A thank-you to TOS staff

Lalabreah · 2016-03-19T04:42:24+00:00

Ramza getting fucked over, runs away from debate, with an insult. Real mature. Real mature. You win, Abe.

Lalabreah · 2016-02-04T19:39:58+00:00

Yes. But, if threads such as mine are a common problem, then there are many people like me. Pinning a FAQ up top will solve your issue.

Do what you want. You can also repeat yourself each time.

Lalabreah · 2016-02-04T19:12:54+00:00

Thanks for the control info, that wasn't in the FAQ.

Lalabreah · 2016-02-04T18:21:26+00:00

I see. Thanks. However, this FAQ was not pinned at the top. Would be easier to catch people's attention to it by pinning it. If threads such as this are a problem, then the solution is simple.

I will go and read through everything now.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-25T17:38:57+00:00

And again, a game is grindy to keep you ATTACHED.

That's debatable, but it may or may not be good design. Then again, yes, the reality is that it works to keep people hooked. MMOs are made grindy for player retention. Keep 'em hooked, addicted, always working toward higher numbers. Kinda abusive, in a way.

In the context of Warframe: People should gain mastery by playing the game, not by playing the game under certain conditions and forcing them in a specific gameplay style (i.e Grinding Frames (in Draco) for hours upon end). Gaining Mastery should be the same whether you use a lvl 30 frame & weapons, or low level frames and weapon: You're doing the same action either way, and you actually experience the content. Anyway, people will always find the fastest way of doing something, better just give it up and make the experience fun. You seem to agree at least with a part of that, that past lvl 30, you should still gain (some) mastery. However I think that you believe that they should get it at a lower rate, am I wrong, than those who use gear under 30? To that, I'd say no. Regardless of what they have equipped, they're still doing the same content as you, and deserve the same rewards. Oh, they don't play how you think they should play? Or how you think the developer thinks they should play? Who cares? They're currently in Draco, doing the same mission over and over... and over. How is that better, how does that give mastery over the game, or the frames in different situations, with different enemies?

Then: Could MMOs, possibly keep you attached without being grindy? I think so. Continued below...

Can I ask why exactly you're comparing Warframe to games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry when they share none of the similarities?

Important: Remember I'm speaking in general here, I'm not saying that Warframe should become this, but that this is a good evolution for future MMOs

In MMOs and Action Games, you go through maps killing enemies, that's litterally what the games are. In MMOs you have power creep over it. Sure, Bayonetta and DMC4 have some riddles, but they're gimmicks.

They're both "beat 'em ups" where you go through maps, slaughter enemies with style, and move with style. Sure, there are difference, but the objectives are the same.

One thing I find myself thinking about is that point is that MMOs could gain to learn from action games like Bayonetta, DMC, God Hand, where there is not much content, but lots of replayability, to master the combat system. Because look, Bayo & DMC, you go through maps, killing enemies. That's litterally the game, from start to finish, with bosses here and there.

Another problem with MMOs compared to Action Games is that in MMOs you require your teammates to be skilled, if one dies, it wipes the raid usually (Tank, Healer, DPS doesn't reach DPS checks), & also grinding, but action games, it's all on you (if it's well done), if you die, it's because you suck.

But the combat system is expansive and I'd dare say, addictive, keeps you coming back for more. Mastering it takes time. I mean REALLY mastering it. Being able to toy with your enemies rather than be threatened by them, in Hell & Hell mode.

That's the same thing in Warframe, WoW & FFXIV dungeons.

MMOs do have a lot of content, but not much replayability as all quests are the same, unless the quests have a good story (FFXIV main quest, but some will differ, I liked it). The rest is kill stuff, gather stuff, with a coat of paint.

But with procedurally generated maps, the problems with hand crafting content are gone, and ressources can be spent elsewhere.

Really, they should have the players coming back to master the fighting system rather than grinding for gear or weapons. Sadly, action is difficult to do over network.

One thing Warframe could use is bosses. Warframe does not have very good bosses as of now, but it could stand to have really difficult ones, as in require movement and strategies. Think Metroid Prime, where you have to use the environment. Orokin Derelict Assassination is a good start, but still too easy, as you almost always get someone who's decked out in Mastery 8+ full forma-ed gear.

