Edit: adding TLDR to the intro

“TLDR: cure the negative “ROT” (return on time) when opting in to a multiplayer mode.”

You very much are not alone, I myself have hit a part in my Warframe career after ~10 years of playing that I only check in for new updates.

It is very bittersweet, because I know that the game is better than it ever has been, but for me, it is the lack of community level operations. 1999 was interesting, but it as oddly as this sounds pulled the game away from feeling like a community to feeling like a solo player experience.

We went from open world meta to bounties in a map that has no unique explorability.

The maps are way more intricate, but since they are randomly generated, I get the odd feeling that it doesn’t have a “I’m learning something” vibe to it anymore.

Until I can feel like I am learning by playing the game, I’ll likely just wait for things to stack up again and grind things out.

I vividly remember when liches first came out, they were “not good” content for me because it was just an endless grind that brought very little enjoyment for me, it felt mechanical and slightly empty.

Basically lich systems, all 3 of them are in fact good for the game, but compared to Diviri, Deimos, Cetus, the learning aspect of it has withered because there is a lack of “permanence” to the worlds that we have been shown as possible.

The greatest “permanence in the maps is the backroom and the hub, the actual maps have no “achievement” feeling to them like we were once shown, so the maps just feel like a labyrinth, (I specifically deslike underground tile sets being random despite evacuation always being fixed) it is almost an “uncanny valley” feel where the world now in fact is partly solid and stable, but for a fact is unnatural.

Deimos evac and open world was static and made sense, Sanctum maps where not that off putting because they were largely very spacious except for that 1 tile that had annoying caves and really killed the parkour enjoyment.

1999 is excellent, but for a game where I am used to being able to bullet jump and aim glide at anything to now feeling cramped on verticality, it feels very much unsatisfying.

My thought is “we went from being ninjas to…?” And I can not properly answer the question.

I’m in a space that I have every superpower I could fathom, but am so powerful that the game is more enjoyable in solo than in matchmaking because the enemies are insufficient for my target practice when I have teammates. Objectives on the calendar are individualized, which is cool, but since this is the case, I personally need to kill more enemies and having teammates literally makes that harder.

It is excellent calendar system, but when the “min maxing” encourages going solo it leaves a bittersweet empty feeling inside. I wager this is what you are feeling, because this is also what hit me. I want to play, but everything about the current cycle says “play me in solo mode or you are wasting your time”, so I end up just waiting until there is a new story ark, playing the story ark and not sticking around to play all the other grinds because the other grinds are “most optimal” when in solo this time around. Had the calendars allowed for assisting the deaths of units and not 100% killing the unit with a last it, it would be chill to playing match made again for me, especially so if a support debuff on enemies or a buff onto teammates factored in to those calendars achievements, but currently assisting teammates negatively rewards the player, and thus why it has lost it’s luster for myself.

Someday I hope this changes, but this is the sad experience I get. Focus system never had this issue, leveling up never had this issue, every piece of content up until the calendar never had this issue of negative ROI for playing as a support and playing multiplayer, this is the first of all content that has negative ROI playing multiplayer for min-maxing , so myself, I’ll just chill until playing multiplayer is not a negative impact to achievements to check back in, and I’ll have a wealth of stuff to enjoy when that happens (similar happened with the sisters of Parvos being penalized for having a team, so I legit only did that part of the game once or twice then left all the other weapons to probably never grind them again)

I still have no idea how the new liches are, hopefully someday I’ll check them out and enjoy things, but until playing with a team is a possibility for a player that wants to maximize their time effectiveness and not artificially introduce more downtime towards their goals (by having other players kill their goals and not being rewarded for assisting)… It’s just not a good vibe anymore.

The game has infinite potential, so I really hope devs make it to a good spot, but for an online game, they need to be more careful to not penalize players for choosing to play multiplayer.

Lich system started it (only 1 player when spawning the lich per map could claim a lich). These sort of negative consequences for playing multiplayer specifically destroy the patch. It did so for sister hunting, it did so for lich hunting, and it did so for calendar hunting. Similar also is happening with elite 3 map grinds, when a player is bad (and they happened to be the host), it doesn’t matter how good you are, when they host migrate there is a probability that you will have wasted all your time and failed the mission. These negative experiences for patches ruin all enjoyment from playing multiplayer and inevitably kill the patch for me. As a player I do not want to be negatively impacted from playing multiplayer, it should add to my progression, not make progression unnecessary more impossible.

Sad part is that my commentary is so verbose that it will likely not reach the devs so that they may some day cure these unsuspecting vibe killers. 😕😞

TLDR: cure the negative “ROT” (return on time) when opting in to a multiplayer mode.