Will There Be Any Proper Hard Mode In Future?

[zelgaris]

I mean not the random stupidity we got when asking for hard mode, I mean proper hard mode, where we know, what we get.

Best case scenario? Allowing us to turn on/off "mutators" and thus changing the difficulty but also reward (credits, items, etc.).

For example, I really love the "no shield" mutator, yet I just completely hate the "low gravity" one to a point I just quit the game.

 

What do you think? Will the devs listen to the community, because this is a thing asked for since alpha, or will they continue with these sort of half-solutions, i.e. adding something community asked for and mixing it with something stupid while also breaking what worked before and thus creating a kind of mess... (not want to offend anybody, but this is how I see the development since alpha)

Edited August 22, 2013 by zelgaris

[Archistopheles]

They're currently working on a "zelgaris" difficulty, where the mobs do exactly what you want them to do, but they're really "hard" so that you feel all sweaty and accomplished once you're done with them.

[RoboDoge]

We dont need more artificial difficulty.....

 

 

If DE would be so nice to fix AI ( i dont know why arent that their prioritiy ), we would have proper challenge in WF.

 

But on the other hand, it is easier to increase mobs levels than fix the dumb AI.

[Althix]

no it won't because when mobs face snowglobe/bastille they die. because they can't do a shhh against it.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Althix

[Scherhardt]

Agree to what RoboDog said. I just hope they get on it soon.

[Eisvogel]

no it won't because when mobs face snowglobe/bastille they die. because they can't do a shhh against it.

 

Exactly, AI is something to work with AFTER the game mechanics enable a proper challenge. As it is now, it's a wipe em all/cheap em much spam fest.... where you have the massive DPS dealers to obliterate anything between mid-high levels..... and you have bastille, frost's globe and Nyx for control and immortal survival.... which are the only things that deal with enemies in uber high levels when the joke of stats scale (the only thing they seem to know to do with enemies) goes out of control

 

What's gonna change if they buff enemy AI? They can't outrun miasma, or Molecular prime no matter what they do :P

And i am not saying they shouldn't, i am just saying that the gameplay needs fixing before working on enemy AI

Edited August 22, 2013 by Eisvogel

[KaoKill123]

We dont need more artificial difficulty.....

sooo in some other case:

let's take OFFLINE monster hunter PSP (3rd person view) which rather fit this game-type where weapon improves as u progress, what is artificial difficulty?

 

more HP?

impossible to hit enemies due to insane speed?

95% invulnerable stat but with a major weakness that dies in 10+ shots?

more defenses?

more resistances to elements?

random patterns?

vary amount of movements?

 

now in an ONLINE case, let's say TERA (3rd person view), since is also fit most parts of the WF-game, what is difficulty?

high HP?

more defenses?

more insanely high damage or instant kill moves?

huge amount of movements?

fast animation + cast speed? 

fast reaction?

 

tell me... 

 

currently in WF: difficulty is:

high HP/ bullet sponges.

high defenses.

high resistances.

high numbers.

high damage.

stun-lock + stagger-lock.

 

what if these so-called artificial difficulty were all removed? hmm instant game-over due to lack of content?

whats the fun of killing things fast? more time on each mission = more artificial difficulty factor?

whats the point of having better weapon, where you can kill everything when you know what you'r doing?

 

off-topic: if DE make stalker player/human-like reaction & thinking pattern, players will rage alot~

Edited August 22, 2013 by KaoKill123

[RoboDoge]

sooo in some other case:

let's take OFFLINE monster hunter PSP (3rd person view) which rather fit this game-type where weapon improves as u progress, what is artificial difficulty?

 

more HP?

impossible to hit enemies due to insane speed?

95% invulnerable stat but with a major weakness that dies in 10+ shots?

more defenses?

more resistances to elements?

random patterns?

vary amount of movements?