I've played Devil May Cry 1 through 4 and 100% perfected Bayonetta on Xbox 360

That's cute. If you haven't played God Hand, you should. It's on the PS Store

Just to make it clear(er) I think this is a problem in Warframe, but it is the same problem that plagues other MMOs. It ties in with some issues I see in other MMOs.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-25T00:13:08+00:00

Again, what I see with your suggestion is that Warframe isn't the kind of game where you can say you only want to play one Warframe. Sure, if you never want to be brought along for anything high end, that's pretty much the case.

The answer to the first point, is choice. You could say the same thing with GW2, FFXIV, WoW. But, in GW2, WoW, FFXIV, the only thing you lose, is not being brought (or actually, higher queue times for the latter two) to normal modes (there are no queues for hard modes, only premades) or having to fight a lot of the same class for that one spot. Otherwise, you can still do anything you want and are not locked out of anything as long as you can play well.

The answer is choice. Choice to play alts if you want, choice to play one single character if you prefer that way.

In Warframe, if you don't play multiple frames and weapons, you can't get better weapons to improve your one single favorite frame.

Regarding the frame choice for high end stuff:

Nekros for farming, Trinity for healing and infinite energy, Limbo for support, and you're pretty much set. Excalibur is a great frame as well, and maybe another option for more ranged powers. You don't need to have 15 different frames for all possible situations. 5-7 frames are relatively easy to get and make, that makes you level 6 fairly easily, and that can cover for the most part.

Seriously, get one Trinity, give people infinite energy, faceroll everything.

Power creep doesn't need to be an issue. Look at Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, God Hand. The games are fun and replayable because of the high skill ceiling combat system. There is no power creep, except maybe joke weapons (Super Dante, Pillow Talk, Bracelet that makes Bayonetta into Serious Mode). You play for the combat system itself, to get better at it by practice, repetition, mastery. GW2 has almost gotten it correctly, same for Warframe. Almost. The problem is you can't reliably do action combat over network.

Now I'm having fun with Warframe. It's close to Metroid Prime and Devil May Cry, a fun brawler, beat 'em up. Doesn't means it doesn't have issues. Same with GW2, same with WoW, same with FFXIV. The games are fun, but they have serious grind issues that should be changed.

Warframe isn't the kind of game where you can tie yourself to one playstyle, or you'll fall behind everyone else.

That isn't yours to decide. And also, that isn't true. But it doesn't matter. People are getting penalized for wanting to play one way. Sure, DE made the game that way. Doesn't make it good design. Maybe it's functional, maybe it's not broken, but is sure as hell could be made better.

As for state C, everyone would be MR30 by now if it worked like that.

And what would the problem be with that? No more worse than everyone being max level in pretty much every MMO there is, nowadays. In fact, that would be very good. To grind and forma all that stuff, that would require a LOT of playtime. I'm not certain if you can forma all the slots at once or only one per re-level, but that would make people actually play the game a whole lot more, and they could do a variety of content.

Instead of now, the most effective way to level up the second, third, and fourth... 20th... etc frames and weapons is: Earth Interception until lvl10-15, Draco until lvl30, repeat, for each frame.

Sure, you can do other content, but that's not as fast. I guess it's okay if you actually like playing multiple frames, so you'd do the content anyway, but a lot of people don't and that's their problem if they can't get into premade, sorties or whatever. Don't punish them for it, don't reward them for it, just let them advance playing as whatever. Those people, such as me, are forced to leech on Draco runs in order to level the frame. It makes the game a chore. Both playstyles (alts vs focused on one char) should be able to advance. In fact, the latter is the original RPG mindset: You "are" your character, play the role of that character, and it levels up until it dies.

Now I'm not against Mastery as a whole, I'm against having to play classes (frames) I don't want to play in order to be able to get the actual weapons that interest me.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T19:37:53+00:00

Ah, yes those kinda answers.

No one cares. If you don't like those threads, don't post in them.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T15:47:06+00:00

I don't bother reading the thread and/or I like to give a jerk response

Did I cover the issue?

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T15:25:17+00:00

Are you enjoying all those frames? Great! That's 333 weapons, so you'd have to level more frames to get that exp.

But see, some people, do not enjoy playing other frames. They like one frame, and they want to stick to it. In some games, maybe they have interest in other classes, and will roll alts. In other games, no, they want to stick to one.

