I have to admit that looking back Duviri is probably my favorite update to Warframe in terms of content and gameplay.
The circuit is a fun addition that is both difficult at times but also scales exponentially into the power fantasy territory without ruining the overall balance since it’s just borrowed/temporary power. Searching for fragments is fun, the objectives go through pretty fast (especially now that defense is changed) and maps are easy to navigate and fun to fight in.
The open world Duviri is also a joy to explore and do missions in to the point that I am disappointed when we get the undercroft stage. The area is beautiful, I even somewhat enjoy the drifter combat despite it being atrocious. Still better than regular warframe melee I guess :P
The wyrm fight has got to be one of the best boss fights they’ve made, especially in steel path. I only wish I didn’t have to do them so many times repeatedly for those damn pathos clamps.
With the addition of kullervo and new arcanes they also addressed the initial issue of duviri just not having enough proper rewards in it, and hopefully they keep adding to it even more. I haven’t had the chance to test the incarnon adapters yet so dunno how that holds up but it also seems like something that can be easily expanded in the future.
TL;DR Duviri is a pretty good and fun update all things considered. I’m enjoying it more than the previous open worlds for sure, I just hope it gets some QoL updates and new rewards so we have a reason to go back to it often.
What I like most about Duviri and the Circuit is actually the randomized gear. To me it’s an incentive to use different things. Specially for warframes. Like, I have all of them with plenty of forma but very few I actually played enough and refined its build.
Duviri plains is a nice change of pace from the madness that warframes are, that and being pleasing to the eyes. I didn’t have much incentive besides that to revisit it but now we get the 3 undercroft portals. Hope they add something else to excuse very long runs in it.
I enjoy rogue like games and duviri scratches the itch enough for me.
I really enjoy it. I do a lot of Circuit. The maps get a little samey after a while but I really enjoy the rapid fire variety!
I recently introduced my partner to the game and they love the Circuit so much, it’s all we do together! On the one hand it’s a great intro to the game and shows you how cool combat in this game can be, but it also makes it hard to go back to the slog of the early starchart.
I quit playing duviri after week 5 of SP circuit, I couldn’t take the constant return to 5 missions repeating ad nauseum. The amount of time required to reach rank 10 in SP circuit, and on top the 5 week rotation with 5 rewards per week.
Coupling that with DE has said they will be adding more incarnons has left with such a sour taste. It’s far too repetitive, too grindy, and extremely time gated. I’d rather get two resources a week that I can turn into any incarnon, even if I can only ever hold 2 at once. And dear god we need more missions that can appear so it’s not so repetitive.
According to my very bad math (based on my most recent run), it takes 3ish hours to farm rank 10 steel path. 3 hours a week isn’t exactly a lot of time, but it’s not nothing either. It really does start to feel like a chore after a while. However, in it’s defense, having a structure for guaranteed rewards feels way better than all of the other pure RNG grinds in the game.
I have to admit it does feel like they had to pad the grind because of lack of rewards, but it’s not that bad and as you said there’s less rng too.
Pathos clamp requirements are pretty annoying, resource costs are also pretty high considering how few resources you get (even with circuit) - getting 200 ueymag was a chore, but then again we got a good focus farm and kullervo bps can be obtained in around a dozen sp duviri runs which is better than many other frames like protea.
DE has been killing it recently. After the flop that was Railjack, they really redeemed themselves with The New War, Angels of the Zariman and now Duviri. Circuit is incredibly fun with the ever changing loadouts, maps and objectives and the very sharp enemy scaling on Steel Path let’s you really test your frames/weapons against quadruple digits enemies while powering yourself up with Decrees. For the Drifter part, I love that there is no rep grind to pursue, just Intrinsics that give you some extra power and that are acquired completely passively. The Incarnon Adapters are also a killer feature, giving life back to so many old weapons, many of which used to be meta back in the days.
The reward structure could be better considering how much of a time sink Duviri is. Simple things like a chance to earn relics after clearing a couple stages would be nice, or a few more regional resources for clearing a stage.
It also feels like it takes too long to earn Kullervo, and that’s with the special event mission going on. It’s going to be worse when access to that stage is only available some of the time, but then again you only really need to earn him once or twice.
Gameplay is fun though, and has a reasonable mix of mission variety. Decrees carry if you got unlucky with your gear rolls so even randomized gear isn’t really an issue unless the game likes to give you the Stug.
I have to say I mostly agree. Combat is janky but fine and rewarding when you get good at it, unlike the mash fire/attack of base Warframe. The Wyrm is cool, but I kinda wish it was more like the trailer (fight it on horseback midair vs fight in the arena). I like the Undercroft and Circuit, they’re good challenges especially for longer runs. I like the random nature of runs, encouraging me to build (both in the foundry and in the modding sense) weapons I haven’t touched in a long time. And I really like that we’re finally getting some proper Void lore.
My main complaint is how janky Duviri is as an open-world co-op experience compared to the rest of the game, including other open worlds. It really just gets exacerbated due to the longer nature of doing a run of Duviri Experience, but the amount of host migrations and/or progression halting bugs for one reason or another has me going back to playing solo only.
My major wish is for the interruption system to be translated to base Warframe. I feel like one of the community’s major sticking points still is the Eximus rework, especially with the early days of Duviri when 1 Blitz can waltz up and 1-shot the defense objectives. The new Dax enemies have special attacks that we can interrupt, I just want that to be applied to the Eximus to interrupt their abilities.
I love it. Circuit with its rotating game modes takes out the usual boredom I feel in endurance runs, especially after the defense changes while the experience gives me a pretty nice feeling alternative mode (and sometimes I wish I could have just that without the Undercroft). You can break the game in multiple fun ways. And you can experiment so much with things.
I hate to admit that I’m not digging having a completely separate combat system I have to master for this one part of one instance.
The weapon randomizer weirds me out as well as it includes weapons I don’t own. And even if it was only choosing from my stash, there’s still weapons that I can’t delete from my inventory (for some reason.)
Eitherway it ensures that I only get weapons I can use every once in a blue moon, as I am rediculously unlucky. (And mean that quite seriously.)
