"End Game Issue" - A Tenno's Opinion - Discussion Thread

[Patroklos28]

Hello everyone. 

First of all, let me start by saying that this is a discussion thread and all i am here for is to give voice to some of my thoughts and opinions on the matter of "End Game" in Warframe. I have put a considerable amount of time into this game (2K hours +) for which i haven't regreted a single minute. I love the game, the community and most importantly the relationship between DE and us, the players. This special relationship is the reason why i wanted to take the time to make this Forum Post and see what the rest of the community thinks about this topic. 

 So now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let's move into the main topic of this Post... "END GAME". 

End game can have many definitions depending on how people perceive it. For Warframe for example, for a certain individual "End Game" could mean having every single Warframe and weapon available in the game, and therefore being content with working towards that goal. For another player, "End Game" could be maxing all mods and being able to min-max anything that they decide to build. There are many ways in which someone could see and interpret what "End Game" truly is, and ultimately that comes down to what the person expects from a game or would like to achieve in it. 

My own interpretation of "End Game" is that of a challenging content that forces me to continuously become better gameplay wise to overcome. It would sound something like: "Well buddy, you 've seen all that the game is about, you have worked your way from 0 to wielding powerfull weapons and warframes, now let's put them all to the test! Let's see how you can actually use all these pretty toys you have collected so far!"

That is the form that I personally have in mind when people say "End Game", that of a challenging content that allows people to feel good when they emerge victorious at the end of the mission, that they know that without mastering certain mechanics, certain parts of the game, they would NOT  be able to overcome. 

And at this point is where you might ask: "So what you would like is a bunch of really hard stupid missions as your ideal "End Game" and then a credits scene afterwards to feel satisfied that you accomplished something during your sad weekend that you didn't go out with the friends you don't have?" 

My response to that is firstly "ouch! ", that really hit too close to home (it's like you guys are inside my head), and secondly "No, that is not what i would like." 

You see, Warframe is a game that gives you so many things to go after, much freedom to choose what you would like to farm for, how you would like to farm it, a huge variety of ways and tools to do what you want to do. And my ideal "End Game" includes this very sense of freedom. It should allow players to choose whether they are happy with maxing all mods, build all weapons and warframes in the game, become the best spear fisherman worldwide etc. 

But i just can't shake the feeling that we really lack the kind of late game i described, which i would love it to exist as a side option to all the existing ones. Some might say that that part is covered by the raids, in which i would partly agree. Raids are certainly a step towards that direction, and they are the only form of anything in game right now relatable to my definition of "End Game". But give it enough time as the only "challenging" option, stale rewards and repetition and you can understand that it's not enough to cut it.

Even if we neglect the repetition and stale rewards parts, there are simply so many great mechanics that are not being used enough into adding difficulty to the way our current Raids work. As a simple example, this game has a really amazing movement system, where flashy parkour, wall latching and dashing is used all over the place, but none of that were really included as mechanics in a fight or movement during our current raids. There could be so many different new mechanics, ideas, and fights that we could have with what is available in this game that I simply cannot be excited about an "Eidolon" fight where all we add is "you have to shoot the shields down with your operator's amp before you proceed, and oh have some lures by your side". That just doesn't cut it for me. 

What i would like to see, is new "Raid - like" challenging content, with a loot table that would work more like the sorties rewards system with different specific rewards in it that would make the players actually want to invest time and effort to make theirs. Content that players could at the end of the day be "proud" they managed to clear.

I know i am most likely the minority here, and once again i just wanted to express my own opinion. I would love to hear your opinions on the topic and i will be around to reply and get into a nice discussion with all of you, as ofcourse was the plan with this Post. Thank you all so much for your time, have fun Tenno! 

P.S. I am sorry in advance for any mistakes here and there, english is not my native language so i would humbly ask to overlook minor mistakes as long as they don't make the point hard to understand. 

[(XBOX)calvina]

If it's hard, and gives good rewards without the filler junk (vitality, credit cache, 20 endo, etc) Then it's endgame in my book.

[Vicsvinny]

Totally agree with you, and honestly my idea of Endgame is pretty much similar, not getting every Warframe and Weapon or maxing out mods and being able to solo every sortie. My idea of endgame is basically the same as yours, having a tough, unforgivable mission that you need to use every bit of knowledge you've learned from playing to overcome, and be rewarded handsomely for it. In short, I pretty much agree with you and it'll be really nice to see that implemented along with all the parkour that really isn't focused on very heavily.

