It's Time to Break the Pattern & Actually DO Something With Your Developments

[SnuggleBuckets]

18 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

NOTE: One of the BEST things about PoE is that it makes the battlefield feel more like a living, breathing world and less like a narrow set-piece. The chaos of dropships, enemy air support, and artillery is amazing. (It needs some balancing still, but that's another story.) If nothing else it makes the game feel much better to play.

Absolutely agreed. With the plains, the dynamic battlefield chaos of drop pods coming down and dropships bringing more grineer to the fights, the mortars, it all feels much more lived in, messy, dynamical encounter each time.
I kind of hope for more faction fighting.
We see at night the grineer fighting vomvalysts and that's a fun skirmish to walk into, spoilers,

Spoiler

and that scripted scene in Saya's Vigil with the Eidolon rising from the waters and the grineer engaging with it was a powerful sight to behold.

Maybe we could have some Tenno, Ostron or other potentially neutral faction spawn in dynamically to engage with grineer camps or patrols/scouts. Maybe if they add more wildlife and build something resembling an ecosystem we could have Kubrows or other hostile fauna engage with grineer, I'd like to see a prehistoric looking giant flightless bird running around kicking grineer b*tts, I even have ideas about it having the wing feathers evolved to become more hardened like shields, so it would shield itself, then run in and kick and chomp with its powerful beak.

I had hopes for archwing to include a type of dynamical epic chaotic space battle mode similar to Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the classic 2005 version), it would so be a perfect fit to spice up the slightly sterile space battles currently in warframe, maybe an invasion mode with massive corpus ships and grineer galleons locked in bombarding combat with all their smaller fighters flying around fighting, and we would come in with a multi-stage mission of defending our contractors vessel weakpoints, then disabling a few key systems of the enemies ship like shields, turrets, sensors etc, then flying into their hangars and engaging on foot inside the ship to do a reactor sabotage mission, and escaping as the contractor finally delivers the killing blow to the enemy ship. All the while all the dogfighting happens around you with the corpus and grineer engaging in combat, both in space and inside the ships.

[Krion112]

I believe the biggest reasons these projects never pan out is because they often have very rarely anything to do with the game-play Warframe became popular on: the instance-based, Cooptional, gear-up and jump in, third-person shooting, slashing, and casting action game, with a living overworld that possessed situational alerts and invasions. All they needed to do was build on that, not tack on every shiny thing they get obsessed with for a given season.

 

I'll do it right here: You know that Nemesis rip-off system they want to make? Yeah, why build a whole system around that when we already have one: Invasions. They could expand on Invasions by making them be lead by a generated Grineer, Corpus, or Infested Boss.

They could then make the system less grindy or off-putting for a given player: each Tenno can choose the mission type the want to run, with different mission types providing different quantities of completion. For example, it would take 5 Exterminates to complete an invasion, but it would only take 3 Captures, 2 Defenses, or 1 Assassinate, but a player could mix and match based upon the Warframes they have and the game-play they prefer. And the Assassination for invasions would be the procedural Boss. It would require some smart design on the part of DE to make the Assassination worth being an entire Invasion, but if they played it smart, it'd work.

Alternatively, they could have made Stalker's Acolytes function by this 'Kingpin' system, with their traits and equipment being not dissimilar to our Focus and Arsenal, making this set of 'Dark Tenno' carry out missions across the Origin system not unlike we do. In fact, I recommended this system for the Sentients long ago, but it would work just as well on the Acolytes:

 

Either would use the nemesis system DE wants to replicate in a way that only serves to compliment and expand the already existing, core game-mechanics, instead of adding an entirely new game onto Warframe.

The same can be said of the Plains. I was hoping the Plains was going to be a conglomeration of all game-play we have, with resource collection, squad-based combat, the availability of Archwing, and a plethora of objectives matching those of the mission types we already have. Sadly, it fell fall short of what that means, as resource collection was rendered null because all the resources of the Plains only applies to the Plains, and the spending has nothing to do with resources I already have, squads seem to hamper more than help in certain circumstances, Skywing doesn't play on any of the strengths of Archwing and is gated needlessly, and the objectives are more monotonous than their individual mission counterparts.

