Let's Talk: Content Drought - What DE can learn from this

[DerGreif2]

Some people will never be happy. I play the game for quite a while now and have to say it's awesome how much content this game has to offer in terms of events. I am used to have one event in a month that mostly is nothing new. Here? A lot of things going on every time and even when the events are recycled... we have a reason for it that are both HUGE projects that will be a blast to play. In my opinion DE is making a great job. We know why the recycle eventa and know what comes soon. To start now moaning about that is just...

[(PSN)WeeMalk5]

How about throwing in some new mods to change up drop tables from time to time. 

Even revamp some outdated mods, but most importantly, change the stagnant drop tables. 

[SenorClipClop]

On 2018-10-03 at 6:27 PM, MartianGHunter said:

Basically want to open up a discussion on people takes on content drought and what DE can do better after the Fortuna release to prevent this from happening again.

You make it sound like DE did this accidentally. Having a relative dearth of content this year was a calculated move by DE, and one that's been backed up by hard evidence. Last year saw a similar content drought pre-PoE, and last year was also Warframe's biggest year of player growth and play time by a wide margin. Having sparing content and then a huge dump of it in a revolutionary open-world addition to the game proved incredibly successful, and now they're trying again bigger, and armed with what they learned from their first swing at it.

On 2018-10-03 at 6:27 PM, MartianGHunter said:

They decided to place all their resources into Fortuna and by so doing have neglected other promising projects such KingPin system and stopped releasing bi weekly and monthly content such as tactical alerts.

I'll give you that Tac Alerts have been relatively lacking, though we have had both the Proxy Rebellion and a completely new event in the Pyrus Project this year, which has been been more event content than some previous years. The KingPin system has been in development since before work on PoE and honestly I'm not sure we'll see it in the next couple years, if at all. I don't think the devs are seeing it as promising right now. We've also received a whole ton of cosmetic content (some say that's not content, but some do) and the Onslaught modes.  The studio has gotten so much better than it's been before, and even with the development of Fortuna they're still giving us a lot more content than they did back in previous years (2016 and The Wait Within, for example) while working on ever-larger projects. DE has not ignored updating their game.

 

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

20 hours ago, -.SP.-G43riel said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

new warframes aren't exactly content, it's the basic, the least expected from them, the minimum.
Even STEVE stated that they are in content drough, that they could have done a lot more. So it's not being ungrateful and petty, its being realistic.

9

 

20 hours ago, mikakor said:

Even the DEVS said that there IS  a content drought. I suppose they are also ungrateful and whiny

 

 

19 hours ago, arii1986 said:

When the developer acknowledges a content drought, you really can't deny it.

 

 

 

OR this is simply PR 101, when a solution is not immediate, acknowledging and siding with the concern can settle nerves. Companies do this all the time. Does not mean that's how they feel. For them, they have a metric S#&$ tonne of new content.

16 hours ago, Cracka95 said:

The size of PoE doesn't mean anything if there's no reason to play it like everything else that has been released that needs a good revisit.

 

 

 

The comment was based around the fact Fortuna is a bigger map than PoE, which should give us some understanding of the amount of work required to get it finished.

12 hours ago, OrlockCedar said:

And this is one of the reasons why most people are afraid to offer criticism. Because someone comes around and says that they are complaining or being petty because of it. I love Warframe to pieces. It's been the only game I have really felt any real investment towards in my many years of gaming. However, I do not let that love blind me into thinking that everything is hunky dory in the game, because it very obviously is not, and DE depends on us, the community to help them improve the game. 

Criticism should always be met with differing criticism. 2 sides to a coin...etc

I never said everything is "hunky dory", I'm MR25, done all they give us, not to be taken as the rule. Even last night I was helping a new player into the game, are they seeing the lack of content?
For my chain of thought, I take into consideration, DE's size, ambition, and talents. I came to the conclusion that they will deliver the new content, my timeline for them is when it is ready. Until then I have other games and things I can do.
The good thing about DE is, it is worth the wait.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

For my chain of thought, I take into consideration, DE's size, ambition, and talents. I came to the conclusion that they will deliver the new content, my timeline for them is when it is ready. Until then I have other games and things I can do.

 

There's the problem again. You have done everything - and are waiting for the next update so you will go off and play another game. And why wouldn't you? 

But this is a free to play game - they need these active numbers, they need people in the game to make money. That's why there "one big update a year" will slowly kill the game.

Because the next time a player goes off, what's to stop them just sticking with the game they start playing?

What happens if a WF competitor comes up and they release content every week - wouldn't you rather play a game like that? If you knew every week there was going to be new content.

You can't just rely on customer investment. Gamer's have short attention span - we will play a game to death and then go for the next big release.

