DogeManX

It was discovered last PS that clicking the Nightwave tab would instantly cut off any dialogue and advance the mission. Just bumping this info for people who either forgot or are playing the event for the first time.

I don't think the problem is them releasing explosive weapons, rather that a lot of the explosive weapons have obnoxiously large and disruptive particle effects that linger. I remember when staticor was one of the worst offenders, but now, using kuva ogris, it's really easy to spam enough projectiles to make my game lag considerably.

Oops yeah. I almost forgot about Guides of Lotus. My bad.

You're definitely right that a 75% cut is very huge and honestly I'd like to take that back. Obviously DE probably looked at forma build times and decided it was a good place to make money. However, I still stand by my point that uncommon forma drops should drop pre-built forma. It may cut into profits, but it makes sense from a design standpoint (rarer rewards are better) and wouldn't impact monetary gains that much (f2p farmers probably wouldn't buy as many forma packs + one built forma every few missions with low drop rate isn't enough to make or break most people). So let me present a defined premise: Plague star should be run as an annual/set schedule event because it gives forma farming a huge boost and increases profit. So the evidence is really right in front of us. The fact that they run plague star at all is an indication that it is profitable. If DE saw plague star cut into their profits, they obviously wouldn't run it. Now, I can't be sure where the profits come from, but it most likely correlates to player engagement. Player engagement directly reflects on how profitable a game is. If you take a look at GTAV, the game does all that it can to push its Online mode. They've since made money grinding much easier (Cayo Perico heist) while also increasing player engagement by giving the community something they wanted (Most noteably the Tuners Update). While the money is easier to come by, by gathering more players, it snowballs into making GTAO very profitable. With DE, they're definitely using the Apple strategy of creating a problem and marketing a solution. The player is in need of Forma? Play Plague Star and get it. That increase in player activity definitely offsets the profit loss of forma sales in the long run. The primary basis in my theoretical increase on player engagement is based on FOMO and sunken cost fallacy. If you farmed for Tenet and Kuva weapons but are short forma, or heard about the forma sink for said weapons, you'll probably rush to play the event because you wouldn't want to waste the opportunity. However, now that you've played the event, you now are invested in whatever you need to do with that forma whether that is formaing your Tenet weapons or now gathering Tenet and kuva weapons to forma (making you spend more time in game and therefore more likely to spend money). Short term losses are often used in business to create long term relationships with customers. We see this with fast food restaurants and chain stores. Oftentimes it is more profitable to appease an unreasonable customer (by comping meals or coupons) because the decisions and opinions of one person will probably affect more people than just the single. In the inverse way, one person who is engaged in activity is more likely to draw more people in. While I can't present hard numbers (99% sure DE filings aren't public and even if they were wouldn't list the earnings per product). It seems that events that highly accelerate forma earnings are profitable. Now to extend that premise to my hypothesis: Lowering timers on forma may create more player activity.. If the logic that is applied to plague star (which is proven by the fact that DE bothers to run the event) could also extend to shortening forma timers on a lesser scale. But I don't have enough evidence for that (Subjective polling would also suggest that nobody will turn down free stuff meaning polled evidence is out of the question). I hope the argument is structured enough that you can at least believe that it might work out. Again, if DE had public documents of profits, I'd definitely use those to draw a better conclusion. But this is the best that I have. I still disagree with this. 30 capacity is just not enough to really get a feel for anything. I'm sure you could theory craft around weapons but it really isn't the same as using it especially for melee weapons and their stances (that make or break the weapon). For most people "getting a feel" for the weapon means putting serration on the weapon and heading to hydron for 20 minutes and then dumping it. You can get a general feel for how it shoots, but I'd very much so disagree that it will give you a feel for the weapon's potential.

To basically summarize your point. Though, if I'm going to be honest, I'm very guilty of this mindset. I almost have 60% rolls for all the Tenet and Kuva weapons (not all but most of them are done) and pretty much immediately got 60% rolls for all the railjack weapons. But I deal with this by playing Warframe in short bursts and finding other games to play when I'm feeling burnt out. It's always important not to put your eggs in one basket.

I think this thread got quite a bit away from the original point. I didn't want forma to basically be given away like candy, rather, I'd like to see something where the rate of obtaining forma is streamlined like shorter crafting times, making uncommon forma drop built, or running events like plague star more often or on a more consistent schedule (Plague star is pretty irregular with its timing). In reality, it wouldn't drastically shift forma into a place where it oversaturates your inventory, but it'll also give a lot of players a bit of a boost. I don't think that getting enough forma to forma every weapon 4 times is a realistic idea. I'm more aiming at a situation where you have a weapon that's sitting at 4 forma and you're debating whether you should use the forma on the weapon again to fit one more mod on it or to forma another weapon.

