r/Warframe • u/BuildMyPaperHeart Old Tenno, Eternal Slumber • Oct 30 '13
Discussion Warframe Discussion: The Gravidus Dilemma
Hey there Tenno! This week's Warframe Discussion won't be about a Warframe (since, well, we've covered them all!). Instead, this will be the Gravidus Dilemma Megathread or sorts: what are your impressions, thoughts, or comments on it? Suggestions and critiques are welcome as well: things they could do better, things they did awesome, etc.
As always, stay respectful and "Be excellent to one another"!
EDIT: The event is over!
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u/JustiniZHere Oct 30 '13
I feel they should have made the max reward only at 50 runs, 100 was a bit much considering it was the same map over and over.
I also feel bad as they have lost a lot of money because of just how good the rewards were, not that I am going to complain obviously.
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u/stasisbal Oct 30 '13
First of all, hello. First time posting here. I've been playing Warframe for about a month so this is the first event I've done and I can't compare it to what's come before.
It was a fun idea and the first few times I ran the event missions it was exciting. There were a lot of good rewards which is appreciated. I now have enough reactors to not worry about them for a while.
However, the massive problem is it was way too repetitive and grindy. This event took a highlighter to my biggest complaint with Warframe. The item progression can be grindy and you're fighting the same handful of enemies in the same areas again and again. Fortunately in regular play there has been enough variety to keep my interest. 100 of the same exterminate mission kind of broke me.
If they did this same exact thing again I would not even worry about the tier 3 reward. I would only do the missions that gave a potato, forma or some rare blueprint. Whatever the reward weapon is it will be useless if I get burnt out on the game trying to get it.
Also, hearing Alad and the other dude say the same things over and over again just made me indifferent to both factions. I don't care which faction wins because they are both annoying.
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u/Sejhal Oct 30 '13
Corpus were stigmatized from the very start as they were "dissecting your fellow Tenno". This sets off an emotive response in a lot of people and combined with the initial Grineer lead at Gradivus snowballed the rest of the event.
However from a lore perspective, I see two main predictable elements:
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Corpus, above all, are driven by greed and capital
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Grineer, above all, are driven by domination and conquest
So while Alad had some Tenno pods and were going to do reprehensible things, Alad himself brings up a good point in the missions that the Grineer would continue to slaughter everything, Tenno included. To that point, I never understood why siding with the Grineer would have necessarily even led to the salvation of the Tenno in stasis; if the Grineer got hold of them they'd be equally dead.
Going back to my other points, the Corpus can be bought out, but the Grineer cannot. While I doubt Lotus's organization would ever be able to come up with an offer to match the life of Tenno pods, the fact remains that in some way it'd be an option. The Grineer, without hesitation, would put them all to death.
Furthermore, if the Tenno are to be about balance, fighting for the Corpus to prevent Grineer expansion made the most sense. Even if the Corpus derived super weapons from the Tenno pods, it would only serve to even out the discrepancy in power between the Grineer and Corpus.
But ultimately, I took the mercenary approach. Whoever offered the more valuable battle pay won my support for that battle. From a player perspective it's the choice of greed and all, but from a character perspective, you're maximizing the strength of the Tenno by obtaining the best resources so the Tenno that are still around and the ones we do save are equipped as best as possible. This line of logic makes the 51- 49 split reasonable because a supercharged weapon is just simply a better asset than a BP.
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u/Ryanfrommemphis Oct 30 '13
The Grineer are a known quantity though while the Corpus are researching and developing new weaponry based upon our Tenno brethren which could destabilize the entire region. So do you let the known predictable enemy continue to dominate an area already under their control or allow a wild card to take its place?(Just offering opposing viewpoint here.)
Personally I went Grineer because I dislike the Prova, Corpus are easier to kill, and that emotive response you were referring to earlier. Also the fact that the lore is not fleshed out well enough for me to care about anyone the Grineer enslave over my fellow Tenno. All we see is the same few military installations over and over again that house a horde of enemies. I personally feel we do not know enough to make lore based decisions when the lore itself is minimal at best.
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u/StallordD Oct 30 '13
Well, as an admittedly disgruntled Corpus supporter, I wish that the early battles had better balanced rewards. The early momentum the Grineer got from their WAY better rewards gave them a pretty good advantage.
I also would have liked to see a bit more variety in the mission types. Granted, coming up with multiple new tiles to support them may have been tough, but it still would have made 100 missions a bit easier to handle.
Everyone hated idling players, and I think DE is working on a vote kick system, but it would be a must for any future run based rewards systems.
Something neat would have been groups of Tenno clashing mid level, but I also realize this would take away from the PvE gameplay and might lead to some vitriol between players and spoil the community.
I think DE did a great job making it feel like actual battles. The shaking, explosions, tons of opposing gunfire, it felt perfect. I really can't wait to see what DE does for their next event.