That's why I am saying POE and Fortuna or awesome in scope and vision for a free game. But the game needs regular content as well to keep people engaged. Because the next time they disengage, maybe the last you see of them.

Once again, the Fortnite example - new content every week, active players, massive on twitch.

That wasn't PR - they must see the numbers dropping, the Youtubers talking, the forums getting nervous. 

A free to play game needs regular content to stay alive - especially one like this that is so community focussed. 

 

 

[MartianGHunter]

9 hours ago, Goodwill said:

So basically... your post is just about everything that DE already knows... Pointing out problems is easy, finding and creating reasonable and feasible solutions is a different matter which something we as a playerbase are incapable of doing as we do not have the capacity or influence to redistribute resources. Although I will agree with your last point on PvP. But that also goes back to clan events and a lot of long term players are already aware of that.

For now, I would rather DE focus on Fortuna and Railjack.

No my post is to open up discussion and air out thoughts the community has. 

These are my thoughts and honestly i am not saying they perfect after all its my opinion at the end of the day. 

And you saying I haven't offered up solutions please look at my other posts before this discussion I am constantly offering up solutions for new content and improving content. Even in my post i suggested more tactical alerts giving more variation to the existing alerts. Improving PvP to be more warframe friendly these are all suggestions i don't what more i can do or say as a single voice hence reason this exists. 

[Oreades]

The two cornerstones for content should be consistency and quality. 

You'd think quality would come first but as long a that doesn't slip too far consistency is far more important. 

the problem isn't that we haven't gotten any content over the last 10 or so months but that the content we have gotten has been inconstant and the quality has ranged from just OK to down right UHOH.

I realize a good part of that is because most of their efforts are being pushed into Fortuna but I don't feel like this Feast and Famine cycle is sustainable in the long term. 

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

51 minutes ago, arii1986 said:

There's the problem again. You have done everything - and are waiting for the next update so you will go off and play another game. And why wouldn't you? 

But this is a free to play game - they need these active numbers, they need people in the game to make money. That's why there "one big update a year" will slowly kill the game.

Because the next time a player goes off, what's to stop them just sticking with the game they start playing?

What happens if a WF competitor comes up and they release content every week - wouldn't you rather play a game like that? If you knew every week there was going to be new content.

You can't just rely on customer investment. Gamer's have short attention span - we will play a game to death and then go for the next big release.

That's why I am saying POE and Fortuna or awesome in scope and vision for a free game. But the game needs regular content as well to keep people engaged. Because the next time they disengage, maybe the last you see of them.

Once again, the Fortnite example - new content every week, active players, massive on twitch.

That wasn't PR - they must see the numbers dropping, the Youtubers talking, the forums getting nervous. 

A free to play game needs regular content to stay alive - especially one like this that is so community focussed. 

 

 

1

There's the other problem again, most forum users, streamers and YouTubers are higher ranked, so are deemed the voice of all. They generally speak for others in the world of high ranked WF players. This does not account for god knows how many people who are not forum users, streamers etc.

Pushing out faster updates may seem like a glorious idea, but if the quality is sacrificed I would be deterred into sticking with other games that offer the quality.

Fortnite, is a dream tale for Epic, one game just died(they killed it). They have their back up game which wasn't even meant to be what everyone loves, no one plays the base game. They landed their BR free addon at the exact right time, (during a content drought on console).  As for new content....please explain how dances/skins and other stuff directed at 9-year-olds is different to our non-content of skins, actual warframes, weapons?

The DEV stream is PR...... "that wasn't PR"??? huh?

 

"A free to play game needs regular content to stay alive - especially one like this that is so community focussed. " DE has a community with expectations, I will thoroughly agree that if they want to do these big updates they need to make/hire a separate dev team to create void fillers. This current time should be seen as a lesson for them.

Current set up would stretch them thin to try doing lots of small but consistent plus the big jobs would lead to disaster. We should have an understanding of their current team, and have patience. DE should make sure this is not repeated.

 

 

[-.SP.-G43riel]

2 hours ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

OR this is simply PR 101, when a solution is not immediate, acknowledging and siding with the concern can settle nerves. Companies do this all the time. Does not mean that's how they feel. For them, they have a metric S#&$ tonne of new content.

9 hours ago, DerGreif2 said:

Some people will never be happy. I play the game for quite a while now and have to say it's awesome how much content this game has to offer in terms of events. I am used to have one event in a month that mostly is nothing new. Here? A lot of things going on every time and even when the events are recycled... we have a reason for it that are both HUGE projects that will be a blast to play. In my opinion DE is making a great job. We know why the recycle eventa and know what comes soon. To start now moaning about that is just...