That is true. My friend is playing the Final Fantasy remasters (apparently they're good). But to 100% the game (doable because its a linear rpg), he needs to read a guide and run around doing unintuitive things to get all the items he needs. While the games are good, you can't deny its a bit frustrating to have to loop around the entire game because of something you missed 3 levels back. Frankly, it's really hard to find a balance between a nice system that doesn't hold your hand over every little thing versus a system that just has no introduction to anything. If I were to come up with a good example of a tutorial, it would be something like how Sevagoth was introduced. During the acid trip sequence when you were playing sevagoth's shadow with the button prompts, it gave ample time to explore the abilities of the frame while also being a fun little tutorial. If we got some of those (say an eidolon quest for the first time you do eidolons where it guides you through how to kill it), I'd say that warframe would still be better. Education really does go a long way. DE should really lean on its community created resources (wiki, market, semlar, etc...) and promote it further in game. I think that would make the experience a lot better without being too much work for devs.

Yeah that I'd very true. Online games do need a lot of online guides to complete. I agree with pretty much everything you say except the part about tutorials. Warframe has a pretty steep learning curve. Though most people who play a game judge it off of first impressions. Maybe if the game were less reliant on online guides towards the beginning, it would keep a lot more players. Because the thing that kills interest for warframe isn't the first obstacle, it's looking over the first one and seeing obstacles 2-1000 stacked on each other.

But you really can't get the gist of some weapons with only 30 capacity. There are so many new mods now that have high capacity requirements. Putting serration (14) and crit mods (18) already puts you well beyond 30 and unless the weapon provides a ton of innate v polarities, then that's about all you'd run. I think you're kidding yourself if you think you can determine how good or bad a weapon is with more than half the mods missing.

And this goes back to my original point. I didn't say that DE should hand out unlimited forma for free, but it's definitely going to boost player interest if a 23 hour timer between forma isn't slammed in their faces. While they might lose a bit of money in forma sales, they'd make it up through player retention and slot sales.

But... I don't expect DE to hand a bunch of forma out for free. I don't expect them to either. I just would like them to do something about either crafting times or making uncommon forma drop pre-built forma. I'm not asking for a huge bump up but rather something small but meaningful. About monetization, I already mentioned above that an increase in forma would possibly lead to an increase on slot purchases which may be more profitable for DE. Forma can be earned through f2p methods but slots are limited to certain events or as devstream rewards (rarely). Da Vinci doesn't "owe" anyone a better Mona Lisa because nobody really pays for it. However, DE actually owes it to people who play their game to make a better game because we pay for their game. Even people who are f2p have an impact on plat sales because of the market. You can't expect an artist to make a perfect painting if the artist does it for fun or themselves. But if someone is paying an artist, that artist will usually go to the client and ask for their specifications. Obviously DE still needs to make money, but saying that they owe nothing to us to make a better game is just wrong.

An alternative argument to this is that if forma is given more freely, more people will build and keep warframes, weapons, and other things that require forma and there will be more incentive to purchase platinum to expand storage. Inventory slots are also a more closed system than forma as well (only obtainable through special events) meaning it would be pure profit.

But its not about building every single weapon. It's about the enjoyment that comes from building various weapons. What I'm arguing is that the fun of warframe is limited by a limitation on forma as more and more weapons and warframes demand your time. How will you find out if a weapon synergizes with a frame or works well with something else if you're limited by the supply of forma. As more weapons are added, more choices are given to the player. But the increase of choice doesn't come with an increase of freedom to make various choices. Forma limiting the number of weapons that can be built will definitely make people gloss over some weapons in favor of others because they may not be as "optimal" or have as shiny of stats.