That would be a good place to start: envisioning how to make the game whole, instead of segregated clumps of disillusionment.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Krion112

[DiabolusUrsus]

2 hours ago, Littleman88 said:

It's hard to figure out.  A lot of the hate for some systems is born from a poor first impression.  Other times it's just overly restrictive/challenging, and others still we're left scratching our heads.  Everyone was super excited for Archwing, but the delivery was a rather stale experience.  People can't see past that experience to the potential it should have since realized.  Raids on the other hand are highly restrictive by nature, both because of their sheer levels causing inflated difficulty and the 8 player recommendation.  Lunaro... was something no one asked for.  DE was trying to ride the popular Rocket League train, except no one got into Warframe to play knock-off Rocket League.

So DE has hard calls to make - will further development of this feature get more people into it, or is it something that was niche by design?

It really shouldn't be, though.

You're absolutely correct on the problems that plague those particular systems, but I think there's a fairly clear line in the sand when it comes to discriminating between "rough around the edges" and "dead-end niche."

Archwing and Raids easily fall into the first category based either on player interest leading up to its introduction, similarity to the core game, or both. Lunaro? Not so much.

Still, even in the case of the latter it should be possible to pull useful mechanics or learning experiences for repurposing into other areas of development.

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

Absolutely agreed. With the plains, the dynamic battlefield chaos of drop pods coming down and dropships bringing more grineer to the fights, the mortars, it all feels much more lived in, messy, dynamical encounter each time.
I kind of hope for more faction fighting.
We see at night the grineer fighting vomvalysts and that's a fun skirmish to walk into, spoilers,

  Reveal hidden contents

and that scripted scene in Saya's Vigil with the Eidolon rising from the waters and the grineer engaging with it was a powerful sight to behold.

Maybe we could have some Tenno, Ostron or other potentially neutral faction spawn in dynamically to engage with grineer camps or patrols/scouts. Maybe if they add more wildlife and build something resembling an ecosystem we could have Kubrows or other hostile fauna engage with grineer, I'd like to see a prehistoric looking giant flightless bird running around kicking grineer b*tts, I even have ideas about it having the wing feathers evolved to become more hardened like shields, so it would shield itself, then run in and kick and chomp with its powerful beak.

I had hopes for archwing to include a type of dynamical epic chaotic space battle mode similar to Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the classic 2005 version), it would so be a perfect fit to spice up the slightly sterile space battles currently in warframe, maybe an invasion mode with massive corpus ships and grineer galleons locked in bombarding combat with all their smaller fighters flying around fighting, and we would come in with a multi-stage mission of defending our contractors vessel weakpoints, then disabling a few key systems of the enemies ship like shields, turrets, sensors etc, then flying into their hangars and engaging on foot inside the ship to do a reactor sabotage mission, and escaping as the contractor finally delivers the killing blow to the enemy ship. All the while all the dogfighting happens around you with the corpus and grineer engaging in combat, both in space and inside the ships.

Yes, yes, and more yes to an expanded ecosystem. The plains are a bit too empty. At the same time, I don't want to see so many Kubrows, etc. that they become nothing but pests infesting every unused inch of the worldspace. Have maybe 2-3 concentrations of them with more complicated AI routines including hunting/fishing/playing/sleeping behavior. Intrude on a nest of dens? You've got a fight. Run into a hunting band? You've got a fight. Happen across a group lazing about in the sun after a kill? Leave them alone and they'll return the favor. I feel like something believable instead of more movie monster madness when it comes to animals would go farther toward building a living, breathing world.

In terms of dynamic battle encounters... I would really love for them to make invasions open-world and progressive instead of 3-run instances, and for there to be the possibility of crossfire incursions where you can pick who you want to support.

A Corpus prospecting crew... What are they doing here? The Grineer are moving to intercept; Tenno, what will you do?

From there, players can pick what they want to do:

NOTE: The intro to the mission post-choice could involve radio contact with either leader and offering to strike a deal.

