Evidences of content drought in a game and that there not so much to do in Warframe.

[Atekron]

So, just numbers:

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

P.S. my playtime did shrink to about 20 minutes every 3-4 days

[Dhrekr]

Tell us something we don't know.

I mean, was there even need for evidence?

 

By the way, the Devs know it perfectly well.

[-VS-Airikr]

given the statistics throughout the year and total time then the content drought + shifting playerbases is perfectly normal. After Venus and co. releases we'll get a big jump and then it slowly decreases again. That's just a normal game cycle and in warframe's case a pretty good one since the overall amount of players still increases.

I dont see the problem here.

[Kylo.]

There are always highs and lows, just like life, but evidently the "low"-numbers are still higher than they were before.

[Saynem]

excluding the peaks of PoE and Tennocon 2018, it's still higher than it's ever been. 

[Jeancly]

the devs know, and that's what fortuna is for XD

[puppycorpse]

The drought is mainly only for people have been playing for a long time or the ones that no life Warframe. They have fortuna coming which is a big update. The big thing is can people actually stop whining and be patient for once. 

[HIGHDAMAGE]

i'm so hyped about fortuna 

real question is: Are this big projects (open world) worth the time/investment

presuming it takes ~ 1 year to develop 

[Joe_Barbarian]

Comparing weekends to weekdays ... 

Yeah content drought.

[Firetempest]

18 minutes ago, HIGHDAMAGE said:

i'm so hyped about fortuna 

real question is: Are this big projects (open world) worth the time/investment

presuming it takes ~ 1 year to develop 

The open world development was already done with PoE. That took the longest to start from scratch.

Now we have hoverboards, custom built guns, custom built pets, vehicles on roads, animal hunting, weather flight effects, multi stage alert system, world bosses, missions provided on map, tandem railjack development, a side archwing rework presumably as well.

Filling up a system already developed does take time still. But DE lives to add new mechanics as well, as well as optimizations all the time.

And I'm sure providing some support to Panic Button for the initial Switch porting has been a thing this year as well.

The kingpin system and flying eidolon still in the background. And we still have A major melee rework in the middle of the mess AND a Gas city tile remake with story. Open world additions are a fraction of the whole behind the scenes.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Firetempest

[Atekron]

12 minutes ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

Comparing weekends to weekdays ... 

Yeah content drought.

but that's 30 days statistic

[Atekron]

22 minutes ago, HIGHDAMAGE said:

i'm so hyped about fortuna 

real question is: Are this big projects (open world) worth the time/investment

presuming it takes ~ 1 year to develop 

probably yes, just look at some other "annual" games, like CoD or Assasins Creed, at least for a while

26 minutes ago, puppycorpse said:

The drought is mainly only for people have been playing for a long time or the ones that no life Warframe. They have fortuna coming which is a big update. The big thing is can people actually stop whining and be patient for once. 

people are mostly inpatient and like to whine, it's human nature

and problem is not with big fleshy updates, problem is that warframe does not have anything for "people have been playing for a long time or the ones that no life", game desperately needs some endgame stuff

[Joe_Barbarian]

16 minutes ago, Atekron said:

but that's 30 days statistic

No your link was 7 day statistic's. Even looking at 30 days, nothing uncommon going on there.

Name 1 game that doesn't get content droughts. We have stuff on the way, yeah it sucks it's taking a little while but droughts are common place for Online games.

Warframe doesn't "desperately need endgame" Would it be nice? yes, but at present it would create more problems than it would solve because end game needs constant updates to keep them fresh. Look at World of Warcraft, they have to keep good pace at bringing out need raids every 3-6 months otherwise cries of CONTENT DROUGHT will be yelled.

Now look at grind games like World of Warplanes / World of Tanks / World of Warships. They have no true endgame but they are doing just fine. It's getting rather boring seeing people proclaim NEEDS THIS NEEDS THAT without fully understanding what they are saying.

[K4RN4]

2 minutes ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

No your link was 7 day statistic's. Even looking at 30 days, nothing uncommon going on there.

Did you try scrolling down. The link provides numbers from 2013 onwards.

[Joe_Barbarian]

1 minute ago, Oru5732 said:

Did you try scrolling down. The link provides numbers from 2013 onwards.

Did you know not everyone uses steam when they play on PC? so those numbers are not absolute.

You also should consider the rest of that post you quoted as well as summer holidays just ended, kids are going back to school so it's pretty natural. If people are going to try and claim the sky is falling in warframe at least have some integrity to your argument instead of using skewed data and ignoring the obvious.

[K4RN4]

1 minute ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

You also should consider the rest of that post you quoted

Why should I the things I didn't quote were correct. I just corrected the false statement at the beginning, which has nothing to do with the rest.

 

3 minutes ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

Did you know not everyone uses steam when they play on PC? so those numbers are not absolute.

But why does this matter. There is no significant difference between steam users and nonsteam users. Therefore just taking the steam users as a sample of the playerbase is perfectly valid. For example the peak player number of steam users has declined by 18.05%, so we can assume that the overall peak player number has declined by a similar percentage of 15-20%. Steams statistics are a useful indicator, even if the numbers are not absolute.