If we keep one upping each other's posts, eventually we'll have enough text to fill a book. However, I'm happy to express my opinions to anyone willing to listen. Education is definitely a key part of warframe. I think with warframe there are a lot of people who have no idea of the many hidden facts and features that are present. For example, for the longest time, I'd think my game was bugging because I couldn't see my squadmates hp/shields. But then I realized that I accidentally pressed "z" on my keyboard and it would make the names disappear. However, in many cases, education seems to be a bandage to fill the gaps where the game is poorly designed. To preface what I'm going to say, I don't hate warframe. I really love the game. However, I love it enough to be able to criticize its shortcomings and want to see the game improve. And I think most people will agree that there are many parts of warframe that annoy us. It's far from a perfect game, but with the ability to reflect and improve, the game can and has gotten much better. I guess to talk about game design, I have to create a premise on what I say is good game design is (with regards to education). Looking at other games, an example of good game design promoting education are things like movement tech. In Team Fortress and Quake, rocket jumping is an integral part of movement and taking your gameplay to the next level. Education is required because it is a mechanic that is not expressly intuitive (e.g. self damage is usually a punishment mechanic for careless gameplay in games), but it is different in the game because it creates a new skill ceiling that adds depth to the game. In warframe, an example of this is the modding system. The way you mod weapons isn't immediately intuitive as there are a lot of factors going into mods, but with education, the modding system adds a level of depth to warframe that brings it beyond the normal loadout selection of: >select gun >shoot gun However, bad game design uses education as a bandage or excuse for why a mechanic is the way it is. To take something from warframe and forma, a great example is the uncommon forma in relics. Rarity systems from "surprise mechanics" are shared across many games with higher tiered rewards being more rare and desirable. So to a new player in warframe, they would naturally gravitate towards selecting an uncommon forma reward over a common drop. However, the education on this topic would be "uncommon forma doesn't do anything extra, it's literally the same forma in a different package". Granted, this example is a very minor example of a learning curve, I hope it serves to illustrate my point. To continue on the train of poor game design, to take an example from your response. "Like auction house warframe dont have it could it would be cool and all but we have trade chat + 3rd party listing site and somehow it works ppl trade and its going on" It WOULD be really cool if we had an auction house and a first party trading interface. Many of the arguments on the farming of forma within this thread have contained something about farming for plat and selling it. However, this requires you to either use the (very lacking) chat interface, or to list your items on a third party website (created as a bandage because of warframes lack of built in trade interface). While education goes a long way in respects to trading, you have to admit that DE could do much better in terms of game design to implement a more efficient way to trade (possible maroo revamp?). The steam marketplace is a perfect example of a game with an in game market and an integrated first party trade system. Granted, there are third party sites because of the $ limitation of steam, if warframe were to either partner more closely with warframe marketplace and have a more integrated and fluid system, it would go a much longer way than just pure education of newbies. I guess to talk about an example of an improved part of game design, we can look at railjack and more specifically, the orophix and arcane system. Now, I think it is universally agreed upon that the (hot)launch of railjack was an absolute disaster. I remember playing it right when it dropped and a bug existed where if you got downed in archwing and died, you could never revive. Granted, the system was very unfinished and unpolished then so pretty much any change would be an improvement, with the release of the corpus nodes and introduction of orophix missions, it fixed a few things. 1. Railjack: railjack had no variety and there were many QOL changes in the update that made for a much more fun experience. 2. Arcane farming: Arcane farming (while I love eidolons) is not everyone's cup of tea. This is mostly due to the average player experience being: >Get operator >Go to cetus and talk with konzu >Start tridolon mission >Die over and over *(This part is just a digression to state my personal opinion not really the main argument) Now, here, I agree that education really does go a long way. I normally go into public tridolon lobbies because I enjoy carrying people sometimes. But to see most people are woefully unprepared (titania with a braton) and end up spending 10-15 minutes doing absolutely nothing and being completely confused. And while in my opinion, eidolons are the most nuanced and fun piece of content warframe has to offer, I know some people who just dislike it. I think Eidolon hunting is an example of excellent game design that is poorly implemented. People are introduced to eidolons way too early and because there is not difficulty warning on Eidolons, are stripped of their power fantasy. *(Back to my main point) Arcanes are an integral part ot the warframe experience. With operation orophix venom, while as flawed as the event was (I had fun with it personally), it introduced an alternative way of farming arcanes. So now, if eidolons are something that isn't someone's cup of tea, there is now an alternative (and honestly I'd say more difficult) way to farm for arcanes. So the education on arcanes now is that either you can kit out an operator and warframe to farm for arcanes or to kit out a necramech and whack a few sentients. To respond to another one of your arguments: "Proper game design? In proper game design i should be able to mod Hikou Prime so i could solo ropalolyst with it on SP But even so i cant is it still bad game design? Nah its just what we get and how it