 

now in an ONLINE case, let's say TERA (3rd person view), since is also fit most parts of the WF-game, what is difficulty?

high HP?

more defenses?

more insanely high damage or instant kill moves?

huge amount of movements?

fast animation + cast speed? 

fast reaction?

 

tell me... 

 

currently in WF: difficulty is:

high HP/ bullet sponges.

high defenses.

high resistances.

high numbers.

high damage.

stun-lock + stagger-lock.

 

what if these so-called artificial difficulty were all removed? hmm instant game-over due to lack of content?

whats the fun of killing things fast? more time on each mission = more artificial difficulty factor?

whats the point of having better weapon, where you can kill everything when you know what you'r doing?

 

off-topic: if DE make stalker player/human-like reaction & thinking pattern, players will rage alot~

Hmm, lets say it like this:

 

Do you really wanna have mobs level 100000 with 1000000 armor and still be able to kill them with 1 shot from Ogris? Simple enough for you?

 

Artificial difficulty brings QQ threads about game being to hard, and you will see increase in damage output of weapons and frames. So, that will become infinite loop in which players will QQ about game being to easy, the to hard, then again to easy etc.

 

We need AI fixing, game mechanics fixing, challenging boss fights, maybe random mission setups for defense, mobile defense etc. Missions where you jump in and know what will happens become stale after some time. Even NM is a joke.

 

And why not make Stalker challenging? He is joke when he shows up, neither difficult nor challenging. Or we could just keep same game AI and mechanics and keep on spamming panic mode button number 4 to extinguish all life. That is sooooooo challenging and not boring at all.

[zelgaris]

It's great you guys are talking AI, broken powers... but I think we really don't need to talk these things here, because it's just well known fact that the AI is crap and the balance between weapons/powers/warframes is hardly optimal.

Talking powers the problem is how people react to nerfing and let's be fair, you can't make the powers balanced or less op without nerfing them :/

 

I started this thread to point out the ideas in Nightmare mode aren't that bad, they are actually mostly good, but the execution is stupid, because it's all random. It's rather some kind of crazy chaos mode than proper harder difficulty, and even which mission will be in nightmare mode is chose randomly (combination of bad luck in nightmare mod (i.e. time limit, no shield), not maxed warframes and weapons and Jackal = aborting mission).

 

Nightmare mode is just something completely else than regular hard mode, and i would like to point out, and lot of nightmare mode mutators are showing this, that making missions harder is not only about increasing hp, armor and damage of enemies. The problem is, again, the randomness.

 

Anyway, I already wrote something about this few months ago (April) - https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/26891-thoughts-on-mods-capacity-polarity-slots-motivation-challenges-gamestyles-and-endgame/

 

For anybody, who don't want to check the whole post, here is the "Endgame" part, sections "Hardcore/ironman Mode" and "Mutators"

 

---

 

Hardcore/Ironman Mode
Adjustable difficulty for missions was already suggested many times at the forum, but I think we have missions with higher difficulty for this purpose and simply changing the strength of the enemies and raising the reward is just not enough in my eyes to defend having a simpel "hard" difficulty there.
Hardcore mode is something a bit different, because it would not only make the enemies more dangerous, but there would be other differences from the normal mode. I would like to call this difficulty "survival", but that could get easily misunderstood.
Not all levels must have the hardcore difficulty available and it should be unlocked only after beating the boss of the sector (or possibl cleaning all missions in the sector).

Features of the hardcore/ironman mode:
- Harder enemies (more damage, shields, etc. but rather make them do more damage than changing them to unkillable ones - remember, more dangerous, not more boring)
- More advanced AI (if possible)
- No revives (no matter how much revives player has available)
- Limited reviving of other tennos - time penalty for subsequent reviving for each warframe (50% for each after the first one); or only one assisted revive per tenno (but limit the revives in some way) - Trinity could get some bonus due to her nature (but that's a basis for different topic)
- Only mod and resource drops from enemies - no health globes, no energy globes, no ammo (players have to check the containers and lockers for these ones or just play in an economic way and use ammo boxes)
- Bigger reward at successfull ending
- No common mods, just uncommon and rare ones
- Possible others I forgot to write down when I have this idea while driving in bus from work...


