Thoughts On Arid Fear (Mildly Long)

[SkyeAuroline]

Disclaimer: I've already reached 100 points, exactly. I ran a mix of solo, clan groups, and PUGs, both with my own keys and others'. I am not anywhere short of the "finishing point", but I also refuse to go farther with it.
And yes, I know there are a hundred other topics about this.

Now, on to the real post.

Hey, an event that looked promising!
Hey, an event that rapidly fell short. A few steps backwards here, DE.

Sling-Stone was great, especially for a DE event. Solo and co-op were both viable, it mixed up what we already had, and it finally gave a reason not to let it fail. Most of all, it had a real motivation. I can't speak for others, but our whole clan jumped on when we saw the Eris ship go up, and some of us wouldn't relax until it was down. That's the kind of reaction that I'd like to see in an event- that "oh, #$%@ just got serious", that mad dash, and that dedication to getting the job done. The mods were a nice bonus on top, but we didn't even need them; the event was still fantastic. Arid Fear... not so much.

To start with, difficulty:

Now, I don't usually care too much about the difficulty in Warframe; if I'm going for something that's low-level, it's short and over quickly. If I'm going for fun, I'll head to higher levels. Sling-Stone, you get to pick and choose which you want to go to (another winning point for it!). Arid Fear... not so much. The Void missions were the single most boring thing I've ever done in Warframe. To the point of falling asleep mid-mission less than five hours after I woke up. I've never done that in any game, much less Warframe. But this was just painfully bad. Even in Phase 3, the enemies pose no threat to a decently ranked frame with decently ranked weapons, and even low-rank gear rolled right through, solo or in a group. Scaling would have been a great improvement here.

Rewards:

The addition of the three mods was unnecessary and a poor decision. The event was plenty fine without the grindfest the mods tempt; we were even somewhat on track to finish close to on time! But community complaints -> addition of mods as an incentive.
"We don't want event exclusive rewards!" ->  The original rewards (and the better set of the two imo).
"Bah, who will run this, there's no reward!" -> DE hands out more dual-stat mods.
Don't get me wrong, the mods are nice. I'm sure I'll use mine. But they weren't necessary, and they were counter to what the community's been begging for since the Primed Chamber debacle. Backtracking like this is probably the thing I'd complain about most here, and the most disappointing part for me.

Entering the event:

FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN don't have another void key-tied co-op event. Ever. Maybe it'd be forgivable if we had void key matchmaking. But I doubt that's going to happen, so let's go with "never again".
Alerts for the parts were an okay idea... except for that whole "tripling your run count" deal. Fake longevity. Then again, if we went straight into the void, this event would have been done on the first day. So maybe that was acceptable.

Timing the event:

Looks like we're not getting six days. DE, I sincerely hope you have a Phase 4, or else just keep the CV missions available until the end timer. This is something I hope DE's picked up on, since the Fomorian ended 18 (correct me if I'm wrong) hours early. We all know the outcry there. That said, since the event is NOT finished, we may have more in store.

Playing the event:

Oh, DE, we know you don't want soloers too badly. But don't screw 'em over on something like this. 1 point a run, after two OTHER runs for parts, then asking for 100 for the full reward? Yeah, no. Not every soloer plays solo to be antisocial. As many people mention, there ARE people with bad enough connections they can only play solo (including a couple people in my clan) most of the time. The aforementioned "couple people" quit around 20 and waited until today when they were able to run with other people. And still stopped at 50. Solo shouldn't be preferred, but it should still be viable.
Also, gotta diversify the events. Here we've just got a standard Capture mission, except with multiple targets who are lightly armed (and get an annoying ability in phase 3). Not too much to it. As a few have suggested, something like an event-special boss would be great. Give the Scouts something better to work with, at least. I'm sure the Corpus have some power loaders or something around somewhere... :)

TL;DR effectively contained below.
Suggestions for the future:
-Level scaling on enemies
-Stick to your rewards.
-Never again on void key events.
-Stick to the 6 day event, don't have it end ridiculously early. (MAY NOT BE VALID SOON)
-Don't screw over solo players.
-Give it something interesting, not just handing a capture target a gun.


