#outside of the new war and outside of the duviri paradox and things

[frameconfessions]

The Atomicycle being accessible outside of just open worlds honestly helps make 1999 feel less like an isolated content island while we wait for infested liches.

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[warframememes]

My unsorted thoughts on the Duviri Paradox (Possible spoilers for every quest)

I love the new Drifter combat and I would actually like to see some of it implemented outside of Duviri.

I'm having a hard time understanding how new players would handle starting with Duviri rather than the typical start. The lore given to you is even more vague than Vor's Prize and the new combat mechanics aren't used outside of Duviri, so it's a lot of learning mechanics that you won't often use.

Do new players go to the Zariman when they're finished? Do they go directly to Vor's Prize?

I like that we get to see that Teshin survived The New War. His pet is adorable and I would die for them.

FLYING HORSE

I like the random loadout system for the circuit. Forced me to bring out my mixed support Saryn and it worked out very well for Steel Path!

I generally don't like the addition of new resources in this game, even though it is understandable from this area.

The cutscenes when collecting pieces of the doll seem to confirm that Drifter really did spend several years on the Zariman, even with all the horrific things happening.

Wait, whose hand is that?

No really.

Who was it that... gave us a hand...?

DE, let me run solo Drifter in normal missions with a melee and secondary. At the very least, let them use Rumblejack again.

[solidcarbon]

btw. it's been more than an year since duviri introduction... and more than an year i've been thinking. small oc ramble alert

my drifter has been stuck in duviri for 18 years - he escaped zariman in 16 and escaped durivi in 34. so, a traumatised child was raised in a completely fake and fictitious society with its own social norms, rules and mind set to experience major changes every day while nothing changes really.

like. this would set some things in stone in his mind. how hard it was to accept your own escape when you never really wanted to escape? how it felt to be thrown out of your dearest home and the prison at the same time? how it felt to realise that you're mortal, after all? (i don't think thrax played with executions for a few days. imo, it was a long-going business before the drifter's leave, maybe a year or two - which is enough to irreversibly twist human mind; even if the consequences and bruises dissappear on the beginning of the new day, your memory does not. how it feels to remember not only the pain, but your every death?) how it felt to realise how much different all the real things are?

and you're thrown in the middle of the ongoing war!! you don't know shit!! nothing!!

and then you're becoming someone else. no, not like that - you help someone else to become themselves again; you're the tool. side-effect from the deal, a needed consequence for paradox to work. how it feels to realise your own unimportance? people can tell otherwise, your counterpart can tell otherwise, lotus can tell otherwise, but still, you're the one who got manipulated and obidently walked the path of the inevitable fate. when you could take action, all you did was pretending to be taking action, pretending to be fighting for your escape, pretending even to be a person - because you've never been one.

life raised and spent in the illusory dream; life spent in the endless wish to help the others; life spent in the overwhelming wish to escape yourself - your joys, your desires, your fears, your agony - so you bury it, you bury it deep and somewhere, where even you won't be able to reach it again.

but outside of duviri you can't drown yourself in that degree of escapism no matter how you want to. how it felt to realise that? how it felt to realise that you need to actually live your life, accept it?

like, life on the spirals did it's job for sure. i think uranus has some fucked up mind, even tho he's looking and acting like a normal person. he's spent too much time in the duviri so it's unlikely his way of thinking will ever change overall, nor his self-sacrificial behavior. he can't comprehend the real life in the way it is but he won't admit it. he probably won't say anything to anyone (except for, like, two people) and will pretend to be okay further.

and it's the only thing i can't quite shape properly, at least to my own satisfaction. how it feels to live in the real world and thinking in a never-ending time loop?

save me ambient from duviri loading screen...

[entergamingxp]

Warframe dev on working from home, Necramechs and the wild new Helminth system • Eurogamer.net

A world inhabited by infested creatures, an abundance of insects, and a daily power struggle between two opposing sides? No, it’s not the British summertime in 2020, it’s the new Warframe expansion Heart of Deimos, which has just been unveiled as part of this year’s all-digital TennoCon presentation.

