Warframe's Fundamental Flaws - and How to Fix Them

[BlackCoMerc]

It took someone finally talking me around to playing other shooters and action games to realize just how deeply, fundamentally flawed Warframe is at the mechanical level.

The first thing I realized, replaying games like Rage, Borderlands and even Saints Rows IV: I am in control of my character. The entire experience, from bashing lowly grunts to battling huge bosses - I never have my control taken away from me, even for a second.

I further realized I was never waiting for an opportunity to act when engaging enemies. No Invulnerability phases. No contrived immunity. I could use every tool in my arsenal, at any time, with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the enemy type, but with a constant guarantee of SOME measure of worth.

All of which lead me to a sudden realization: The fundamental, mechanical flaw in Waframe is that enemies in Warframe are NOT intended as something we engage and interact with; they exist solely as a barrier to completing objectives in a timely and efficient manner and thus, are working as intended despite all of their apparent flaws. The fundamental problem with Warframe is, in other words, not its mechanics, but the Design Philosophy that gives rise to them.

What I mean by this is simple: Warframe is a Free to Play game focused on the obtaining of loot and items. The more quickly and efficiently players obtain items, the less likely it is that they will spend money to acquire those items. Thus, barriers must exist between players and the obtaining of items. 

Time is often used as such a barrier. Usually, this is transparent. Wait timers for crafting. Nitain alerts. However, time barriers might also exist in slightly...less obvious forms. Such as mission failures. Or missions designed more to frustrate than to entertain. This latter example is most readily apparent at higher levels of play. Here, narrow corridors and tightly packed rooms are filled to overflowing not with grunts we are intended to take down as part of exciting, empowering but reasonably challenging game play (as seen in games such as Rage, Borderlands and Torchlight, to use a Shooter, Shooter ARPG and pure ARPG as examples) but with entire platoons of enemies that would each qualify as mini bosses in other games. 

Whether its wall to wall power canceling, knockdown spam, homing rockets, 360 degrees of stagger spam, slowing tar, screen fuzz and obfuscation or unavoidable flame walls and teleports we cannot even dodge (so much for skill based play) the enemies in Warframe are NOT designed for engagement. They exist only as barriers. The longer and more frustrating the delay they can place between players and rewards, the more likely it is that players will simply buy Plat as an alternate method for obtaining those rewards. 

I genuinely believe that the underlying design philosophy at the heart of this game is no longer a desire to entertain players with engaging game play. Rather, the point and purpose of Warframe game play, at this point in time, is to delay at every opportunity the obtaining of rewards in every way possible, no matter the cost to game play. This is why we needed thousands of Cryotic for a Warhammer. This is why the new Infested weapon grind was ridiculous. This is why Relics cannot be shared like keys, why we have Nitain and Fish Oil for Skywing. 

These are all noticeable, obvious ways in which the business model has affected the Design Philosophy at the cost of fun. But the less obvious ways I mentioned above also have a cost. And the cost is Player Enjoyment. I often wonder how many people truly find late game Warframe FUN. Not tolerable; not challenging; not something they can put up with. How many people really ENJOY having their input constantly robbed, being damaged through shields that at this point are, lets face it, barely functional beyond level 35-40, having their character knocked backward by damage that tight corridors and low ceilings make impossible to avoid and having their powers canceled at every opportunity while they wait for a weak point to be exposed like school children raising their hand to go to the bathroom. 

Warframe is deeply, fundamentally flawed compared to every other game with which it shares a genre. But the flaws are not mechanical. The flaws underly the mechanics. They exist in the very design philosophy that drives the mechanics. A design philosophy that insists that delays between players and rewards must be maximized at any and all costs. Fun, enjoyment, engagement, goodwill...these will exist in only the barest and most minimal sense, being slowly eroded by the need for ever more barriers as time goes by, until enjoyment reaches a minimum at which it CAN exist, in order to maximize the time and frustration needed to drive the sale of in game currency.

Warframe needs to change. To recapture a sense of FUN. To show its players that it wants to be more than a storefront for virtual items with a barely functional, largely irrelevant interactive mode for the extremely patient or extremely bored few willing to NOT just skip the tedium. The flaws can be fixed - but it must start with turning the barriers in Warframe - the enemies and missions - into entertaining, engaging things with which we are intended to interact, as opposed to the current focus of just making them as tedious and frustrating as possible.