If you made it this far, congratulations! You're done! Thanks for reading, hope I made sense, have a good morning/afternoon/night.

[Blatantfool]

 Just throwing this out there.

 

 Arid Fear has/had a 6 Day timer - but not because DE thought it'd take that long.

 

 I think it should come as no surprise it ended during the weekend. I believe the extra time was purely 'just in case'.

 

 Say something went catastrophically amiss - like the scaling on the event bugged and the event broke for the better part of the weekend. That could have happened. Well - even if it had happened the event would have just gone into the week - no problem.

[SkyeAuroline]

 Just throwing this out there.

 

 Arid Fear has/had a 6 Day timer - but not because DE thought it'd take that long.

 

 I think it should come as no surprise it ended during the weekend. I believe the extra time was purely 'just in case'.

 

 Say something went catastrophically amiss - like the scaling on the event bugged and the event broke for the better part of the weekend. That could have happened. Well - even if it had happened the event would have just gone into the week - no problem.

Yeah, and I'm glad DE built in some extra time in case of that. But this looked, for all intents and purposes, like DE finally realized not everyone has free weekends and made an event that would run well into the week to account for that. It's one of the few gripes I saw with Sling-Stone, and with most if not all of the events before. Just disappointing that it isn't going that way.

Edited August 12, 2013 by SkyeAuroline

[Paper_Rabbit]

I really wouldn't minded the void key bit that much if not for the none stop void storm effects that keep popping in and out. That **** gets old damn quick and it's also physically uncomfortable. For something in the void, why does the map look just like your regular ol' Corpus ships? Just saying. This event feels very slapped on and badly put together compared to what we've had previously. I actually enjoyed Sling Stone event. Sure there were still grinding, but at least we didn't have to grind for the key parts over and over or get occasionally stiffed with 2 or 3 points in a full squad. The mod not getting saved bug just adds to the tire track in the cake. 

[xGryphus]

Wow a constructive feedback for once - faith in community restored. You have a few good points and a few even better don't judge to harsh though - remember that events are not only for our entertainment but also for testing purposes - DE needs to try new things to check what suits player the most. The event might looked good on paper but it's literally impossible to predict everything.

 

There is still plenty of time so I hope that DE still got something up in their sleeves - maybe operation's mastermind as boss? Also I believe that phase two rewards were planned earlier rather then forced by community and devs were only teasing with us.

 

The worst part IMHO is that the event forced players to host while the best is multiphase aspect, especially that second phase showed up out of blue (we can't, just can't expect to know everything - these are the laws of war and we are at war after all).

 

EDIT:

 

For something in the void, why does the map look just like your regular ol' Corpus ships? Just saying.

Because Scouts were lunched into Void in whole Corpus ships.

Edited August 12, 2013 by xGryphus

[notlamprey]

Rewards:

The addition of the three mods was unnecessary and a poor decision. The event was plenty fine without the grindfest the mods tempt; we were even somewhat on track to finish close to on time! But community complaints -> addition of mods as an incentive.

"We don't want event exclusive rewards!" ->  The original rewards (and the better set of the two imo).

"Bah, who will run this, there's no reward!" -> DE hands out more dual-stat mods.

Don't get me wrong, the mods are nice. I'm sure I'll use mine. But they weren't necessary, and they were counter to what the community's been begging for since the Primed Chamber debacle. Backtracking like this is probably the thing I'd complain about most here, and the most disappointing part for me.

 

 

     It didn't feel to me like those rewards were announced as a way to appease the community. Obviously, I can't know their intent. To me, this looked like something they already had planned, and the coincidence with community complaints was just unfortunate timing. Every event has been met with a certain amount of displeasure, so I don't see this as a case of "DE responding to this specific round of complaints."

 

     I won't argue with you when it comes to "Event exclusive, and never again" rewards. It's never a good idea to divide your community like that. Never ever. It's Book One, Page One of "Designing Games on the F2P Model." I really do hope that DE has some plans for eventually making all of these mods available. Like you, I'll be disappointed if they decide not to.