Defend the Corpus and

• Get paid for their services, or
• Get double-crossed by the conniving jerks and wind up killing them all before looting their findings, or
• Opt to double-cross them after getting paid, kill them all and then loot their findings.

Help the Grineer exterminate the Corpus and

• Get a minor buff from a nearby Grineer facility (e.g., increased resources from a mining camp), or
• Get double-crossed by the warmongering jerks and wind up killing them all before looting their resources, or
• Opt to double-cross them after the buff expires, kill them all, and loot their resources.

Assuming there's no double-crossing involved, there might be status-quo consequences for the victorious faction. Stuff like that.

In terms of Archwing, I think actual space-archwing could benefit a lot from its own open-world style space maps. One of the best things about Archwing is how fun it is to freely fly around at high speeds, and the Asteroid map is really the only tile that accommodates that.

1 hour ago, Krion112 said:

I believe the biggest reasons these projects never pan out is because they often have very rarely anything to do with the game-play Warframe became popular on: the instance-based, Cooptional, gear-up and jump in, third-person shooting, slashing, and casting action game, with a living overworld that possessed situational alerts and invasions. All they needed to do was build on that, not tack on every shiny thing they get obsessed with for a given season.

 

I'll do it right here: You know that Nemesis rip-off system they want to make? Yeah, why build a whole system around that when we already have one: Invasions. They could expand on Invasions by making them be lead by a generated Grineer, Corpus, or Infested Boss.

They could then make the system less grindy or off-putting for a given player: each Tenno can choose the mission type the want to run, with different mission types providing different quantities of completion. For example, it would take 5 Exterminates to complete an invasion, but it would only take 3 Captures, 2 Defenses, or 1 Assassinate, but a player could mix and match based upon the Warframes they have and the game-play they prefer. And the Assassination for invasions would be the procedural Boss. It would require some smart design on the part of DE to make the Assassination worth being an entire Invasion, but if they played it smart, it'd work.

Alternatively, they could have made Stalker's Acolytes function by this 'Kingpin' system, with their traits and equipment being not dissimilar to our Focus and Arsenal, making this set of 'Dark Tenno' carry out missions across the Origin system not unlike we do. In fact, I recommended this system for the Sentients long ago, but it would work just as well on the Acolytes:

 

Either would use the nemesis system DE wants to replicate in a way that only serves to compliment and expand the already existing, core game-mechanics, instead of adding an entirely new game onto Warframe.

The same can be said of the Plains. I was hoping the Plains was going to be a conglomeration of all game-play we have, with resource collection, squad-based combat, the availability of Archwing, and a plethora of objectives matching those of the mission types we already have. Sadly, it fell fall short of what that means, as resource collection was rendered null because all the resources of the Plains only applies to the Plains, and the spending has nothing to do with resources I already have, squads seem to hamper more than help in certain circumstances, Skywing doesn't play on any of the strengths of Archwing and is gated needlessly, and the objectives are more monotonous than their individual mission counterparts.

That would be a good place to start: envisioning how to make the game whole, instead of segregated clumps of disillusionment.

I agree. I can't count the number of times I've heard about some new unveiled hype-train mechanic and though "But why...?" DE would seriously benefit from sitting down for an hour (or three, or four, or weeks; you get the point) to decide what sort of game they want this to be. Or, at the very least, they should sit down and discuss how each new mechanic they want to unveil could contribute to the existing game instead of supergluing it on as its own independent thing.

The Plains definitely feel like a missed opportunity, but the entire point of my post is that it's not a missed opportunity until DE neglects doing anything interesting with it. Adapting the game modes that would actually be better-suited to open world than what is implemented now is a good first step. Using the open world mechanic to reinforce their worldbuilding and complement the rest of the non-open-world game should be a no-brainer next step.

Still, I don't have high hopes that we won't witness the usual "put out the fires and move on to the next shiny thing" we've all gotten used to.

PS: I'm glad we get to be real about what the Kingpin system is likely to amount to.

