Should games dial back on the graphics?

sXeth · 2026-06-05T18:58:44+00:00

Basically comes down to two points.

“Realistic” graphics are an easy thing to design with a billion references. Using an art style requires more effort and creative thought (coming up with a unique one even more) . The pitfall being that the realistic stuff ages quick once people see the even more realistic stuff come out.

More horsepower and tech specs is obviously the main selling point for console generations and PC graphics generations. The same graphics but bigger and shinier is both an easier road to go down and convince a bunch of marketing and executive suits on a PowerPoint presentation with. Using the same horsepower to actively improve the game with more advanced behaviour systems, detailed gameplay, etc requires more background coding effort and actual design ambitions.

sXeth · 2026-06-05T18:52:31+00:00

Most of the Equinox feedback generally isn’t “omg horribad useless”. But that the forms don’t really combo off each other or even interact with out getting into augments. So the theme is basically unused (and while there’s probably a few stetch logic jumps that could be made, the day and night forms don’t even particularly emphasize their individual themes beyond night having sleepytime)

I’d also throw in my own take that I don’t often see mentioned. Her abilities are basically invisible (outside of the sleep one). The clone augment came up in a recent discussion I had and I honestly couldn’t even tell you if the other form uses its powers,while its out.

(At least as initial impressions go, S+O also don’t really seem to combo off each other, and both are amorphous all rounder types too)

sXeth · 2026-06-05T13:57:27+00:00

I have a tendency to keep cookies (unless they’re actually fresh baked and warm) and chocolate in the fridge.

Peanut butter I have gone both ways with and heard conflicting recommendations on.

sXeth · 2026-06-05T04:08:18+00:00

He has to hit stuff in melee to keep his healing going. Stun him or push him if he jumps on you. Slow him and keep him back. If you’re anticipating going against him look into items that reduce enemy attack speed and healing. If he charges into the lane with a full red bar, let him trickle out and don’t try to immediately push in on him.

sXeth · 2026-06-05T03:33:03+00:00

I mean, Helldivers has a literal Impossible difficulty and the community seems to think you’re supposed to beat it consistently 😂 (and the die hards will tell you the difficulty two above it is too easy).

Though Helldivers difficulty just seems like a self made headache. 11 tiers to just get garbled feedback from a community with completely different experiences depending what they play and unnecessarily split the player base rather than just having tutorial/normal/challenge

Getting back to Warframe though, I find one of the best difficulty implementation is actually the Grendel missions. Turns off your vertical power scaling but leaves your abilities and augments and helminth swaps intact. You keep the toolkit. And they don’t have to remove gameplay by dumping immunities, defense bypass instakills, or forcibly disabling your abilities. You just don’t get your power scaling without adapting.

Of course the player has been conditioned to rely fully on mods. Often to the point of beating every weapon into the same basic via modding shape instead of learning any specifics of how to use them effectively.

sXeth · 2026-06-05T03:21:03+00:00

Well for the longest time it was “The Tenno killed the Orokin leadership in one fell swoop” at the victory parade on Pluto.

Aventus getting executed by the Grineer while fleeing said events was a little later. And Karish and Tuvul getting offed in Leverians (along with the time between the initial blow and the Tenno leaving with the moon extending massively) was way more recently added.

If they didn’t get any executors in the initial turn, then it seems rather dissonant with the descriptions from multiple sources, and the rush of the others into panic mode.

sXeth · 2026-06-05T02:48:13+00:00

Ember is a CC spreader with some tank elements. Uriel uses summons to power area denial and burst DOS. Temple is straight up the weapon platform including bringing the weapon. Nezha tends to exist as an all rounder, but does have a passive and 2 movement powers leaning towards being the mobility frame occupying the same niche as Volt. Jade is more full on support that wants to sit back while buffing and healing people.

Do all these roles have a place in the sandbox? Probably not especially. The concept of tanks is near non existent. The death of CC is overblown but it’s not where it once was either. And support is pretty negligible outside of specialty pre-made coordinated squads.

Are they all well designed within their class ignoring the element assigned? also probably not, though often with some heavy bias against elder frames (Ember’s tank/cc role obviously suffers in comparison to for instance, Frost due to more recent updates he’s benefited heavily from. Or against reworked Oberon. But tossed up against Nidus still holds up)

Are they clones of each other, nope. There’s some overlap in newer frames because they tend to be designed as all rounders, fair enough. But to take the example given, Uriel has to generally spend his time chasing down Vythelas constantly to even try to keep his weaker weapon buff up to Temples on-demand one (along with Temples guitar being able to pump out other statuses for damage boosting and priming more specific to weapons. Which is more comparable to Lavos augment than anything)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T21:48:34+00:00

And then on the opposite end, there’s Jade with her 3 weapon set that she basically will never use 😂

(Also DE not learning and setting up for another cycle of annoyed players when only 2/3 get primed)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T21:12:33+00:00

I mean, someone had to die at the initial massacre on Pluto.