[Alighierian]

iirc sling-stone ended 13h early

and tbh it's not bad if it ends early, if the remainly people can still get their points

 

with sling-stone all you could do was wait for the goodies whilst the timer slowly went down, if you can at least do more runs to get your points (even after we reach 100%) then it makes sense it was for 6 days.

 

for the event itself:

- Phase 1: this bored me out beyond belief. no challenge at all. still, good for the rookie players to get their points

- Phase 2: quite a lot more interesting since the enemies got flux rifles. at times you had to pay more attention because they hurt

- Phase 3: truth be told, I just found it annoying. still roughly the same level mobs, but now with shockwave MOA spam.

 

shockwave MOA spam isn't challenging, it's plain annoying. having all corpus with a flux rifle and them around level 50 (without the overload of shockwave MOA's) would have been a lot more interesting.

 

another idea would be to have a chance for 'boss battle key' as bonus after making an event key in the foundry.

for this event you could have faced for example ambulas, raptor or hyena. (NOT JACKAL; he's just boring, with being stunlocked most of the time and just soaking up dmg)

the boss battle key would give 10 points / boss kill. lore: the boss was guarding a special section of the data.

all bosses should have considerable difficulty (and no artifical immortallity, just good damage and decent toughness)

 

that would give people a choice: do I go for the hard boss battle for more points, or do I rushkill my way through hordes of enemies. at the very least it adds some more diversity, and that's still one of the mayor things you need if you want something to remain interesting.

 

as for the mods:

I think they were planned already. but the 2nd mod (vigor) still made me wonder: why does it have a tactical polarity if it has 2 defence things (health and shields)?

Edited August 12, 2013 by Alighierian

[Slurmageddon]

I agree with you on most counts, but the addition of a material personal reward was a good move in my books. It gave a sense that I was working towards a set of established goals with established material return as opposed to just being asked to grind away as just another tiny statistic and "do my bit".

I personally reached 50 points before the mod rewards went in and was burnt out assembling CV keys. If not for the rewards Id have just finished with the event at that point.

Also I think DE are caught between a rock and a hard place with events because the community cries out in flames for the facilitation of solo players AND encouragement of teamwork. Getting both those things in the same event is tricky.

[CaptainHugeKatana]

I dont why all are having bad thoughts about this event?!

Just to know,DE is doing this for us,giving us three really nice mods,they are not useless any bit.

Low levels? Oh come on! What if beginners want to participe in this event? They can not handle 50-80 lvl mobs for sure!

Six days? They gave us that much time because DE wasnt sure will we make it for weekend.As I know,Last stand is last  phrase!

[d1ru]

i really wish we could do void with pugs. i reaaaaaly do. its the main reason why i dont play void so much, otherwise, it would be a blast. this even wouldnt have been so bad if we didnt have to pull teeth to find ppl to add to our group everytime we were about to run the void, and friends werent on.

[Panceto]

 I did a little more than 250 points and another 250 on a friend's account in the Fomorian event.But no amount of mods will make me do more than the five points i have in this event, because getting the mats for the keys is slow, and being a laggy host with crappy internet I have to solo the void corpus ships for 1 pityful point, and it bores me out of my mind.

 

 I'm not mad at DE though,beta is for trying new things,sometimes they work,sometimes they dont.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Panceto

[Ayarai]

Yeah, I have to agree that Operation Arid Fear was a step backwards when it comes to the event fun factor. For me the main issues with this event were:

 

- Lack of diversity

- Lack of difficulty

- Poor contribution point balancing

 

This event consisted of 3 phases (unless there are more) of gathering the ciphers & datamasses and then repeating the same Corpus void capture mission over and over again. Which in my opinion started to feel really repetitive rather quickly and after doing around ~130 contribution worth of CV runs I honestly never want to see the Corpus void again.

 

One of the things that I felt contributing a lot to the boredom was the lack of difficulty of the Corpus void missions, which were mostly just aimed for low to mid level geared players. Eventually I just found it more enjoyable to rush through the missions with a Volt in the group who simply just spammed Speed to the point where playing the missions felt more like playing Sonic the Hedgehog rather than Warframe - which certainly shouldn't be the case.

