The Plains of Eidolon are hard to play

[wezling]

(And no not the enemy difficulty. It's lengthy, I apologize but I tried to break it up to help out.

Firstly, let me state that I think the Plains is an amazing expansion to Warframe (and yes expansion, it's big enough to be considered one in my opinion). It adds something novel, amazing, and wonderful to Warframe which was starting to become a bit static (my opinion). Personally I would love to see the rest of the game adopt a little bit of the feel of the plains, but that's not why I'm here. The Plains, for being as great as they are, came with lots of content and with that lots of bugs and more importantly some very.... very rough gameplay mechanics. And that's what I want to address.)

The Plains are hard to play and not from a difficulty standpoint. No, they're hard to play with a gamer's standpoint. They are anywhere from frustrating to downright infuriating. As in the last two weeks I have played more outside the Plains that in it, and yet I can't stress enough how great I think it is! But I can't find the motivation to play in the Plains for one (ONLY ONE) reason:
Grineer.

Now I used to think the grineer as easy targets that just took a bit longer to die than most (rather fitting for them IMO). But the plains have made them my new #1 target of absolute hatred in this game (The only sense of compensation I get is the screams of falling pilots. I hope you get my point without me saying more.). So starting from the top let's discuss the reasons why.

1: They're everywhere! 
     No joke, for the greater part of the map it's hard to walk even 50m without running into a group of them. I understand they're trying to take over the plains and occupation and all that good jazz, but come on. We do bounties to thin them out with no effect.

2: They never stop coming!
     Kill 1 group, 2 spawn. I spend 15 minutes trying to clear out a single patrol unit that was way out of the way because ground units respawn in like 3 minutes on top of 1 drop ship for every group lost, plus one Tusk Seeker Drone per group. I get the overwhelming numbers and all the good stuff. But it makes it hard to do literally anything. The Seeker Drones for example are thrown off even without provocation and can shoot a flare in 3 seconds (which is indestructible) on top of being fast, small, and relatively tanky.

3: They see for days!
     Have you ever been fishing peacefully and then boom! Being shot at by grineer out of nowhere. You have to switch to a weapon (cause fish to start despawning) kill them (hopefully no replacements or Drones) before being able to return to fishing. Please if you haven't try to fish on the plains for 30 minutes before you reply.

4:Turrets
     The turrets in the Plains are a great idea and really add a sense of bases to grineer camps. Problem is that they see in 360 degrees and as soon as you are remotely within striking range then you can forget about focusing on anything else. Doesn't matter if you're over the side of a hill or even restricted in range by an objective, they will fire at you. To top it off they have the option to retreat and you can't even do so much as obstruct their launch platform. But I mean it doesn't really matter anyway because it'll respawn in about 3 minutes anyway.

5: Air support.....
     The grineer have a hefty range of heavy battle ships, namely the Bolkor and the Ogma. But the frequency and use of these airships in the game make no sense. Omga carpet bombing a camp that you are doing a mission in? I'm no expert but that seems to be more detrimental to your own troops than excessively armored Warframes. Bolkor airdrops for a simple random patrol group? Seems a bit overkill for scounting.

6: Archwing
     Yes, you knew it would be here. Archwing, a great way to move about the plains to explore and travel. Except the grineer shoot at anything that so much as exists. Which is worse considering the fact that about half of the grineer have some sort of blast damage to knock you out of the sky as soon as you so much as fly over their heads (Hellions about 1-3 per group, Heavy gunners, bombards, grenades, etc.). Which mind you is less than 100m above their heads and you have only one way to avoid being hit out of arch wing: run away. So enjoy your fast travel! Just watch out any sort of signs of grineer life. Oh and I hope you don't get motion sick because reaching over 100m above the ground at any point will drop you half way to the ground before you know it. Great decision for a map with large mountains and steep slopes...

