Plains Player limit proposition

[MrTitan123]

Now before you read further, I have to warn you that if you get pissed off by this topic for some reason, I had no intention of doing so. If you wish to give your input, please do so in a calm and reasonable manner. If you spit out comments and criticism full of butthurt, I just can’t take you seriously.

 

In the Shrine of the Eidolon update, two new powerful teralyst variants were added. And that’s great for players looking to fight a huge behemoth of a boss other than the teralyst. However, this update was not without downsides. And no, I’m not talking about the ember nerf. I could care less about that.

What I’m concerned about is the temporary removal of trials, more commonly referred to as raids. Raids were a unique experience, allowing up to eight brave Tenno to go on a full frontal assault against the grineer forces. With the unique reward of arcanes, raids were a way for experienced players to get a bit of an edge. Unfortunately as you all probably know by now, raids are for the mean time: Kaput. Gone. Dead. That leaves entire clans and communities in shambles, even veteran players leaving the game. But that’s not what I’m talking about here, I’m talking about the removal of one of the most unique pieces of player interaction. The removal of Eight player squads.

Trials were incredibly difficult, forcing players to work together and actually strategize. That itself is very rare in this game. Usually, you just go full bum rush mode and it works. No, for trials, you had to plan. You had to prepare. Everyone had a role to play and a place to do it.

 

Have I talked enough about raids yet? Yeah? Good. I never even played raids...Anyway, on to my main point.

With the addition of the new eidolons and trial rewards moved to Hydrolysts, even with matchmaking bounties, taking down not only a Teralyst, Gantulyst, and then a Hydrolyst is incredibly difficult for a team of four, especially when matchmaking bounties put you into a squad AFTER you walk through the Cetus gate. 3 Chroma’s and a Rhino aren’t exactly going to do well.

Without proper coordination and team composition, you can kiss your briliant shards goodbye just trying to take down the gantulyst before inevitably failing to kill it. You walk out with only a buttload of sentient cores, but your standing is already capped for the day, so you’re just like “Dafuq do I do with these?” Look, my point is, if more players were allowed out on the plains at once, the less likely your chances of wasting resources.

My point stands not only for eidolon hunting, but plains in general. The plains are a massive open space. Put more people in to explore it! Surely if trials could house 8 players, the plains shouldn’t be a problem, right? Just imagine it: 8 friends wandering around together on a big open landscape! I have a group of friends on my discord server who play, and I would love to have everyone together at once!

[peterc3]

If 8 players could reasonably be allowed to exist in the same instance of the Plains, don't you think it would have happened already? They said it would be 4 and they'd work on up to 8. It doesn't appear to be a priority, rather all the other bugs regarding matchmaking in the Plains are probably a bigger priority.

14 minutes ago, MrTitan123 said:

That leaves entire clans and communities in shambles, even veteran players leaving the game.

Your point isn't served by any of this, though. Veteran players leave all the time. Is it a Tuesday? A veteran player probably left. Generally they come back. Entire clans and communities that approached 2% of the activity in Warframe last time stats were shown.

X activity is hard with 4 people, wouldn't 8 make it much easier?

[Trowicia]

I really like the sound of this idea! Especially if Trials can pull it off (despite being cell-based tilesets), who's to say the same can't be done at the plains?

DE just keeps on shattering the impossible, so I'd say the future as far as this goes may be quite bright.

[tarfeef101]

I think aside from the design discussions and code changes around this, one of the big issues is performance. Most people take a large hit to performance in the plains as it is, doubling squad size puts more strain on the game than already exists.

Not saying I don't want it, but that is likely a large reason why this isn't a thing

[MrTitan123]

3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Your point isn't served by any of this, though. Veteran players leave all the time. Is it a Tuesday? A veteran player probably left. Generally they come back. Entire clans and communities that approached 2% of the activity in Warframe last time stats were shown.

X activity is hard with 4 people, wouldn't 8 make it much easier?

Well, let me elaborate on that. If a veteran player leaves, oh well. Good for them I guess?

My main point is not at all about the collapse of raid communities or veteran player salt, or any of that crap. That’s a topic for another day. My point is the removal of a one of a kind matchmaking opportunity is kind of heartbreaking. 

 

Think about this. Sure, if 8 player plains squads were possible, there is a chance it would happen. What wasn’t foreseen was the removal of raids for the time being. The one opportunity for 8 player co-op is now kaput. I just think that DE should try and implement that into the plains so teams of friends and/or fandoms can play together.

[MrTitan123]

9 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

I think aside from the design discussions and code changes around this, one of the big issues is performance. Most people take a large hit to performance in the plains as it is, doubling squad size puts more strain on the game than already exists.

