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-CdG-Vici

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    A Message to DE in Regards to Trials, Dark Sectors, Alliances, Endgame Content and the Overall Direction of the Game.

    in General

    Posted

    There is a TL;DR at the bottom.  For those who read the whole thing, I don't suggest clicking every link as you'll be here for a while, I put them in mainly as sources of information for those curious.

    Dear DE,

    I'm writing this lengthy and detailed post because I, and many other veteran players I know, have recently lost faith in the direction you're taking this game.  I'm one of the few players that participate in trials, so going into the recent devstream it was a given that I'd be a bit salty by the end of it.  However, as I'm heavily involved with my alliance community, I was very eager and optimistic to hear about the future of dark sectors.  Unfortunately, by the end of the dark sectors segment, I was still left extremely disappointed.  For those of you who haven't watched the recent dev stream here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E96hgup-Ng0 The discussion on trails begins at approximately 16:10. The dark sectors portion of the stream starts around 19:00.

     

    Trials

    I actually wrote this before the meeting between DE and members of RSB was announced, and I have complete faith in those members to explain to DE how to go about fixing raids, but since I already wrote this I figure I may as well still share it.

    Before I delve into dark sectors, I'm going to quickly jump back to trials and address their future.  As Steve stated, the trials had very low user engagement yet high player/dev frustration (https://twitter.com/sj_sinclair/status/961409340434472960).  Because of this, trials are going to be shut down on the 28th (https://forums.warframe.com/topic/917480-the-temporary-future-of-warframe-trials/).  Whilst I find this very unfortunate as I have enjoyed my time completing trials, I can understand the need to rework them as they're extremely buggy and not exactly welcoming to the larger player base.  Nonetheless, the comments made in the devstream made me concerned about the future of the trials and how they will manifest when they resurface. What will the gameplay be like? Will they even slightly resemble raids in their current form?

     

    In the devstream Scott said that the future of trials would be a "redesign to fit better with the core gameplay of Warframe.  Right now they kind of push to a section of stand still on the spot, do this weird designer puzzle." (https://youtu.be/E96hgup-Ng0?t=16m50s)  It was also stated by Megan in the forum post announcing the removal of trials that "taking down a Teralyst mirrors the tactics of a Trial in terms of teamwork and communication, but can also be done as a lower-level player if properly prepared."  There are some serious flaws in these comments that I will outline.

     

    First of all, killing an Eidolon does not take any teamwork and communication at all.   Shortly after the release of the two new Eidolons, all three of them were completed solo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmXLheWGw2s).  In a case where you are doing an Eidolon with a competent team, communication really isn’t necessary.  The fight is extremely telegraphed.  An example of a team used would be a Trinity, Volt, Chroma, Harrow.  To beat the Eidolons the Trinity would keep the lures alive with bless, the Volt would place shields to increase damage, the Chroma buffs damage, the Harrow would make everyone invulnerable during the Eidolon's magnetic pulse.  When the Eidolon's shields are up everyone is in operator shooting through volt shields, when shields are down everyone shoots a weak point.  It doesn't even matter if you all shoot different points because with good gear they're so easy to kill it doesn't matter.  You approach all three Eidolons in the exact same fashion. You don’t need to adapt or change your play style for each individual Eidolon. The new ones simply have more health and more abilities that make your eyes bleed from the insane amount of bloom and intense brightness.

     

    The last time I checked, completing a trial solo is impossible in LoR, and can only be done in JV by a player who has vast experience in the trial and it is extremely time inefficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJRnxw7XC4A.  Not only do Eidolons require a lot less communication and teamwork than trials, but in LoR an experienced squad is really able to highlight their talent, hard work and dedication to the perfection of the trial by flying through it at incredible speeds, as opposed to the way Scott described it as simply "standing still on the spot", example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=497nZvK-aRs.  As far as JV goes, well, I can agree that thing is boring and buggy as hell.  But just like LoR, aside from decryption, there's a lot more than just standing still on the spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGDju8ykQPS.

     

    The most incorrect statement by DE is that Eidolons are more accessible for a lower-level player.  My favourite bit about this statement was that the sentence finished with "if properly prepared", directly contradicting itself.  A group of four new players don't have the gear required to kill an Eidolon.  Whilst technically a vet could carry new players in the fight, a group of two skilled players and two new players who don't have amps is going to take a lot longer than doing it with four players who have amps.  I know for a lot of players in this game, efficiency is important to them.  This is why we see a map like Hydron being so popular for affinity farming.  It's not exactly fun to sit there with a banshee quaking every wave (RIP), but it's efficient.  Alternatively, for a new player to do a trial, they simply need to be taught how to run it with the guidance of a vet.  This is incredibly easy to accomplish by joining a clan who does raids or by joining the RSB discord, where there are numerous players there looking to help teach new players.  Trials can have up to eight people and most players are more than happy to have a new player join in unless they're speed running.