Mutators, i.e. Mission Adjusting (or Cursed Artefacts)
These are well known from the time of orignal Unreal Tournament so I think DE is pretty familiar with them. Considering the endgame content, players could be able, after meeting some requirements, getting a particular item/artifact, to modify the challenge of the mission in a limited way to increase the risk/reward. See some examples:
- "Full Shields", which would equip each and every enemy with proper recharging shields
- "No pickups", which would remove all containers, unlockable lockers and all non-mod drops from the enemies
- "Quad damage", which would boost the damage of enemies considerably
- "Forced challenge" - this is related to the "Advance Mission Challenges" I was writing about above and it would force the players to fullfill a particular challenge to get the better reward, but failing to do so will result in no reward or even penaly to reward for accomplishing mission
- "Low stock" - half ammunition
- "Jammed" - melee weapons and powers only
etc.

These mutators could be basically quite similar to a hardcore mode, but while the hardcore mode is composed from more limitations applied at once, these mutators couldn't be used in great numbers. Mentioning artifacts before, these mutators could be as well represented by some "cursed" artifacts, that grants not a benefit but penalty, but greater reward if the mission is finished successfully. So in case of four players, four different mutators could be used to provide four different penalties to the mission.

 

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

Powers, AI and stupid stats virtual fake challenge..... arise exactly because of that.

 

Nightmare mode is a joke, a piece of crap and represents no challenge at all. It's just more stat play and a new way of punishing the player, breaking the previously stated rules of engagement in the game. Seriously, to give us that crap... just don't even bother releasing that.

 

The way of creating more fun and hard challenges, is to actually make the game mechanics something to challenge the player, instead of playing with lame stats and fake virtual attempts of masking something as a challenge.

[zelgaris]

The way of creating more fun and hard challenges, is to actually make the game mechanics something to challenge the player, instead of playing with lame stats and fake virtual attempts of masking something as a challenge.

 

That's great theory but how about sharing some concrete improvements/changes with us? I am really interesting what you find challenging, because I personally find for example playing without shields challenging.

(EDIT: But as stated before, the current implementation of Nightmare mode is joke)

Edited August 23, 2013 by zelgaris

[Eisvogel]

That's great theory but how about sharing some concrete improvements/changes with us? I am really interesting what you find challenging, because I personally find for example playing without shields challenging.

(EDIT: But as stated before, the current implementation of Nightmare mode is joke)

 

Sure, no problem:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/92326-we-need-endgame-and-a-challenge-what-do-we-expect-for-warframes-future/

 

I also find this video very helpful to understand different points about difficulty and real challenge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU

 

 

I do not see nightmare mode in any way challenging. The game breaks it's own rules in nightmare mode, and try to attempt to mask that S#&$ joke mode as a challenge. Nightmare mode is basically the same of everything => A) Do the same as in any level wiping everything along the way without caring about the mode if no extremes are there, B) Get cheap killed because an enemy can just appear from nowhere in high levels and annihilate you even with maxed redirection in 1 second (yeah that's so challenging, something that you can't counter suddenly destroys you just because of massive stats and 0 skill.... so *fun*)..... you also have magic option C) Where you get energy drain + no shields, the ultimate level of absurd cheapness and the final stage of nightmare's sick joke.... basically you'll be disintegrated with any frame in high levels like Pluto, because stats are the way to go (lol?).... the best bet is to go rhino and cast iron skin before getting low on energy, use crates to repeat with the 50 energy gained.

[zelgaris]

Thx for the links, I agree with you on most things actually, yet I still find breaking some rules to create harder conditions for player not actually a bad way.

But again, current iteration of Nightmare mode is sad joke... especially with the current weekend event...

EDIT: Lol at the Warframe sliding spin slash :)

Edited August 23, 2013 by zelgaris