EDIT:

I was planning to post in your thread after reading it, but apparently it's archived. Just wanna say that when Eidolon came out it felt to me like the Vomvalysts were miniature versions of what the Sentient mooks should have been; susceptible to Tenno weapons (following that whole lore bit about Sentients overriding more advanced tech) and ultimately finished off by Warframe (at the time) or Operator (after the reveal) powers given their whole "Void is Sentient kryptonite" trait.

It never made sense to me that the "big bad" should be some enemy we were designed specifically to counter and had already defeated. IMO a Sentient fighter shouldn't be much harder for a Tenno to tear through than the Grineer. Still, I wouldn't mind it if they implemented something similar to your suggestion instead. It's kind of damning your proposal with false praise (not my intention), but pretty much anything would be preferable to the annoying cheese-fest we have now.

Edited October 17, 2017 by DiabolusUrsus
Archived Thread

[Azuset]

22 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

We've all seen this story pan out before: DE adds some drastic and radical new mechanic, then lets it rot seemingly for eternity after the hype dies down instead of polishing and refining it into something useful that actually complements the game experience.

Dark Sectors. Invasions. Melee Channeling. Archwing. Sharkwing.

Sure, these things get occasional minor improvements to rewards or the most glaring mechanical flaws, but that's it. They're mostly static.

 

I was just thinking the same thing. Its a constant "shiny new stuff" development cycle. I know they say the game needs new weapons and frames to level because that is the bread and butter but seriously we need a "2.0" on a lot of these systems. They could be awesome. 

For me, and i'm probably in a small boat here maybe alone, I think the game needs more narrative driven experiences like The Second Dream. That is what will make the world feel more alive at this point. Exploring the lore of the game is the sweet spot. We know we are going to get endless amounts of weapons and frames to grind out but that is not that appealing to continuously play the game for. Truth be told I have not don't played much since the second dream. I pop in every few updates and get caught up with the grind. 

I would be more engaged and spend more of my money if I had more lore expansion. Cetus is great, it was great on paper until I quickly found out it turned into a fishing simulator.

• What about the Syndicate expansion with bounties/bosses?
• What about umbra?
• What about the Sentient evasion?

22 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Keep it to 4 so that the generation routines can run safely out of sight.

I totally agree. 

I think Cetus is just the beginning of something beautiful for warframe. It opened up so many new opportunities. As long as they take out the "Fish Frame" progression system I think has potential to do better than the other systems that have been collecting dust for some time. If they do not I just wont play the game.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Azuset

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, Azuset said:

 

I was just thinking the same thing. Its a constant "shiny new stuff" development cycle. I know they say the game needs new weapons and frames to level because that is the bread and butter but seriously we need a "2.0" on a lot of these systems. They could be awesome. 

For me, and i'm probably in a small boat here maybe alone, I think the game needs more narrative driven experiences like The Second Dream. That is what will make the world feel more alive at this point. Exploring the lore of the game is the sweet spot. We know we are going to get endless amounts of weapons and frames to grind out but that is not that appealing to continuously play the game for. Truth be told I have not don't played much since the second dream. I pop in every few updates and get caught up with the grind. 

I would be more engaged and spend more of my money if I had more lore expansion. Cetus is great, it was great on paper until I quickly found out it turned into a fishing simulator.

• What about the Syndicate expansion with bounties/bosses?
• What about umbra?
• What about the Sentient evasion?

I totally agree. 

I think Cetus is just the beginning of something beautiful for warframe. It opened up so many new opportunities. As long as they take the "Fish Frame" progression system I think has potential to do better than the other systems that have been collecting dust for some time. If they do not I just wont play the game.

Can't really disagree with you regarding narrative. More importantly, I'd like for the gameplay and narrative to actually match wherever possible. Less of this "Whoa Tenno, now if you lose your Operator you die for realsies!" ... Two updates later and BAM they push for OperatorFrame. These Focus 2.0 shenanigans put the nail in the coffin of the development from The War Within instantly deflating the sense of peril that The Second Dream introduced.