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by BlackCoMerc

[(PSN)NoxRare]

The game does have its flaws as any game does out there, I feel like you need to keep in mind that Warframe is still in "open-beta" state. A lot has changed since the very first version and there is more changes to come. I agree with almost all your points as I've 800+ hours on the game and can therefore speak from experience that the game is very repetetive at times and at some points missions can be more difficult than they should. I also feel like the current way of earning plat is bad considering the only way is to either buy it with real money or trade Prime stuff for plat, but the thing is that the prime stuff can be earned and therefore not a lot of people buy the stuff and the value is also very low on pretty much everything. A Trinity Prime set for example can be sold for 20p if lucky, thats only enought for 2 weapon slots or 1 warframe slot.. Warframe & weapons slot is an essential part of the game, this is the main reason a lot of my friends dont play the game.. Because they dont have the means to get plat to try new weapons and frames. They dont want to sell any of their current weapons nor warframes. It pretty much makes the game boring.

[NinthAria]

Yeah hi, I'm one of those hypothetical people who has fun with Warframe's endgame. It's tough sometimes--even frustrating--but for all the times I get blast proc'd by a stray rocket, there's a dozen times where I Reckoning bomb an entire crowd, or clear a hallway with an Arca Plasmor shot, or knock somebody into orbit with my hammer, or...well, you get the idea. It's not without flaws--nothing is--but if you think DE has some kind of agenda to keep players from having fun with their game, you may need to actually watch a devstream sometime and see who you're talking about.

[Volinus7]

Remember the last time DE did something with gameplay in Warframe?, all the waaaaaaay back to Parkour 2.0. Since Specters of the fail they've been busy with monetization, grind bars, how to rig RNG without anyone noticing, and twitch empire, that's almost 2 years of nothingness while holes in Warframe getting bigger and bigger through accretions and redundancies.

The most basic thing in the action game is the time frame balance, how many frames enemy needs to telegraph its attack, how many frames players have to arrange their positions/counterattack/evade, how many frames strong attacks need, how many frames weak attacks need, etc. Risk/reward system must stand on a firm foundation of time frame balance, no wonder why difficulty is busted and pvp is a joke in Warframe. No, Warframe isn't a fast paced game, it doesn't even have pacing in the first place.

It's possible to make a meaningful and tactical basic gameplay in Warframe but DE has already chosen the dumbed down bubble wrap popping game path which makes Warframe just another musou clone, with focused power spamming snooze fest grinding Warframe goes even lower to the level of Cookieclicker/Farmville/TapTitans. Power balance in Warframe is also bad to the point that it's comparable to character collecting games on mobile. The best of Warframe is how it can let sunk cost fallacy and anchoring effect slowly seep into players and induce ignorance. Warframe can be bad or meaningless as long as it still has supreme skinner box that can train players well.

Edited November 3, 2017 by Volinus7

[Tengetsu96]

Unless you're running a 45+ minute survival/defense etc. the star-chart is fairly easy/fun.

With all of the items/frames/weapons etc. ingame - you really can choose your 'difficulty level'. You can take Banshee and try to dodge/take out the hundreds of enemies shooting at you, or you can take Loki and nearly fall asleep while wiping out waves of enemies.

With 1.3k hours of enjoyed gameplay, the only thing I would consider a huge grind is the Hema at 5k mutagen samples - even that takes only a few days at worst. I personally sold a few mods and bought it from the market.

Warframe has bugs/design/balance issues but is undoubtedly better than some games that expect you to pay a subscription fee - a few time/grind barriers is a fair trade off. In the end they need money to keep the lights on.

[blazinvire]

I agree with the OP, it feels like Warframe has gotten a little lost and confused over time, potentially because of the influx of new players putting pressure on them, or maybe they just want to focus on stuff they the developers find fun.
Can't really blame them in either case, as running a company with a game like this must be incredibly tricky to cover all their bases.

But the fundamental truth behind all of this is: The Journey is becoming tedious, while they use the Destination to lure us.