And your English is pretty good.

[Spartan336]

What is all this? Fishing is obviously end-game. 

 

[(PSN)Dorian-Hawkmoon]

Just an added thought, if clans were able to create thier own missions, choose mob levels, and fill in the prize pool them selves, there could be opportunity for some endgame  that would intrest quite a few with this idea. Just something to ponder while it is discussed.

[Patroklos28]

Thank you for your responses and for taking the time to read this wall of text! 

@Vicsvinny I am really glad to see more people have the same approach to "End Game", i certainly hoped there would be a few people to share the same perspective and i am glad to see one so fast in the comments! 

As for fishing i didn't doubt it for a second friend! @Spartan336 ! Grab your beer, your fishing spear and let's go fishing any day! 

[Kimimoto]

100% agree, I want something to use all my formad Frames/Weapons on.

[Patroklos28]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Dorian-Hawkmoon said:

Just an added thought, if clans were able to create thier own missions, choose mob levels, and fill in the prize pool them selves, there could be opportunity for some endgame  that would intrest quite a few with this idea. Just something to ponder while it is discussed.

This is an amazing idea to be honest!  
I don't know exactly what tools we would need to make this a reality but it's certainly a very interesting idea that could provide with a LOT of fun and UNIQUE content! That's truly a very intriguing idea! 

[(PSN)Dorian-Hawkmoon]

I'd love to pick a good tower map with level 400 or so mobs, run a survival on it. Maybe throw an Ember set on rotation C or something, just to see it played. Probably never happen, but, we are allowed to 'want' lol.

[-N7-Leonhart]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Dorian-Hawkmoon said:

I'd love to pick a good tower map with level 400 or so mobs, run a survival on it. Maybe throw an Ember set on rotation C or something, just to see it played. Probably never happen, but, we are allowed to 'want' lol.

In the eyes of the developers, Ember P is no more special than any other vaulted frame, so it alone on some special drop tables doesn't make sense. It's just the players that give it value, based on it's rarity. On the other hand, if you throw it alone back into the drop tables (even in such a hard mission), it will become soon enough the least expensive of the old vaulted primes. 

[(PSN)Dorian-Hawkmoon]

I was discussing a hypothetical situation where 'I' provided the prize pool. Not my intention for DE to put it in. It was in relation to my earlier post.

[Patroklos28]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Dorian-Hawkmoon said:

I'd love to pick a good tower map with level 400 or so mobs, run a survival on it. Maybe throw an Ember set on rotation C or something, just to see it played. Probably never happen, but, we are allowed to 'want' lol.

Of cource! And that is more of a reason to voice our thoughts and wants. :) 

Tbh, one of the reasons that i decided to take the time and write this post now while i have been thinking it for quite a long time was Devstream #100 the other day, where to a question from twitch chat about the potential of other Raids becoming a reality the answer was quite dissmissive, clearly stating that it's not the path they are thinking of walking towards, and they rather make more "Eidolons" when it comes to "End Game" challenging content. And i really found that a bit dissapointing to be honest. Don't get me wrong, Eidolons are a really fun addition, but they are just not really mechanically demanding or bring up new stuff into the table. Or at least that's how i see it. 

[(PSN)fullblast35]

We need more alerts with different mission types like this and of course serious rewards.  

 

[Patroklos28]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)fullblast35 said:

We need more alerts with different mission types like this and of course serious rewards.  

 

That would be one way to partly deal with the issue indeed. We do lack challenging, out of the ordinary alerts with different types of rewards, i certainly see your point! 
My only concern is that alerts seem to target the universal player base (to be able to be done by anyone so we don't exclude people), so i am not sure whether alerts or a different specific section for such "alert" like missions would be more proper for something like that if it was to be something that would stick around as a game feature. 

Edited November 6, 2017 by Patroklos28

[MayssonFairbanks]

Well Idk how long you've been playing, but if you spend a lot of time playing any game, AND if you happen to be skilled at said game, then chances are, you'll reach end-game and eventually you will have trouble finding new and/or challenging content. Maybe you'll reach a point where you can practically beat everything the game has to offer. Warframe is no different, it's just like any other game out there in that regard.

