Octavia's Anthem and quests in general

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Spoilers ahead.

The last mission of Octavia's Anthem has two glaring problems.  There is so much visual noise that it can be difficult to see which blocks you have and haven't gotten to.  It makes them very easy to miss and backtracking is extremely annoying, due to the second problem:

That was one of the most boring, tedious quests I've done yet.  It would be an interesting mechanic if it weren't for the fact that it was executed so poorly.  I wasn't even halfway through with the second stage of the "fight" and I was dying for it to be over.  It's like trying to play guitar hero with a computer mouse while you're on acid in the middle of a daycare where all the kids have been given a truckload of sugar.  Just these pointless, annoying robots harassing you while you try to see through the lighting effects to figure which platform to jump to next, rinse repeat for what felt like an hour, even though it was probably only 6 or 7 minutes.

So far, the only quest that I've done that hasn't been a textbook example of the most basic, boring "go here, collect this, kills rats in the basement, here's your gold" MMO quests, has been The War Within.  The story is at least interesting for that, even if it is just a glorified Operator Tutorial.  What's up with the quest design in this game?  Do they not have anyone with any experience on their team?  I've played RPG Maker games with more complex quests than most of these.  The main thing giving them any substance is the tedium involved, "find 900 of each of these plants.  Farm this rare resource from this game mode no one likes.  Do plains stuff even though we refuse to optimize the plains."

[Ragingwasabi]

-1

[True_Naeblis]

Honestly I thought the quest was great until the final round. One thing that would have made it far better is if I'd realized earlier on that while you can use the highest platforms to avoid the "needle", you can also simply duck under it. The fake sentients are actually pretty easy to kill. The main issue is how quickly you pick up on the mechanics. 

I do agree that the final round got to be a bit much, but I'll have to go back and do it again before I pass my last judgement on it. My feeling as of now, though,  is that DE starts so many things out well and then passes beyond fun and challenge into tedium, annoyance, and bad design. When the game play takes away from being able to appreciate the scope and design of what's going on there's something wrong.

Her quest is bogged down by too much going on by the end, Harrow's by the endless enemies spawning in later parts of it. Sadly the norm for almost all of the frame quests is that eventually they all stop being fun. 

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by True_Naeblis

[Dark_Lugia]

Quest are done step by step while they expand the solar system and often introduced new mechanics or events. And they can´t make every new quest cinematic.

[Siilk]

16 hours ago, True_Naeblis said:

I do agree that the final round got to be a bit much, but I'll have to go back and do it again before I pass my last judgement on it. My feeling as of now, though,  is that DE starts so many things out well and then passes beyond fun and challenge into tedium, annoyance, and bad design. When the game play takes away from being able to appreciate the scope and design of what's going on there's something wrong.

Pretty much this. I actually liked plot of the Octavia's quest and it's mechanics but the amount of repetition I was facing was mind numbing. Which is pretty much what happens in 90% of the warframe quests: good basic concept with is buried under piles of self-repetition and time gating. Yes, DE wants quests to last for more than half an hour, I get it. But the way this is achieved is horrendous. Outside of TWW quest, I think Chains of Harrow is actually one of the better ones. It wasn't ideal but it was still original and not too repetitive.