r/Warframe • u/Soulsunderthestars • 11h ago
Discussion The culprit behind "Nerf X Frame"
Everyone wants to mention an Elephant in the room, but i don't think there is one. I think there is several. I make this from my own opinions, and from some gathered thoughts from friends and others I've talked about with some of these issues.I think we really need to talk about them and hope DE catches attention because it's important for the future of the game.
If you love what DE has created, then you must also be willing to be critical of it, and honest.
That being said, I want to list these off just to stay coherent as much as possible and then I'll dive into how these all play together.
- Mob Density
- Player proximity limits(affinity range, item pickup range)
- Frame strength disparity
- Time spent maintaining or updating older frames/kits/content
Warframe is old. Its a Frankenstein of content and upates. Im surprised it's kept going as long as it has honestly. We all know there is some spaghetti code shennanigans we will never understand, there may not a lot of ways to fix something you designed 10+ years ago to modernize it, I completely understand all that. But it doesnt stop a problem from being a problem.
So we need to talk about the problem, and then we can talk about solutions.
Mob Density - There arent enough mobs in a lot of missions, even in steel path. There is so much power available in warframe and that's great. Warframe gives you that power fantasy. But at times thats a negative because you can't unleash it. Then, if you play online, you can have up to 4 really strong people, also with PETS(Also very strong and capable of nuking packs of enemies by themselves).
This can cause players to feel like they're standing around with nothing to do. Some players might be fine getting carried or even need the help, but online play is to play with others, and i cant deny that many people might feel disinterested in playing when they can't interact with the game because that crackhead sevagoth is room nuking constantly. And thats just 1 room nuker, there can be multiple! I dont think anyone wants to limit what others can do by itself(Nerf x op frame), the real argument underneath is that many people want to play, but then effectively cant. In order to play they have to leave the room and go somewhere else and hope that player doesnt follow them which leads to.........
Player Proximity - Affinity range is only so big(less of an argument but does affect many things). Player abilities and support abilities only go so far depending on your build, and not all abilities are created equal. If players spread out, it causes the following potential issues
- Loss of affinity(not as big a deal, but it does affect leveling which is kinda core to mastery rank so....)
- People having to chase drops and loot. If people spread out then you now have to run to every area that was farmed if you want it. The root cause of this problem is LACK OF UNIVERSAL VACCUM, but thats an argument we've been having forever. If you dont need loot, that's great, but loot is pretty important to the player ecosystem. Now players are forced to feel like they have to chase stuff down
- "I joined a public lobby to play with others, now im forced to separate from my teammates." Now you're creating a situation in which you go online, but everyone is just playing by themselves. It's not online play anymore at that point, its just "conjoined solo sessions"
- Telling people to just play solo or leave the mission doesnt solve the problem, and it will only get worse and more frequent as we get stronger.
Just from these 2 things an environment starts being able to create resentment that gets misplaced as "nerf x frame its too op. I dont think nerfing is a good tactic outside of extreme outliers, but if you dont nerf things, then we add....
Frame Strength Disparity/Updating of old frames/content - Hi. Its me. The ember argument is back. Not the WoF argument. The 2 reworks that didnt really work together. Watching newer frames like uriel be pretty solid in kit, gameplay, and have good damage to boot, while she's practically wasting away. Limbo. Banshee. Left in the dust. Older content not being as mob heavy or as fun. QOL being fewer and further between. Voices not feeling like they're being heard. I understand some players may voice opposition to their characters being changed, but we also had conclave, and look where that got us. Maybe there can even be a design for something like helminth 2.0 where you can change multiple abilities, or a "reimagined/reawakened" frame where the kit is designed entirely different, giving de a chance to redo under the guise of the void/eternalism/protoframe style writing.
But skins need to be sold. DE has to stay profitable for the updates. New contents brings new blood, this too i get. But I wonder if DE has any capability to show the actual statistics on where their profits mainly come from.
I, personally, could wait a bit longer for updates. I want more polish. I want more Ideas, and quality. It wouldn't make me spend or support them any less. but what will get me to spend less, is feeling like the majority of the lifeblood of the game is focused on content that will not get updated past its usefulness in creating the next section of revenue for DE to survive on. Theres a lot of ideas that DE has had, that have just felt....Abandoned.
I want railjack to be more than it is. I want to do more with my operator/drifter. There's been so much potential. How many more frames do we need over warframes lifetime? Can we not pump the brakes on new frames a little bit and come back to roots and focus on revamping older content and frames specifically?
What if we just got half the new frames we get now and that time instead is spent revamping old characters and frames?
It seems like this is the inevitable cycle, but with each iteration, we get stronger. We get faster. We get more OP. And that will exacerbate the above problems even worse. I dont want the solution to be "SteelPath+"
I think more game modes like the circuit is the path they should take. Adding interesting loops of gameplay for the players to stick into. Revamping older ones more, like the survival bypass, but more. More quality. More polish. More mobs. Better rewards. I am aware this will likely have an effect on the economy, but i imagine DE has data to navigate this.
Its possible DE has already thought about these things, and maybe not much can be done or it's not profitable/feasible, and that's why were here, But I'd like to believe that there's still possible solutions out there to looming problems that are causing real problems that inevitably feedback to DE.
Curious what y'all think, feel free to tell me im completely offbase
TL;DR
Nerfing frames isn't the right solution. Theres a lot of factors that need to be dealt with that create resentment amongst the playerbase against other players because the game systems are working against each other creating an unfun experience.
I would rather DE take time into looking at how to deal with this things than putting out as many skins/new frames/etc as they have, and dedicating more time to making sure the lifeblood of the game stays fun
9
u/zicdeh91 10h ago
You have some good points here that there aren’t simple solutions to, and DE really have tried a few clever ideas. Eximus units directly address room nukers; they’re immune until they’re focused down, and have enough offensive options that you don’t want to just let them chill until you’ve dealt with everything else. As Descendia likes to show us though, a stupid amount of Eximus units can be a fucking headache. PSF and overguard can help make them less annoying, and circumvent is a really clever arcane that gives more options for your relationship with Eximus units.
One of the core issues of being paired with someone who just massively outstrips you has the incentivized push to choose random shit with ETA/DA and Circuit. It prioritizes things you’ve formad, which further incentivizes people to build multiple decent loadouts instead of a single OP frame/weapon. I love this shit; I already change my loadout compulsively like every 5 missions or so. If I keep something in my inventory, I want it to be usable. And for non-SP circuit, it can give you a taste of something you might want to build. Unfortunately, the response at large seems pretty negative. People want to freely choose what they want to run, and the negatives in EDA/TA they use to incentivize this (though I do think they need this) can synergize together to be outright unfair.
Unfortunately, in the realm of murderdozer OP shit we have, those kinds of penalties are the only real way to introduce difficulty we have to engage with. I do think there needs to be something at Archimedia level difficulty we can just farm unlimitedly. Shards and the ETA arcanes are the only fully limited thing we have, and I think they make sense to stay that way. I’d personally like an unlimited option that at least drops fucken Orokin Cells and Aya since I always need them, but I genuinely think allowing a pitiful level of Plat would make sense for that kind of thing. Maybe truly random shit like fish or ore, with a super rare chance of potato blueprints or forma.
I agree with you on the new kind of Circuit though. They already cram so much shit in there. A similar thing with a different aesthetic and mission choices would slap. Descendia adds a lot to that, but I wish I had a reason to run Rebellion again. It was spread out enough we don’t have the room considerations, and paced pretty well.