Not I'm not here to just complain. I do want to see these problems resolved at least a bit. So here are my solutions:

1- Grineer sight
     I'm not sure of what their current line of sight is, but reduce it for none lazor sight guided enemies (Bastillas and Bombards (not the mortar ones)). Or have them instead call a Firbolg to boost forces before attacking, you know they know they have no chance at winning with only 5- people. Turrets only gain vision after a nearby ally becomes alerted. Dargyns will only alert enemies within a set distance of them, maybe 30m.
Reason: Let us fish in relative peace (especially since we can't use abilities with a spear which does no damage) or find a similar solution (Vomvalysts aren't even that rude, I have proof). Or let us avoid being targeted by turrets because the Teralyst decided it'd be funny, because they physically can't do anything to him. Additionally it's not cool that an omniscient turret can alert an entire camp when you're passing by for a second.

2- Patrol drops
     Patrol drop ships should only be the Firbolg, which will be faster and drop enemies quicker.
Reason: There's not really a good justification for why a Bolkor should drop patrol groups, a call from a beacon is understandable because it's combat backup, but not random patrols. Waste of resources. 

3- Air support
     Killing an airship will either reduce of prevent another of that type from appearing for a time(situational). Firbolg: no penalty, Bolkor: 5 minute restriction if called for airstrike, 1 minute restriction if called for reinforcements (will no longer act as patrol drop), Omga: 30 min restriction (maybe add a 10% friendly fire), Dargyn: no shield spawns for 5 minutes (When the entire group in killed) (iffy). Additionally Pilots will die if they fall more than 25m (normal humans will die if they fall about 15m).
Reason: Grineer air support is arguably more challenging than a bursa or even a juggernaut and come far, far, far more frequently. This is to at least give some sort of balance to taking the time to kill them. This is a game after all, many players sometimes wish to just relax and fish rather than stress over geting shot at because of a patrol dropping bolkor...

4- Patrol replacement
     If a patrol group is downed before being able to call reinforcements (Seeker Drone), then it will not be replaced for 30 minutes (minimum, until dawn maximum). If reinforcements were called then a replacement group will appear in about 2 minutes and act like the first group.
Reason: If a patrol goes missing they don't have a chance to report it to command. I don't feel the grineer are the super techy types to give ever soldier auto-distress signals or are the brightest bulbs in the box that would first call in for support rather than rush in head long to a fight.

5- Archwing dismount
     This one is tricky, but here I go: Double blast proc criteria. Must be affected by two blast procs with a span of time (ex: 10 seconds). 1 blast proc (not damage) will give you a debuff of damaged systems and the second proc will dismount you. 
Reason: I have no found a way to avoid being dismounted by a group of grineer other than to outrun the shots and hopefully not get hit (I primarily use Amesha, the archwing that avoids taking damage). I don't feel archwing is particularly powerful on the plains as range is drastically reduced so I feel it's much more a mode of transport and would very much like it to be used that way.

6- Archwing ceiling
     Again tricky, Increase ceiling to 100m above the highest ground height in the entirety of the plains OR do that and have it slope linearly toward the sea. I don't really care but please just make the ceiling a bit more smooth.
Reason: Make archwing movement just more fluid, it's very bouncy sometimes for no real reason other than a steep slope.

 

To boil it down to one concept the grineer spend a ton of resources in the plains as if they have an infinite number (troops, drop ships, entrance portals, etc.). This tends to over stress the player and really break them from the game. I'm not gonna say that other aspects of this games don't do that (interception, defense, etc) but even those don't break the immersion into the game this much.

Please feel free to comment and reply.

[DiosGX]

I absolutely love this and echo your sentiments profoundly. After 3+ years and nearly 4000 hours, I'm somewhat confident I don't absolutely suck at this game. And yet, I find myself feeling like I'm doing something direly wrong in the plains. 

Then I remember that no, it's just that I'm being attacked by 700,000 explosive weapons from across the map at every second. The minor explosion size reduction is a step in the right direction from today's hotfix, but it's not enough. I love the plains, but they're more frustrating and irritating than enjoyable for me at this point. So I just don't bother now mostly.

 

I swear it seems like fishing spears have a sniper rifle's level of alerting for enemies. Why the hell do they take such a drastic interest in me spear fishing but completely ignore when I smash a vectis into a dropship from a closer proximity? Guess the Grineer are really big on Greenpeace?