Thing about other games, is they make the Journey more enjoyable, so that people don't focus on the Destination so much.  Because if all you can really find that interests you is the Destination, then the Journey is going to drive you insane; you'll find every bump and detour a frustration, every flaw and issue will become glaring and be seen as a pure hindrance.

If the Journey is good, people will probably spend more time there simply enjoying things, rather than blazing through as fast as possible to get to the reward; the difference between forcing people to take longer on the Journey, and making the Journey interesting enough for people to want to stay there longer.

[latetier]

Hmm this is a slippery slope.

Warframe does have its many and when I say many, I mean many faults. I am an avid and vocal voice in region chat daily, talking about the many faults. That said..

For me, through some odd 20 years of gaming from consoles, to pc, warframe has been probably the best experience I have had from start to finish.

Also don't get me wrong I do not hate warframe, I complain on the daily because I enjoy the game. I feel as if I have earned that right to complain a little about the game I enjoy, even if that right is not deserved.

Warframe has never once forced me to feel as if though I had to buy anything. Not once. And let me reiterate that I have played every game there is under the sun from shooters to beat um ups to indies to racing games and mobile ports and browser flash games that use energy.

I have 1540 in game(thats in actual missions time) hours played and 3019 hours played on steam. I am currently mastery rank 24 and have never spent a single penny in real dollars. I've collected pretty much every item possible.

 For all of the crap I give DE, they are actually probably the only developers in the world that I would say as of today, right now, actually give two S#&$s about their game. I mean, yeah they are out to make a buck lets be real, but you can tell that they enjoy the game they have created and listen(sometimes) to the player base.

It may seem like a case of the best of the worst but really they have managed quite a feat with warframe. I still find it fun to go shoot things and collect some resources even though I have millions upon millions of resources already.

If you truly find it boring the game might just not be for you and that is something you will have to live with.

Edited November 2, 2017 by latetier

[Bobtm]

There's a bit of an issue you didn't pin-point during the evaluation here, and that's the core design style of Warframe being different than the games you looked at.

In games like Rage or Borderlands you fight far fewer enemies at a given point in time, and have much more rigid limitations on power usage as compared to a game like Warframe.  The combat per enemy is much more directed and engaging because players are not given the option to full-stop invalidate every single enemy in a 50 meter radius in a single button press.  You cannot have gameplay like Borderlands when the power system is as open and free-form as Warframe, unless you give 90% of enemies in the game full immunity to frame powers.

I didn't note Saints Row here because I've more or less 100% ignored that series over time.  From what I have looked at of it, it seemingly appears to be an easymode sillier version of GTA that spiraled further off the rails with each iteration into silly territories.

Now, how does this play into the topic at hand precisely?  It's that what you're describing as a "fundamental flaw" is not quite a flaw due to the game type being different.

In terms of relative game design, Warframe is more in the realm of something like Dynasty Warriors with an edge flair of Devil May Cry.  In a game like Devil May Cry, none of your abilities are placed on general cooldowns, you can swap weapons on the fly immediately and can attack foes from multiple directions immediately one after another.  In a game like Dynasty Warriors the only limitation you have is tied into an energy gauge which, with some upgrades, you can eventually ignore entirely during most gameplay.  This allows the player to cut down massive hordes of enemies at incredible speeds and with relative ease.

Warframe essentially combines these two ideals together, into what is a stylized power fantasy.  It lacks the bulk of mechanical and timing difficulty present in the Devil May Cry series, but is less mindless than the Dynasty Warriors series.

The bigger and more glaring issue of all is thus;  Every single time DE tries to include extra mechanical difficulty in Warframe, the playerbase at large has a supernova tier hissy fit.  Bursa for example, have attacks that can be dodged, countered, they have a weak point that can be exploited by a player who moves well and hits precisely.  What happened?  Bursa were nerfed into the ground.  Sapping Osrprey, they fire out a mine that players can shoot out of the air easily before they ever deploy and deal damage.  About every turn you see players calling them unfair, which is utter nonsense.  Grineer Commanders are the only unit that needs to go the way of the dodo, since it cannot be countered nor does the unit have a proper telegraph nor counterplay.