The update brings a raft of goodies – including a fleshy open world, K-Drive combat, mechs and warring giant wyrms – all of which should keep players occupied as they search for the origins of the Infested faction. Oh, and there’s also a little thing called the Helminth Chrysalis System, which allows players to transfer an ability to another Warframe (something that should create some truly wacky combinations).

But given this year has been so disruptive for many studios thanks to the impact of COVID-19, I was curious to know how Digital Extremes had shifted its content plans and managed the workload for Warframe: particularly given the game normally receives a fairly consistent flow of updates and content. After watching a press deimos-tration, I had a chat with Warframe COO and dev team member Sheldon Carter, who was able to tell me more about the challenges of working during lockdown, how the Necramechs work… and what the hell is going on with that Helminth.

So first of all, how are you doing? How’s it been working through the COVID-19 lockdown?

Sheldon Carter: Oh, yeah, it’s been a challenge. You know, it’s been a challenge for us to get something like this event and this type of content together over COVID. But after the first month of it, I think we started hitting our stride and figuring out what we wanted to do, and how to work towards it. I may have gotten a little bit of pinkeye from stress in the last little bit, but otherwise, I think we’re good.

How did you adapt your plans for the year ahead? Obviously the Duviri Paradox was delayed, but what restrictions did lockdown place on what you could do working from home?

Sheldon Carter: It did, I mean, we were really lucky that the way we work is we have some of our teams doing advanced work on future stuff. When we looked at Duviri and even some of the stuff we were looking towards such as New War, versus the team that had already started out on Deimos, we actually felt like Deimos had a better chance of getting to TennoCon with the type of content we wanted to. So we just did a pivot, it was one of those ones where it wasn’t what we were expecting to do. If you would have asked me in March, what TennoCon was, I would not have said this. But it was a great set of content and features for us to work in multiple different groups. So we had the Helminth system being worked on by a group, we had the landscape people, and that’s a huge part of our team. And then even for the Warframes and some of the systems we were able to portion it out a little bit better… the cinematic group was also able to take small sections. So yeah, it just really, really worked well for us from a compartmentalisation standpoint to go with Deimos.

More broadly, how have you balanced the need to keep Warframe updated as a live service game with making sure that devs are coping with the difficulties of working from home?

Sheldon Carter: We definitely recognised it was not gonna be the same [level of] productivity as we have had. Outside of that, however… our team, once they get a hold of something, they really impress me. Thinking about what we were going to do versus what we have for TennoCon… you know, it’s a testament to those guys, they really worked their butts off.

Heart of Deimos is the first simultaneous launch of a Warframe update on all platforms, is that something you hope to continue in future?

Sheldon Carter: This is one of those ones where the stars align… we were gonna try it, and obviously what we’ve always wanted is for everybody to be able to experience the content at the same time. We wanted those console players to feel like, ‘hey, it’s not something that I’m getting a couple weeks later’. So we’ve been tightening and tightening, and we’re going to try it with this. Hopefully it all goes well, and it will be something we continue to look at as we go forward. But yeah, it’d be great – even if it was for major updates, I’d be happy with that.

Why did you want to focus on the Infested for this update?

Sheldon Carter: If you look at the other two landscapes, Fortuna and the Orb Vallis are Corpus-focused, Plains of Eidolon is Grineer-focused. So [the Infested] is the last faction in the game, right? I think it provided us with an interesting story angle, and I think that’s what we’re most interested in, generally-speaking, from our open worlds as well. To be like… ‘how can we set something up with a story that’s going to give us new information about a faction, that can really build up the lore’.

On the topic of the previous two open world updates, what kind of design decisions did you make to put a twist on this open world and make it different?

