[An Open Letter from [DE]Steve]

Cheers for all the fun over the years Steve, good luck on Soulframe!

 

[There really needs to be some streamlining for new players]

So, before anyone gets up in arms - I'm not a new player having a whine about being unable to do things, but I have recently started again on the xbox and it has me really concerned how horrible it is for new players now. The two different experiences are night and day, which should be really worrying for anyone that wants to see the game continue to thrive.

Maybe this is down to my newest run being on console but I have basically had to solo myself all the way to end game, whereas when I first started this game there were far less things to do and there were always people on missions. If I needed to farm something then I could be pretty much garunteed that I could find a group for it. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore for new players. I almost never see any squads going except for Sedna affinity farming or when there's a special event on.

I really don't think it's fair to expect newbies to do the same, if not longer, grinding to be able to do the newest content when they have none of the benefits that us older players had. When I was learning the game I was pretty much always having a squad affinity bonus. Getting the more finicky basic need mods like Equillibrium, Pathogen Rounds, Ability strength/duration/efficiency, etc, really wasn't that bad because I'd find people to do it with. Now? Nope.

Why are DE still treating it like there's the same community of people that are running the old late game content? Using the earlier mods as an example - Equillibrium is a 7% drop from Lephantis. Are we really going to continue to expect people to solo him over and over just so they have an effective health replenishment? Sure, I can do it because I know how, and I knew it was coming so I prepared, but without that benefit of knowledge that would be daunting as all hell. How many new players know how to build a Hydroid/Nekros to do survival long enough to get pathogen rounds (or to do the g3)? I think it's really telling that when I go into a mission with my Nekros prime that mid-MR people don't seem to know his abilities, they've obviously not encountered it or been taught by other players how to do these things.

Every other MMO that I've played has had to keep the progress from new to end game streamlined so that they don't lose their fan base, or at least get people to the point where they're interacting with other players. Warframe seems to be going the opposite direction - Still expecting players to do things that become harder by the day. I never see anyone on Mot. How many people are running the Lua defense mission to 15 waves for the relay to Eris? Hell, half the time I don't even find people on Lith relic missions despite being in an open squad.

This really needs a rework. Make it easier for new people to get what they need; Up the drop rates, rework what they drop from, alter the relay requirements, make it easier to get rep for quest requirements - just little tweaks like that would make a huge difference. Yes, some older players may not like that new players would "skip" a lot of the stuff they had to work hard on, but I'm more than willing to swallow that pill to ensure that the game keeps being appealing to new space ninjas.

Anyway, that's my concerns/feedback. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just because I'm on console for this new run, or it's just my experience of this levelling. Thanks for reading, have a great day 🙂

[Can anyone explain why I automatically failed this rank up test please?]

Hey guys, thank you all so much for the replies!

With regards to the loadout I have a mag level 30 and level 27 bo that I took (because the first time I used fang and I thought I'd try something different), I'm afraid I can't get into the game at this second to give a huge detail on what mods I had in but I had about 850 shields, 400ish health (I think - vitality, etc in there), Bo was bulked up with overall damage and I think I had radiation secondary elemental type on it.

The test is definitely timed, you get 40 seconds on the first wave - I was paying close attention to that which is what confused me.

I'll try to get a video capture of what I did exactly but I can't do that until later. I don't think that I left the central area - I was fighting the first three that came out of the back of the pillar, smacked them a few times, saw shields dropping so I ran up the pillar, turned around, dropped down and did a smash as I landed on them. Turned to start hitting and that when it gave me the fail message.

After posting this up and the first response I went to the relay and tried it another two times in practise doing pretty much the same thing and I didn't have the issue repeat. I even let myself get smacked around a bit and I got the "2 attempts remaining" as normal. Although, I don't know if this is relevant - on the first test when I tried to reproduce the results my powers became active, the second time they didn't. I wonder if maybe I pressed one of my powers by accident? I don't remember seeing them go off, but then again if it insta-failed me for using them would I have time to see them?

Thank you all for the replies. What I'm getting from this is that it might well have been a bug which would explain it or I might have been a daft sod and gone out of the area somehow. I'll keep trying to replicate it later and I'll vid-cap it.

[Can anyone explain why I automatically failed this rank up test please?]

I definitely didn't run out of time. This was literally within the first 15 seconds. I mean, I'd get it if I ran out of time or took enough damage, etc, but neither happened. That's why I'm so confuzzled - Had shields, had health, was fighting for 15 seconds, landed with a smash of my weapons and knocked them down then was just told I failed. o.O

I was fairly confident with doing the test again as yesterday I was on the last wave but just borked it up on the last couple of enemies by being overconfident. I will go to the relay to try it out again and see if I can replicate it though :)

[Can anyone explain why I automatically failed this rank up test please?]

Hey all,

So, I just tried to do my Rank 3 test with the melee weapons. I started the fight, had 2 corpus and the grineer with the riot shield - wailed on them a bit and had some of my shields go so I ran up a post, jumped off to land on them and hit them. Then I just suddenly got told I had failed the test. 

I tried this yesterday and borked up the test, but when that happened I got "2 attempts remaining", "1 attempt remaining", "test failed". This time I just got an automatic fail out of the blue. I didn't do anything today that I didn't do yesterday; Yesterday I was standing on top of the columns to regen shields or running up them to avoid taking damage.

I don't understand it... fairly frustrating considering that I've got like twice the shields I had yesterday and barely got hit today.

Any insight would be really appreciated.