[Atekron]

18 minutes ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

Look at World of Warcraft, they have to keep good pace at bringing out need raids every 3-6 months otherwise cries of CONTENT DROUGHT will be yelled.

so, how is it different from curent situation in warframe? we also crying, but we got nothing like for very long time

18 minutes ago, Joe_Barbarian said:

Now look at grind games like World of Warplanes / World of Tanks / World of Warships. They have no true endgame but they are doing just fine. It's getting rather boring seeing people proclaim NEEDS THIS NEEDS THAT without fully understanding what they are saying.

all of what you mention are PvP games, PvP games does not requare constant stream of new content and freacvent updates, and even can be harmfull - just lokk at LoL

Warframe is PvE games, PvE games need constant stream of content to live, i'm not claiming that Warframe dying, we all aware of upcoming Fortuna update, but you can't deny content drought and it's negative consequences

[AzureTerra]

and then when the rain (content) happens people will be back.. cycle of life and that. bored with whats on offer now then you know take a break. your not missing out on anything if you do and will be fresh for when the next big thing happens

[Joe_Barbarian]

4 minutes ago, Oru5732 said:

Why should I the things I didn't quote were correct. I just corrected the false statement at the beginning, which has nothing to do with the rest.

 

But why does this matter. There is no significant difference between steam users and nonsteam users. Therefore just taking the steam users as a sample of the playerbase is perfectly valid. For example the peak player number of steam users has declined by 18.05%, so we can assume that the overall peak player number has declined by a similar percentage of 15-20%. Steams statistics are a useful indicator, even if the numbers are not absolute.

Firstly, taking incomplete data and assuming the rest is what creates fake news. As I've already tried to explain, with all things considered this is Perfectly Normal behaviour. Content droughts happens in all sorts of games, we have stuff on the way. 

2 minutes ago, Atekron said:

so, how is it different from curent situation in warframe? we also crying, but we got nothing like for very long time

all of what you mention are PvP games, PvP games does not requare constant stream of new content and freacvent updates, and even can be harmfull - just lokk at LoL

Warframe is PvE games, PvE games need constant stream of content to live, i'm not claiming that Warframe dying, we all aware of upcoming Fortuna update, but you can't deny content drought and it's negative consequences

If you actually look at the statistics this isn't the first time there has been a spike in player activity and then drops, take a look at any other game you have the exact same things happen. Also, I never said that claim the game was dying, I said the sky was falling, crying out "content drought" "needs endgame" when it doesn't NEED anything.

[Zeclem]

content droughts are in commonplace among pve games yes. but they are nowhere as big as warframes in most games. 

[Yatazanami]

what are you talking about op ? we literally have tons of Syandanas and Skins and Prime Vaults that have boundless Depth to them and actually give you the urges to login daily .

Edited September 18, 2018 by Yatazanami

[DrBorris]

Okay, but, um, let's compare apples to apples here.

• September 2017: 37k Average Players
• September 2018: (currently) 56k Players

I rest my case.

Also, I would argue it was in DE's best long-term interest to "take a hit" and endure a population drop in order to reinforce the foundation of the game. If DE just keeps pushing forward, never going back to touch up or rework, the end result will not be good. And this year, DE took a hit in player count in order to reinforce Warframe's foundation a bit in order to increase long-term success. And given that the population is still higher than at this point last year, and that their expenses are most likely largely unchanged (as DE has not done much growth staff wise), I would say it has been a good gamble so far. 

Looking at short term gains is, well, short sighted. Thank god player population is not a metric like stock price for major corporations, if it were we would never get some of the great quality of life enhancements we got this year.

[TeneKay]

People focus too much on numbers, we should just enjoy the game - the numbers are for the devs to worry about.

Yes, there is content drought to some people and those people will leave in favour of other games if Warframe got a bit boring to them, but a large majority will come back after a major mainline update hits to check it out, and they'll likely stick around till they get bored again. It's just how it goes, if Warframe is not your main game, you'll likely just play it once big updates hit and then go back to your main game(s).

[Atekron]

1 hour ago, Yatazanami said:

what are you talking about op ? we literally have tons of Syandanas and Skins and Prime Vaults that have boundless Depth to them and actually give you the urges to login daily .

dude, I'm playing this game for 2 years, MR25, only reason for me to log in is that I dont want to be kick-out from clan, I just like our emblem

[Yatazanami]

1 hour ago, DrBorris said:

Okay, but, um, let's compare apples to apples here.

• September 2017: 37k Average Players
• September 2018: (currently) 56k Players

I rest my case.

Also, I would argue it was in DE's best long-term interest to "take a hit" and endure a population drop in order to reinforce the foundation of the game. If DE just keeps pushing forward, never going back to touch up or rework, the end result will not be good. And this year, DE took a hit in player count in order to reinforce Warframe's foundation a bit in order to increase long-term success. And given that the population is still higher than at this point last year, and that their expenses are most likely largely unchanged (as DE has not done much growth staff wise), I would say it has been a good gamble so far. 

Looking at short term gains is, well, short sighted. Thank god player population is not a metric like stock price for major corporations, if it were we would never get some of the great quality of life enhancements we got this year.

i second this ! 

 take the risk and slow down the rushed content train a bit

 we need more reworks and overhauls to the core game like Damage 3.0, sophisticated Ai, Rework to the Rivens/kuva farming , and maybe investing on dedicated servers.