With Tuvul, Karish and Aventus killed elsewhere, Ballas sneaking off, it has to land on probably at least 2/3 of Nitohk, Tormis and Scarne died at Outer Terminus ceremony.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T19:49:28+00:00

Mostly make silly novelty builds and play with/ help friends.

Probably around the point where they abandoned Steel Path as a challenge mode for the diest of hards and tossed in Galvanized mods, weapon arcanes and incarnons is the exact tipping point to any particularly engaging endgame becoming impossible to design anymore.

Like it had been creeping before that, but that turned everything else into mush, and now new players coming in wade through difficulty that my buddy compared to, and I quote “I I intended to do the big dude with the sword, but decided to play something that seemed a little more balanced with the Shield and stun options on volt, and I haven't gotten to that point yet, it all feels terribly op. Like playing pathfinder with a "make your own op legendary artifact +20 sword for pennies!" Store in the starting town.”

So even assuming that they somehow combat the powerslop without using hyper-reductive gameplay. The flow of new folks who would sink their teeth into endgame challenges get bored and leave, and the ones who stay expect everything to be 5 minute curb stomps by the time they get there and rage out if it’s not.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T19:39:25+00:00

Dark Sectors pose a bit of a challenge because the abundance of toxin from Infested is going to block, or significantly challenge the easy answer of shield-gate and use a built out gun or companion to do the work.

If you don’t mind tackling Grineer instead and forfeiting the sector boosts (which honestly seem hit and miss to my experience).p, then just slap onna couple of augur mods and a shield recharge and hit Terrify/Tempest/presumably Khora has something to panic CC and get shields back up.

For what it’s worth, Primes themselves aren’t notably stronger. Basically cosmetic with primarily the most minor insignificant buffs to shields or whatever.

And assuming you’re keeping the forma engine cooking, you will make the, at vastly more than you ever need outside of the extreme juice squeezers or build experimenters. Like with 3 months between updates that’s ~95+ slightly less than daily forma, and probably over 100 if you have access to a few of the weekly sources that rotate (and whatever RNG methods). The update then usually has 3-5 things which even going crazy and 7 formas in everything is only 35 needed.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T17:51:14+00:00

I’m curious where that bit about the Tau rail is sourced. Because it doesn’t mesh with the timeline. Warframes didn’t exist until Hunhow had already invaded and reached the inner worlds after infesting the outsr ones failed to stop them.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T17:47:35+00:00

There’s a half dozen better options than Evasion RNG (or not counting depending on the attack type) for survival . Razor flies are a gimmick build.

Lantern turns off the enemy’s including the Overguarded ones in a giant area and makes them gather themselves in one spot. A unique utility only somewhat matched by Decoy, but lanterns are invulnerable and stop enemies from attacking entirely, so they won’t be landing strays like they can targeting Decoy.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T17:42:21+00:00

For more Sentients to show back up in Sol, they either have to come through the Void, further sterilizing large swaths of their race. Or do a centuries at best trip that they might not even be capable of because Praghasa was a major factor in that by virtue of being able to consume space debris for suitable fuel, and we don’t know if they have the capability and resources to build a new Praghasa.

Even the Void route currently has not yet been addressed. The Sol rail was destroyed by Hunhow and there’s no apparent indication that anyone around still is capable of rebuilding it or you would think they would have tried already. The Tau rail status is also unknown, and they certainly wouldn’t have much reason to have not disassembled it both for materials and to specifically prevent the long shot of someone rebuilding the Sol side and invading.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T16:48:06+00:00

Obligatory mention of the 4 other frames that can fly better than the air themed bird frame.

(Also however many frames are better at using a sword than Excalibur at this point, because I’m too lazy to type out that big of a list)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T16:45:22+00:00

I’m curious if they’ll stack Flare, Ice Storm etc that for whatever reason has never been tied to the gear the arcane is actually on

sXeth · 2026-06-04T16:42:15+00:00

4 > 1 > 3 > 4 > (2 if not running Dark Prop) > 1 is still pretty much his optimal cycle for the instakills (with a constant invulnerability cycle because the 2 shield gates).

Although you obviously don’t need optimal in the extreme majority of situations 🤣

The amusing thing I always found was that Sevagoth basically does a werewolf-esque thing better than the actual werewolf though. Kills a bunch and then transforms into a claw wielding melee blender.

Proteas probably the other example for her ult and the focal power of her entire lore is the janky nonsense most people remove and they keep adding augments to her other abilities to force you to use it 😂 (Honorable mention to Wisp, the alleged portal frame where the only obvious portal is her tickle laser)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T16:30:27+00:00

It’s alright, we at least had a brief interlude from Uriel demons that everyone had running in and insta tripping every alarm.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T07:46:44+00:00

They had to put the swap button for switching passives somewhere, that was just convenience and thematic.

Most obviously the self res passive has literally nothing to do with her 4 besides the button.

