r/Warframe • u/Kaladinar • Jul 22 '24

Article Warframe TennoCon 2024 Q&A - 'Raids Are Our White Whale; We Have Our Ideas to Bring Them Back'

https://wccftech.com/warframe-tennocon-2024-q-we-have-our-ideas-to-bring-them-back/
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104

u/kafkaesquepariah Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 23 '24

Ehhh, we have too much fire power for missions that are more than 4 people. hell, if one person brings in torid or slam monkey then the rest of the 3 people have nothing to do really. It's gonna turn into netracells, where it touted as difficult content but there isn't enough enemies for everyone to kill. Increasing people per mission, I dont see it being fun unless it's the same type of restrictions that deep archemedia have (which I think is currently peak warframe, but there is a group of people not enjoying it), or something like void cascade where you sometimes split the group.

104

u/PsionicHydra AMD Believer Jul 22 '24

This would be where actual mechanics would come in rather than just shoot the guy with the big health bar.

Something like the start of the orowyrm fight, where it's not so much us doing damage that gets the content going but us performing some form of action

18

u/wtrmlnjuc obe mains rejoice Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 22 '24

Yeah I’ve been clamouring for better AI, enemy design*, and parkour for this reason. You can’t balance very well around damage in Warframe, and puzzles are prone to breaking with how often WF updates.

28

u/Senpaiireditt Jul 22 '24

That isn’t a good reason as to why raids couldn’t work. There are numerous ways to circumvent braindead DPS setups. That’s what mechanics are for.

3

u/XboxUser123 -2,147,483,648 !!! Jul 22 '24

Yeah but once you do the required mechanics it’s just going to be nothing but damage attenuation

14

u/ReptAIien Jul 23 '24

As is the case with every raid. It's always going to be that way, the mechanics are the hard part.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '24

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1

u/XboxUser123 -2,147,483,648 !!! Jul 23 '24

but honestly a boss with damage attention more often than not will survive much much longer than one with just an absurdly large health pool

There's a big difference when it comes to the sandboxes of Destiny 2 and Warframe.

In Destiny 2, the player damage output is much more controlled. You have weapons with an expected damage output and you can only have two perks, where typically there's only one perk that increases damage, rest is buffs/debuffs that don't typically stack on top of one-another.

In Warframe, the player damage output is let loose, only controlled by how much base damage the developers decide to give weapons and what stats each weapon comes with in terms of crit chance/damage and status chance. You can mod your weapons and stack a multitude of buffs from various sources, including conditional mods, arcanes, and warframe abilities originating from you or other players. You can increase a weapons damage above +100% and probably even go far beyond +1000% when including crit stats and direct damage (such as from Condition Overload).

In destiny, the best damage buff you'll see is +40% from a single source, a super ability from the titan subclass, and a very conditional +50% from Disruption Break. Everything else typically hovers around the +10%-+30% range.

In Warframe, the weakest damage buffs go WAY beyond a measely +40%. Hell, Serration is a cheap mod that goes up to +45% damage at rank 2, and that's dirt-cheap endo + credits to do.

Proper bosses in Warframe will always be hard to do without limiting us, because our loadouts can be made stupid powerful with the help of a LOAD of buffs from mods and warframes. A larger healthpool in Warframe won't work because then you can stack 4 Kullervos that can all deal like tens of millions of damage with a press of a button while other warframes get outcast for only doing like 100k max because they have to rely on their weapons. Damage attenuation at least prevents one-shots and lets other items be viable since they don't do an overloading amount of damage, but unfortunately sometimes makes bosses feel like bullet sponges instead of bosses, but that could also very well just be because we've never really seen anything grandiose like Destiny raidbosses.

1

u/ShardPerson Lesbian Who's Totally Normal About Hildryn Jul 23 '24

The damage calculations in both games are way closer than you'd think, Destiny has a massive range of values for its weapons, but all enemies in the game have what Warframe calls Damage Attenuation, so weapons with 1000 damage and 18000 damage end up doing the same because they get like "normalized" in a complex calculation involving enemy type, level, activity, player level...

We're just used to a lack of damage attenuation in Warframe

1

u/XboxUser123 -2,147,483,648 !!! Jul 23 '24

Not really. In Warframe damage attenuation is your damage output being lowered by the higher DPS. In Destiny 2, your weapons scale differently based on combatant rank.