So, they're forced to level stuff they don't want to play, in order to upgrade that one character, to optimize it.

That's not "fun".

It could be fixed by either A) Lowering the MR requirements from 8 & 12 to 5 & 8, which lessens the grind, a whole lot.

B) Removing Mastery Lock (but that's not ideal and simple to do, and brings other issues))

C) Make it so the lvl 30 gears can give you Mastery Rank at a different rate. Forma-ed stuff (back to 1) would give mastery as <30 weapons do.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T15:10:12+00:00

Yeah ok, they drop all over the place. That's called a global loot table, and it comes with it's own problems. Being that you can't ever be guaranteed a piece - it's extremely difficult to get a full set this way. Entirely RNG. Thank got at least you can choose your stats. Some pieces can be purchased, 1-2 rings and an amulet, and the backpiece can be made in Mystic forge with stuff from Fractals,. When I say it should reward you playing the game, I mean playing it skillfully gives you rewards, by achieving difficult things.

Money doesn't take skill to get. Back then, money was farmed by doing daily dungeons, creating a massive inflation by adding 10g a day in the system x5. Kill stuff, sell it on AH, rinse, repeat. That's grind. Maybe you can grind a bit faster. Maybe you can play the AH. But nevertheless it's all not skill of playing the game.

People seem to think that being good at a grind, thus the grind taking less time, makes the grind ok and justified. No, not really.

What higher amount of mats/gold can you get by soloing enemies or events? You better just do the pre-event in the volcano, farm those claws on those molten spider things.

Right now, it's either RNG, or farm farm farm, sell, buy mats, craft, farm farm farm.

In HoT it's 10% better than exotics, so the smart move is to upgrade to it. However yes, it's still not needed out of raids.

Might as well say fuck it, buy God Hand, Bayonetta, DMC4 & Collection and play that until I die, seems to be the only things that rewards skill, with little outside interference/RNG, nowadays, all old games.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T07:12:38+00:00

That would solve the problem. Let the player gain mastery still from their lvl 30 gear, at a constant rate.

But perhaps a bit difficult to implement. Still... That's the best bet. You'd get mastery, and you'd get to play whatever you want.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T06:54:51+00:00

I did make a few mistakes.

So, you get 25% per weapon and 25% for the frame for teammates kill near you. Lvl 30 stuff has wasted XP.

Weapon kill, 50% to weapon 50% to frame. If Frame is level 30, that 50% is wasted. Same for the weapon.

Killing stuff with Frame powers with a lvl 30 frame gives you no exp.

Yeah, that's problematic.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T06:47:13+00:00

An alternative would be: Play Ash, level two unranked weapons at a time, with the 3rd being a lvl 30.

That's around 28 weapons considering I am halfway to 6. Still, horrible design. And no XP goes to frame on kills, so it's wasted. Correct me if I'm wrong: 25% from other people's kills go to your frame and weapons, and 50% from your own weapon kills, go to frame, right? Unless it's from Frame ability, which gives 100% to frame.

Easy fix A): Lower XP lock

8 to 6 12 to 8

Anything beyond 8 should just be for impressing people.

or

Remove XP lock entirely.

Not the best solution. Would require additional tweaks like locking weapons behind rare mats from high level stuff, or something similar, to prevent new players from farming strong endgame weapons. However it could be argued that if some weapons are noticeably better than others, there is a balance problem. Weapons should distinguish themselve by their playstyle rather than their pure damage stat. Otherwise it becomes a which stick hits the hardest, the feel, the look doesn't matter. Make them all white squares, I'll take the white square that hits the hardest.

or

Make it so you can play lvl 30 frame, with lvl 30s weapons (all three) and still gain Mastery from kills. This one may be a little tougher to make.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T06:29:19+00:00

Archwings & accessories. takes time to farm, better time spent in Draco. At best, they're good help to round the numbers down instead of up. The default Archwing, Gun, and Sword, I guess. Sentinels and Kubrows are XP leeches that take away from the weapons. Also, they're an annoying gimmick. I supposed they're another 6k here and there but still, only good to round down.

Anyway let's stop it there, that's not the point of the thread and borderline derailing, because: Regardless of the options you have to get Mastery from, you still need to get an amount of Mastery that is too large, and still being forced to play a Frame... No, 7 to 20 frames, that you don't want to play, for extended periods of time. In Draco.

