When is Free Roam going to be Worthwhile?

[BlackCoMerc]

Because weeks in, its still pointless. 

Free Roam offers no useful rewards. Exploration is pointless. PoE is basically just a big waiting lobby for actual, rewarding missions. So tell us: Is this going to change? If so, when? 

[CoreXCZ]

18 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Because weeks in, its still pointless. 

Free Roam offers no useful rewards. Exploration is pointless. PoE is basically just a big waiting lobby for actual, rewarding missions. So tell us: Is this going to change? If so, when? 

Main problem I see about Plains is that there's so many issues, no matter if it's extraction, bugged bounties, not even mentioning strange fish spawn rates and buggy baits. Plains could use more things to do, could use more life since it's so dead (if you don't count are degenerated Grineer friends), there are just two types of animals on ground and in air. DE could build way more lore than it did so far, we all have questions about past and present (not just in case of Plains, but overall).

Edited October 24, 2017 by CoreXCZ

[Magneu]

If all you want is to go fishing/mining/scavenging, or even want to Teralyst hunt, it's easily the best way to do it. Grineer stay below level 15, and there's no mission zones to wander into.

If you want to do bounties, go to Cetus. Anything else (except for farming Tusk enemies, although why you would do that is beyond me), go Free Roam.

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, Magneu said:

If all you want is to go fishing/mining/scavenging, or even want to Teralyst hunt, it's easily the best way to do it. Grineer stay below level 15, and there's no mission zones to wander into.

If you want to do bounties, go to Cetus. Anything else (except for farming Tusk enemies, although why you would do that is beyond me), go Free Roam.

But thats the problem: Unless you are Teralyst hunting (which is impossible solo, btw) or just want to stand around mining and fishing, Free Roam is pointless. Going Free Roam to take on enemies, clear camps, explore for hidden caches, whittle down Grineer forces, etc should be a thing. They built this huge, open map, and yet, the only reason to venture into it is to take on missions that take place in limited "areas" smaller than a defense tile. 

PoE feels pointless. Give us reasons to just venture out into the open world. Maybe different levels of free roam, instead of just 5-10, and then let Set Mods, Kuva, Traces...any Mission Rewards also drop from things in the open world areas.

[CoreXCZ]

9 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Teralyst hunting (which is impossible solo, btw)

It's not impossible to solo it. It just take it's time, skills and equipment. Not everyone can do that since everyone have different level of skills when playing a game.

[dudefaceguy]

You can select a higher bounty to bump up the enemy level, but you'll have Lotus yelling at you the whole time. Has anyone tried this for affinity farming?

[DrBorris]

After the highest level bounty Incursions give 800 standing, between Incursions run around fishing/mining. Feels plenty rewarding to me. 

[DinendalMinyatur]

I partially agree with OP. I expected more while exploring . It would be great if we could find sculptures, rare caches, void relics etc.

Also I think it would be great if DE adds Corpus to field as sneaky infiltrators trying to scavenge the field for orokin relics. (As a rare random encounter of course)

[Lisztomaniac]

26 minutes ago, DinendalMinyatur said:

I partially agree with OP. I expected more while exploring . It would be great if we could find sculptures, rare caches, void relics etc.

Also I think it would be great if DE adds Corpus to field as sneaky infiltrators trying to scavenge the field for orokin relics. (As a rare random encounter of course)

its kind of frustrating, it feels like they could add a lot of exploration to the map, but chose not to, because then it would be a progression method in direct competition with fishing, and they seem to really really want people to fish, it would be a matter of adding a simple void container spawn here and there, an ayatan sculpture somewhere on the map every 24h, things to scan for completionist other than the fish (yes the scannable PoE collectables are fish, because you havent interacted with those enough), or just simply making every grineer camp have a  "vault" or something  that demands a hard fight to achieve and  makes it worthwhile fighting them when freeroaming (would it really hurt the game so much having a vault with a guaranteed random rare mod on each grineer camp?), instead grineer pressence on the map just feels like something thats there only because its expected.

 feels like if it had been on DE hands they would have just made a big open world fishing map, because at the end this its what it feels like an open world fishing map with grineers slapped into it, now while i dont love the teralyst fight or think its that fun, at least night offers a bit of variety, but even then was it that complicated to make diferent enemies spawns? youre telling me this huge being broke into a lot of pieces that came to life, and they are all deathcube-looking things that fire lazers, was this thing built on minecraft or something?

 i was led to believe nightime was going to be "dangerous" time of the map, yet, its even less dangerous than the day, the enemies are easily killed in a one two combo gun+void blast whereas grineer will outnumber and overwhelm you in a matter of seconds if you dont watch their flare shooting thingy, i expected night to have battalysts and such, i wanted night to be at least harder than a lvl 30 mission, honestly i thought i wasnt going to make it at night i figured  new players goals were going to aim for the night, to hope that if they got the right stuff they might be able to face the plains at night, daytime would be a starter-hard zone the deeper you got, and night would be like the engame, that new players would get out of earth and farm somewhere else before being ready for the night, instead its just farm fish all day and kill everything at night.