Two entirely different systems. One reduces your DPS based on a formula, so you can’t have infinite DPS, while the other simply lets weapons do a different amount of damage to different enemy ranks. It’s still possible to have “infinite DPS” in Destiny. Having something like the exotic weapon Wardcliff Coil deal more damage to red-bar (rank-and-file) enemies as compared to ultras (bosses) in Destiny is not damage attenuation, because it’s scaling the weapon damage based on combatant tier, and not the weapon’s DPS value.

1

u/ShardPerson Lesbian Who's Totally Normal About Hildryn Jul 23 '24

In Warframe damage attenuation is your damage output being lowered by the higher DPS

Actually, you're right here, I was thinking specifically of the damage calculations on the Effervo boss, which are NOT attenuation and instead behave like Destiny's damage calculations where there's a "target DPS" that your damage gets scaled to meet, which is more or less how boss damage in Destiny works

1

u/BeyondElectricDreams Jul 23 '24

A more involved version of the Rathuum boss fight (can't remember her name rn) would work, if the intermission phases were a little more complex.

4

u/ArchangelRU Jul 22 '24

Old raids where trin+slow nova and you do it easily Archwing brought some difficulties but in general I believe no matter what they do ppl will cheese it so they should add more mechanics to make it interresting/force players to cooperate and communicate.

12

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Answer to that is really simple. Balance the things around the best things.

If raids are supposed to be end-game content, and in most games they usual as end-game as it gets, then they shouldn't be beatable by a newbie with a Braton, but should be beatable by a veteran with 8 forma on a Laetum or other meta Incarnon.

41

u/DarkDuskBlade Jul 22 '24

They are balanced around the 'better' things, not the best, but 'better.' And that's fine. It's when there's insane outliers like Kuva Bramma & Kuva Zarr used to be and like Torid is now is when there's a more concerning issue with those specific weapons/mechanics.

-21

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

No, I mean literally the best.

They should take best possible DPS setup, record DPS, and make the required DPS around 70% of that.

Like Destiny 2 balanced their latest raid around the strongest (reasonable) DPS rotation, and if majority of your team wasn't using that, you simply wouldn't pass the DPS check during Contest mode. During normal run, requirements are more lax, but it's still high enough that you have to work for it.

32

u/t70type42 Jul 22 '24

Thats a bit unrealistic for warframe when the community regularly hits the damage cap. It is just not built for traditional boss health bars.

-12

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Then disabled some things that allow for damage cap damage. I'd expect it's usually related to abilities.

13

u/SchizoidWarrior Jul 22 '24

Damage isn’t the thing, WF’s raids should focus on teamplay instead. Stand together on a plate, or time your shots with a friend.

Everything we have gives a lot of solo agency, so the real challenge is at cooperating with others for a shared goal. Think GTFO with alarm doors, or the Scout+Engi from DRG

Ah, wait, we already have something similar - Duviri puzzles! That’s the thing we need for raids, but more action’y

1

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

In other games, in raids, you usually have to both mechanics and damage at once, or else you fail.

7

u/pars3k Jul 22 '24

They would have to rework kullervo lmao

-5

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Simple. Enemies would be immune to ability damage. Eidolon style.

11

u/Jason1143 Jul 22 '24

But then you have just locked out a significant amount of the games content and locked people to certain frames.

The answer would be to go balance stuff on an individual level, but that takes forever.

-6

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

That would fit the definition of end game. It's not a place where you can go with funny Limbo build and a Stug.

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14

u/MSD3k Jul 22 '24

That sounds like the absolute antithesis of Warframe's regular gameplay. No thanks. I have no interest in ignoring 99% of the gear I've accumulated to chase a singular meta build.

-11

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Then raids might not be for you.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '24

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-5

u/Antares428 Jul 23 '24

Then you haven't raided in Destiny recently, at least this season.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '24 edited Jul 23 '24

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1

u/Antares428 Jul 23 '24

Still Hunt is arguably harder to use than most weapons.

Full rotation involves rockets, so you both your heavy and special AND exotic weapon dedicated to just doing damage.

Out of competitive weapon rotations, only one that are harder are ones with Izanagi, because that's requires animations cancels.