8 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Whether its wall to wall power canceling, knockdown spam, homing rockets, 360 degrees of stagger spam, slowing tar, screen fuzz and obfuscation or unavoidable flame walls and teleports we cannot even dodge (so much for skill based play) the enemies in Warframe are NOT designed for engagement.

Power canceling is explicitly required for increasing gameplay engagement when frame powers can 100% nullify all enemy units via either extraordinary levels of damage output or full hard CCs.  Knockdown spam is fully avoidable currently in-game, via the use of basic evasion and/or dodge rolling.  All enemy rockets can be dodged currently, by way of movement and/or dodging (dodging even grants us a huge damage resistance).  The slowing tar only effects players who are grounded, it has HP and can be destroyed by attacks.  Screen filters or distortions are very normally used even in skill-based games, and require the player to use memorization and audio cues to counterplay.  Flame walls via Eximus units do not pass through physical walls (their visual does, hit box does not) so they can be avoided easily or rolled through, and the attack comes out after a specific animation of the unit.

The only one of your points above that is accurate is that of the Grineer Commander.  The rest of them are actual proper mechanical hurdles that are set forth unto players in a way that is well designed.  Which proves the point below v;

DE does have the desire to increase the level of mechanical engagement in enemy units and require more from player action in terms of combat.  It's many of the players who in fact protest against proper mechanical difficulty.  We even regularly see players calling good designs flawed, which is completely insane.  They ask for difficulty only to turn around and call foul on every properly designed instance of mechanical difficulty.

[yles9056]

6 hours ago, Tengetsu96 said:

With 1.3k hours of enjoyed gameplay, the only thing I would consider a huge grind is the Hema at 5k mutagen samples - even that takes only a few days at worst. I personally sold a few mods and bought it from the market.

The drop rate in derelict survival is roughly 1 mutagen sample per minute with Nekros and Smeeta.

Assuming you are playing 60 minutes per day, it's going to take 83.3 days to get 5k mutagen samples.

Edited November 3, 2017 by yles9056

[o.0-]

I dunno, the only real issue I see is how we have various systems scale off each other in how progress is established throughout the Solar System and its influence on other systems that are intended for veteran players, higher level Rathuum, Index, Sorties and so on.

What I remember was that the progression worked as one is earning and collecting things through the Solar System (I mean mods, now endo and credits to rank them up, taters and forma), and the need to provide long time veterans with worth while goodies also, has lead to the mishmash that is seen as flaws and some of the design choices that have been made.

So the gear checks worked as we go from a new player and beyond through the Solar System, but break down with fully ranked Primed, Corrupted and savvy players that have been at this for some time with lots of taters forma and even Exilus. And then it turns into a cat and mouse game over cheese and peanut butter (Enemy Cheese, Sortie Conditions and so on).

What I've felt is the devs do not want to go after the mod system directly, and along the way, have had internal communication issues in mod releases and so on, I remember Steve commenting on a particular Prime that he hadn't expected to see released (so I'm curious about the design process and what's on the table for making future adjustments).

So I figure, there could be a possibility in working into a floating scale based on how a squad loads into a mission or even actually consider restricting mods to match the level they are tackling, so that gear checks are still an aspect either way, we wouldn't need to micromanage loadouts and change how we relate to the available content so that enemies cheese can be reigned in along side player cheese.

So this would affect non-endless and say half way through 5 min / waves endless, with regular scaling we come to know to expect begins to kick in as we stay longer and longer as always.

TL;DR I feel that how the Mod System relates to content is at the heart of these issues. And should at least be evaluated to see if a means to modify how elements scale off each other would help tweak enemies and how other systems are working in Warframe.

Edited November 3, 2017 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
the missing

[(XBOX)UrticantAura420]

You obviously are new... This game got overhauled so much to make the grind so much easier... Yet it is still a griind... but that's the game... Sorry but i think some things should be HARDER to grind for. I grinded for my mantis ship when it was near impossible to get it... But i did it and feel accomplished. People now a days want everything handed to the. That is why we have all of destiny 2 coming to warframe because destiny 2 gave them all the loot as participation prizes lol 

[nickelshark]

I agree. But how do we change this without revamping the entire game? Its broken system on broken system. We, the tenno do godly amounts of damage compared to 4 years ago and it's only getting higher. Enemies are also far more ridiculous than they where back then. Powers are easier to spam more than ever. We long time players have been watching it get worse and worse. They continually add more and more systems and stuff that just bloat the game and contribute to powercreep while adding more and more grind. To fix it you would need a time machine IMO or literally Nerf nearly everything, including enemies and rework entire systems. 

