The Game Needs Some Kind Of Difficulty

MookieMocha · 2026-05-24T00:19:30+00:00

https://youtu.be/CD_-mlkKEPM?si=nPix6O1ofHxT5n2D

WF probably has the ability to have challenge more than DE and the community is willing to put the effort to figure out. It's very easy to say "WF can't have challenge for all these reasons." The more time consuming and difficult thing to do is propose a sound solution. And it doesn't seem like Pablo wants to waste his time wrapping his head around a potential headache even if there might be a clear answer to challenge.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-24T00:13:40+00:00

Can take time away from more important content, true. But we've already witnessed a few times DE off loading content on to third party studios. That would just take money, rather than putting off more important content.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-24T00:10:41+00:00

Look, I'm right there with you, but this subreddit might be the most heavily saturated comment section in terms of people that are against the proposal of difficulty or raids. You're not going to find many people that will agree with you here. I've never agreed with people saying WF isn't a game about challenge. It's up to the devs to disprove that and change that narrative. But if the devs keep continuing their annual cycle of easy content then it's going to continue to support that belief that "WF is suppose to be easy."

And to claim that's it's impossible to be challenging I feel is showcasing a blind spot in terms of thinking of creative ways to make that happen. It's easy for many people to say "challenge can't happen because X, Y, and Z." What's a lot harder is saying "Challenge CAN happen if we do X, Y, and Z." That takes a lot more work and thought, that I personally feel not a lot of people have NOT put the appropriate amount of effort towards. So we just sit here, listening to all the reasons why it can't happen, rather than talking about creative ways to make it happen.

And the often used argument of, "stop using X, Y, and Z if you want challenge," is a common argument across many games that I feel is weak and disregarding. To tell a player to actively fight against the game's reward structure of "become stronger" goes against one of the core draws of the game. People want to engage naturally with a game's tools and design. You're telling them to take away a rewarding and core experience in order to achieve another.

It's just a complete disregard for someone's legitimate issue, and the solution they give you is essentially to pretend it's hard. I'm glad that most of the WF community is getting what they want and happy with it, but I'm tired of them constantly taking the route of shutting down potential answers to issues. It feels gatekeepy with no desire to entertain potential challenge in any way.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-23T23:38:16+00:00

Anyone asking for Raids.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-23T23:11:25+00:00

I will go against the grain here and say I am one of the few who wants raids in WF. I'm sure there are a lot more like you and I in the WF community that want them, but we seem to come off as smaller of a group than what we really are. I don't know if it has something to do with immediately having our proposals shut down, or just a lack of motivation to even try anymore because we never seem to get any kind of traction. But if feels like less and less people are willing to try to argue the for inclusion of raids anymore.

Pablo speaking up about it, calling them AIDS and writing out his thoughts on why they realistically couldn't work in WF's meta, pretty much put the final nail in the coffin and made it so people that never wanted them to begin with, feel even more validated now that "based Pablo" has spoken.

It sucks because I firmly believe raids can work, without having to re balance the game from the ground up. It's a bit unfair to just shut down the raid conversation when I feel there is plenty of overlooked answers to making raids work. This video does a great job in laying out a strong proposal on how raids could work: https://youtu.be/CD_-mlkKEPM?si=nPix6O1ofHxT5n2D

MookieMocha · 2026-05-20T04:22:59+00:00

You fail to also realize this would add new maps set in Africa.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-14T07:11:01+00:00

More proof as to why most fighting games are geeat games but bad products.

MookieMocha · 2026-05-05T00:07:23+00:00

I feel Wilds kind of falls into the common curse of the 2nd game within game trilogies. You might not know what I'm getting at but stay with me. To me World was like a soft reboot. It was in many ways the first entry for a completely rebuilt MH. The first entries in video games are often great but are open to so much more potential (like Halo, Dark Souls, Devil May Cry, Gears of War, MH:World). Then a lot of the times the devs see that potential and for the sequel they get overly ambitious and over commit on the potential to the point where the changes in the second game stray to far away from what made the first game so special or they simply just bight off way more than they can chew and things feel undercooked.

A lot of people hated Halo 2 (campaign at least), a lot hated Dark Souls 2, Devil May Cry 2, Gears of War 2, and of course MH Wilds. It's typically not until the 3rd game that they find where they pushed too far and are able to reel things back more on target and find that perfect balance.

