanics that I enjoy discovering and I see myself using operator more often from now on, not as main damage force but as secondary utility I can ajust to my playstyle with gear and focus choices. Focus is mainly not about gaining passives for warframes anymore but about growing in power with operator, therefor I dont understand the complains about zenurik.

Still the balance is just not there. Naramon is dead there is just nothing to argue about, its weak, lacks utility and there is nothing to look forward to in that tree, unless you are diehard melee user, skills like looking through walls are a joke. All in all Naramon is a slap in the face of the community, since DE know that it was a main choice for many people. Unairu is way to passive and armor is just not important enough to dedicate a whole tree to it,  so it falls flat again. Vazarin is oke,but provides not enough defence to justify the grind. The only schools atm that will make the grind somewhat rewarding are Marudai and Zenurik, since the player will actually feel his operator growing in power with those. The main issue with current focus balance - the grind must be rewarding, DE is way to careful, hesitating making focus powerful enough. Same goes for amp guns - I build my amp yesterday - its fine but just a little bit more damage would make it really great, but well havent enhanced it with Quills "blessing" yet.

Regarding the "giant grind wall" Its not giant, its the usual bit over the top WF stuff. I managed to level up Quills standing to rank 2 just in 3 days, I managed to build operator amp, I unlocked the pasive in Marudai tree and have 3 ranks in it - I feel the progression. Its not great but I can see it work with some nerfs to rare resource requirements like cetus whisps or murkray fish. Regarding focus, you dont need every skill in your trees - thats the point about skill tree anyway - you have to decide what to pick. A very big new thing about focus grind - you dont need to grind anymore. I almost maxing my focus by daily playing the game - you can get up to 50k focus from one tier 5 bounty phase. 

And finally the main aspect of focus 2.0 is broken atm - eidalon battles, operators progression should reflect in those battles and this is not existant atm, since community found a workaround with shield disruptor and you barely need operator for the shields in the battle. Regarding the battle itself, I highly enjoy it, for me it hits the balance between new mechanics - operator progression - damage and team support, skywing for search between phases and in the end just damaging the big fat boss with your big fat leveled guns. It needs balance, shield disruptor needs to go, cheese mechanics like chromas and ivaras damage need a slight cut down, it still should be possible to kill 2 eidalons during the night. But the fight itself is fun, spectacular and got exactly that monster hunter/shadow of colossus vibe to it I hoped for and I see myself doing it for quite a while, polishing the aprroach. especially considering the little side mechanics like lures and getting the brilliant shard and better cores. But its buggy as hell, the cores not always drop, the lure part is basicly working 1/10 times, the damage balance is not existant, it needs work. And we need more eidalon fights - 1 enemy type is just not enough and people will start to burn out soon.  I know that Steve mentioned that its just the s-tier Eidalon, but they will have to deliver more and very soon if they want this new gamemechanic to be a thing for the playerbase. 

2) Warframe designs - Gara(lol) is a let down gameplay-wise and design-wise. I cant judge the coming deluxe skins, since we only saw the concept. But DE always have been inconsistant in this regard - some frames get the love, some fail. Recently we got two amazing new frames with Nidus and Harrow, top notch design and gameplay mechanics and we got a very creativly designed frame with Octavia which falls flat gameplay-wise and we got a design fail with Nova deluxe and boring frost deluxe. Yet we just got the incredibly beautiful Mag Deluxe skin. I dont see a tendency of design fail you are talking about, usual downs and highs, sometimes that deliver sometimes they fail, it has been this way since the very beginning. 

3) Warframe story always balanced between creative, inspired ideas and borderline cringy stuff. The whole Lotus space mum thing alone - srsly guys, its beyond freudian joke about gamer nerds. On the other hand Ballas and Margulis part is awesome. There are a lot of examples in this regard and I see the same tendency in PoE. The guy living in a cave next door is just lol. But the multiverse part fits well in the void narrative and the idea of a small tribal culture in the future that base their believes on multiverse theories is good sci fi stuff. So are the orokin structures made of meat, its fine. All in all i dont see any tendency of failed writing here. Its still the same - sometimes cringy, somtimes inspired. 

To finish this wall of text, this update is a good fundament for the future of t he game, it needs polish, economy balance, more focus balance, lots of bug fixes ( i havent menitoned the matchmaking its really really bad) and more content, but I strongly believe DE can deliver. Cant wait to see new M-tier L-tier Eidalons new planet tilesets and moar fish. 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2017 by CanIbiteU

[o.0-]

3 hours ago, Teloch said:

Spoiler

As the topic name says. Call me a paranoid, but I can see a disturbing trend in DE's performance. I'll elaborate it in a simple, thesis-like form. 