the whole thing just feels disconected from the game, either play outside of earth and have fun and get good S#&$ and warframe gameplay, or get into PoE to fish all day and do the same boss battle over and over every night, to get stuff that doesnt compare to the rest of the game, much less if you look at how much mindless grind PoE requires, at least outside PoE the grind was fun and active.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Lisztomaniac

[Xaranoth]

I agree with OP. Currently going to the plains, minute for minute, is far less rewarding than running simple star chart missions. The only reason people are going to be still going there in a month or two is because it’s forced of them by the fishing requirements for operator amps. I was really hoping that the plains would become an alternative farming spot for either resources or endo or credits or affinity or something, but nope. After you’ve run over the whole map once, you realize it’s pretty barren outside of the forced resources they added there. It’s a relatively isolated economy and it just feels way too separate from the rest of the game. Every day when I load warframe, I get the feeling of “so do I want to play warframe or do I want to wander around in the plains today?” Which honestly is kind of a shame. I want to enjoy it, but the lack of adequate rewards makes it feel like I’m wasting the little time I have to play warframe and make progress each day. I have a job; I’m not a streamer that can afford to play 10 hours a day.

[Lisztomaniac]

47 minutes ago, Xaranoth said:

I agree with OP. Currently going to the plains, minute for minute, is far less rewarding than running simple star chart missions. The only reason people are going to be still going there in a month or two is because it’s forced of them by the fishing requirements for operator amps. I was really hoping that the plains would become an alternative farming spot for either resources or endo or credits or affinity or something, but nope. After you’ve run over the whole map once, you realize it’s pretty barren outside of the forced resources they added there. It’s a relatively isolated economy and it just feels way too separate from the rest of the game. Every day when I load warframe, I get the feeling of “so do I want to play warframe or do I want to wander around in the plains today?” Which honestly is kind of a shame. I want to enjoy it, but the lack of adequate rewards makes it feel like I’m wasting the little time I have to play warframe and make progress each day. I have a job; I’m not a streamer that can afford to play 10 hours a day.

hell dude i can play hours a day, but ive just been scared away of WF bacause of PoE, i log on every time and i try to play an star chart mission and i think "i wish there was an open world in this..." the whole things just feels like dreaming you have something awesome and then waking up. PoE has ruinned the game for me, it has showed me how big and awesome WF could be but at the same time it has shown me how clueless DE is.

playing old star chart missions now feel like coming back home after going on vacation to an awesome place, but going to PoE hinders your progress so badly in return for such a shallow grindwall, that its akind to being paid 1 dlr/hour for watching grass grow versus working in a cubicule for 5dlrs/h. even if you want to only have fun in PoE thats someting hard to achieve because anything outside fishing or operator standing/amps, feels rushed and incomplete, lacking basic mechanics and worst of all lacking all logic (AW dissable munition and lack of individual extraction come to mind), adding to this the frustration of 9 hotfixes about fixes to fishing and other trivial stuff.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Lisztomaniac

[racooperii]

Probably around the time I don't spend ~15 minutes doing a bounty to only get some garbage reward and lug my way back to Cetus to try it again. How hard would it have been to add rewards for each step, the time investment isn't all that different compared to Normal missions anyways when you figure in Travel Time...yet the Reward for Time Investment is 1/3 maybe even 1/4 Normal Missions.

Short of a few rewards(Gara, Stances and Set Mods...and maybe Lenses for the masochist), the Bounty system is just not worth it. Exploring the Plains(Hills really) isn't worth it, enemies don't drop anything interesting from what I see, the vaults have 1 Plains resource in qty.1 and maybe 30 credits....wow, and the Caves might have 2-3 mining points.

The plains falls into the open world trap of Big Empty Space, but lacks the usual trappings of things to find, quests to unlock, rewards to seek out. It really boils down to, get a Bounty, Do the bounty(And most likely be disappointed), return to Cetus...and I WANT a reason to be in the plains more. 

Ontop of all that, the garbage mount that is Skywing...never have I seen such a useless mount in a game before. Limited charges, easily knocked off, and a ceiling that is uncomfortably low.

 

[Lisztomaniac]

most dissapointing expansion ever.

[racooperii]

Just now, Lisztomaniac said:

most dissapointing expansion ever.

It's disappointing cause it could have been SO much better.