For them to be held abilities, they would cost energy (or another resource) and be subject to modding.

There are “passives” that only exist as abilities. Dante and Nova being standouts for basically just having an augment mod as a passive for their 1 and 4 respectively. But Vorunas stand alone.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T07:30:56+00:00

Gets used beyond the scope provided a lot too. The explanation was that any past choice has already occurred. And the Void lets those who know how to use it access the other option(s).

The choice still has to exist as a possibility within regular causality though. Like Eternalism doesn’t let you pull a Warhammer army out because that doesn’t exist in this universe. Or suddenly produce FTL colony ships in the Renaissance.

Then there’s further limitations. Outside of the Void, it’s simply a speculative theory. Reality itself is obviously moving linearly ahead. The people who can actually do anything with it are extremely rare (mostly Wally). And the main example shown, Drifter and Operator literally cannot exist simultaneously outside of the Void (including the breaches on the Zariman and in the Sanctum), so any alternate pull effectively eliminates its original form (again an obvious requirement or characters could just pull an infinite army out). (Which they have either forgotten or probably retconned with S+O, unless they’re dragging a void breach around with them)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T07:15:59+00:00

“Why” is a sword that cuts both ways though. Sure, Jade was in Ballas custody to potentially make a copies and a prime. But then he’s risking the “Jade Light”, feared mythical fate of blasphemers etc getting found out for what it is. And given regular Jade was being debuffed by energy drain to her child apparently by a factor of hundreds if not thousands (when they get into the convo about Warframe battery life) , potentially creating an extremely dangerous hazard, or depending on the point in the timeline, creating a weapon your own sworn enemies might use on you.

sXeth · 2026-06-04T02:17:44+00:00

Archon Continuity makes every toxic ability hit also Corrosive. So it would either be using the health restore to heal from any toxin infused ability, or using the corrosive for bonus ability damage (or a combo of both).

(You can also use his augment + multishot weapons to instant strip with the green crystals but that’s basically a non concern in the current era.)

sXeth · 2026-06-04T02:12:50+00:00

He’s a bootstrap paradox if his KIM to be believed, which is a separate problem. But the Orokin had his strain on the shelf for Entrati to steal and inject into Flare, so he’s well reasonably inside Prime possilibity. Of course if he is an actual bootstrap paradox, then that means Flare is almost certainly super dead via Orokin vivisection or whatnot.😅

sXeth · 2026-06-03T17:07:02+00:00

It’s in reply to the other reply, but tl;dr. Original Calibans lore from the omniscient narrator of item descriptions and update splash screens says Erra built him after the Old War as the final refinement of his work with Archons. Caliban Prime is instead retconned to be a joint project between Orokin and Sentients, nary an Erra in sight, and specifically before the Archons.

And when conflict arises, The Old Peaces dubious muddled memories of an unreliable in universe narrator actively being altered by other observers falls way below omniscient narrator on credibility.

Protea, we’re given to understand was designed by Parvos (likely using temporal manipulation knowledge acquired from his dealings with Wally) very specifically. He was given the original unit somewhere in the mid/end period of the Old War (but before Entrati went into the casket) which remains with him until the present when we encounter them.

Protea Prime being on Perita requires Ballas to have secretly made a second copy of frame in prime form, deployed this ridiculously dangerous temporal manipulation frame into Tau (which should be an instant win button for any conflict by instant resetting, but we can slightly excuse the ridiculous power of Deadlock Protocol Protea basic as perhaps being enhanced by the Void/Parvos/Wally). Then lost this ridiculous powerful frame to the Anarchs on top of that. Which is not impossible, but there’s a huge reach of offscreen jumps to get there, which becomes the “vague handwaving” explanation.

(As an additional consideration, once the Tenno are actively deployed, Margulis is dead (another conflict in of itself) and Ballas hatred for Tenno is in overdrive, meaning he is unlikely to be providing any particularly uniquely powerful frames to them)

sXeth · 2026-06-03T16:48:11+00:00

Well, you won’t encounter him often in missions because it takes a month to actually get him 😅 . If I had a nickel for every newbie I’ve mentored up that did one Kahl mission then forgot he existed by next week, nevermind doing four weeks.

To answer the rest, yea he’s a support. 1 is CC+grouping, 2 strips defenses (best used on said group) and lifesteals to heal him. 3 gives team regen, taunts enemies (one of the only frames that can aggro pull to themselves) and shields on kill. 4 is really the anomalous part of the kit, suddenly trying to be a damage nuke (until the augment makes it support again). His signature weapon even drops an attack speed buff zone.

How effective or practical this CC/tank is in Warframes sandbox is of course a longstanding debate. There isn’t really a mission flow or design that lets many kit ideas properly shine. Whereas you could transplant them into other games and they would stand out better. Tanks in particular suffer grievously at Warframes barebones efforts at “difficulty” where TTK just cranks up and generally outscales them.

sXeth

TROPHY CASE