[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

For me it's not (only) about OMGWTFBBQ_I_FAILED_TEST_*RAGEQUIT*, it's about the game chasing away it's players for significant periods of time.

For example: to progress further in this game I need to level up some weapons, the weapons I have parts for are MR8 locked so to start crafting (that's 12-24 hours BTW) them I need MR8.
If I fail MRT8 I have nothing to do in the game for 24 hours, and if after 24 hours cooldown I finally succeed at the test I have another 12 hours of nothing to do in the game while my weapons are being crafted.
While I'm waiting for another attempt at the test I might as well find some other game to play, and who knows, maybe even abandon Warframe completely to play that game instead.
Such outcome should be very much undesirable from DE's business point of view, hence my bewilderment about why this game mechanic exists the way it does.

 

12 hours ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

 

So ... you'd read 273 pages of a manual but you didn't want to go check out a room in the relay ... right ...

Do you understand how inane your statement is? If not, read it aloud.

 

P.S. To all people who wrote something like "The tests are there to teach you 2 B gud @ tha game": do you actually believe the devs give a single flying fcuk about whether you're good at their game or not? I mean, really, you believe that?

[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

18 minutes ago, (XB1)Thy Divinity said:

Remember, we're laughing at you, not with you....

In Russian there's a saying: "Cмех без причины - признак дурачины". It seems quite fitting in your case (and the others like you).

[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

13 hours ago, SgtHotPepper said:

It's true but i know that before even playing it. And im a pretty new to this game.

Warframe is a wikigame.

 

You know that some mods add a pourcentage multiplying a base pourcentage and others add a flat number ?

Do you know that some location are far more reliable to drop some stuff that others ?

Do you know that the damage outpout is no the reflection of the numbers in game but the mods combinations and much of these combos are not intuitive ?

Etc. ...

Warframe have layers and layers of complexity.

You can feel that this can be very hostile but personnaly i enjoy it.

It's the complexity of the game that make me stay because the animespaceninjajumpingepilepticeverywhere aspect make me first hesitate a lot.

 

Yeah DE can just add a help pop-up to every fonction but we barely see ours Warframes anymore 🙂

 

Another positive aspect is the community created by the need to search informations, to share tips and to communicate.

I played many others games and i think that the Warframe community are far much less toxic because players need each others. And many veterans enjoy helping newbies.

 

Or maybe im just a generation who played games that implies to read a 100 sheet manual before push the start button....

Well, I am of that generation of players who reads the actual F-86F Pilot's Manual (that's 273 pages IIRC) before playing the F-86 in DCS and actually enjoys it.
The difference is: things in F86 manual are logical and make sense, while things in Warframe mostly aren't/don't.

The first few days I played Warframe I had it running in one window and Google search (with 20-30 tabs) opened in another.
While learning the game this way could be done, and could be somewhat fun - this is bad game design. Good game design is when a player learns to play the game by playing the game (that doesn't necessarily means that the game should be simple or "lead a player by hand").

 

20 hours ago, so_many_watermelons said:

It's called using your eyeballs and/or exploring. You may not notice it immediately within your first couple of MRs, but you have to deal with Simaris eventually and if you can't be bothered to look through this brand new room to you when first walk into it, let alone simply looking to your right when you enter, that's on you. You don't have to google things to figure it out. It isn't some hidden mechanic, it's pretty clearly there.

That back room at Simaris' was the only place at the relay I didn't bother to go in.
I didn't even think there is "physical" representation of MRT in game, because the fact that the test is activated through the esc-menu and the look of the test itself made me think it's purely VR experience for player character. And that small tooltip thingie which 99.9% of players won't notice until being pointed to is where it is exactly to be used as an excuse for bad game design.

 

15 hours ago, rastaban75 said:

Mastery Rank tests are a rough equivalent of stage boss fights. In many games, in order to progress, you go through a boss which is usually some sort of fight/challenge that is supposedly there to test your abilities, your "build" and your thus far knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Sometimes these challenges force you to think in a way you haven't done before, too.