[BlackCoMerc]

1 hour ago, nickelshark said:

I agree. But how do we change this without revamping the entire game? Its broken system on broken system. We, the tenno do godly amounts of damage compared to 4 years ago and it's only getting higher. Enemies are also far more ridiculous than they where back then. Powers are easier to spam more than ever. We long time players have been watching it get worse and worse. They continually add more and more systems and stuff that just bloat the game and contribute to powercreep while adding more and more grind. To fix it you would need a time machine IMO or literally Nerf nearly everything, including enemies and rework entire systems. 

That's the Crux.

Players and enemies need a Nerf. Scale back CC on both sides. Create a REAL energy economy. Narrow the gap between high and low level.

Design a game we are intended to interact with, not circumnavigate using cheat code level "powers."

Edited November 3, 2017 by BlackCoMerc

[blazinvire]

Yeeup.

We need a Damage/Healing Overhaul to alter the Time-To-Kill rate of both enemies and Players to something less instant.

Probably easier to achieve that by stabilizing weapon and power damage values with a blanket stat squish, and probably removing the 'chance' element to Status and Crit so that damage is consistent, easier to measure and thus easier to balance and fine-tune to get the exact TTK rate you're looking for.

Also need to alter healing methods, because if people have the ability to instantly restore all their health at nearly any time they like, enemies will either need to be able to kill you instantly or they won't pose a threat at all.
For example, if you futz with Healing so that on average it takes you about 10 seconds to go from 1% hp to 100%, that means you can reduce the enemy damage to the point they can kill you in 9 seconds if you stand still in plain sight and let them hit you.  And if you do the math, you'll discover that 9 seconds is a lot longer than 0.2 seconds.
If it takes them 9 seconds to kill you, that means you don't need to keep them permanently CC'd or minmax so hard you kill them instantly before they can even hit you, so you can alter CC to require more tactics and less cheese.  Also won't need permanent invulnerability or permanent invisibility, those can become tactical too.

[MayssonFairbanks]

36 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

That's the Crux.

Players and enemies need a Nerf. Scale back CC on both sides. Create a REAL energy economy. Narrow the gap between high and low level.

Design a game we are intended to interact with, not circumnavigate using cheat code level "powers."

So basically you want to turn a space ninja power fantasy into a Destiny clone.

[Lost_Cartographer]

13 hours ago, Bobtm said:

There's a bit of an issue you didn't pin-point during the evaluation here, and that's the core design style of Warframe being different than the games you looked at.

In games like Rage or Borderlands you fight far fewer enemies at a given point in time, and have much more rigid limitations on power usage as compared to a game like Warframe.  The combat per enemy is much more directed and engaging because players are not given the option to full-stop invalidate every single enemy in a 50 meter radius in a single button press.  You cannot have gameplay like Borderlands when the power system is as open and free-form as Warframe, unless you give 90% of enemies in the game full immunity to frame powers.

I didn't note Saints Row here because I've more or less 100% ignored that series over time.  From what I have looked at of it, it seemingly appears to be an easymode sillier version of GTA that spiraled further off the rails with each iteration into silly territories.

Now, how does this play into the topic at hand precisely?  It's that what you're describing as a "fundamental flaw" is not quite a flaw due to the game type being different.

In terms of relative game design, Warframe is more in the realm of something like Dynasty Warriors with an edge flair of Devil May Cry.  In a game like Devil May Cry, none of your abilities are placed on general cooldowns, you can swap weapons on the fly immediately and can attack foes from multiple directions immediately one after another.  In a game like Dynasty Warriors the only limitation you have is tied into an energy gauge which, with some upgrades, you can eventually ignore entirely during most gameplay.  This allows the player to cut down massive hordes of enemies at incredible speeds and with relative ease.