 

Also this time around, I felt like the contribution point distribution was really punishing towards the solo players as the amount of corpus scouts depended largely on your group size. While I think co-op should be encouraged, it shouldn't be done in this kind of a manner.

 

What I would have liked to seen instead (bear in mind this is probably way too over the top in terms of development time that should be dedicated for an event) would have been something like this:

 

The event consists of 3 phases, each of the phases unlocks a new mission type in addition to the previous ones available - thus allowing players to pick the missions they enjoy most or simply cycle them for some variety.

 

Phase 1: Two types of foundry schematics are available: Corpus Void Spy, Contribute Intel

Phase 2: Another schematic type is added: Corpus Void Capture

Phase 3: Another schematic type is added: Corpus Void Defense

 

Key / Schematic functionality:

 

- Contribute Intel: You can choose to contribute your cipher + datamass in order to gather more intel about the Corpus. Doing this gives you X amount of contribution points, but isn't as rewarding as fully completing a void mission.

 

- Corpus Void Spy: A lower level mission, where you have X minutes to collect up to 5 datamasses. You can extract after collecting just 1 of the datamasses but retrieving more will give you more points.

 

- Corpus Void Capture: Mid level mission, essentially same mission as what we got in Arid Fear but without the group size scaling up how many scouts spawn in the map.

 

- Corpus Void Defense: High level mission, endless defense with a twist. Prevent Corpus from destroying the ships reactor for as long as you can, while also preventing their scouts from escaping (either capture or collect intel from a corpse). Contribution points are based on how many scouts you prevented from escaping, failing the mission will reward no contribution (risk vs reward: chance for huge amount of points, but a risk of losing them all).

 

Obviously that would require a ridiculous amount of development time, especially if it was just for a one off event (rather than building a portfolio of modified mission types to re-use for other events) and who knows - maybe it is nothing more than just a bunch of bad ideas. But it would certainly have some variety for solo and co-op from low to high level.

[Silvershadow66]

For something in the void, why does the map look just like your regular ol' Corpus ships? Just saying. This event feels very slapped on and badly put together compared to what we've had previously.

 

The Corpus sent some of their ships with all the scouts and navigators who knew details of the Grineer settlement into the void because it would make it harder for the Tenno to locate them. They also said that its dangerous for normal ships in the void. So yes we should have Corpus ships and strange things should happen.

 

 

i really wish we could do void with pugs. i reaaaaaly do. its the main reason why i dont play void so much, otherwise, it would be a blast. this even wouldnt have been so bad if we didnt have to pull teeth to find ppl to add to our group everytime we were about to run the void, and friends werent on.

 

You can, I did about a dozen runs just picking people up from the Recruiting channel. Got a good group together and we kept running the missions.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Silvershadow66

[SkyeAuroline]

I really wouldn't minded the void key bit that much if not for the none stop void storm effects that keep popping in and out. That **** gets old damn quick and it's also physically uncomfortable. For something in the void, why does the map look just like your regular ol' Corpus ships? Just saying. This event feels very slapped on and badly put together compared to what we've had previously. I actually enjoyed Sling Stone event. Sure there were still grinding, but at least we didn't have to grind for the key parts over and over or get occasionally stiffed with 2 or 3 points in a full squad. The mod not getting saved bug just adds to the tire track in the cake. 

 

Yeah, the effects were pretty damn annoying. Would have been nice to have a way to turn them down.

 

Wow a constructive feedback for once - faith in community restored. You have a few good points and a few even better don't judge to harsh though - remember that events are not only for our entertainment but also for testing purposes - DE needs to try new things to check what suits player the most. The event might looked good on paper but it's literally impossible to predict everything.

 

There is still plenty of time so I hope that DE still got something up in their sleeves - maybe operation's mastermind as boss? Also I believe that phase two rewards were planned earlier rather then forced by community and devs were only teasing with us.

 

Thanks for the faith :D

And yeah, I'm hoping there's something good coming. (I haven't logged in yet, though, so maybe it's here already!)

 

I dont why all are having bad thoughts about this event?!

Just to know,DE is doing this for us,giving us three really nice mods,they are not useless any bit.