Not to say TWW was bad; I enjoyed the quest particularly because aside from the Golden Maw I didn't die in Operator Mode during normal combat. I understand the necessary story-gameplay segregation against permadeath, but I would much preferred for them to have refrained from making the Operator a direct battlefield presence.

I agree that Cetus is nice to explore, though it would be nicer to explore without the 49 extra people adding to the latency.

Still, I think one of the biggest problems with Warframe at the moment that can't be fixed by better content updates is that the devs have latched onto this philosophy of "It's meant to be played in a group," where they try to force players into multiplayer at every turn.

I'm in a flexible boat; I have a small group of friends I enjoy playing with, but my residence in a well-developed nation and middle-class access to decent internet gives me the option of playing with other people in desperation. Others are not so lucky, and are restricted to solo play (not that simply wanting to avoid social interaction with other players is something of less intrinsic value than inability to play).

Why do the less-fortunate need to cope with reduced affinity gains, extra difficulty, and inability to access some content? Does DE think that someone who a) can't get the full experience of grouping up and b) is mechanically discriminated against wherever possible is more likely to want to spend money on their premium content?

To me it makes much more sense to develop the game to support solo play and balance around a one-player experience, then add scaling for additional players to accommodate them without making things TOO easy as much as possible.

To answer your questions from my perspective and best guess based on past experiences,

• Syndicate/Kingpin expansion will likely just be another interface for randomly-generated missions tied together sortie-style with minimal effort storytelling.
• Unless they unveil some groundbreaking new twist that carries some significant implications for the game, Umbra is probably just another cash-cow Prime clone.
• Sentient Invasion hopefully carries some decent story implications, but unless they change the obtuse damage absorption mechanic of the Sentient Fighters I can't see anything Senient-focused being much fun to play. Experience and listen to? Sure. But play? Eugh.

Still, I hope you're right, and that they take their open-world developments and run with them.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I'm not entirely convinced the new formula works all that well , honestly. Remove the grind and you're left with a big open space that's not really that fun to traverse compared to those procedurally generated corridors imho... I would still take a quality tileset like the orokin moon over the plains any day of the week personally.

[-JT-_-R3W1ND]

11 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

*shameless bump b/c I posted this late at night*

Also, brainstorming would be appreciated.

We don't need a brainstorm. We need a friend to Steve who will ask everytime "what are you doing and why? How it is a part of game? Why anybody want to play this?".

As you sayd, main problem is we have simple pattern:

1. I have great idea.
2. ???
3. I'm not intrested more in this, i have another great idea.

Plains have isolated economy. Yes, it make some interest for veterans, but in other way new players will feel this isolation even more. They says Vitality and other bad rewards is for newbie, but there is 0 reasons to put effort in this part of game. All you have is one warframe, special melee and some Kubrow skins. It is fine for me now, but only becouse i have everything. I can enjoy fishing for nothing and a new (great, as for me) boss-fight.

Even more. We have Teralyst. We need Operators only to kill em. And we kill em only to make Operators stronger. Even Focus 2.0 and Brilliant shards are focused at Operator. It is fascinatingly to see, how Ember Megan and Rebecca have fun with Childrens, but there is 0 reasons to use em over warframes.

 

Exuse me, but i don't believe we will have something more consistent and holistic than we have already. I guess some bandaid are expected, but we will never understood are Plains for veterans, or newbies. Why we should use Operators. And how this all connected to a main game.

 

 

[Fallen_Echo]

On 2017. 10. 17. at 5:51 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

We've all seen this story pan out before: DE adds some drastic and radical new mechanic, then lets it rot seemingly for eternity after the hype dies down instead of polishing and refining it into something useful that actually complements the game experience.

Dark Sectors. Invasions. Melee Channeling. Archwing. Sharkwing.

Sure, these things get occasional minor improvements to rewards or the most glaring mechanical flaws, but that's it. They're mostly static.

Plains of Eidolon is a major proof-of-concept step that DE can use to drastically change the world of Warframe for the better:

NOTE: One of the BEST things about PoE is that it makes the battlefield feel more like a living, breathing world and less like a narrow set-piece. The chaos of dropships, enemy air support, and artillery is amazing. (It needs some balancing still, but that's another story.) If nothing else it makes the game feel much better to play. Capitalize on this.