[wezling]

It'd be so great if hitting a grineer with a spear ripped them toward you. Like Mags pull but for one target.

Drag them into the water so they drown.

 

[--CoB--Rooshi]

I feel like the Grineer's difficulty is quite nice and refreshing. It ACTUALLY makes them look like a formidable military and not a rag tag group that get slaughtered by the wayside on lower level missions. The Grineer can very well be difficult in other regards, as in endless missions (the only place in this game where you will truly find the frightening end of the difficulty spectrum) their armor scaling and mass spawning of eximus make them quite dangerous to deal with if you and your team are not properly equipped and synergized (Have a good team composition). However, despite this difficulty at much much (Level 150+) higher level, its not difficulty in terms of variety, its difficulty in terms of numerical values.

THIS however is quite nice. They have carpet bombers, artillery, drop ships, scouts, fast responses, care about the wildlife (that's why they shoot at you XD), and lots of military bases. What does this all culminate into?

The sense that the Grineer are actually strong. Which, seeing as how they own about half of the solar system, seems fitting.

Archwing aside (that glorified jetpack), I think most of it is fair and the difficulty is not so bad.

Also a note on the fact that Ogma's carpet bomb their own bases. If you think about it. Think about it from their perspective. What are the Tenno and their Warframes other than the MOST TERRIFYING THING THAT CAN EXIST. Most Grineer mind their own business controlling the solar system and then BOOM!!! One small group of children controlling power suits busts through your front door and blows up your entire compound in a span of less than a hour. If I had even ONE single one of those things in my rag tag forward base, I'd bomb it and everything inside of it to oblivion. Its a better option than watching everything else also get destroyed around you by those metal powersuits.

[Astrotrap]

IMO they should suffer some kind of friendly fire from those Ogmas, and maybe mortar fire in general.

A lot of the concepts are really cool, it can just get a bit overwhelming.

[Lost_Cartographer]

The only beef I have with the Grineer in the plains is how beefy (heh) their bombards can feel at later levels (level 100 sortie bombards are less durable, WTF) and the Bolkor gunship having a teeny tiny turret that fire's super accurate vulkar strength rounds with the RPM of a chaingun.   Tone back the bombard/napalm's armor or health just a bit and put an akkad turret with a slightly bloated hitbox on the Bolkor and things will improve immensely for the feel of the plains.  Finally, it's time DE looked into zoom on aim glide - it severely limits FoV and is a hassle to deal with.  No, I will not use the mod for that.  It's not even -100% zoom, and I NEED the freakin' damage with how hard Tusk armor scales regardless.

The firepower of the enemy is respectable.  Holy hell is it jarring at first after years of confined spaces with plenty of cover, but the plains puts the lag-aim coding to good use with frequent bullet jumping and few obstacles to smack into.  Definitely learned to glide and shoot, but I have to admit that most of that is done with sloppy weapons like the Astilla and the Lenz, where I get results for ball park aim, because that forced zoom makes it hard to quickly acquire targets while on the move.

[DGmoN]

its funny, the only problem Ive found is the fact that in the time it takes me to respond to an enemy force they would be right ontop of me. The reason for that being the sudden and emence frame drop at thier approach. In the mean time Ive set the graphics as low as pixels allow with little to no improvement. And I think it may have ties, not only the the grass phisics, but to the number of enemies it has to constantly keep track of. Do the plains even have a limit as to how far from a player an enemy can spawn?

[Genitive]

On 11.11.2017 at 5:41 AM, wezling said:

   I'm not sure of what their current line of sight is, but reduce it for none lazor sight guided enemies (Bastillas and Bombards (not the mortar ones)). Or have them instead call a Firbolg to boost forces before attacking, you know they know they have no chance at winning with only 5- people. Turrets only gain vision after a nearby ally becomes alerted. Dargyns will only alert enemies within a set distance of them, maybe 30m.
Reason: Let us fish in relative peace (especially since we can't use abilities with a spear which does no damage) or find a similar solution (Vomvalysts aren't even that rude, I have proof). Or let us avoid being targeted by turrets because the Teralyst decided it'd be funny, because they physically can't do anything to him. Additionally it's not cool that an omniscient turret can alert an entire camp when you're passing by for a second.