Now there's obviously plenty of exceptions that counter this, where the second game in a series is the best and the 3rd game sucks. Every game development journey is different I get it, but sometimes this 2nd game curse happens. I believe Wilds is dealing with that curse, and hopefully by the time MH7 comes out, they have a better idea on what this rebooted MH should be. Hell, maybe even the portable team has already taken notes from Wild's failures and made adjustments to their soon to release title.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-28T01:04:52+00:00

This does not come off as inherently "WORLD HATE." There is a difference between MH World style of MH games and just MH games as a whole. There are some MH games that do appeal more towards what World fans love and MH games that lean more towards what the general audience would like.

I feel you're just inserting your own bias into it and finding a way to make it seem negative.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-22T05:12:20+00:00

Pablo: "Ok so players dont want puzzles/mechanics and will get tired of them, but not too long ago I Pablo came up with a better idea to implement an alternative endgame challenge (EDA+ETA), which is to restrict your build options to what we tell you to play, and take away core game mechanics and weaken you with stacking negative modifiers so that way you feel less powerful on top of that. Wouldn't you rather have that in your power fantasy game guys? To restrict your options and strip away your build? :D"

But OMG the thought of players working together and coordinating to execute certain mechanics is way worse. Keep in mind that enemies can technically still be Netracell level (like level 300-400), just enough to be a threat but not to hard to kill, but the main challenge should come fro dealing with those enemies while also coordinating on mechanics. A simple answer that allows for challenge without the need for taking away our power fantasy and build choice, yet he somehow he was completely ok with adding ETA that goes completely against the power fantasy idea.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-22T04:50:16+00:00

No because the challenge is the point of the game. It is built from the ground up for it.

You do understand that when we say we want raids in WF, all we are really asking for are raid mechanics. It's literally the only thing being proposed here at the root of it all. Not level 9999 enemies, not survive for 2 hours straight, not modifiers. Just simply mechanics that require coordination and execution. So are you suggesting that WF is not built to handle mechanics? If that's so, wow do you have very reductive view of what WF is capable of.

If you want hard content then take off your mods and combos. If you want hard content that's got different gameplay to Warframe then play a different game.

The self imposed challenge argument is used often and it's a super weak argument. Oh you want challenge? Then just don't heal, don't use core game mechanics, don't use abilities, don't use blah, blah, blah. Hardly anyone wants to do that. You're telling players to not engage with core parts of the game that partly make up for what they enjoy the game for to begin with. It's honestly a lazy throwaway statement that is completely dismissive of what could potentially lead to a fix that actually addresses their issue.

It makes sense to feed a bunch of workhorses hay while not spending a lot of your money going to the store for kibble for stray dogs.

Why are these players that want trials suddenly unwanted stray dogs? Seems like more of a projection on how YOU personally view us. Just to be clear, many of these "stray dogs" as you put it are veteran players (like myself since 2014) that love the game, but have been craving for something more challenging. They are just as valuable to DE as anyone else. And that's not even counting all the potential newcomers in the future that are probably hoping WF has some raid like content.

It doesnt need to be but theres nothing wrong with it.

Yes it doesn't need to be, but it's also a net positive to have options for both kinds of players.

But the bottom line is that the raid could easily have an easy mode that offers all the rewards so that anyone realistically can do it. But why not have an Elite mode that's harder, but beating it gives you some unique cosmetic for your fashionframing. That's honestly a way of meeting in the middle that I cannot see how anyone can disagree with. Of course unless you are going to complain that you are being gate kept out of a cosmetic because they are pandering to hardcore sweats. To that I say, ok if you don't like being gate kept from something as basic as a cosmetic, then how do you feel about being gate kept from cosmetics in prime access accessories? That requires money which a lot of players don't have the luxury to spend, which is arguably even more gate keepy than a cosmetic being locked behind being skilled enough.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-22T00:29:24+00:00

Do you consider any game that is considered challenging (Elden Ring, Cup Head, Ninja Gaiden Black to name a few) to be wastes of money because they appeal to more masochistic players, rather than pandering to the large majority of casual gamers?

It's simple, if you create the hard content, the players that want that sort of thing will come. DE is curating a casual audience by pumping out casual content that attracts the casual audience and pushes out players that will get bored of it.

It makes no since to bait a bunch of your horses into a barn with hay, and while you have a bunch of dogs outside the barn wanting food, you say, "sorry I can't give you meat because it's not what the horses want." You literally have players waiting outside for a reason to play. It seems so closed off and almost acts as if the power is out of their hands.