• It's time to move away from procedural generation as an entire world-generating tool and use it to generate structures fit into an open worldspace. Planetside missions? Inside the worldspace. Shipside missions? Create ship layouts based on different ship "Classes" with maybe 1-3 variants for a bit of diversity. Don't stop there, either. Make tiles destructible in the worldspaces. Let us actually see that Grineer base collapse after we sabotage it, or let it gradually be leveled as it hosts intense fighting. The structures should be generated away from player presence and there should be incursions that let players interrupt Grineer construction teams setting up new bases or operations.

NOTE: For this reason, DE should avoid creating non-instanced worldspaces with a bajillion players. Keep it to 4 so that the generation routines can run safely out of sight.

• Continue to refine and expand on the mission storytelling. Instead of randomly have us searching for a downed drone to escort, then randomly looking for caches, then picking up some generic Grineer officer schmuck to go kidnap with Lotus' dialogue only sorta tying it all together... generate missions in coherent objectives. Instead of randomly finding some downed drone, let us invade a base and commandeer an AA turret to shoot it down. Instead of telling us to scavenger-hunt unguarded caches, let us assault a supply train! Instead of forcing us to rush into a camp and kill things until a commander shows up, let us climb up on the nearest mountain and snipe his sorry butt in his own tent!
• Integrate existing types: Excavation (with additional planet-specific or biome-specific resources instead of plain-ol-Cryotic). Procedurally generated structures within a designated area used for Capture/Exterminate/Spy/Sabotage/etc. missions. Planetside ARCHWING missions letting us perform air support or hit strategic ground targets. Planetside invasions. Archwing support FOR INVASIONS. The possibilities are freakin' endless... don't squander them. Please.
• Dark. Sectors. Remember this thread? Dedicated worldspace. Procedurally-generated progression-blocker objectives and pathways. Day-night cycle dependent environmental hazards and enemies. Random Grineer/Corpus interference delivered by dropship. Archwing-based emergency extraction. That is all.
• Unique. Boss. Arenas. NOT limited by needing to connect to a bunch of different tiles. Sure, don't spawn the arenas outside of Assassination, but it would be pretty sweet to climb up a mountain to fight Hek on Everest and fight him somewhere other than an overgrown Grineer take on a UFC ring.
• Assassins that don't spawn right on top of you waiting to be dogpiled and instead hunt you down in the worldspace.
• Actual air support from your landing craft, with Ordis at the helm. Now Ordis can live out his dreams of dreams of bloody battle.

I'll probably add to this as things go on, but who else likes the sound of some proper worldbuilding with gameplay integration? I believe that the best way DE can alleviate grind without actually touching RNG is by polishing the game into something that is so compelling and engaging on its own that the loot is just a plus... not a sole driving motivation. Still, needed to word-vomit these ideas sooner rather than later.

Please DE, actually do something useful with all these ground-breaking development stunts.

Well said.

Its time to stop and look back, too many changes were left to rot, too many ideas were implemented and left in half-broken useless states. 

Limbo and oberon rework, the big weapon balance pass, the kuva update and who knows how many more has been implemented in halfassed ways with many desired (or must be added) changes missing. Its time to go back and fix them all. Poe has been launched let it be the main project for a month atleast but when its done dont jump on the next open world madness but go back to early ideas and fix em. I want to see chanelling, the kuva fortress and the void useful in this century please.

[Mr._Clean]

The pattern is making dedicated modules that exist outside the core game and have little/no interaction where you keep having to start what feels like a brand new game every time. Archwing is one example. PoE is another. I kind of hope PoE fails so DE might finally realize this.

 

You've invested heavily in certain frames you like? Forget it because most frames powers are useless in PoE due to the new combat ranges.

You want to try archwing? Too bad, it's locked behind a grindy consumable, you get knocked out of it constantly and it's not even the full experience.