works i use Hiko where i can when i want and for other stuff i have different weapons" I mean, I guess it is bad game design. However, every multiplayer game past pong (and even then with port priority) is not balanced perfectly. The balance itself is not what creates a situation of bad game design, but rather what is done about it. Proper game design is not a reflection of viability. Imbalance is just a property of any mechanic. Ideally, everything would be evenly balanced and equally viable, but with so many factors, it really isn't possible. While yes, the imbalance in weapons does reflect on poor game design and the developers should always strive to make everything equally viable, the common logic is that games will deviate further from perfect balance when more mechanics or variations are added. But back to an earlier point of "what is done about it" making the difference between good and bad game design. Balance changes are controversial most of the time (especially in Warframe). So to avoid an entirely separate argument on Warframe weapon balance, I will use another similar game as an example: In Destiny 2, recently (last year) they made a new subclass, stasis. When it came out, it was really really imbalanced. Many people straight up quit D2 PvP because of it. The key element that made it so hated was the introduction of hard CC in a shooter that has time to kill values of under 1 second. Now with that being said, D2 players were not happy when an opponent running stasis could freeze them for 3 seconds (These values may be wrong, but just know they were more than 2 seconds). There was also an option to break out after a second or so at the cost of a massive chunk of your health disappearing. While this is reflective of poor game design by itself, the changes they made over the next year did very little to actually solve the problem. They lowered values but did nothing to change the core problem of hard CC being absolutely overpowered in any shooter that has low time to kill values. And their lack of understanding of that core concept kept them from actually creating an acceptably balanced subclass. Quick access to low risk CC is very strong in any shooter. McCree (better name pending) from Overwatch becomes a deadly threat to many characters because of his flashbang which stuns for half a second it is a very powerful ability. So purely just talking about game design and balance, the argument you have falls flat when you consider that every multiplayer game has issues with balance one way or another. And furthermore, weapon archetypes exist where certain weapons are more optimal than others for specific situations which is a reflection of good game design. If any weapon could be used to break the shields of the eidolon and every weapon could break the limbs equally easy, it would take away much of the depth to boss killing weapons in Warframe. Now, onto another point: "I didnt need to have guide anywhere or info like "hey this weapon will be good but only up to sortie level enemies" anything above and that weapon will be crap I just needed to waste few formas to learn my lesson" So this goes back to my original point. When people first obtain the majority of weapons, they are looking to either mastery rank up or to build it. And especially with the glut of weapons that people from MR 8-16 build (that require forma) and the many weapons that demand more forma to use, it becomes a difficult decision to either forma a weapon to completion to see what its full potential is versus moving to the next weapon that might hit harder without as many forma. I have ran into many weapons where the damage output is okay until I complete the trinity force of modding on it and it becomes a favorite of mine. An example that comes to my mind is Quellor. With its guaranteed impact procs on its secondary fire and huge damage, it's a solid choice for my steel path arsenal. However, with one or two forma on it, the weapon doesn't hit much harder than many of my other weapons because the mods I have to put on it are quite expensive (serration, multishot, and hemorrhage are 14, 16, and 15 capacity). My original point was that if forma could be obtained more efficiently or more quickly, I would have less of a problem with investing 5 or 6 forma into a weapon that I'm iffy on. And while being completely efficient with forma farming will leave you with more than enough for all of your weapons, most players, even if they know proper farming techniques, will not be completely efficient because it is a very easy way to burn out from Warframe to constantly grind and be diligent on timers. Currently, because I have everything I want kitted out, I don't really have to worry about forma usage and I regularly slap however many forma I need onto a weapon to determine if its bad or not (I spent 8 forma on zylok with a riven before I said it wasn't great). And now I've typed enough to make a longer post than you so I'll leave it at that. ;)

Sorry, I should've been more clear with my methodology. You're right when you say that yes, I am not 88% efficient with overall farming for forma farming from every possible source. I meant to illustrate efficiency as a method of 1 day logged in = 1 forma gained. I know it's a very flawed way to measure pure efficiency (for example, if I ground 1000 forma from plague star, my metric would basically say that I was over 100% efficient with forma farming). I only used the percent as a measurement because it was the easiest way I could quantify efficiency at the moment. It's a really flawed measurement and basically relies on the notion that with only farming relics and crafting forma blueprints, the efficiency is 88%. A better way I just came up with is to divide total forma by hours played to get my forma per hour. Total forma: 880 (I actually forma'd some weapons right after I posted) Total hours: 1665 880/1665=.529 Forma per hour So I guess a better way to state forma efficiency is to say that in all the time I spent playing warframe, I'd roughly generate .529 forma in an hour of gameplay. I'd say this is a decently fair way to quantify forma farming as it also accounts for the other content that could be done outside of solely forma farming. Anyways, apologies for my primitive measurement and the confusion it caused. I just used easy figures because I didn't really have a solid way of formatting forma efficiency.