1) PoE and focus rework. People adapted the call-name "Flopus 2.0" for a reason - the rework nerfed the frames and failed to re-imagine the operator gameplay. You still move as wonky as you did, you still struggle to kill lvl 50 mobs even with those fancy guns, you are still limited to the grand total of four skills, having an option to merely choose between their secondary effects. All of these underwhelming changes are hidden behind a GIANT (even by Warframe standards) grind wall. DE refused to embrace the possibility of making the schools distinguishable and significant, making them influence the way we play. Ironically, the focus 2.0 became the glorified archwing.

Same goes for the concept of eidolon battle: it is just a bunch of kuva guardians glued together. The mega-fat amalgam of a few kuva guardians, that exists only to test operators DPS. Imaginative? I'd say no.

2) The warframe designs. There are plenty of threads regarding the recent changes in new warframes and skins visual designs, namely - gara, ember and volt deluxe. They are bland. Cripplingly bland. Bland to the degree that leads us to believe that whoever made them, was compelled to do so, and thus they hated their work.

3) Story. The whole "biggest update ever" features a half of a single quest (yes, the playtime and its complexity are too short/simple to consider it a wholesome quest). A story about a love triangle? A literal Deus ex Machina faction that knows absolutely everything, elaborates nothing, and shoves a hairdryer gun into your hands, stating that it was somehow foretold, and now you must hunt thousands of dumb mammoths eidolons just "because it is a path to the future".

Diviners? Prophecies? Multiverses? What is next, time travels of the chosen one? Do you employ the laziest tropes because you like them or because you just can't avoid them?

I'm not even mentioning the "maturing" of the operators. Wearing an armor composed of discarded car tires and waving the hairdryer gun isn't what "maturing" or "becoming a warrior" is about.

DE, you can stop being shy and just use inbox messages to directly tell us what to do because the traditionally weak story and characters degraded to the level of total disbelief.

A little disclaimer: all the information above is just my gut feeling, which emerged because of the dip in the quality of the content and ideas that DE materializes in their game. I do not pretend it to be the absolute truth and not trying to raise the panic, but can't you feel that DE might be growing tired of the development process, and began to produce it only so we could shut the sh@g up for a couple of weeks?

 

1. A lot of work went into Focus 2.0. Some of the changes are fine, but it is still rough around the edges. Best is simply provide feedback on what works and what doesn't, so that hopefully we can see a 2.5 sooner than later. I think we had 1.0 version for far too long and these were some big changes.
2. Glassframe should not have gotten the romanji Gara'su' name IMHO, and I've only seen the Ember skin, that looks like it needs to have a Chicken Dance Narta to go along with it. As its subjective as to taste, I hope its a phase that ends soon enough with the design style as the Ember one looked too busy.
3. I hope its gonna be just another crazy cult thing, we already have the Corpus and a few groups like Nef's Profitteers. So the Ostrons and Quills can believe whatever they want to believe, as long as they are there to simply provide tools to manipulate Void Energy.

I imagine as how the Orokin were in their heyday, that scientific knowledge was cutting edge, yet still dogmatic, and as such the Quill could still end up representing something like the remnants of Ballas' Researchers, who could have worked on matters of the Tenno and Void (and had gotten locked out of the Tower due to lacking the DNA to run any controls). Otherwise the Ostrons could simply be survivors who simply stayed near active towers as they were familiar and felt safe, establishing a community there.

So over time, and generations, cling to what they can as they do their best to survive their new reality, maybe they could even be working for a new Cephalon (or along the lines of what was learned of the Red Veil) who has been trying to teach the Ostrons, and ended up creating an unintended crazy cult instead, the Quill.

Like for example, thanks to what my parents watch on youtube, I have sadly become aware that people actually believe and work to prove things like the Earth is flat, or hollow, the moon is hollow, WWII badguys have bases on the Moon, and a whole range of other topics that have little proper evidence to support such claims, and are trying really hard to find anything they can to label evidence to support their beliefs. So in Warframe, the devs can still provide this layered story-telling of the Ostrons and Quill, with familiar and campy tropes, while still being able to pull off a believable and compelling story in the end.

[METAHUMVN]

5 hours ago, Teloch said:

DE, you can stop being shy and just use inbox messages to directly tell us what to do because the traditionally weak story and characters degraded to the level of total disbelief.