This can't be stressed enough. Right now enemy line of sight is ridiculous. I guess this would require some AI rework, but it is necessary.

[Khalinda]

2. Git gud, kill them faster. Use AOE weapons and warframes. Use snipers. Use your archwing. There are unlimited numbers of dealing with lots of enemies.

3. Fish at 8 lake at night for standing. Fish at ocean on right of the gate for rares. None of these two places have enemies spawn on you. Im maxed standing on Ostron and Quills, I know what Im talking about.

6. Go invisible with Itzal. Use your Core vent with Elytron. Disaray with Odonata. Etc. Again, git gud, dont hover above an enemy camp expecting the enemy to do nothing.

 

The rest of your points are decent, except that Grineer air supperiority is not so superious as you might think. You probably just need better gear.

[wezling]

On 11/12/2017 at 11:56 AM, --CoB--Rooshi said:

It ACTUALLY makes them look like a formidable military

You make a fair point and I do like alot of what you said. But what I'm saying is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO REGARD FOR RESOURCES. Seriously. And for the bounties it makes sense that they throw a ton of stuff at you from a gameplay standpoint and also from a military standpoint, to a fault. Sometime sometimes it's just better to let things be lost and focus on what you can with your resources.
In the case of ships, I say feel free to send as many as you'd like. But at the same time if you're VERY EXPENSIVE ships are getting blown up one after another, especially the power house ones, it might be a good idea to hold them back for a more strategic attack. The same goes for expensive explosive weapons. You don't expect to see everyone with an rpg or chain gun, but yet half the units have one.
But otherwise I agree with you. The grineer seem more fearful than they ever have before. AND I DO LIKE IT. But it's far too much over the top in the sense you're getting drowned by grineer in a layaway base on a territory they don't even have full control of. I mean, consider something like Ceres where they control every inch. I expect to see them swarming in hordes there. Lastly, would you expect a pack of 5 or so patrolling grineer to start shooting at this power suit that can take out armies all on their own? I know their not bright but... come on. Basic military training.

On 11/20/2017 at 12:56 AM, Khalinda said:

2. Git gud, kill them faster. Use AOE weapons and warframes. Use snipers. Use your archwing. There are unlimited numbers of dealing with lots of enemies.

3. Fish at 8 lake at night for standing. Fish at ocean on right of the gate for rares. None of these two places have enemies spawn on you. Im maxed standing on Ostron and Quills, I know what Im talking about.

6. Go invisible with Itzal. Use your Core vent with Elytron. Disaray with Odonata. Etc. Again, git gud, dont hover above an enemy camp expecting the enemy to do nothing.

 

The rest of your points are decent, except that Grineer air supperiority is not so superious as you might think. You probably just need better gear.

So i'm now restricted to using weapons able to clear our mass amounts of enemies or enemies 1000 meters away? Good to hear the aim of DE was to discourage the use of your favorite weapons and warframes. Warframes especially....

I know how and where to fish thank you. It still doesn't change the fact that you get randomly spotted by grineer and shot and have to literally sacrifice your fishing activity to deal with them. Can't use abilities, spear does no damage, fish despawn. And yah I can fish at night, but you know what? That's the only time I can hunt down an Eidolon. 

So I'm save as long as I don't move... or I have to basically stand on top of enemies to affect them. Oh and not play amesha, even though I like that one. Man you're making this game sound more and more fun. You should join the marketing team.

Better gear. Yah. Every warframe with almost every prime. Wide array of weapons. Regularly solos tier 5 bounties. 4 years experience. Able to solo Ediolon captures at about 2-3 per night. Get gud. Got it....................

All in all, bravo. You've done a great job at completely missing my point. Let me try to simplify it:
I like that the plains are hard, difficulty wise. However some mechanics in the games lend themselves not to being hard, but instead distressing.