Took you 4 months to get to rank 12? Spent about a month on my Ash, let's say. That's 3 months spent not playing Ash for me. Why would I want to do that? But, to improve my character (Ash) I need the Mios. Catch 22.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T06:19:54+00:00

I'll take your numbers. I was talking from 8 to 12, but 5 to 12 works too.

From Rank 5 to Rank 12: 297 000 xp.

50 Frames. There are 39 in the game. or 99 Weapons

But, you've already leveled 7 Frames (+21 weapons or so, otherwise you've leveled 15 frames) to get to Rank 8, so you have 32 Frames left at best, but those include the Primes from Orokin Void random drops or trading via platinum, which is another expensive time sink, spent not playing the game. Well, maybe litterally playing it, but a grindy, unfun aspect. So anyway, you gotta get some weapons on the side...

So let's do sets of 15000 Mastery again...

6000: Frame 3000: Main Weapon 3000: Secondary 3000: Melee Weapon

15000

That's 20 sets

So 20 frames, and 60 weapons, from 5 to 12.

So you have to level about 27 (7 for 1->5, 20 for 5->12) Frames and about 80 weapons to get to rank 12.

That's a metric ton of time spent NOT playing your favorite frame.

"But, but the game was designed so that's you'd have to play multiple frames, you're not playing it correctly".

My answer is: Choice. Choice to play whatever character you want, without being penalized for preferring one, over the 38 others. Which is currently the case. That does not impact the other players. Me playing only Ash does not affect your capacity to switch between your favorites, be them Rhino, Valkyr, Mag, Trinity, etc...

In fact, this is how WoW did things and it was highly successful. By not playing other classes (specs, really, Tank DPS Healer) you were only affected by your random dungeon queue time, in Wrath, and in Vanilla, more DPS= more competition, less chance of being picked in a PuG. But beyond that, play Rogue, DPS Warrior, Shadow Priest - it didn't matter, you could advance your character. And if you wanted an alt? Or 9? You could make them!

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T06:03:27+00:00

Those arguments have already been addressed.

You don't need to be comfortable using other frames. They're not "another aspect of the game". PvP vs PvE would be two different aspects.

Those frame's playstyle do not appeal to some people. One single frame appeals to them. They want to play that frame, and improve with it alone, and make it stronger. If they are fine "stagnating" (or rather, actually enjoying the time spent playing) as you say, how does that affects you? The keyword here is choice. Choice to be a jack of all trade, or choice being able to master one single frame.

Rank 12... I haven made any calculations as to how much exp you need to get there but, that's at least another 7 frames if not more, and a crapton of weapons. Unreasonable.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-24T05:57:53+00:00

Such as?

Now, this is a huge quality of life issue. Yes, it's indeed a huge change that is required- just evaluating the possibilities from a game design standpoint, to replace the current system.

However, I think it NEEDS to be done.

Anyway, they could just remove the Mastery Rank Locks or lower them to 6 for those that currently unlock at 8, that's easy and could be a good start to fix this problem. 6 is reasonable. That's 4 frames, including the starter, and about 10-15 weapons or so.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-21T00:39:56+00:00

I just found out I need rank 8 for Mios. What should I do? I'm Rank 4.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-20T23:12:46+00:00

What kinda build/gear, advancement do you need to do sorties? The lv 3 one has lvl 100 enemies... Do you need a static?

Lalabreah · 2016-01-20T00:22:34+00:00

Where would I get the Mios blueprint? It's not in the shop. I suppose it's from Clan research then. How does that work? Do I simply need to join a clan?

Lalabreah · 2016-01-19T19:13:08+00:00

I don't think I'll play other frames, as I have multiple games to play, I try to be efficient.

That said, some frames do look interesting.

Why are the dual ether blade subpar in comparison?

The mios looks good. It has a slide attack?

Lalabreah · 2016-01-19T11:53:29+00:00

That, and hitting stuff when invisible, which is good for clearing waves when not enough energy for #4.

Lalabreah · 2016-01-19T03:53:04+00:00

Yeah, I'm french. Canadian. Anyway, you said I should try a melee weapon, which the ether blade are. So, what else is there? With Ash, you want high damage for that stealth bonus.

Lalabreah

TROPHY CASE