Anyway, please ponder this: Maybe Warframe is simply not a challenging game by design? Maybe try and find suitable challenge in other venues (such as pvp, or other games even, I know that sounds crazy). If you are waiting for DE to come up with impossible new ways to challenge the one percenters who only swear by the three Ms (min, max, meta), maybe you're wasting your time.

 

Quote

What i would like to see, is new "Raid - like" challenging content, with a loot table that would work more like the sorties rewards system with different specific rewards in it that would make the players actually want to invest time and effort to make theirs. Content that players could at the end of the day be "proud" they managed to clear.

I appreciate DE's efforts and creativity but the only way to challenge players in this game is to put arbitrary restrictions and mutators, which severely restricts the choice of gear and strategy, thus players are even more compelled to come up with min maxing and cheese tactics. Your idea of parkour during raids is cool, but platforming is is breeding ground for frustration and eventually players will just use titania and get to the reward asap. There is another way to make challenging content but it would involve nerfing 99% of all frames & weapons to the ground, and turn this game into yet another generic f2p sci-fi shooter like Halo or something.

Edited November 6, 2017 by MayssonFairbanks

[Patroklos28]

Hey @MayssonFairbanks , ty for taking the time to read the post as well as replying with such a thorough and well constructed post! 

First of all, i have to agree with you on the very first point you make that playing a lot of time + being skilled at a game will most likely guide you to have trouble finding new and/or challenging content. That is where the game developer puts effort and thinking into keeping the players interested and keep challenging them with new ways, just like the first couple Raids were a breath of fresh air for many of the players that were expecting such kind of late game challenge. That is where we actually begin to debate on the existence of this kind of "End Game" and whether Devs actually do or do not want it by design. 

Tbh i consider this by all means the most plausable scenario, for DE to prefer Warframe to be on the most part a non challenging game by design just like you mention, where everyone can enjoy it without strict limitations on the amount of time they spend playing. That is exactly why i bothered making this post where i wanted to express my thoughts on a topic that surely expresses a minority, but with the right rewards, design and challenging gameplay that provides fun to make it something that would be a target for a much larger percentage of the player base, make it a goal that people would like to reach, or just an experience people would love to go through. 

The reason why I am suggesting this type of content is because the prerequisites are there. Just consider some of the ideas put in some of the mastery rankings and you could see that there are many different things that could be done to spicy up things and create completely new scenarios/environments for fun fights. I do not agree that restricting choices is the only way to go by any means. The way things are, you power up, you power up, you keep on powering up, but eventually the question "and now what?" comes to mind, simply because you reached a power level that is too high.  The Raids were something that could answer this question once and for all, but as i mention above their fault lies mostly to rewards - incentives being vastly insufficient. I would love for a solution to come up that now what is a question with a clear answer, so that I or anyone else won't ever have to search for another game to fill this need. I posted this thread because I trully believe that potential is there. 
 

[meristu]

Reason why I started playing Warframe was my attempt to find new mmorpg to replace massive hole left by WoW ... "end game" in wow, aside from farming reputations and professions, is collecting current tier of gear, be it pvp or pve you simply farm dungeons and raids or arenas and get the best gear and then you can stop playing

So I came to warframe, looked around at what is considered good gear and finished warframe in 2 weeks ... well finished, I had like 2 normal frames and around 4 prime frames and weapons .. so what now I have end game gear, lets try some of that end game raiding ..

experience from wow prepared me for hours of hair tearing, keyboard smashing, mic exploding orgies ... yeah if only .. as soon as I had MR for LoR I decided to try it, got into some random group, no communication on ts, ingame whatever, just bunch of guys running around, panicking and spamming abilities and in 30 minutes I was done with end game ... and woalah awesome end game reward, some trash enchant for some trash cosmetic I didnt even had at the time ...

Some people find it fun leveling all those weapons and getting MR, but its rather boring, some weapons can be fun, I have several weapons I actively use (multiple formas and potates) and they are total trash, but they look nice and work nice so I have them .. but aside from this leveling weapons only for the sake of leveling weapons cant be the real purpose of the game, also how you can this be endgame when you need to run around with unranked weapons ..