[BlackCoMerc]

On 11/12/2017 at 7:52 PM, Littleman88 said:

The only beef I have with the Grineer in the plains is how beefy (heh) their bombards can feel at later levels (level 100 sortie bombards are less durable, WTF) and the Bolkor gunship having a teeny tiny turret that fire's super accurate vulkar strength rounds with the RPM of a chaingun.   Tone back the bombard/napalm's armor or health just a bit and put an akkad turret with a slightly bloated hitbox on the Bolkor and things will improve immensely for the feel of the plains.  Finally, it's time DE looked into zoom on aim glide - it severely limits FoV and is a hassle to deal with.  No, I will not use the mod for that.  It's not even -100% zoom, and I NEED the freakin' damage with how hard Tusk armor scales regardless.

The firepower of the enemy is respectable.  Holy hell is it jarring at first after years of confined spaces with plenty of cover, but the plains puts the lag-aim coding to good use with frequent bullet jumping and few obstacles to smack into.  Definitely learned to glide and shoot, but I have to admit that most of that is done with sloppy weapons like the Astilla and the Lenz, where I get results for ball park aim, because that forced zoom makes it hard to quickly acquire targets while on the move.

I agree with all this.

The only issue I have with Plains outside of the useless free roam -  and I really enjoy playing there - is super enemy range + omniscience + high level accuracy buff = God tier Enemies at level 50.

Sight, firing range and accuracy need a hard cap. And the omniscience just needs fixed.

[Khalinda]

@wezling 

Nah, mate, I was mostly joking with the whole git gud thing. And you're not restricted to use anything, I've seen the entire arsenal of weapons and warframes in the plains being used. Which is nice. Don't really have any advice, I've played the update since the start, got maxed on both quills and ostron, killed a crapton of eidolons with random squads from recruiting, mined everything I needed, fished alot. Never had any problems. I don't even think the farming is so bad as people are saying. Got everything I needed from the new infested event in 2 days.

I don't know man, play smart, not hard.

[wezling]

On 11/23/2017 at 6:41 PM, Khalinda said:

I don't know man, play smart, not hard.

Well I'm glad you were, it was rather upsetting to be slandered that harshly over a critique. As such I apologize for my harsh verbiage earlier.

[TheMuslimGamerGB]

I'm an old player and I love the bombardment from the Grineer. Sometimes they murk me, but it has brought a new play style to WF and I love it. 

[BlackCoMerc]

25 minutes ago, TheMuslimGamerGB said:

I'm an old player and I love the bombardment from the Grineer. Sometimes they murk me, but it has brought a new play style to WF and I love it. 

I like Bombardment. It makes sense in the setting.

The PROBLEM is Mission Area Restrictions. We NEED to be able to deal with distant threats, without auto failing missions. This needs fixed.

Basic rules of Open Worlds: If your missions restrict players to tiny areas, you're doing it wrong.

[DiabolusUrsus]

The problem at hand is that Warframe is entirely a game of who can be more unfair, and without narrow halls to mitigate numbers and objects to shield us the enemies will win that competition much faster.

[tsoa]

I wonder if anything will be done about the spawns from drop pods and drop ships when the ghouls come. As it is right now, it would feel comepletely ridiculous to just have additional spawns on top of the ones we already have.

For their ships I'd like two changes in paticular:
1) They should be able to collide or avoid the same air space. I had 3 Bolkors and an Ogma overhead at the same time flying through each other to get the best shots at me. Imho that's a bit much for a t4 solo bounty. With my Mag I don't really have a problem against single Bolkors, but 3 was more than I could handle. So I was mainly hiding away in void mode since I couldn't even stay in my frame for more than a second without being shot to death.
So 2) I hope for those beasts to be scaled with squad size. I wouldn't mind 3 of them in a full squad, but when playing solo two should be more than enough.

[onichomp]

i think the reason they made the spawns so high is cause they wanted to avoid the "open but empty world" type of gameplay, but they went too far in the other direction by accident. im glad thats something they're actively trying to not fall into but the fact is you just end up doing the same things over and over again anyway.