Low levels? Oh come on! What if beginners want to participe in this event? They can not handle 50-80 lvl mobs for sure!

Six days? They gave us that much time because DE wasnt sure will we make it for weekend.As I know,Last stand is last  phrase!

 

I agree, the mods are hardly useless. But DE's timing makes it look like the rewards were a last-minute addition. If they were planned from the start, I've got a lot less of a complaint there, though I'd love to see what happens with an event when we don't get that carrot in our face for once.

 

You can, I did about a dozen runs just picking people up from the Recruiting channel. Got a good group together and we kept running the missions.

 

The rest of the events used matchmaking, though, not the Recruiting channel. Which is really a mess of a system, but that's another topic.

Edited August 12, 2013 by SkyeAuroline

[-CM-SASMcBride]

Rewards:

The addition of the three mods was unnecessary and a poor decision. The event was plenty fine without the grindfest the mods tempt; we were even somewhat on track to finish close to on time! But community complaints -> addition of mods as an incentive.

"We don't want event exclusive rewards!" ->  The original rewards (and the better set of the two imo).

"Bah, who will run this, there's no reward!" -> DE hands out more dual-stat mods.

Don't get me wrong, the mods are nice. I'm sure I'll use mine. But they weren't necessary, and they were counter to what the community's been begging for since the Primed Chamber debacle. Backtracking like this is probably the thing I'd complain about most here, and the most disappointing part for me.

 

i spose  it is possible DE already had these rewards lined up but didnt release that till phase 2 started.

Entering the event:

FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN don't have another void key-tied co-op event. Ever. Maybe it'd be forgivable if we had void key matchmaking. But I doubt that's going to happen, so let's go with "never again".

Alerts for the parts were an okay idea... except for that whole "tripling your run count" deal. Fake longevity. Then again, if we went straight into the void, this event would have been done on the first day. So maybe that was acceptable.

 

Yeah i agree this being a void key event is a pain to have to keep looking for people to play with

 

Playing the event:

Oh, DE, we know you don't want soloers too badly. But don't screw 'em over on something like this. 1 point a run, after two OTHER runs for parts, then asking for 100 for the full reward? Yeah, no. Not every soloer plays solo to be antisocial. As many people mention, there ARE people with bad enough connections they can only play solo (including a couple people in my clan) most of the time. The aforementioned "couple people" quit around 20 and waited until today when they were able to run with other people. And still stopped at 50. Solo shouldn't be preferred, but it should still be viable.

Also, gotta diversify the events. Here we've just got a standard Capture mission, except with multiple targets who are lightly armed (and get an annoying ability in phase 3). Not too much to it. As a few have suggested, something like an event-special boss would be great. Give the Scouts something better to work with, at least. I'm sure the Corpus have some power loaders or something around somewhere... :)

 

Yeah again i agree with this....if you wanna do this event solo for whatever reason your screwed unless you really wanna do 300 runs to get the 3 mods

[SkyeAuroline]

 

 

Might want to bold your own lines, or however you'd like to do that. Took me a minute to see where you said anything.

[Hazmatzone]

The part about the rewards is what really annoyed me. The event rewards were fine from the beginning, a shiny badge that is exclusive and didn't affect gameplay in any way a bonus to the real reward which was at the end. Yet we had such an uproar from people saying "These rewards suck so we won't even play", how is DE supposed to deal with that? It just shows that whatever DE does it won't please some people and they'll find a way to complain about it until it gets changed which leads to new complaints from a new group of people.

 

Below are some issues that have resulted in the same way.

 

-Iron Skin: This has been changed 3 times now and people are still not happy with the looks!

-Idle animations: Already we've had a change with Ash because people didn't like it when it was changed people complained that they liked the previous idle so they want it changed back!

-UI changes: That foundry alone has had 3 changes and still complaints are being sent out for it to be changed. Even the newly changed mod UI has complaints asking for it to go back to the old way.

-Rhino: He was oped, then he was nerfed, then buffed, and people still say he's useless and needs more changes.

-Alerts: Resource alerts were begged for, then they were added, then people complained because the amounts weren't enough...I mean really? really guys?