 

The biggest problem I see in endgame for warframe is reward, you can create hardcore obstacle courses with enemies who can oneshot you, tons of puzzles and add last boss with 15 phases, but what is going to be the reward ... just completing such challenge wouldnt make it, this isnt singleplayer game you beat the boss and watch credits, here you beat that challenge and the world goes on, you can get stronger weapons, new items ... so you need something saying: hey you are the best ...

What do you want to give as reward, games like WoW have it easy, simply the latest boss gives the best gear but in warframe its the opposite, you already got the best gear to beat the latest boss, throwing in stronger and stronger weapons would rather ruin the game ... resources would be too easy to farm for skilled player and even legendary cores have certain limit where you tell yourself man I wish I got credits ...

Creating hardcore raid isnt problem but in game where all the tools to beat it you get before even visiting it is kinda pointless, go survivals for several hours and if you want to survive you have to mix best mods, frames, weapons, your own skill and parkour (if you just dont camp somewhere with trin behind you and some spammer in front of you), but what will be the point in that challenge where you can put down hands from your keys and say I beat the warframe

[khaotixxx]

1 hour ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Anyway, please ponder this: Maybe Warframe is simply not a challenging game by design?

I Agree with you.

We (veterans) already have all the gear we wish to just destroy any enemy DE will bring us.

Just look at how every boss gets instakilled in sorties if they don't have any invincible phases, and i must say Rivens do make those bosses easier in a certain way.

IMO, to have real challenging endgame content we shouldn't be allowed to bring full formated weapons/frames but then it can't be called "endgame content" nor "fun"

 

Warframe is a game designed to farm, and optimize any way of farming. Making it easier and faster to farm until arriving to another "Endgame content" : Fashion Frame

Well to get real challenge ATM, we should just try long survivals / LoR with operator only because they haven't any mod on them to make them overpowered. But by the design of operators i don't think it would be this fun to play only with them (By this i mean you have 1 weapon and the few mechanics proper to the operator...Quite limited isn't it ?)

Edited November 6, 2017 by khaotixxx
F***in CTRL+Enter habit..

[kuchn]

I agree with your post to the letter, but:

5 hours ago, MayssonFairbanks said:

Maybe Warframe is simply not a challenging game by design?

THIS^^
Warframe is easy by design..and it will not ever change. Even if there would be something challenging, be sure that some cheesy mechanic to bypass the difficulty will be implemented, or already is.
You talk about parkour? Now think about all the frames that make parkour skills obsolete...titania...ivara...and so forth
The only "difficulty" in Warframe is the grind, but anything that even remotely touches the area of "skill" is and will always be avoided, because this would create a chasm in the player(customer) base. Warframe is a game without any skill requirement, you can be an objectively bad player and still have access to everything....

 

 

[khaotixxx]

16 minutes ago, kuchn said:

The only "difficulty" in Warframe is the grind

The grind itself isn't difficult at all, it just requires an enormous amount of patience and self control doing the same things over and over (Hello there Focus/Rivens !)

22 minutes ago, kuchn said:

You talk about parkour? Now think about all the frames that make parkour skills obsolete...titania...ivara...and so forth

Setting difficulty by forcing the player to use every parkour mechanics isn't that much a bad idea, BUT disable every Warframe spells and passives / Operator switching while this parkour mission.

Sure some frames like Loki would still get this easily (and i'm not even counting the parkour mods, rendering the thing cheesable).

29 minutes ago, kuchn said:

but anything that even remotely touches the area of "skill" is and will always be avoided, because this would create a chasm in the player(customer) base

THIS is the problem, wich isn't really one. The accessibility and player-friendliness the community always wished tend to "penalize" players that are looking for difficulty / challenge.But on the other side it isn't a problem because accessibility means more players.

 

Apologies if my sentences might be misunderstood, english isn't my native language :x

[Volinus7]

Pit of Panga in Warframe lol

 

After reading comments in this thread, it sounds like Warframe is a stupid game for dumb people...

Difficulties in Warframe are marginal designs filled with red herring and Powercreep that's why you won't get any reasonable challenge or endgame.

Warframe can use its vast maginal designs as excuses for every bad game designs, aka band-aids. It's a terrible version of "there's an app for that" meme.

Edited November 6, 2017 by Volinus7

[(PSN)Croewe]

They are attempting to make hard but fair units right now. Look at the Nox and the upcoming exploding guy they showed I'm devstream 100. Your ideal endgame might be closer than you think.