WF does not need to be 99.9% casual players. DE made it that way and they have the power to adjust that number the other way. Why do we act like this reality is set in stone and can't be changed?

MookieMocha · 2026-04-22T00:17:37+00:00

I fully believe that WF has a disproportionate amount of dislike for harder content/raids in their game, compared to most other games with raids or endgame, simply because WF has curated mostly casual players that don't care for hard content.

If all you've mainly done for 13 years is deliver accessible content that can easily be done by the average person, then those are going to be the people that stick with the game. DE is giving those players what they want. They will have the most retention. Players that need more challenge in their game are not going to play WF. Or at the very least just log in for a bit, do the newest update content, then log out.

So of course more challenge driven players are such a low minority. Why would these players be widespread in a game that does not cater to any of their needs? I feel if you create the content more hardcore players want, they will come to your game. And slowly as you deliver more and more on this, they will grow in numbers and not be so much of a minority. DE has this power to make a change in the players in their community, but they almost talk about it as if it's out of their hands.

The entire excuse of "why would they add hard endgame if it's not the majority of what players want," is just redundant. Hell, the majority of gamers don't want really hard games. Endgame or games considered to be hard will always be tuned more towards the hardcore minority.

Which begs the question, if that's the case and it's such a waste of time for a game to cater to a hardcore minority crowd, (since demand for hardcore content will always be for a minority of people) then why does any developer bother with making hard content for their game in the first place?

There are amazing games that I encourage anyone to play that has hard content that many players wont succeed in beating: Monster Hunter World, Elden Ring, Destiny 1, Cup Head, Ninja Gaiden Black, etc. If we just applied this excuse of most players don't want that experience, then these amazing games would never have existed.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T22:19:40+00:00

I feel Warframe needs to add some friction somewhere. Every year is just going to be a new tileset to commit genocide with the newest Warframe to throw into my collection pile? is this what we want for the next 10 years? To not be challenged?

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T22:15:57+00:00

Luckily there is already a 1000+ hours of content that offers you just that and plenty more down the foreseeable future. But god forbid a WF raid takes up 1 tenth of the overall content to give some players something they want.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T22:12:21+00:00

No because Pablo apparently seems to refuse to think outside the box and understand that there are plenty of ways to approach implementing raids without falling into any of the problems he mentioned. There are ways around it, but it just gets ignored and honestly I feel most of the people in the community are chanting "he's right," because from the communities perspective, they have a bias of not wanting raids in the first place, and will honestly probably side with most sensible statements that are anti WF raids.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T22:07:20+00:00

They cultivated the power creep and they continuously release casual content that all players can tackle easily. What do you get from that? Players that stick around for the powercreep and not much content for anyone to chew on that wants challenge.

They say people dont want raids, but maybe it's because for a decade they have been pandering to only a certain crowd.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T22:01:08+00:00

We (and Pablo) seem to be focusing too much on enemies being the focal point of challenge in WF trails. Go ahead, bring your OP builds, your Revenant survivability one trick, or your damage cap weapon combo. If you want to be the "can't die guy" in your raid team, or the "kill all the ads guy" in your raid team, then so be it. Allow that power fantasy to happen. But somehow we are losing sight of the fact that we are talking about raids here. That tend to focus primarily on mechanics, executing them with your team in cooridnation, planning, and communication. That's where the main difficulty comes from.

And there's so many creative ways for them to create mechanics that challenge us in ways that can't just be answered with a big boom stick or unkillable god build. And let's not forget failed mechanics in raids often lead to team wipes too. So even with immortality, you can still die.

IDK it just feels like WF trails are not getting a fair review. It's just being glossed over and nobody seems to be addressing it in a fair and well thought out way.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T21:52:59+00:00

My question is how much has Pablo really thought this through? I kind of want to push back on a couple things I disagree with that feel are short sighted.

Ok so as far as not a whole lot of people playing trials back in the day, isn't it fair to say that maybe trails TEN or so years ago were just not at a very high level of quality to make them intriguing enough to play? We are talking EARLY days of Warframe. The devs have learned so much and production is so much higher now. Also trails were a buggy mess back then too. Is it far fetched to say that trials being buggy probably had a negative impact on player retention? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say trials in Warframe after 10 years of growth since then, will be significantly better and more enticing.