[Proslackernifty]

On 11/10/2017 at 10:41 PM, wezling said:

 

5: Air support.....
     The grineer have a hefty range of heavy battle ships, namely the Bolkor and the Ogma. But the frequency and use of these airships in the game make no sense. Omga carpet bombing a camp that you are doing a mission in? I'm no expert but that seems to be more detrimental to your own troops than excessively armored Warframes. Bolkor airdrops for a simple random patrol group? Seems a bit overkill for scounting.

 

3- Air support
     Killing an airship will either reduce of prevent another of that type from appearing for a time(situational). Firbolg: no penalty, Bolkor: 5 minute restriction if called for airstrike, 1 minute restriction if called for reinforcements (will no longer act as patrol drop), Omga: 30 min restriction (maybe add a 10% friendly fire), Dargyn: no shield spawns for 5 minutes (When the entire group in killed) (iffy). Additionally Pilots will die if they fall more than 25m (normal humans will die if they fall about 15m).
Reason: Grineer air support is arguably more challenging than a bursa or even a juggernaut and come far, far, far more frequently. This is to at least give some sort of balance to taking the time to kill them. This is a game after all, many players sometimes wish to just relax and fish rather than stress over geting shot at because of a patrol dropping bolkor...

 

I gotta admit, on 40-60 bounties, solo, the air support needs to change.  When I'm in a group, there is always someone available to deal with air support.  But solo, if you take the time to deal with airships you will get overwhelmed and possibly fail the bounty stage.  It also doesn't make sense that I can kill myself all day with my talons, but the grineer are immune to bombardment.  

I really hope DE fixes the ogmas.  I can't even shoot straight with all the bombs dropping on my head.

[wezling]

On 12/5/2017 at 4:49 PM, tsoa said:

1) They should be able to collide or avoid the same air space. I had 3 Bolkors and an Ogma overhead at the same time flying through each other to get the best shots at me. Imho that's a bit much for a t4 solo bounty. With my Mag I don't really have a problem against single Bolkors, but 3 was more than I could handle. So I was mainly hiding away in void mode since I couldn't even stay in my frame for more than a second without being shot to death.

I recently ran a t5 solo bounty. Within one liberation mission  (4/5) I had TWO Ogmas and 4 Bolkors within the span of 2 minutes for the mission. Plus another Bolkor seconds after the mission completed. Luckily I have a fully prepared loadout for plains' bounties, but boy was I pressed to the wire to disable those threats while still picking off grineer that were hiding in bushes of the ravine I was taking. (from the cetus gate: left side side border about 1/3 the way to the back wall. Area outside one of the new tunnel entrances.)
This is not directed at you Tsoa, but like I've been saying: The difficulty is good. The playability/realism is bad. That's my problem. The Grineer don't have unlimited resources.

On 12/6/2017 at 12:39 AM, Proslackernifty said:

I can't even shoot straight with all the bombs dropping on my head.

I believe you can turn off screen shake in the menus. I do agree is makes aiming hard, but my personal preference is for that. I feel it encourages movement and dynamic tactics.

[FreeWilliam]

On 11/12/2017 at 1:56 PM, --CoB--Rooshi said:

I feel like the Grineer's difficulty is quite nice and refreshing. It ACTUALLY makes them look like a formidable military and not a rag tag group that get slaughtered by the wayside on lower level missions.

Totally with you, I LIKE the fact that on the Plains we've got some foes that make me strategize a little.  Plus they're interesting.

My only real complaint about the plains is how much really useful Space-Ninja content (I'm a melee fiend, so double for me) behind a bunch of really grindy and non-fun barriers.  Mining drives me batty and I'm always low on those materials.  Fishing's better but it's really hard to enjoy like it is in so many other games.  And don't get me started on Cetus Wisps...GLAH!

I wish we'd either get those goodies during normal gameplay or have the ability to focus on them while not randomly getting distracted by fun combat.

I think this is a problem a lot of us have.  I THINK it's the combination of these factors.