Not saying I don't want it, but that is likely a large reason why this isn't a thing

Oof, hadn’t considered that. Yeah, that might be a problem...Thanks for bringing that up. Sheesh, that puts a major dent in my proposition.

 

This might take longer than I thought...

[Owmion]

I know this may sound stupid or it's just my bad luck, but I have at least 1 leecher in my squad when doing  bounties. Now I don't wanna know how many leechers I'll get in 8 man squad. 

+- Performance issues for some players  etc. etc.

 

[MrTitan123]

1 minute ago, Omni_Owm said:

I know this may sound stupid or it's just my bad luck, but I have at least 1 leecher in my squad when doing  bounties. Now I don't wanna know how many leechers I'll get in 8 man squad. 

+- Performance issues for some players  etc. etc.

 

Dude...I know the feel. There’s always that one guy fishing or mining the entire bounty. I understand if it’s just to snag a gem on the way to the objective or something, but the entire time? No, just no.

If it’s a newbie player wandering off, I can understand that. They tend to wander a bit, and I just let them do whatever.

[Owmion]

Just now, MrTitan123 said:

Dude...I know the feel. There’s always that one guy fishing or mining the entire bounty. I understand if it’s just to snag a gem on the way to the objective or something, but the entire time? No, just no.

If it’s a newbie player wandering off, I can understand that. They tend to wander a bit, and I just let them do whatever.

yea, rank 18-19 newbies man :/ they have a lot to explore 

[MrTitan123]

1 minute ago, Omni_Owm said:

yea, rank 18-19 newbies man :/ they have a lot to explore 

Well, I wasn’t talking about the high tier bounties. I was talking about the low tier ones lol. But yeah, I get your point.

[MBaldelli]

19 minutes ago, MrTitan123 said:

But that’s not what I’m talking about here, I’m talking about the removal of one of the most unique pieces of player interaction. The removal of Eight player squads.

Trials were incredibly difficult, forcing players to work together and actually strategize. That itself is very rare in this game. Usually, you just go full bum rush mode and it works. No, for trials, you had to plan. You had to prepare. Everyone had a role to play and a place to do it.

I admit that I have been pondering this since the announcement and dealing with the Raid Bus frustrations and salt -- right down to the point where they were accusing me of being either a DE Apologist or a DE Spy because I tried to get them to rally instead of feeding into their mountains of anger and salt...  While I got tired of their accusations; I find myself hovering around this very subject you're talking about here:  the uniqueness of an 8-player team that had to work together and strategize.  

Like you I had never joined a raid.  I admit that I had been hesitant about it if only because I still have strong Radical Faerie roots and some of their strong attitudes on efficiency goes against my want to play my way.  I try my best to work in teams when necessary, but there's an element of individuality I prefer to stick to.  However, one thing that I learned is that in spite of the raid bus leaders and players often difficult attitudes in warframe efficiency, I know that this attitude of theirs does ripple through the community as I often see such players working as a team in a 4 man squad.  So much so that I can actually rely on them to pull their weight and even communicate effectively and efficiently with the rest there.  

With this removal, and the subsequent loss of such experienced players, I have concerns of the ongoing attitudes I often catch from 4-man PUG squads.  Leechers, Special Snowflakes that ignore team settings or -- best of all -- players with the amount of rage and salt that -- I firmly believe -- can only be solved though prescription medicines. 

Sure, DE has limited warframes like Ember or Banshee with Resonating Quake in the same way they have limited Bless Trinity or Ash's Blade Storm being the penultimate press-4-to-AFK in the past to make them work better in teams..  But how does this removal of the Trials teach teamwork?  After all, you can lead people to the well of teamwork by making builds less godlike -- but you can't make 'em drink.  

1 hour ago, MrTitan123 said:

My point stands not only for eidolon hunting, but plains in general. The plains are a massive open space. Put more people in to explore it! Surely if trials could house 8 players, the plains shouldn’t be a problem, right?

I'm not entirely convinced either that shoehorning everything into Cetus and the Plains is a good thing either.  This attitude of DE's to try to get players onto the Plains by removing Trials and forcing events to spawn quicker is a good business model to be emulating.  Players while often demonstrating the capricious nature of crowds going with the winds and the whims of developers aren't the grazers of the past that would accept things changed in the generations that grew up with nothing more than television as entertainment.  Players are often shrewder and will hesitate if they feel that there's a carrot being dangled in front of them.  

Not to mention, this isn't the first time DE has tried to back something only to scrap it and "temporarily put to rest".  Rebuilding the destroyed relays, Dark Sector/Solar Rail Competitions, and now Trials.  Which forces me to beg the question, "how long will it be before this novel approach to open roam becomes a bother and plague of code that the developers tire of it, and scrap it as well?"