Sheldon Carter: Quite a few! It’s funny, you’re used to hearing in games that ‘this the biggest open world we’ve ever done yet again’, right? And this isn’t the biggest one. This is actually probably our smallest one in terms of size, but the depth we put into it is definitely much more. So there’s way more systems to understand and learn. There’s these beautiful grottos you get to go into and explore, there’s the Necramechs, which is a totally different thing that we have never had in Warframe. We have, you know, conservation pets you can ride. I think the Helminth system is another good example. So we really wanted to take the types of ideas that players are expecting from Warframe’s open worlds, but we wanted to twist them. And that’s how we did it with certain things like that.

Do you have any examples of what you can make with the new Helminth Chrysalis System: are you able to create any really weird or unique Warframe builds and or gameplay styles through that?

Sheldon Carter: So you can imagine the face on our QA leads when we said, ‘okay, so we have this system, and you can take one power from a Warframe, and you could put it on your Warframe. Could you guys make sure all the combinations are good?’ Do the maths, and it’s… oh, god, there’s a million combinations. It’s exponential. So we’ve tried a number of different ones to see what works, and we’re only allowing one power to come from each Warframe. So that kind of limits it a little bit. But it’s insane, honestly, and I’m really excited to see what the community comes up with. And I say that, like, excited, because I’m sure there’s gonna be stuff that’s going to blow our minds. But I think at the same time, we stuck with abilities that players really wanted to see. It was kind of a power fantasy for some players to do this. So we wanted to make sure we gave them that ability without compromising what made the kit of a certain Warframe special.

So were certain limitations put in place to make sure that the Warframes were balanced?

Sheldon Carter: As balanced as it could be with that many combinations. I think one of the nice things about Warframe you know, from a development side, is there’s a very small PvP element, but most of it is… you know, we are dealing with enemies and players getting to tear enemies apart. So if we can give them something that’s powerful and they can find new powerful ways to do it, that’s exciting to me. I mean, within reason.

How do you think the community will react to the idea of sacrificing a Warframe? I feel like normally a Warframe has almost been revered, and here we’re feeding one to a fleshy blob.

Sheldon Carter: I think that’s definitely the one that we don’t know. Which makes it exciting! And sometimes that’s what makes TennoCon exciting, right? Sometimes you gotta try these things. I’m crossing my fingers it’s gonna go over well. You never know.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the Necramechs – such as how they unlock, and if you can customise them?

Sheldon Carter: We have a kind of a two-stage system with them right now. In the press demo, you would have seen Rebecca Ford [live operations and community director] use transference to rebuild a Necramech right in the environment. And that’s open to any of the players (spoiler alert, there’s operators in the game). But for players who have unlocked that and have gone through all that content, that’s kind of a bonus for them, because if they find them in the environment, in the right situations, they can use transference. But to a new player, or even for those players, there’s factions you can raise standing with, and you can learn about. And through those standings you can build your own.

Are the Necramechs going to stick to the Heart of Deimos area, or could we see them in other open world areas in future?

Sheldon Carter: I could definitely see them there. I think we’re going to release with them in Deimos in their home environment, but I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t expand out from there.

So Steel Path was introduced recently, I was wondering what sort of feedback you’ve received from the community on this and how well it’s been recieved?

Sheldon Carter: It’s done really well. I think it’s one of those things Warframe players are always looking for… we were just talking about the insane combinations you might get with the Helminth. I think players are always trying to find a way to test their skills and their abilities with more and more difficult content. So this is one of our answers to that. I wish I had engagement numbers for you, but it was incredible to me how many players engaged with that system and have gone all the way up through it already. So from an engagement perspective: yeah, super great. I think there’s still more work to be done there. But we’re happy with the feature in general.

On that point, I think some in the community were wondering about maybe higher drop rates for rewards for Steel Path. Do you know if that’s a possibility?

Sheldon Carter: Usually it’s me who looks at the rewards, I definitely have heard that feedback. So we were looking at that stuff, for sure.