1) You have to 'disable' your weapons to fish or mine.

2) In group gameplay, it's not cool to gather materials.

3) In solo gameplay, it's hard to find spots where you don't get swarmed constantly.

4) Gathering POE materials requires a disproportionate amount of work and time...especially time.  I miss the days of complaining about Nitain.

The problem with getting swarmed frequently for me is NOT about it making things 'difficult', it's because I'm a space ninja and the planet's being invaded.  When I'm trying to mine, have gotten what I haven't been looking for five times in a row, and see some beefy Grineer to kill then I'm going to want to kill it!  That's so much more fun, makes more sense for the story, and not guaranteed to end in disappointment. 

I feel like, other than POE materials, DE has been VERY respectful of my time and I appreciate the heck out of them for that. I only hope they do something similar for POE.

[BlackCoMerc]

38 minutes ago, FreeWilliam said:

Totally with you, I LIKE the fact that on the Plains we've got some foes that make me strategize a little.  Plus they're interesting.

My only real complaint about the plains is how much really useful Space-Ninja content (I'm a melee fiend, so double for me) behind a bunch of really grindy and non-fun barriers.  Mining drives me batty and I'm always low on those materials.  Fishing's better but it's really hard to enjoy like it is in so many other games.  And don't get me started on Cetus Wisps...GLAH!

I wish we'd either get those goodies during normal gameplay or have the ability to focus on them while not randomly getting distracted by fun combat.

I think this is a problem a lot of us have.  I THINK it's the combination of these factors.

1) You have to 'disable' your weapons to fish or mine.

2) In group gameplay, it's not cool to gather materials.

3) In solo gameplay, it's hard to find spots where you don't get swarmed constantly.

4) Gathering POE materials requires a disproportionate amount of work and time...especially time.  I miss the days of complaining about Nitain.

The problem with getting swarmed frequently for me is NOT about it making things 'difficult', it's because I'm a space ninja and the planet's being invaded.  When I'm trying to mine, have gotten what I haven't been looking for five times in a row, and see some beefy Grineer to kill then I'm going to want to kill it!  That's so much more fun, makes more sense for the story, and not guaranteed to end in disappointment. 

I feel like, other than POE materials, DE has been VERY respectful of my time and I appreciate the heck out of them for that. I only hope they do something similar for POE.

Enemies and containers in Poe need to drop the gems and rocks mining provides. And fish parts.

The more DE force players to fish and mine, the quicker players will become bored and burned out on their game. That's bad.

[--CoB--Rooshi]

On 11/22/2017 at 10:49 PM, wezling said:

In the case of ships, I say feel free to send as many as you'd like. But at the same time if you're VERY EXPENSIVE ships are getting blown up one after another, especially the power house ones, it might be a good idea to hold them back for a more strategic attack. The same goes for expensive explosive weapons. You don't expect to see everyone with an rpg or chain gun, but yet half the units have one.

So to all the people arguing from a standpoint of the Grineer having limited resources, I say this: They own more than half the solar system. It means that they have (in the scope of a small military campaign on a single stretch of land on Earth) nearly infinite resources. The Tenno could blow up a ship every second for days and days on end and I'm sure that the Grineer wouldn't run out of resources. They own EVERYTHING. They control a massive empire of cloned soldiers and are experts are building machines of war. Nearly every mission on Cere's is a Grineer military factory for a reason. One could even call them a Military Industrial Complex as they don't seem to have much in the way of culture.

So no, I don't think the ships are "VERY EXPENSIVE". In fact, considering how much Vay Hek absolutely loathes the Tenno, I don't see him giving any regards to the casualties inflicted on the Grineer military just so that he could put minor dents in the Tenno's warframes. You also have to consider that in the grand scope of things, the tenno and their warframes are nearly as much of a threat (if not more) to the Grineer than the entirety of the Corpus. The Corpus own a solid chunk of the solar system (Pluto, Neptune, Saturn, etc) and if the Grineer find the Tenno to be such a big threat, then its absolutely not strange that they wouldn't send just as much of a military presence to siege Cetus than they would to defend their territory from the Corpus military.