You want to improve your operator for other areas of the game where the bonuses and weapons could be useful? Farm this one boss, during a specific timer interval, repeatedly for the next few months.

You want to experience the new mods or frame? Pay us platinum or pray that our overly-diluted bounty reward tables give you want you want. Oh, you got rewarded credits you say? Vitality? Some other junk? Well that's great for new players! They couldn't possibly acquire any of that anywhere else with less time and effort invested! Everyone wins right! (wrong!!!).

You want to get focus? Did you know it takes tens of millions of Focus to simply max out one of SEVERAL trees? You want to earn it at a non-abysmal rate? Pray you get lenses, then pray you get the blueprints from our new exclusive bounty system because the new trees take even more focus to level than before! Oh but you want to actually see REAL progress in that system without spending countless hours playing the same mission over and over again with the same frame killing hundreds of mobs? You want to feel like by playing the game normally that over the course of a few weeks you progressed somewhere? Too bad. Only the people who grind endlessly will get anywhere and we're always looking to remove the areas that they love to grind and farm in.

You want to experience the new weapons and the rest of the content this update has to offer? Go repeat the same bounties over and over, with the same recycled objectives. Or you could fish or mine minerals and sell them. BUT! You need a hoarder's stash to give to the people of this town to increase your reputation with them so you can either die a miner or a fisher and have gotten nowhere or you could do our bounty system. But there's a catch: no matter what your standing is with the people, they never offer you better paying bounties, the rewards never get better, you're always stuck with the same low-reward bounties. And you're limited to only so many bounties in a period of time and the pool of standing you can gain is shared by all the mining and fishing you do also! Plus at the end of the day you STILL have to become a fisher or miner due to the sheer number of the new resources you need anyways!

 

That was pretty ranty, but I really feel like I got slapped in the face by how grindy the repetitive and low return-on-investment PoE is. Archwing at least you could go and do Caelus for a solid day with a group of friends (back before they started spreading things out) and get a few new parts and a bunch of tellurium. It was a big melee fest with explosions and was kind of fun in very small doses. But in those small doses you still felt like you were getting somewhere.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Mr._Clean

[DiabolusUrsus]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

I'm not entirely convinced the new formula works all that well , honestly. Remove the grind and you're left with a big open space that's not really that fun to traverse compared to those procedurally generated corridors imho... I would still take a quality tileset like the orokin moon over the plains any day of the week personally.

Which brings us back to the issue of polishing the core mechanics and stitching disjointed pieces together into a cohesive whole until the game by itself is fun to play and loot is just icing on the cake.

I'm not complaining about the quality of newer tiles, but the procedural generation blends together so smoothly that there's no real significance to having a new layout for each mission short of being confused on where to go. Does anyone really care if the exact path through each mission changes from time to time? All the levels in a tileset look the same. Procedural tiles worked great for DE starting out because they could copy-paste a tileset into multiple places for building larger game "worlds," but now that they're big enough to experiment more boldly I would rather see bigger worlds hand-crafted to support stuff like parkour more effectively.

1 hour ago, -JT-_-R3W1ND said:

We don't need a brainstorm. We need a friend to Steve who will ask everytime "what are you doing and why? How it is a part of game? Why anybody want to play this?".

As you sayd, main problem is we have simple pattern:

1. I have great idea.
2. ???
3. I'm not intrested more in this, i have another great idea.

Plains have isolated economy. Yes, it make some interest for veterans, but in other way new players will feel this isolation even more. They says Vitality and other bad rewards is for newbie, but there is 0 reasons to put effort in this part of game. All you have is one warframe, special melee and some Kubrow skins. It is fine for me now, but only becouse i have everything. I can enjoy fishing for nothing and a new (great, as for me) boss-fight.

Even more. We have Teralyst. We need Operators only to kill em. And we kill em only to make Operators stronger. Even Focus 2.0 and Brilliant shards are focused at Operator. It is fascinatingly to see, how Ember Megan and Rebecca have fun with Childrens, but there is 0 reasons to use em over warframes.