Am I fond of MR tests? Not really, but I don't hate them either and in a sense I'm glad that they exist to force us try different things outside of comfort zones. They are also in agreement with the vague lore type of thing in that we are "ninjas" and gain mastery and higher ranks through tests. In many martial art movies etc. the character often learns and "levels up" through different tasks set by a teacher/master, and in many cases these seem inane or irrelevant. I see a certain analogy here.

The 24-hour requirement is hated by lots of people, but the case is always that you immediately forget about it when you pass the test. The game doesn't punish you by not allowing you to get MR points, either. Your progression till the next rank is there.

This is true, but a boss fight is fun because it's a fight, jumping around some platforms with the perspective of being locked out of new content for 24 hrs (if you don't jump the way the devs want you to jump) - not so much.
I'm not against the test being there, it's just the test requiring you to do things you never did and never will be doing in actual game (I for one found out that my keybindings are poorly suited to complete MRT8, while being very comfortable in all other situations I encountered while playing the game), and also I don't understand why having 24 hrs cooldown on test failure.

[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

18 minutes ago, J1ha7 said:

dude once i failed my mr 22 i think 4 times .. 😄 just enjoy dont cry for nerf on the forums this "game is easy enough "

 

ahh enough sarcasm
- go relay train that mission until you master it - tada u rdy to win thats it nothing hard or imposible

I'm not crying (and I didn't cry "nerf" anywhere), I'm genuinely curious about what the devs want to achieve with this gameplay element. I fail to see anything positive about it so far.

 

[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

21 minutes ago, NPC said:

If u can't clear a mastery test, then u have clearly not mastered the game enough for said mastery rank. 

U can practice the tests in Relays on advance without a cooldown

The thing is: mastery rank tests require you to do things that have nothing to do with being good at the game.

18 minutes ago, Padre_Akais said:

You fail your test Bud?

Let us know which test and we can try and advise.

Thanks, but I've already figured that out.

10 minutes ago, (XB1)Skiller115 said:

If you go to a relay you can go to Simaris you can practice the mastery tests before actually doing them so you don't have to wait 24 hours for it. MR 9 test was the hardest for me because I had no stealth frames at the time. I failed it a few times myself.

I've found out about that too, but only after some googling and warframe-wiki reading. There is no information about this feature in game. There are lots of things in this game you can only know about if you googled for them specifically, which makes the game extremely hostile for new players.

10 minutes ago, KnossosTNC said:

I just see it as a way to put a bit of marker on you mastery rank-up, to make it a little more memorable. The 24-hour cooldown adds a bit tension without permanently hampering your progression; additional mastery points will add on as normal.

I'm MR 23 and I think I've only failed the test twice, and one of them was because heavy server load kicked me out of the session. Once I found out that I could practice at Simaris's place, I haven't failed one since.

I think, like pretty much everything else in this game, it just needs a bit of preparation. You prepare well, you'll breeze through.

I wouldn't say that losing 24 hours adds "a bit of tension". I'd say it adds a lot of hate towards that mom-look-imma-gaem-designer who devised this gameplay mechanic. BTW, I have enough things I must be prepared for in real life, but IRL I get paid for being prepared for them.

6 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

you gotta learn how to do stuff other than hacking and slashing. you get additional loadout slots and can obtain more Void Traces and Reputation with syndicates, as well as get access to more powerful weapons (though this stops after a certain point.). it's worth doing, and as other's have mentioned, you can practice them as often as you like if you go to visit Simaris. 

we've all failed them from time to time. I hate the stealth ones too, but once you get certain frames it's not that hard.

Aren't there other, less frustrating and time-consuming, ways to teach people "how to do stuff other than hacking and slashing"?

[Are "Mastery Rank Tests" there to make players leave the game?]

Because I fail to see what else can be achieved by this game design "feature". Really.

These tests force the player to do things that he/she doesn't want to do 'cause they are boring or just s###ty (hello "Parkour", hello "Stealth") and penalizes failure with 24hr cooldown to the next attempt. What's the positive side to it?