All in all, I think you just need to expand your idea of scale. It doesn't even seem implausible that a single nation on Earth in reality would do a similar thing as the military stance of the Grineer in the Plains of Eidolon.

[wezling]

17 hours ago, --CoB--Rooshi said:

All in all, I think you just need to expand your idea of scale. It doesn't even seem implausible that a single nation on Earth in reality would do a similar thing as the military stance of the Grineer in the Plains of Eidolon.

And I would counter to say that you need to keep in mind everything else that happens in the solar system!

The grineer:
Are constantly being raided by tenno losing resources, personnel, and data.
Are constantly under siege by the infestation or corpus. As in full scale war. Winner takes all. They don't have the luxury of losing, aka they throw in loads of resources to that war. (not to mention their offensives)
Are constantly cloning. Clones cost resources. Often the same resources. Not to mention outfitting them and training.
Are constantly creating a FLEET of skyscraper sized star-ships being powered by an extremely complicated core that is not easy to build.
Are undergoing HUGE research projects and expeditions to get a leg up on this near invisible tenno.
Have built giant cities on the various planets.

Compare this to the cetus siege:
Ragtag camps that they honestly could set up withing like 2 days per camp at most. Excavations would take about a month or two for the various caves with the given equipment. All in all, this is at best a side project for the grineer.

Oh but what about the various threats? Like:
Vomvalysts which they have lures to deal with.
Teralysts which they could litterally leave alone if they had even half a mind. But even then compared to 1 Tenno it deals no damage. Because it has no interest in them and deals minimal area damage (maybe half a big camp of it's base spawns before the thing moves out of range of the camp).

Obviously lots of defense needed. 

Do the grineer have the resources to fight the tenno on the plains as we've seen? Yes. Does it make sense for them to do that? Not in the slightest.

Honestly. With all the power the grineer have they could blow Cetus off the map within 1 week starting from scratch. The Ostran are not exactly overly technologically advanced. It's a small village the primarily fishes with most advanced tech they have being either the gem cutters or the ships that we've heard about. They may have some orokin technologies under their belt but we have no idea what capabilities that possess. But i think it's safe to say that a single formorian could still eventually blow up the city.

On 12/11/2017 at 7:57 AM, FreeWilliam said:

I feel like, other than POE materials, DE has been VERY respectful of my time and I appreciate the heck out of them for that. I only hope they do something similar for POE

To be honest I don't think that the resource gathering in the plains has been that bad. Most objects don't require many resources and honestly I think either Eidelon gems or Cetus Wisps are the two hardest resources to get. Compared to the wide use and cost of polymer bundles the poe resources are not that bad. But that's just me.

[FreeWilliam]

33 minutes ago, wezling said:

To be honest I don't think that the resource gathering in the plains has been that bad. Most objects don't require many resources and honestly I think either Eidelon gems or Cetus Wisps are the two hardest resources to get. Compared to the wide use and cost of polymer bundles the poe resources are not that bad. But that's just me.

I think the difference is that you can just 'be a space ninja' and get a bunch of polymer bundles as part of gameplay.  

To get what you need to get standing on Cetus you have to STOP gameplay and start fishing and mining, but gameplay is still happening around you.  It's hard to 'casually' fish and impossible to casually mine.  I'd love a way to do it as a change of pace WITHOUT space ninja gameplay distracting me...but without that I doubt I'll ever find POE mining or fishing anything other than a burden, despite it being the barrier to a lot of things I really want in game.

I'd be happy with

1) A way to mine and fish WITHOUT being distracted by things to kill (This isn't 'I find it difficult' or 'I don't have Ivara', it's 'Even with Ivara, I'd rather kill than mine, and that's what this game has been rewarding')

2) A way to acquire the same materials during regular gameplay (I'd rather do a dozen top level missions than spend five minutes trying to fish)

3) A far better reward ratio when we do mine and fish (Worst solution, but maybe it'd work)

Quills standing is another issue...gah. I'm a melee fiend and that's just cruelty.