-Rushing vs Exploring: Not even going to explain this one.

 

Future changes that'll follow the same path.

-Nova: Some say she's oped, some say she's fine the way she is. If she's nerfed people will complain and if she stays the same people will still complain.

-Armor system: Granted most people don't like this system but whatever changes DE make to it people will find a way to complain about it.

-Clans: With the upcomming alliances I'm sure we'll be seeing some complaint threads soon.

-Future warframes: Definetly just look at Vauban and Nova's history.

 

DE needs to realize they can't please everyone and stop flip flopping on all issues that get a few upvotes. There are over 10000 players in this game and yet I've never seen a post with more than 500 upvotes. Why are 300 people deciding the faith of the game for thousands? If you really want to know what the community wants DE make an in game poll thing so that when we log in there's a popup that comes up allowing us to vote this way you can get everyone's opinion.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Hazmatzone

[Gh0st_Slay3r]

The other events havent been all that bad but I just found this one massively boring. The alerts took the &!$$ with a lot of them being defense / mobile def which took too long or having a rescue mission follow by a second rescue mission and the same with datamass. Bored the hell out of me and has kinda worn me thin on wanting to play at all for now :/

Edited August 12, 2013 by Gh0st_Slay3r

[-CM-SASMcBride]

Might want to bold your own lines, or however you'd like to do that. Took me a minute to see where you said anyth

 

 

yeah im not used to this multi quote system :p

[Fleetwing]

I really wouldn't minded the void key bit that much if not for the none stop void storm effects that keep popping in and out. That **** gets old damn quick and it's also physically uncomfortable. For something in the void, why does the map look just like your regular ol' Corpus ships? Just saying.

I agree that the void effects were weird.

However, the "corpus" ship maps are actually repurposed Orokin derelicts, iirc. The Corpus are the only ones who know how t oreactivate the security measures (lasers and security cameras), so it makes sense that they could have figured out how to move some of them.

[SkyeAuroline]

yeah im not used to this multi quote system :p

 

No worries :P The forum's interface isn't great anyway.

 

The other events havent been all that bad but I just found this one massively boring. The alerts took the &!$$ with a lot of them being defense / mobile def which took too long or having a rescue mission follow by a second rescue mission and the same with datamass. Bored the hell out of me and has kinda worn me thin on wanting to play at all for now :/

 

Yeah, I'm right on the edge of quitting. DE's got a lot of work to try and get something new on the table.

[direcyphre]

I think they did a lot of things better than their previous events, as it allowed anyone to come together without having to directly organize things like Corrupters. The downside however was being a void key, because you really could just enter any public game like you could in in the previous events, so you really had to have a group together beforehand in order to get the full points per run.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

The thing I liked the most about the the event was that the mission were designed to be completed quickly, through I would refrain from wanting DE to add more content whose most effective playstyle is rushing.

 

The thing I liked the least is the inability for players with slow connections to host void runs or give them to somebody who can. It forced me to "leech" others' void runs without being able to contribute datamasses or ciphers, making me feel a little guilty by the time I was done. Worse, the system you had pugs rely on to team up for corpus void runs broke down multiple times to a point where you couldn't invite anyone not on your friends list or even message other people in your squad without relogging.

 

I'm also not a fan of exclusive rewards at all, so take that as a general criticism if you will.

Edited August 12, 2013 by AuroraSonicBoom

[FistOfTheNorthStar]

I agree with you on most counts, but the addition of a material personal reward was a good move in my books. It gave a sense that I was working towards a set of established goals with established material return as opposed to just being asked to grind away as just another tiny statistic and "do my bit".

I personally reached 50 points before the mod rewards went in and was burnt out assembling CV keys. If not for the rewards Id have just finished with the event at that point.

Also I think DE are caught between a rock and a hard place with events because the community cries out in flames for the facilitation of solo players AND encouragement of teamwork. Getting both those things in the same event is tricky.

 

 

[Slurmageddon]

 

I know its a LoL character but I didnt play that game enough to know if thats a specific reference, or a point of some kind, you'll need to explain with words. sorry.