 

Exuse me, but i don't believe we will have something more consistent and holistic than we have already. I guess some bandaid are expected, but we will never understood are Plains for veterans, or newbies. Why we should use Operators. And how this all connected to a main game.

 

 

True, brainstorming is unlikely to accomplish real change, but if all we can do is dream we may as well have fun with it. We don't need more holistic mechanics, we need better ones.

Energy is supposed to gate ability use but fails in that respect because a) it is unsustainable without cheese, and b) the game is balanced around cheesing it. Which means that "succeeding" is the same  as bypassing the system entirely.

Short example cuz I gotta go to sleep, but I can go on later if you're interested.

[SnuggleBuckets]

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes, yes, and more yes to an expanded ecosystem. The plains are a bit too empty. At the same time, I don't want to see so many Kubrows, etc. that they become nothing but pests infesting every unused inch of the worldspace. Have maybe 2-3 concentrations of them with more complicated AI routines including hunting/fishing/playing/sleeping behavior. Intrude on a nest of dens? You've got a fight. Run into a hunting band? You've got a fight. Happen across a group lazing about in the sun after a kill? Leave them alone and they'll return the favor. I feel like something believable instead of more movie monster madness when it comes to animals would go farther toward building a living, breathing world.

Well the plains are a hand crafted environment with fixed grineer camps already, so I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to make a certain area the fixed kubrow territory, inside it the dens are fixed, and maybe make it so that during the night kubrow AI is more hostile, they are hunting, and then you can find during dusk and dawn outside their territory more passive kubrow packs just lying in the open enjoying the plains. We should probably have some grazing herbivore herds that are massive, heavily armoured, and will charge if threatened, otherwise will graze the plains peacefully in their own favourite spots on the plains.

Also a sidenote, I really want the devs to increase the droprate of regular earth resources from grineer like ferrite, rubedo and especially neurodes, it would help with the criticism many have levelled on the update about the plains being too isolated with its own grind resource system that won't help outside of the plains at all. At the moment you can sort of farm for old and new mods that do help outside the plains, and xp for all your regular gear (though archwing is much harder and you can't level up your archwing weapons), and you can eventually grind for the Zaw weapons, but that will take time. If they increase the droprate for something rare we need universally like neurodes it could help a tiny bit. Kubrow dens would help with eggs in case we need them, at the cost of entering their heavily guarded territory.

[mitspieler_]

As a fairly new player (130 hours) I just wanted to say that I love Warframe for all the ideas and (half-assed?) systems. Who cares if Lunaro is the most popular thing? It's possible, it's there, and if 12 people enjoy it, good. I just spent quite some time figuring out the challenge rooms on lua with a friend. And if you ask me, anything else than infested survival is beyond the point of this game.. 

So many games are just boring due to their polished balance fetish. All the broken systems in warframe add up to the experience. I rather have those broken ones instead of not having them at all. And imo DE deserves compliments for taking that approach, trying to manage that lovely clusterf* of a game they created. 

From an MMO point of view I can imagine the endgame content point (just not there yet). Otoh, from a coop actionlooter game pov (like destiny, division, diablo, etc) this seems like a first world problems discussion. Warframe offers so much more to sink time already. Even WoW gets boring at some point... 

[Iccotak]

I think Eidolon presents the perfect opportunity to perfect and refine their formula with open zones and procedurally generated content.
Zones should be used to interconnect planet side missions. Make dungeon entrances on the map lead to procedurally generated content.
Earth could have more than one zone. Plains of Eidolon and maybe a Forest zone. 

One of the more important things I think should be on the to do list is adding story quest content (large & small) to the open zones and the planets in general to provide direction to players. Flesh out the beginning player experience. 
Give a quest line for Oberon in the Forest
Add unique side quests and missions for specific NPCs, like the vendors we have in PoE.
Giving out unique storylines, like the love triangle in Cetus, would add flavor and breathe more life into the world.
This is what proper Looter RPG games do. Look at Diablo and Borderlands. 

Warframe needs more story than the Main Cinematic story.
The more story and world-building the stronger the main story is going to be. I am not saying tell us everything. Just flesh out what we have now.