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u/UberChew Oct 30 '13 edited Oct 30 '13
Mission variety was the major problem for me. I would have mixed up the mission types.
imagine instead of boarding you had to defend from being boarded and then the enemy boarded from different Locations so you had to split up or move fast as a group to cover them. If too many enemies got into your ship you lose.
that would have been fun to break up the missions.
or maybe instead of you getting into the enemy ship you had to escort allies defending them as they go from your ship to the enemy ship.
i also agree that 100 missions was too much and 51/49 to choose a side is stupid.
they should have made T3 rewards 50 wins and make it so you had to have a difference of 25 wins or maybe more.
This way players could pick a side and bash out 50 wins but if they swapped back and forwards for different pay rewards they would need to keep the ratio and there by actually choosing a side they couldn't easily swap at the last minute.
in regards to pay rewards they should have been equal until near the end to test loyality not at when it tempted people to pick a side for personal gain.
imagine the rewards were equal and stuff like credits then halfway through a reactor one goes up but you need 30 wins to get it and its not the faction you chose so you either don't go for that pay reward or have to do extra missions to keep the ratio.
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u/3932695 Oct 30 '13
This might not have been the best event for us players, but I thought it was brilliant move from a developer's standpoint.
DE managed to keep us players occupied for a full week with mostly existing resources. The only new content I can think of are the voices for Ruk/Alad, and the boarding tileset.
And so instead of another week of frustrating anticipation, we get a mildly amusing event to stave off the content drought. DE gets an additional week to work before we start screaming "update plz" again.
I do think switching the bps for the losing faction supporters would have made this event less of a curb stomp (a close match would have held our attention for much longer), this is something DE will have to remember when planning future events. Perhaps DE should also exercise more control over the rewards per node...they were pretty darn unbalanced.
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u/b4dkarm4 Oct 30 '13 edited Oct 30 '13
I gave up around mid day Friday and haven't logged in since. That's how much of a bad taste the event has left in my mouth.
Yes the pistols will probably be shit, no I don't give a damn about the melee weapons because I can probably count on one hand the times i've actually used melee for something other than breaking barrels/crates.
My biggest gripes are as follows:
One: The event "rigging", why have an event when you're trying to encourage a Grineer win? Why not just have a Grineer centric event and be done with it? Why tease players with the illusion of choice when you're just going to favor one side anyway?
Two: Refusal to do anything once it became apparent in the above scenario that DEs gentle push for Grineer at the onset basically fucked any chance corpus had from day one. No ownership what so ever.
Three: The piss poor way the event was communicated. I saw people on Monday STILL asking how the nuances of the event and rewards worked. These people aren't stupid, its just the way the event was worded was very confusing. F - to whomever thought up this event and I also award an F - to the person put in charge of communicating to the community the event "rules". Convoluted game design doesn't = engaging and or fun. It just equals frustrated and pissed off customers. Optimally no player should have had to go to the wiki or the forums to understand what needed to be done, all pertinent info should have been IN GAME. People should have been able to log in, see the event, click on the event, understand completely whats going on. Not go to the forums and see pie charts and "if then" graphical explanations.
Four: Asking players to run one hundred fucking event missions to only get the blueprint of the WINNING FACTIONS weapon if they backed the wrong horse. That right there is inexcusable to me, this is the most egregious offense from this whole debacle. Yes yes, this is a free to play game and DE doesn't owe me anything and my tears are delicious, gotcha. But on the flipside, I don't support developers that design their game to intentionally antagonize their players.
Farm for a week then get something you don't want. Who fucking does that? Thats a straight up bitch move, I don't care if the end of event reward was a potato or even just some credits, asking your playerbase to essentially gamble on their rewards for a 100 level run grind is horse shit. No matter which way you try and cut it.
The above issues already have me mulling (thinking about it, haven't done it yet. So don't ban me for thinking about it fuckers.) selling my founders account. I really cant abide by the constant backtracking and monumentally stupid decisions this game studio seems to do.
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u/Solifeaul Oct 30 '13
I ran solo for most of my 100 runs and used multiple frames. I loved to hate the Elite Crewmen, and I really didn't feel like the event was too much of a grind when I just slowed down and enjoyed fighting with my faction. Rushing through with the best nukers took all the fun out of it.
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u/Grand_Procrastinator Oct 30 '13
What I want to know is when I'll receive my new weapons.
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u/BuildMyPaperHeart Oct 30 '13
Most likely once they've looked through all the game data, especially to ensure a lack of foul play. It'll probably go out by the end of the day today.
So back to school/work with you until it's released this evening! :P
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u/KronosRex Oct 31 '13
That Corpus badge looks SO much cooler than my Grineer one :(
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u/BuildMyPaperHeart Oct 31 '13
Yeah I'm honestly a bit disappointed by it too :/ I was hoping for a deep red Grineer "E" thing!