Warframe essentially combines these two ideals together, into what is a stylized power fantasy.  It lacks the bulk of mechanical and timing difficulty present in the Devil May Cry series, but is less mindless than the Dynasty Warriors series.

The bigger and more glaring issue of all is thus;  Every single time DE tries to include extra mechanical difficulty in Warframe, the playerbase at large has a supernova tier hissy fit.  Bursa for example, have attacks that can be dodged, countered, they have a weak point that can be exploited by a player who moves well and hits precisely.  What happened?  Bursa were nerfed into the ground.  Sapping Osrprey, they fire out a mine that players can shoot out of the air easily before they ever deploy and deal damage.  About every turn you see players calling them unfair, which is utter nonsense.  Grineer Commanders are the only unit that needs to go the way of the dodo, since it cannot be countered nor does the unit have a proper telegraph nor counterplay.

Power canceling is explicitly required for increasing gameplay engagement when frame powers can 100% nullify all enemy units via either extraordinary levels of damage output or full hard CCs.  Knockdown spam is fully avoidable currently in-game, via the use of basic evasion and/or dodge rolling.  All enemy rockets can be dodged currently, by way of movement and/or dodging (dodging even grants us a huge damage resistance).  The slowing tar only effects players who are grounded, it has HP and can be destroyed by attacks.  Screen filters or distortions are very normally used even in skill-based games, and require the player to use memorization and audio cues to counterplay.  Flame walls via Eximus units do not pass through physical walls (their visual does, hit box does not) so they can be avoided easily or rolled through, and the attack comes out after a specific animation of the unit.

The only one of your points above that is accurate is that of the Grineer Commander.  The rest of them are actual proper mechanical hurdles that are set forth unto players in a way that is well designed.  Which proves the point below v;

DE does have the desire to increase the level of mechanical engagement in enemy units and require more from player action in terms of combat.  It's many of the players who in fact protest against proper mechanical difficulty.  We even regularly see players calling good designs flawed, which is completely insane.  They ask for difficulty only to turn around and call foul on every properly designed instance of mechanical difficulty.

Said it way better than I could.  Have a hand clap.

The problem with Warframe's challenge is two-fold.  On one hand, you have endless scaling, where enemies become artificially more difficult through sponginess and damage.  On the other hand, you have mechanical difficulty - the kind of difficulty people ask for - but since most players are actually really really bad they often relate these challenges to cheese mechanics. 

The Scorpion's/Ancient's ripline has precision aim because it needs to be precise to be dangerous, but it's still a projectile, thus it can still be dodged or even faked out.  In the case of projectiles - precision = predictable = skill can beat it where as the inherent spread of Grineer hitscan weaponry relies on DE coding Grineer to intentionally lag their aim when we're on the move.  Anyone else remember the days when the only reason they missed was because of their weapon's inherent accuracy?  

Hitting the melee button once ziplined or hitting space or roll once otherwise knocked down isn't a challenge contrary to popular belief, and it diminishes the value of mods that passively prevent the zipline/knock down from being a threat in the first place.  The skill comes in between knowing what's coming, and preventing it from succeeding.  This is why, as the above poster so appropriately pointed out, that the Grineer Commander is the only truly offending unit in the game.  There is no preventing what he does from succeeding beyond simply dropping him before he has line of sight, and when you're dealing with a game where the enemy all sports very similar silhouettes and is coming from all angles, that's a tall order.  The instant switch teleport wouldn't be so bad if complete control wasn't stripped from the player for a few seconds.  The stun wouldn't be so bad if there was some warning signal that there was about to be a switch teleport (like a beam of light connecting the commander and his target fora  few seconds.)  Both scenarios offer viable counter play potential - in both cases the player can react immediately in response to the switch teleport to minimize or even negate its value.  The current situation the player is completely at mercy to the ability.

But as I said earlier, most players are actually really bad at the game (any game, really,) and lack to some degree learning capacity and awareness.  This is why you see so many latch onto the META, which is often pioneered by one or two guys and doesn't change until someone finds something else that works even better.  This is why in the early days of Warframe getting to round 40 of a defense was once upon a time considered legendary, until the reasons and methods as to how a few individuals could go that far was explained, then it became common place.  I'm not saying One should figure everything out on their own, I'm saying most people don't think and experiment and learn when they need to, either because they don't know how or because they refuse to spare the time and resources to do so, instead opting to have someone else tell them what to think and do.