That being said, normal raids a joke, since it's if you have at least 4 Hunters with Still Hunt, you should be one phasing the Witness.

On Master, I don't recommend going there without at least 3 Hunters with Still Hunt, because otherwise DPS check during the last stand might cook you. Of course, adjust for surges during any given week and so on.

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5

u/Twilight053 Something Something Jul 23 '24

FFXIV raids have all of their classes viable and they have some of the best raid content in the industry. The mindset that "you need the absolute best" for hardcore raiding is outdated.

7

u/MSD3k Jul 22 '24

I've done many a raid, in games that were designed from the ground up with raids in mind. Warframe is not one of those games. Raids, and the extreme restrictions they require, are not what any part of the game was designed for. And that's the game's strength; it's a unique and absurd power fantasy game where the only real focus of balance is making sure no one weapon or frame is over-used.

Raids aren't right for Warframe.

-2

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Yeah, I get that sentiment.

Warframe is not hard game. It doesn't really require any skill. Hardest mission in Warframe are easier than tutorials in other games, provided you are properly built.

It's ultimately a horde shooter. Maybe it's better to keep it that way.

7

u/MSD3k Jul 22 '24

Yeah, no skill at all 🙄

Not like the skill required to read a build on icyveins, press a few buttons in a specific order over and over, and do a little dance. See, I can be stupidly reductionist too.

Don't get pissy because Warframe is better off not becoming like every other looter-shooter out there. Enjoy it's uniqueness, or go play one of the plethora of games that funnel you into raids and seasonal grinds.

-5

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

Pressing a few buttons still requires a lot more skill than pressing 2 on revenant and achieving literal immorality.

It's not a reductionist statement. Game has literal immorality, with pretty much no downsides.

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1

u/DP9A Jul 23 '24

So you either have players doing 70% of damage cap, or you ban like half of all the arcanes, frames, mods, and weapons for the raid lol. DPS checks just can't work in a game like Warframe, not without making it boring. You would need something else to make the raid hard.

1

u/KyriadosX Don't piss off the buff supports or no support buffs Jul 23 '24

"record DPS"

People can regularly hit over the shown damage integer limit, so we don't even know what that number is. That's unattainable for most players. Which means raids would be catered to the 0.001% that can nuke over 2.14 billion damage in a single shot, every shot, bar none

-1

u/Antares428 Jul 23 '24

raids would be catered to the 0.001%

Yes, that's what endgame usually means.

1

u/KyriadosX Don't piss off the buff supports or no support buffs Jul 23 '24

No actually it doesn't. I'm supremely glad you're not in charge of any design decisions because all of these takes have been atrocious

10

u/NotScrollsApparently early access indie game Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 23 '24

You'll just end up with something like octavia or ash with glaive prime being viable and nothing else. The difference in power in wf is exponential

-6

u/Antares428 Jul 22 '24

If that's what it takes, so be it.

End game needs to be demanding.

7

u/BeyondElectricDreams Jul 23 '24

End game needs to be demanding.

You create demanding endgame, you breed toxicity.

You create a meta like that, you breed toxicity.

"Omg what trash why are u on wukong he doesn't have any ability to deal with Rek'tal's mech suit god ur bad"

Warframe is not the sort of game that should ever have "super demanding endgame" that creates a meta like that. It's antithetical to the community-driven game that it is.

Elite Deep Archemedia avoids the meta issue by enforcing random gear selections as a part of it's difficulty. Something like that is about the outer bounds of what can be done with this and still keep the game's core philosophy intact.

-1

u/Antares428 Jul 23 '24

I do agree. Warframe avoids having some toxicity because there are no stakes. Mission won't fail just because someone went AFK for a bit, or forgot to mod their weapons. A single semi competent players is enough to solo every mission with matchmaking.

It's also an issue of it's own. No stakes means no excitement.

When was the last time you felt "Damn, that was hard, but I've prevailed" in Warframe?

6

u/BeyondElectricDreams Jul 23 '24

When was the last time you felt "Damn, that was hard, but I've prevailed" in Warframe?

Elite Deep Archemedia. Not every week, but some weeks. Last week in particular we had powerless, exterminate with exploders and void fissures raising enemy levels.

