CouchPotater

Honestly, new players immediately being greeted by a microtransaction in order to play a free-to-play game with veteran friends is probably the worst first impression the game could give, and the fastest way to turn interested newbies away. Simultaneously I appreciate that we can't just give, free of charge, 10 years worth of unlocks and gear as a consequence free catchup. I've written what I think is a viable alternative, in a seperate thread for the sake of keeping this one tidy, found here: TL;DR - Allow players to opt for either their own gear or mediocre temp loadouts via duviri (+temp railjack/nechramech with basic mods, only usable in the new content) to play with friends. This way new and returning players can experience new content while still seeing what endgame players are capable of and being incentivised to play the rest of the game in order to get similarly strong and smooth their own ride. All the while, they'll gaining resources to hasten their progress through the rest of the starchart and ease some of the grind without any paywalls turning them away from an amazing game.

During the most recent dev stream DE announced plans to allow a platinum catch-up for the warframe story, to allow new or returning players to play through more recent content with friends. There's one glaring flaw with this plan... Inviting friends to play a "free-to-play" game only to immediately discover they have to swipe their card for what (given the scale of skipped/given content) would presumably be a very expensive package is most likely the fastest way to get your newly interested friends to very, very quickly become uninterested friends. I feel like this implementation would have a wholely harmful effect on the game. So what to do? Here's my idea. Remember Duviri? Remember the amazing new tech that allows for temporary warframes with default loadouts, which you don't actually get to keep? That. Allow players to queue for new content, and choose to either use their actual gear or a temp loadout. This could even be tied into the story... How has NewPlayer69 gotten to this endgame content? They haven't, it's a void projection from the planes of Duviri. Using Teshin's cave could even allow the choice of a few different bits of gear according to the mission, although quite frankly even a mildly levelled Excalibur and some mid-level weaponry would do the trick. This extends to the Nechramech and Railjack too. One of Rebecca's foremost concerns was that players skipping to endgame via a purchase would require giving the player all of these endgame unlocks but we could simply not. A temporary warframe, temporary railjack and nechramech, all with mid-range default mods, used to queue with friends and experience the modern warframe wonder of warframe. This in turn allows said player to gather resources via these higher-levelled missions, accelerating their progress toward obtaining their own gear and unlocks to use in missions beyond the new content. Why would they bother farming gear if they get decent defaults? Because custom forma'd gear is still immensely more powerful, and the struggle they've just experienced with mediocre gear would prove to be a massive incentive to go play the other content, farm up, and make future progression a much smoother ride. Just food for thought, Potater