[BlackCoMerc]

3 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

So basically you want to turn a space ninja power fantasy into a Destiny clone.

For all it's flaws, Destiny does balance well.

Would the ability to engage enemies really be that bad?

[BlackCoMerc]

59 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

Said it way better than I could.  Have a hand clap.

The problem with Warframe's challenge is two-fold.  On one hand, you have endless scaling, where enemies become artificially more difficult through sponginess and damage.  On the other hand, you have mechanical difficulty - the kind of difficulty people ask for - but since most players are actually really really bad they often relate these challenges to cheese mechanics. 

The Scorpion's/Ancient's ripline has precision aim because it needs to be precise to be dangerous, but it's still a projectile, thus it can still be dodged or even faked out.  In the case of projectiles - precision = predictable = skill can beat it where as the inherent spread of Grineer hitscan weaponry relies on DE coding Grineer to intentionally lag their aim when we're on the move.  Anyone else remember the days when the only reason they missed was because of their weapon's inherent accuracy?  

Hitting the melee button once ziplined or hitting space or roll once otherwise knocked down isn't a challenge contrary to popular belief, and it diminishes the value of mods that passively prevent the zipline/knock down from being a threat in the first place.  The skill comes in between knowing what's coming, and preventing it from succeeding.  This is why, as the above poster so appropriately pointed out, that the Grineer Commander is the only truly offending unit in the game.  There is no preventing what he does from succeeding beyond simply dropping him before he has line of sight, and when you're dealing with a game where the enemy all sports very similar silhouettes and is coming from all angles, that's a tall order.  The instant switch teleport wouldn't be so bad if complete control wasn't stripped from the player for a few seconds.  The stun wouldn't be so bad if there was some warning signal that there was about to be a switch teleport (like a beam of light connecting the commander and his target fora  few seconds.)  Both scenarios offer viable counter play potential - in both cases the player can react immediately in response to the switch teleport to minimize or even negate its value.  The current situation the player is completely at mercy to the ability.

But as I said earlier, most players are actually really bad at the game (any game, really,) and lack to some degree learning capacity and awareness.  This is why you see so many latch onto the META, which is often pioneered by one or two guys and doesn't change until someone finds something else that works even better.  This is why in the early days of Warframe getting to round 40 of a defense was once upon a time considered legendary, until the reasons and methods as to how a few individuals could go that far was explained, then it became common place.  I'm not saying One should figure everything out on their own, I'm saying most people don't think and experiment and learn when they need to, either because they don't know how or because they refuse to spare the time and resources to do so, instead opting to have someone else tell them what to think and do.

Flame walks often CANNOT be avoided, being as they are the size of a room. There's no skill factor there.

Health drain auras? In a game with melee? 

Those "fair" grappling hooks...have aimbots that clip through walls, terrain, characters...how's that reasonable?

I get where you're coming from. And your points are not without merit. But they'd carry more weight if Warframe were half as mechanically sound as you claim.

[Lost_Cartographer]

11 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Flame walks often CANNOT be avoided, being as they are the size of a room. There's no skill factor there.

Health drain auras? In a game with melee? 

Those "fair" grappling hooks...have aimbots that clip through walls, terrain, characters...how's that reasonable?

I get where you're coming from. And your points are not without merit. But they'd carry more weight if Warframe were half as mechanically sound as you claim.

Oh it is, problem with a bit of what you pointed out - lag.  It's inevitable in a P2P system.  Solo play, hooks don't travel through terrain.  In coop, everything is many times less predictable.  The only exception is killing enemies, that's oddly client side.  Even reloading and hopping between operator and warframe requires confirmation with the host.

Health drain auras straddle the line as the only real counter is to kill the enemy... from far away LoS pending (cause that crap ignores terrain in my experience,) but while we have melee, we also have ranged weaponry.  It's on the player if they're going in with just melee.  DE isn't balancing around the idea that a player is going in with just melee, they balance on the idea the player is going in with a full kit because they have to.