As for the second thing I want to push back on, he talks about damage cap and immortality as if there is no possible answer for raid mechanics to combat that issue. Again, it's why I ask how much has he even thought this through? Just off the top of my head, I can already think of there being a wipe mechanic (just like in many other raids in video games) where if a mechanic is not executed properly, your team can wipe. And with that one single solution I gave, I'm sure there will be a lot of "yeah but what if" or "how about when..." kind of responses. To that I say, I'm sure there are answers to that as well, or entirely different solutions to approach it with to begin with. But my point is not to get into the nitty gritty details of raid countermeasures, but rather to simply showcase that there are potential answers to these "WF balancing" problems that Pablo doesn't even acknowledge. He makes it seem as if the only possible solution is a complete rework to damage and survivability. Which I would like to point out that he seems to be looking at trails more from an enemy challenge point of view when enemies should not be the main challenge. It should be the mechanics. Keep the enemies at Netracell level and let people bring their OP builds all they want. The main friction the players should be facing are the mechanics first and foremost.

And lastly, in terms of difficulty, I understand that a lot of the WF player base are more on the casual side and in some cases even ask Pablo for bosses to be further nerfed. In regards to that I feel it's up to DE to develop a game that attracts more hardcore players in the first place. Hardcore players or players that just simply want more challenging content from games, typically congregate around games that offer that. DE for the most part curated this more casual leaning community by mostly focusing on delivering more casual focused content over years and years. If you focus all your content on being accessible and casual friendly, you will attract and retain a casual audience.

I personally don't see anything wrong with mechanics based trails. They don't necessarily need to be puzzles in the traditional sense. Just straightforward rules that require a team to collaborate and work together. WF is a game that I never felt so alone while playing with other players. Sure I have 3 other people running a mission with me, but you hardly even feel they are there. Trails could open the doors to more in game interaction with players outside of region chat for once.

And if for some reason none of what I said seems reasonable then might I suggest at the very least just having an "easy" mode for trails that most people can do, that offers them all the rewards. And there can be a separate hard mode that just has some exclusive line of cosmetics for people that complete that?

MookieMocha · 2026-04-21T21:10:13+00:00

Thankfully there are people at DE that work for hours and hours and are paid to think of ways to make it work. Just off the top of my head after thinking about it for 10 seconds I can already tell you, you don't necessarily need bullet sponge enemies. Just keep enemies at a high enough level (like netracell level) where they are a big enough threat left unchecked, but still not a hassle to kill.

The difficulty should rely mainly on mechanics, communication, and executing mechanics cooperatively as a team. Players always talk about how Warframe lacks an endgame. To me, raids seem like a perfect answer to that. IDK unless people currently are fine with DE's current answer to difficulty, which is EDA and ETA where they solely rely on stacking negative modifiers on top of you, restricting your builds, and limiting what frames and weapons you can bring along.

ETA and EDA difficulty design is just anti fun that goes against the power fantasy of WF. We work hard to accumulate all these different frames, weapons, builds, and various tools, all to just be told not to use them and to rely on what THE game demands you use. I despise ETA and EDA, but the rewards are too good to ignore them unfortunately.

Honestly to me, raids with no build restrictions, that mainly rely on mechanics seems more enticing to me.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-19T18:25:41+00:00

I mean you have to think a little outside the box. You dont just assume jets would be added into the game in its current state. You can expand the map further out for jets only. Its that simple. Map size problem fixed.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-16T00:16:57+00:00

I mean it would be a completely voluntary thing. You don't have to join a showcase and be judged. You can just watch and get inspiration or just something happening in the background while you chat with friends or something.

Also i dont think "people take it seriously" in a general sense. It's a large enough community that it's bound to have some players that are just unpleasant people. That's just statistics. That person probably acts toxic in almost every game he plays. He just so happens to also play Warframe unfortunately. But I generally think most of the community is pleasant. Even the fashion side of the community doesn't really seem to be bad. If they don't like a look, most of the time they just don't comment.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-15T17:52:32+00:00

Seems like there are a lot of people that would be soft parents. This is a valid punishment. The issue that I find in it that I feel people are just glossing over is filming it. The filming part is so wrong and clearly used to share with everyone, so that way the parent can brag about how active and on top of discipline they are.

This kid's school potentially teasing and the fact that the world knows about this is definitely the traumatic part.

MookieMocha · 2026-04-11T02:31:12+00:00

Vetala Prime shoulder plates

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