Is there any news on progress for the Command Intrinsic?

Sheldon Carter: Yeah, it’s coming. That’s about all I have right now. It’s not forgotten, but we decided to go with this swath of content that’s coming out. What’s cool is that usually at TennoCon, we’re showing you content and it comes out a year later. I mean, this is coming out weeks later. So hopefully you will be able to get right into that. And then we can focus on some of the other stuff that we’ve been working on for the other systems as well.

So we’re obviously coming up to next-gen console time: I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about how Warframe will transfer over? Is it going to be fairly seamless, will there be any noticeable changes for players?

Sheldon Carter: I think at this point we haven’t done anything officially to announce around next-gen and what we’re doing, but we’ve been, you know, speaking with all of our partners, we’re excited to see what’s gonna happen with Sony with the PS5 and with the Xbox Series X as well. But yeah, we’re really excited about the next gen and the hardware.

One final question, it’s very important: are you able to catch the flying fish in the Heart of Deimos?

Sheldon Carter: Can you catch the flying fish? The answer to that is yes. Yes. You have to be able to fish, right?

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/warframe-dev-on-working-from-home-necramechs-and-the-wild-new-helminth-system-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=warframe-dev-on-working-from-home-necramechs-and-the-wild-new-helminth-system-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[infestedslime]

Another thing I really like is how for narmer parallels and contrasts we all lift. It makes the fortuna segment even more heartbreaking. I do like that both little duck and Nora managed to avoid being veiled. I also really like the deacon design and I’m kinda mad they don’t appear in any post new war missions, or at least as something viewable in the codex. The next segment, if memory serves, is the zariman part. This and the drifter obviously serve to set up the duviri paradox, which I am now much more excited about. I like the introduced stuff about eternalism and I think it has some cool applications in future quests or even gameplay mechanics. I REALLY like how the void corruption looked on the zariman, I think all the wired swirling metallic stuff is a lot more interesting than just having things be overlaid with a gold effect and a void key. I’ve always thought the corrupted enemies were the weakest faction design wise, and that they’re a pretty big wasted potential, and I’m hopeful now that they might get a redesign, or at least an update. I think it would be nice to expand the void in general, but I’ll save my thoughts on that until duviri. Next is the Cetus section. I with that Cetus itself had gotten the same visual overhaul that fortuna did, I don’t really even remember what was different. I did however think the Unum tower was very cool. I’ve been hoping they’d let us visit it in a quest for quite some time and I thought the area was pretty cool. I’m kinda surprised how little we actually got to use our frame. If I recall it was only in the unum tower and part of the sentient mothership. I thought the part where you where you fly up to the mothership was a really nice spectacle and I’m glad erra also ends up joining you. I enjoyed watching his model move around in game rather than in a cutscene. The final archon fight is pretty underwhelming, but I really like the ballas fight, and I really like that he gets killed for real this time and (hopefully) won’t show up again. I also like that we get the option to choose which form the lotus takes and I like the parallel of the lotus carrying us at the end of the second dream vs us carrying the lotus at the end of the new war. I chose Natah, admittedly because I like that form’s design the best. I’m hoping this choice will affect quests in the future, but I wouldn’t really be surprised if it doesn’t. A lot of people before the update seemed to think we’d get the option to kill the lotus and I don’t really get why anyone thought that would be a thing? It would be a huge change to commit to given that she’s kinda on of the game’s mascots and since everyone hates the hologram lotus they’d eventually have to redo every mission control voiceline. I really don’t think they’d commit to that big of a change, especially if it’s one that could be opted out of. I really enjoyed the quest but i have. A few thought about the post quest content. I do like the changes to the open world, and I like that we can switch between drifter and operator. I like the new weapons, all of them are designed very well and are fun to use and caliban may well eclipse nidus as my favorite. That ring said there isn’t a lot to do. All that’s left are 2 bounties that only include veiled enemies. No sentients, much less any of the new sentients. Still now way to access the sentient tileset outside of proxima railjack. And the biggest issue is teshin. Teshin is one of the only non white characters with main story importance and they seemingly kill him off with no build up and no pay off. It’s not even mentioned again anywhere in the quest and if you visit the relay he’s been replaced by a hologram. You know, the thing that everybody hate that they did with the lotus. Now there is the possibility that he is not actually dead. The lotus hologram was a temporary thing until they could conclude the Natah arc so hopefully there will be some sort of new war follow up that deals with some of this stuff. I have hit the character limit again so I’ll put the rest of my thought in another reblog.