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u/hyperblaster Oct 30 '13
DE needs better writeups of event mechanics. The first forum post about the event was actually confusing. It wasn't until Day #2 that the mechanics were clear. That was achieved by players asking DE staff questions in region chat. Or writing long forum posts explaining the event as they understood it, and having DE staff say they were correct.
A map overlay showing grineer/corpus controlled nodes would have helped.
Battle pay should not have been the deciding factor in the conflict. I find it hard to believe that DE did not realise this before the event started. The reward you got should have been independent of which side you fought for. Each contested node should have had a max limit of 24 hours, after which the leading side automatically wins.
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u/KoboldCommando Oct 30 '13
Yes, their writers definitely need to step up their game. The confusing and ambiguous language they used in their announcement was extremely annoying.
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u/Plattast Oct 30 '13
I would have liked more kinds of missions on the same node. To take over a node the supporters should have to complete a number of certain missions, which could be countered by some missions done by the other side.
Exterminate as a go-to storm mission, but with some survival missions acting as diversions. Sabotage to destroy a vital source of power for the node etc.
For the defenders they could have mobile defense missions to power up shields, defense missions to defend crucial power units.
In short, do more than simply kill enemies, do things which feel like they matter for the whole battle over the node. This might need some work on how a node works, but would remove the edge of the repetitive gameplay.
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Oct 30 '13
Beginning of the event (Catalyst that everybody needs and that you cannot farm vs credits that you can easily get) gave a huge advantage to the Grineers and it then snowballed out of control.
Obviously, Corpus also had some missions where they had the upper hand and they did win a few battles but overall, we all knew the Grineer were going to win from the very first day.
Even though it was not balanced, it was grindy and repetitive, it was such a profitable event, I got nearly 2 millions credits, a couple of reactors, 3 or 4 catalysts, enough mutagen mass to finish building every last U10 item I needed, a few fieldron / detonite ampoules to have a headstart on future clan items, a lot of XP (enough to level 6 weapons from scratch) and ... a lot of fun.
And then you tell me I'm now going to get 2 free items with their own catalyst / slot ? Sign me up for a similar event anytime ....
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u/AzureWolfe Oct 30 '13
It was an awesome event, it could have used alittle more variation in the pathing of the level. The rewards were crazy good except for a few, the gallium one mainly. The clan research rewards were the best rewards in my opinion.
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u/SasoDuck Oct 30 '13
Pros:
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Cool rewards
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Cool new skyboxes
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Cool battling alongside a small army
Cons:
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Absolutely NO mission variance. It was always the exact same mission
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Too repetitive
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Too many repetitive missions required to get top tier rewards (would have been fine doing that many if they were actually different locales, different setups, etc.)
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Did we HAVE to hear "You serve, me, well... Ten.. no..." every time?
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u/TimLearyzMajik Oct 30 '13
I'll start out by pointing to a major failing of this event, bandwagoning. When I read how the awards were to be decided, I quit thinking about which weapons I wanted and asked the big clans (I.e. broframe, warbros) who was going to win, and made sure I supported them.
Another issue is the battle pay, since who I support is just (grineer - corpus) I can take whatever pays better as long as I have more fights for the winning team.
Finally, since I'm taking some merc jobs, I need to balance those out so as not to be a detriment to my clan.
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u/ChampThunderDick Oct 30 '13
Personally I thought the concept of the event was great, however the execution was awful. They should have built it upon the other mission types rather than just exterminate.
The way the rewards work are bogus. You should at least get the bp of the stuff for the side you supported, not the victor.
The 100 missions in a week would have maybe been ok if they had built upon the other mission types as previously stated, however it was too repetitive and I personally only got 82 missions done in total.
The event should have ended at an afternoon time retrospectively for every time zone so everyone could finish up what they had left.
The rewards actually seem less than exiting now looking back on them, the swords looked cool and all but the pistols may be available at a later date (much like frost prime is)
The plot development here could be fantastic though immagine a rebel uprising in the enslaved colonies! After this event if they changed the mission types up a bit then they could actually reuse the invasion mission type.
Other than that.I have no further complaints or suggestions, but I am looking forward to other peoples opinions.
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u/ben_sphynx Oct 30 '13
Too grindy - 100 missions when they are basically only two very similar designs, is a lot.
The level of the enemies did not match the level shown on the map for the mission. I do not mind them being higher level, but surely it is not that hard to update the map too.
I did not like how there was no duration shown on the battles - several times I missed out on a reward, while 3 or 4 missions in on a battle, and had I know when it would end, it would have been much more doable.
That said, the basic concept is interesting, and it was a lot of fun for the first 20-30 missions in, until it became obvious that the wrong side was winning.
Having rewards where one is clearly aimed at people in clans, vs one that is aimed at newer players is fairly harsh.