[Lisztomaniac]

Just now, racooperii said:

It's disappointing cause it could have been SO much better.

exactly it just feels like they had such big ideas, but they did the bare minimum, just enought to make it look enticing on the surface

[BlackCoMerc]

1 hour ago, Xaranoth said:

I agree with OP. Currently going to the plains, minute for minute, is far less rewarding than running simple star chart missions. The only reason people are going to be still going there in a month or two is because it’s forced of them by the fishing requirements for operator amps. I was really hoping that the plains would become an alternative farming spot for either resources or endo or credits or affinity or something, but nope. After you’ve run over the whole map once, you realize it’s pretty barren outside of the forced resources they added there. It’s a relatively isolated economy and it just feels way too separate from the rest of the game. Every day when I load warframe, I get the feeling of “so do I want to play warframe or do I want to wander around in the plains today?” Which honestly is kind of a shame. I want to enjoy it, but the lack of adequate rewards makes it feel like I’m wasting the little time I have to play warframe and make progress each day. I have a job; I’m not a streamer that can afford to play 10 hours a day.

This really sums it up.

In fact, my girl and I played tonight, and this is EXACTLY the question she asked me: Do you want to play Frame, or do some Plains instead? And you know, until now, it didnt even occur to me that hearing it said as if they are two different games is odd. Because it isnt. They are, in fact, two different games. 

[Lisztomaniac]

2 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

This really sums it up.

In fact, my girl and I played tonight, and this is EXACTLY the question she asked me: Do you want to play Frame, or do some Plains instead? And you know, until now, it didnt even occur to me that hearing it said as if they are two different games is odd. Because it isnt. They are, in fact, two different games. 

youre breaking my heart.

[rudman88]

I am just really dissapointed with the bugs during the mission and before after leaving the city.

1. We cant leave without the rest of the team mate want to leave.

2. During loading, if 1 dc ( before mission) the mission can fail

3. Host migration can also make mission fail

4. Warframe are trying to make it more tedious to kill 1 simple boss. need to transform put lure, etc.

 

[TaurusDeRoma]

It is their first time using open world in warframe, I'm sure they will add more to the plains, we just need to be constructive with our feedback. Give them ideas on what to add to the plains to make it a better experience. To expect them to have gotten it right the first time is bit unreasonable, since up until now they've only been giving us new tile-sets to play in.

There are some caves, but they just stop at grineer doors. They could be planning on adding an underground at some point later in update 22. It like what happened with the syndicate system. The were adding in a new group to associate ourselves with, only adding worthwhile rewards later on. The plains were already an ambitious goal, we just have to wait and see what direction they take with this expansion in the future.

[racooperii]

30 minutes ago, TaurusDeRoma said:

It is their first time using open world in warframe, I'm sure they will add more to the plains, we just need to be constructive with our feedback. Give them ideas on what to add to the plains to make it a better experience. To expect them to have gotten it right the first time is bit unreasonable, since up until now they've only been giving us new tile-sets to play in.

There are some caves, but they just stop at grineer doors. They could be planning on adding an underground at some point later in update 22. It like what happened with the syndicate system. The were adding in a new group to associate ourselves with, only adding worthwhile rewards later on. The plains were already an ambitious goal, we just have to wait and see what direction they take with this expansion in the future.

I didn't expect them to get the whole thing right, just a few things right.

Skywing is the worst Mount I've ever seen in an open world map set ever, not even hyperbole at this point. Consumable charges that are used anytime you dismount, easily removed from said mount and probably the clunkiest controls to the Arcwing I've experienced yet.

Bounties are a great and interesting idea, however they simply take too long for what they give you(Which is usually just something disappointing) when compared to the rest of the game. I can run a 20 minute survival and get more out of it than doing a Tier 5 Bounty which takes about the same amount of time and probably has stronger enemies to boot.

Zaws could be awesome except they cost too much for one time use BPs and Parts and have thus far proven to be unimpressive when compared to other Melee Weapons. The Entire Point of a customizable weapon, is making something On Par or Better than what you find with all the time and effort you put into it...so far it's a waste of time all things considered.

Fishing, I like this and is probably the best feature of PoE to me...which in a game of super powered ninja murder-hobo's speaks pretty poorly about the rest of the content. But even this is buggy, fish spawn in rocks, bait hardly seems to work, which makes it less enjoyable than it could be.

Mining, is ok. I really didn't have much expectations for this to be honest as it usually sucks in games that have it.

The Quill, is exists in a vacuum. The only reason to Rank up the Quill is to make it easier to Rank up the Quill. I'm not sure if they've fixed all the Amp bugs yet interfering with Harrows Quest and Kuva Siphons, but they broke more than they brought. The price of entry to even consider making an Amp is too high, from a time perspective of doing a repetitive and tedious task utilizing one of the chunkiest and least liked tools in the game(Operators).

I agree there is potential, but first impressions matter a whole hell of a lot.