The new war

I’ve been meaning to make a post about the new war for about a week and a half so here goes. As I’m sure is obvious major spoilers for pretty much the whole quest.

The first part of the quest was pretty much what was shown at tennocon, with the main things they didn’t show being the jackal bossfight as Veso and the last half of teshin’s part. I thought all 3 segments were pretty fun and it’s something I hope they implement again in the future. I would say however that the alliance stuff could’ve used a little build up. It might’ve been nice to have maybe and Invasion mission or something showing the sentients invading or even a cutscene with us meeting with the heads of each faction (I’m looking at you worm queen). The start of the quest just feels a little sudden. Also I feel like DE didn’t realize Kahl and Veso were going to get as much fanafare as they did since they don’t appear at any point later in the quest. The lotus thing was also a bit sudden. It had been hinted at that she was being controlled in most of the prologues but was muddied with things like the orphix venom operation dialogue or the ropalolyst transmissions. I thought there would be a bit where maybe it isn’t clear at first but ballas and erra start to lose control and the have it lead into what happens. I don’t have any major problems with the first part of the quest (aside from one thing I’ll get to later) just a few minor things, and i understand that they may have had to cut things or leave things out or even do rewrites so as not to make development take even longer so I get why they didn’t do most of that stuff. The next segment is the drifter which I really enjoyed. I liked their abilities and weapons, and I liked sneaking around the narmer base. This might just be because I’m a little dense but I was actually waiting for some sort of big reveal as to who the drifter was because I didn’t realize they were the Tenno. I thought it was like, grown up Nakak or something at first and I didn’t even realize the drifter could be customized until after the first archon. I did guess that the one speaking over the radio was ordis so at least I figured that one out. I also like that they established the archons as a threat before the actual fight, and I like that nira was sort of the main one since I think she definitely looks the coolest. I was excited in the promotional stuff when it mention Hunhow and stalker returning since I really like both characters and have wanted them to appear again for a while, so you can imagine my delight when they not only showed up, but became allies. I’ve seen some people say they thought hunhow teaming up with us came out of nowhere but I think it makes sense. He’s been wallowing in a pit after being defeated by the Tenno 3 different times, and he doesn’t have any reason to kill us since we don’t have void powers. He wants to gloat in the fact that we’ve also been defeated. I also think it provides some good characterization that he sides with us over erra and ballas. Personally I’m hoping that he’ll continue showing up in the future. I also love the implication that stalker still just hangs out down there, I thought they had broken up after war was broken. I’d like to think they just sit down there and play space checkers or something. I especially liked that we’re just given the bow and I’m hoping they’ll add the ability to use it in drifter form again at some point. I kinda wish I had known we wouldn’t get to fight the last archon normally because I saved nira for last, assuming it would be the most climactic, and ended up just slaughtering her in like 5 seconds with the paracesis. That and the Jupiter narmer tileset seems to have had the coolest looking set pieces which brings me to my only real complaint about this segment; there should’ve been amalgams. I know someone in the ropalolyst mission makes a big deal about creating soldiers “with the strength of both and the weakness of neither” and beyond that alad v was making amalgams well before the sentient invasion, and was the first to bow down to the sentients, so I find it kind of weird that we only ever see veiled enemies and sentients. Apparently there’s a text post limit so I’ll put the rest in a reblog.