     

    I understand that the trial community is very small (http://i.imgur.com/zbC8BWp.png), but I also feel like you don't truly understand why trials are played by some and not by others.  The thing is, as pointed out by Brozime, it's almost impossible to know what a trial is without being told by another player or watching a video (https://youtu.be/JtdfHnZNZDs?t=3m33s).  There is nothing in-game that points to them, they're just a  blueprint for a key that you can buy in the market.  The second problem is the most viewed and easiest to find guides on these trials are utter garbage and the only thing they do is make the trials look harder than they are and confuse the viewer:

    JV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGxoloNQpks&

    LoR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcz5k_dT-sQ

    If trials were made more visible or if DE had pointed players to a good guide or to the RSB discord it'd encourage a lot more players to play the trials.

     

    So what do I want DE to take away from this?  Well, when trials do return my first suggestion is to make it easier to access the raid content.  Secondly and most importantly, when you say "fit better with the core gameplay of Warframe", my biggest worry is that you mean removing the puzzles entirely.  The entire point of puzzles is that it requires communication and teamwork rather than gear requirements for fighting a boss.  It also means those running the trials at the highest level are able to display a lot more skill than simply overwhelming a boss with top level gear.  If you do intend on removing the puzzle aspect of raids, all I can do is link this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU.

     

    Dark Sectors, Alliances and End Game Content

    Moving on from trials, I'd like to talk about dark sectors, past and future.  This topic is particularly important to me as I'm part of a competitive clan and I'm also heavily dedicated to my alliance.  Now, I wasn't around for the old dark sectors, but I've done my research and I'm well acquainted with the effective kings and queens of the rails.

     

    The core problem with the last iteration of dark sectors was that it was a click war and could be rigged by getting another clan/alliance to block others attacking you by winning the click war on your node.  If you had two alliances you could do this yourself.  Because of this blocking, certain alliances were able to build up extremely large sums of credits as they were always holding the node.  In the odd case that someone else wins the click war, the defending alliance would have built up more than enough credits to straight up outbid their new attacker, there was never any contest.  On top of this, when certain alliances taxed at 100%, the community would be made to suffer on an otherwise extremely useful node.  Despite it being obvious to not support a 100% tax rate, because the top alliances had the ability to outbid everyone else, players would still fight for them for that sweet initial credit reward.

     

    People also have to live their lives out in the real world.  It shouldn't be expected that clans spend hours on end defending their node when it gets attacked at unfortunate times of the day and week.  To make matters worse, a regular alliance had no hope in these conflicts because the top alliances had incredibly dedicated tacticians who would take 12-hour shifts, ensuring their never-ending victory.  Due to the aforementioned reasons, it’s clear why a rework was needed.

     

    So where do we sit now?  I'm quite interested to see how DE progress with this rift game mode.  It has the potential to be a fantastic opportunity for veteran and clan end game content.  But it isn't dark sectors; it has no resemblance to the old dark sectors and nothing to do with alliances, you didn't even mention the word alliance once in the devstream.

     

    Ignoring that fact, the actual game mode has potential, assuming the rewards are worthwhile.  The fact that it is a set 20 minutes is a fantastic idea.  20 minutes is a nice amount of time that allows every member of the community to participate on the leaderboards, instead of it being an endless survival which is only achievable by those with a ton of free time.

     

    I'd like to credit one of LifeOf Rio’s video for the initial ideas of what I'm about to say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xY-1RNQ-1Q.  The first thing DE needs to do: meaningful leaderboards.  The leaderboards need to be easily accessible so that the top players and top clans can get their name out there.  This acts as a little bonus incentive to participate on top of the actual rewards.  I personally believe there should be a solo leaderboard, squad leaderboard and clan leaderboard.  The leaderboards also need to be made more accessible, instead of being hidden away under profile in the esc menu where they hardly ever get looked at.  Next, there must be actual rewards that entice players to play the game mode, if it's not worth running then the competition will be stale and dry.  DE shouldn't just slap in existing rewards to the table, they need to create something new and rewarding to play for.  There's plenty of options and possibilities here.  I propose a store exclusive to this game mode, completing runs earns currency to purchase your own desired rewards.  Clans could be rewarded with cosmetics for participating members.  Whatever DE chooses, there's plenty of good options for rewards here, but I highly suggest that DE rely on community ideas and feedback to ensure the rewards are something players actually want to play for.

     

    Going back to actual dark sectors, we need a replacement.  The current features of an alliance in-game is an extra chat tab and an extra regalia to put on your Warframe.  Now, if DE actually intends on implementing alliances into this new game mode, I'll be rather unimpressed.  The best feature of the old dark sectors was the direct combat between Alliances over ownership of part of the map.  In the latest devstream it was said that there weren't enough nodes for the number of clans.  I can completely agree with this, there are way too many clans.  However, there are a lot fewer alliances, so make them Alliance exclusive.  If you still believe there are too many alliances, you could add new nodes or possibly add a new planet covered in nodes purely based on conflict.  Alternatively, if you still believe there aren't enough nodes, there's plenty of other ways to implement worthwhile rewards for Alliance vs Alliance combat.