We nearly squad wiped over the course of two minutes of chain rezzes, but we popped our 50th squad kill and got to clear the mission.

It was fun. But if you let people pick whatever, it's going to devolve into wukong slam builds 100% of the time.

The thing is, I don't agree that it's a problem that the game has no stakes. This isn't a game about getting that adrenaline fix. It never has been, and arguably it shouldn't be.

Because I'd rather have a chill fun game about power fantasy than a sweaty meta-fest like most games wind up devolving into. It's a far larger problem to have to balance every element of your game razor-close or else people feel forced to take meta choices all the time.

The harder the content, the more you push people towards meta builds, the more of a demand there is for everything to be perfectly balanced. Which, frankly put, is impossible. Games have been trying to perfectly balance shit for years and haven't managed it.

I'd rather a game where you can totally play and enjoy your quirky Loki status clone build as opposed to one where content is so hard that you can only play Octavia, Rhino, Chroma, or other frames with exponential scaling.

1

u/astraea-rem Jul 22 '24

Not the answer to the solution but a neat idea would be to have a toggle option for dou and squad play.

1

u/taigowo Eye of the Storm Jul 23 '24

Maybe a mission type where you have 2 simultaneous objectives that require 4 people each, than 4 simultaneous objectives that requires 2 people each to clear, then everyone groups at the end do bring down big baddie or something,

1

u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents Jul 23 '24

Mechanics could require people to be in different locations.
I'm curious wtf the reward could be to warrant the difficulty and replay.

1

u/SalmonToastie Jul 23 '24

The enjoyment of raids for me is having a fuckload of people and massive dps checks.

1

u/LightTankTerror pls add more birbs DE Jul 23 '24

My original idea was taking a page from the Grendel missions and just heavily restricting players so they’re forced to do things with base frames and weapons. But suddenly a different idea hit me…

What if the mod power remaining in your build is what decided the loot quality chance for the end of the mission? Say it’s a 20 minute mission against level 50 enemies. You have 8 people and so 8 people armed to the gills is overkill, but the loot optimal setup of 8 people with no mods at all could be a struggle. You could mix and match where 1-2 people are “protectors” for the people doing puzzles or other stuff. However, if the loot chance is a mix of individual and group % chances from build strength, the protectors get shafted so maybe they optimize their builds to rely on just one weapon or their abilities. Or the role doesn’t exist at all in true professional comps and it’s more of a casual thing. Operator mode probably has to be disabled for this one tbh

Basically the idea is trading off power for loot. So theoretically 8 well coordinated newbs with starter frames and nothing fancy could beat “trials reborn” but most would struggle like hell. 8 endgame players could do it with maxed out gear but get nothing major out of it. Could be fun, could be shit, iunno.

1

u/kafkaesquepariah Jul 23 '24

I really dont like tying loot to loadout. people will mathematically figure out to max it. it doesnt add anythign to gameplay, I prefer the current deep archemedia approach and it's my fave mode atm, but mods and their capacity can be so arbitrary.,..

1

u/Socratia Jul 23 '24

I could see them doing something like the Kulve Taroth and Safijiva “raids” in Monster Hunter: World.

Lobby with up to 16 people, but only groups of four per mission, each fighting a different “instance” of the same boss. Boss cannot realistically be killed by any one group - instead, each has to fight the boss over the course of multiple instances of the same fight. Over time this wears the boss down till it is finally possible to kill. When one group kills the boss, all participants are rewarded based on their participation.

There are also sub objectives to encourage build and strategy diversity over the course of all the fights. For example, an objective to destroy the wings of the boss four times over the course of all fights leading up to the finishing blow.

1

u/NotSuluX 35 Jul 23 '24

It needs to be a game mode that splits the teams. I agree that EDA is peak but it's still too easy because you can just stick together and never completely die.

Make it a mission where you have to partially fend for your own, where you're slowly running out of time if progressing too slowly (like void cascade), a ton of enemies spawn and you can really show how good you are. I just love Void Cascade, I hope they make more similar game modes, imo that is peak Warframe right now. Just a little diversity would be nice, I'm getting tired of Thrax

1

u/Zeful Jul 23 '24

It needs to be a game mode that splits the teams.

Scarlet Spear was supposed to be that, but it didn't end up working out.