^This could be said about 99% of the major sci-fi games out there. I do agree, but I give Warframe a pass because at least they're doing a way better job, as a free game, then some $200M games that costs $60 to buy. 

 

[TheBrsrkr]

5 hours ago, Teloch said:

. 

1) PoE and focus rework. People adapted the call-name "Flopus 2.0" for a reason - the rework nerfed the frames and failed to re-imagine the operator gameplay. You still move as wonky as you did, you still struggle to kill lvl 50 mobs even with those fancy guns, you are still limited to the grand total of four skills, having an option to merely choose between their secondary effects. All of these underwhelming changes are hidden behind a GIANT (even by Warframe standards) grind wall. DE refused to embrace the possibility of making the schools distinguishable and significant, making them influence the way we play. Ironically, the focus 2.0 became the glorified archwing.

Do people just not understand how not to grind anymore? Until you learn, Focus is going to end up just like the syndicates it tried to replace. 

 

The point of the focus system was GRINDING IN THE BACKGROUND. DE realized millions of XP was going into your weapons and  frames and designed a system to reward you for simply playing with those. But people insist on grinding these things out as fast as possible and then feel burnt out trying to do several weeks of content in a day. You don't NEED focus. No one NEEDS focus. Not even your operator absolutely needs focus. You're just supposed to stick on a lens and play as usual. 

[YatoNeko]

The point of focus was to give to each school a strong point, i feel like zenurik is still the master school... and as a madurai player i still regret the school i've chosen maybe even more now

[Hypernaut1]

It's easy to criticize, but who is doing it better? For all the egregious faults people say the game has. What developer does it better?

Maybe developing the perfect game that vets can play endlessly for 1000s of hours every update isn't as easy as logging into a forum and theory crafting nebulous ideas of what a perfect game should be.

Of course constructive criticism is warranted, but to bash the devs as if they are some creatively stunted amateurs and not some of the best in the business is ridiculous.

-But if you have examples of this paragon of game development... Please show me.

I agree that everything is not perfect, but IMO they are good in the context of the game. The story is about as good as most we've gotten in this story. The missions and grind is just about the same too. I played for a few days and already advanced with Cetus. The grind is suppose to feel like a long haul at first.... Is was JUST released. 

Art design is subjective. Personally, while I enjoyed the Ingus line, it had its own style and it wasn't WF. I don't think every frame needs a deluxe skin that adheres to his theme. Maybe DE doesn't wasnt all of their frames with a generic edgy fantasy skin.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Hypernaut1

[Rakosta_Kai]

5 hours ago, Teloch said:

Yeah. A lot of points that are easily forgotten by the heated conversations and multilateral accusations. The very fact of the open-space combat situations is what alone elevates this update, but this also brings out the hard topic: DE can not conceptually improve the "old style" (aka corridor levels) and compete with all those IPs exploiting legit or semi-open worlds. This means the bifurcation point. This means DE will have to choose. This means that if the new game concept would prevail, an entire mountain of the old content will become outdated/obsolete. Anyway, considering how long it takes for DE to produce stuff, the next "landscape" won't arrive sooner than the fall of 2018

I just wonder whether or not DE remember about all those systems and ideas they put into the far shelf to concentrate on PoE

Iirc DE didn't start working on Plains until about 6 months before Tennocon and have already stated they had other open world maps well underway.

The nice thing about a setup like that is that it's like legos...Once you have the assets, you can put many of them anywhere so long as you reskin them.  Judging by the fact that some of our rifles are also some of the Galleons in the game, they have that part down pat.

The two types of gameplay can live together just fine provided neither is wholly forgotten...Archwing could live along with them if they perfect transitions and make those maps more diverse.

The big deal to me with PoE is that they are implementing those transitions...That's massive long-term.

They could just as easily add randomly generated caves as waypoints for subterranean missions, allow players to transition into them and players are back in a corridor style mission.

Is that alot of work? No (...says the ignorant non-developer). The cave assets already exist from Lua and TWW and TSD (one or both had caves I think) and The transition system exists (cetus to plains) and random generation exists (ship based missions)

....All they have to do is string them together like legos...Each has to be polished and scraped to fit the other though. Once that's done once they can do it countless times regardless of planet.

It's old school shard style MMO design with waypoints and transition doors the likes of City of Heroes or Anarchy Online.

I don't disagree with the sentiments in your posts...I do think it's important we see the new shiny they have added for what it is.

It's a pretty neat new shiny if they find ways to be creative and iterative with it.

It won't be so nifty if they don't though and will get stale fast.