     

    What should the new dark sectors be?  Well first off, if nodes are used again, it needs to be stressed that an Alliance shouldn't be able to ruin nodes for other players by placing high tax rates.  Taxes should be forgotten and instead, the Alliance holding a node should just receive a flat % of what the player makes, without taking away from that player's rewards.  As for the rest of it, that's something that DE need to work on.  I can't emphasize the importance of being receptive to feedback from alliance leaders and the larger player base for this project.  It needs to be enjoyable to play as well as easily manageable for the average alliance leader and can't be so easily rigged like the previous iteration.  The best way to avoid flaws in your future content is to go ask those who found the flaws previously.  Those people love winning, hence why they found and abused the flaws to take advantage of the broken system.  So I can promise you that they would much rather have a working system that encourages competitive play than a broken system that gets shut down for 3 years.

     

    As an example of what could be, I'd like to point to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=u7wcxpag8fs.  Now, the owner of this video might be a little too over-enthusiastic about this content, but I personally believe that it would be really damn cool.  Alliances could own relay-like ships and take over nodes or even entire planets, whatever DE finds works best.  But this is just an idea, the main thing is DE need to find a way to give alliances meaning again, but they need to rely on community feedback so they don't make the same mistakes as last time.  I also want to point out that there are specters, rails and billions of credits left over from the old dark sectors that are just sitting there unable to be used, it would be extremely unjust of DE to not make use of those resources or at least compensate those who have been holding onto them for all these years.

     

    My final message.

    The current endgame content in Warframe is practically non-existent.  With the removal of trials, a lot of players I know will just simply log in for the daily reward, log out.  They complete the new content as it comes and grind out leaderboard events, but for the most part, they no longer play the game.  Now I understand you guys are extremely happy with your 26 million registered losers users (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZtrFxdGUbs), but you only have an average of 47,832.3 players on steam (I know you guys have a non-steam client, but I suspect most of the players use steam anyway) over the past 30 days (http://steamcharts.com/app/230410).  I would suggest that there are three reasons for this major discrepancy in numbers.  The first being the fact that Warframe is a free-to-play game and on Steam, it's bound to have people start and decide it's not their game.  The second reason is the new player experience.  It has been improving, the tutorial was reworked, the progression between planets through junctions was a great idea, overall, it's a good start.  It still has its way to go.  However, I'm not here to tell you how to do that, you guys can figure that out. The third reason is the lack of polished endgame content causing players to quit.

     

    There's a recurring pattern with a lot of content that is introduced to this game.  Dark sectors had so much potential to be a great way that alliances could compete against each other, but it had plenty problems and thus was removed and untouched for years.  Trials provided challenging content that required teamwork to get through rather than just gear requirements, however, it was left buggy and unpolished, untouched for years and now soon to be removed.  Conclave, a game mode that can fulfil the pvp desires of some players, wasn't initially successful and now left to become a wasteland.  Archwing, a cool idea to introduce space combat to a game based on space ninjas, poor implementation and no improvements.  DE, you come up with so many great ideas, but as soon as it becomes too difficult to improve, you drop them and move onto your next project.  What we're left with is a game with a ton of unpolished, unfinished content that has so much potential.  I didn't write this to bring up problems in the game but rather because I love the game and I love the community and I really want to see Warframe become the best game it possibly could be.

     

    TL;DR: (also read My final message, right above this)

    Trials:  DE saying that Eidolons mirrors the playstyle of Trials is completely inaccurate since there are almost no similarities, Eidolons are just a gear check whilst Trials are a knowledge check.  Trials had nothing in game informing the player of their existence, just a blueprint in the market.  The easiest to find/most viewed guide makes raids look harder than they actually are, causing players to avoid trials.  When trials do come back, DE needs to fix the horrible learning experience and bugs but leave the raids untouched at their core, there still needs to be the puzzle element.
    Proposed 'Dark Sectors':  Has nothing to do with the previous dark sectors.  It has potential as a fantastic game mode for regular players and clans.  However, it has nothing to do with Alliance vs Alliance, as was the old dark sectors.  As long as DE give it good rewards and don't stuff it up it could turn out as a good addition to the game.
    Alliances:  Warframe currently offers Alliances nothing, their only benefits are an extra chat tab and emblem for your shoulder.  DE should continue with their current idea on dark sectors for clans, but provide Alliances with their own game mode focusing around direct combat between Alliances over ownership of something that actually holds value (dark sector nodes).  Only this time, don't include taxes that ruin it for everyone else.

     

    [Console] Operation: Plague Star!

    in Announcements

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Eureka.seveN said:

    so dont objectify things u never used. you got 3 based on ur playstyle but u dont accpect the other people who play this game

    If you get 3 based on your playstyle then that's all you need, he's done, what's the point in getting the rest?  No point grinding out to get the remaining ones if he won't use them.

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