Flame walks aren't the size of a room, but they are deceptively larger than their graphic suggests.  This is an issue DE should address, but it's not a death sentence for a napalm or anything else flame spewing to throw a fire ball.  They're not totally unavoidable.

The game is pretty mechanically sound, numbers might be a bit whack is all.  Adjusting numbers doesn't require new lines of code, literally just adjusting a variable somewhere (which is why it's still inexcusable that the Machete or mods like Sure Shot are still pieces of garbage.)

Edited November 3, 2017 by Littleman88

[BlackCoMerc]

7 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

Oh it is, problem with a bit of what you pointed out - lag.  It's inevitable in a P2P system.  Solo play, hooks don't travel through terrain.  In coop, everything is many times less predictable.  The only exception is killing enemies, that's oddly client side.  Even reloading and hopping between operator and warframe requires confirmation with the host.

Health drain auras straddle the line as the only real counter is to kill the enemy... from far away LoS pending (cause that crap ignores terrain in my experience,) but while we have melee, we also have ranged weaponry.  It's on the player if they're going in with just melee.  DE isn't balancing around the idea that a player is going in with just melee, they balance on the idea the player is going in with a full kit because they have to.

Flame walks aren't the size of a room, but they are deceptively larger than their graphic suggests.  This is an issue DE should address, but it's not a death sentence for a napalm or anything else flame spewing to throw a fire ball.  They're not totally unavoidable.

The game is pretty mechanically sound, numbers might be a bit whack is all.  Adjusting numbers doesn't require new lines of code, literally just adjusting a variable somewhere (which is why it's still inexcusable that the Machete or mods like Sure Shot are still pieces of garbage.)

I can absolutely assure you...hooks are just broken. They DO clip in solo. They ARE fired around corners and out of alignment with the throw hand IN SOLO.

Flame Walls we're actively made WORSE. Once, we could Dodge through, offering a skill based counter. That was intentionally removed.

Health drain auras and Invulnerability/wait walls in fights are just objectively bad design, being cheap, unavoidable, lazy substitutes for good AI and engaging fights.

I get the PURPOSE of auras and flame Walls: force a change of approach. Varied tactics.

The issue is that too many such abilities exist, and the enemies using them are far too numerous. 

If these abilities belonged to high health mini bosses with visually distinct models, and if other spawns temporarily dropped off to, day, 59% so we could focus on the mini boss...these mechanics would be reasonable.

But what we have now are hordes bot if grunts, but if mini bosses CC'ing players into non-interaction. It's cheap, poorly balanced and needs a hard look soon.

Except Grineer Commander. That Teleport is the single worst enemy ability in gaming. All of gaming.

Edited November 3, 2017 by BlackCoMerc

[Lost_Cartographer]

10 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

I can absolutely assure you...hooks are just broken. They DO clip in solo. They ARE fired around corners and out of alignment with the throw hand IN SOLO.

Flame Walls we're actively made WORSE. Once, we could Dodge through, offering a skill based counter. That was intentionally removed.

Health drain auras and Invulnerability/wait walls in fights are just objectively bad design, being cheap, unavoidable, lazy substitutes for good AI and engaging fights.

Okay, Flame WALLS are a different story (I assumed "walks" to mean fields of fire, my bad.)  This is a trickier issue as it's DE's call if they want us to roll through a wall or run away/take cover from it.  From a skill/reactionary stand point, it does seem kind of dumb to disable our capability to roll through it as an option, but there are still answers, we're still given the opportunity to avoid the knock down, they just removed one method (arguably the easiest.)

And I said health drain straddle the line.  Not exactly providing counter play beyond keeping distance and occasionally eating a pizza, but they're not immediately lethal either (unlike switch teleport.)  It's mostly awful that it's not clear where the aura ends.

Invulnerability phases ARE awful however.  Generally not fun, and the fact that bosses are generally immune to our abilities makes them questionable, and since DE can shove a ton of raw health onto a boss that can scale with regards to us, it's almost criminal.  The idea is to give the boss a chance to do SOMETHING before we destroy them.  If nothing else, at least they should be highly resistant to damage with those weak points occasionally revealing themselves.  Maybe then Lech Kril wouldn't be less exciting than f**ping with a powered hand mixer.