I get it, it's great that FOR YOU there's still content, but sooner or later you'll also run out content like many old/veteran players.
That's my point, what is there to do when you already did everything and have everything? nothing, zero, nada.
Events and special alerts are good, but there's nothing new or worth for me and a lot of people to do them again.
The only thing that still makes most people come back is during the weekend that Baro comes around.
 

2 hours ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

I never said everything is "hunky dory", I'm MR25, done all they give us, not to be taken as the rule. Even last night I was helping a new player into the game, are they seeing the lack of content?

If you're MR 25 how can you say there's not lack of content? content for MR25 should be just helping new players? should be just farming endless missions? should just be Dojo Fashion Design?
Where's a mission or mode to really engage clans and alliances together ?

now seriously,  its really shocking when people appear saying that "there's no problem" or "It's just PR"  just makes no sense
Both Steve and Rebbeca said "it's not a problem to go play something else for a while" you should never say that to your audience/client.
The game is not fine and they know that.

Edited October 4, 2018 by -.SP.-G43riel

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

3 minutes ago, -.SP.-G43riel said:

I get it, it's great that FOR YOU there's still content, but sooner or later you'll also run out content like many old/veteran players.
That's my point, what is there to do when you already did everything and have everything? nothing, zero, nada.
Events and special alerts are good, but there's nothing new or worth for me and a lot of people to do them again.
The only thing that still makes most people come back is during the weekend that Baro comes around.

now seriously,  its really shocking when people appear saying that "there's no problem" or "It's just PR" 
Both Steve and Rebbeca said "it's not a problem to go play something else for a while" you should never say that to your audience/client.
The game is not fine and they know that.



 

 

"That's my point, what is there to do when you already did everything and have everything? nothing, zero, nada."
Q1. How long did the sacrifice take you to complete?

Q2. How long do think it took to develop the Sacrifice?

Guarantee the two times do not even come within months of each other. The sacrifice was a smaller update, dismissed as real content apparently. No company can compete with time to consume Vs Development time. Yet you expect them to feed us content at a time span relative to ours?

 

"Both Steve and Rebbeca said "it's not a problem to go play something else for a while" you should never say that to your audience/client."

How dare they be realistic!!!

 

 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

There's the other problem again, most forum users, streamers and YouTubers are higher ranked, so are deemed the voice of all. They generally speak for others in the world of high ranked WF players. This does not account for god knows how many people who are not forum users, streamers etc.

Pushing out faster updates may seem like a glorious idea, but if the quality is sacrificed I would be deterred into sticking with other games that offer the quality.

Fortnite, is a dream tale for Epic, one game just died(they killed it). They have their back up game which wasn't even meant to be what everyone loves, no one plays the base game. They landed their BR free addon at the exact right time, (during a content drought on console).  As for new content....please explain how dances/skins and other stuff directed at 9-year-olds is different to our non-content of skins, actual warframes, weapons?

The DEV stream is PR...... "that wasn't PR"??? huh?

 

"A free to play game needs regular content to stay alive - especially one like this that is so community focussed. " DE has a community with expectations, I will thoroughly agree that if they want to do these big updates they need to make/hire a separate dev team to create void fillers. This current time should be seen as a lesson for them.

Current set up would stretch them thin to try doing lots of small but consistent plus the big jobs would lead to disaster. We should have an understanding of their current team, and have patience. DE should make sure this is not repeated.

 

 

Sorry, but the game isn't just built for you. Just because you are happy with the way things are - that does not mean it's okay. If slow updates eventually killed the game what would you say? HR players can also have an opinion like yourself. And their concerns are warranted. 

Okay so let's talk recent "content" in WF. Skins are not content. Primes are reskins. Revenant was clearly rushed and untested. And Phantasma doesn't do enough to upset the meta in the slightest. Pyrus Project: nothing like what was hyped. And the Sacrifice? 30 minutes max. No new game mechanics, no new game modes. The only good thing recently was the Nezha rework - which was damn magic by Pablo. Fortnite may have stupid dances and emotes aimed at 9 year olds, but they also introduce new mechanics and gameplay impacting changes on a regular basis.

I know the dev streams are PR lol I was referring to your statement with regards to Steve's recognition of a content drought: "OR this is simply PR 101, when a solution is not immediate, acknowledging and siding with the concern can settle nerves. Companies do this all the time. Does not mean that's how they feel. For them, they have a metric S#&$ tonne of new content."

DE may have a strategy - but all strategies can have their flaws. And people have the right to question them.

 

[-.SP.-G43riel]

24 minutes ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

"That's my point, what is there to do when you already did everything and have everything? nothing, zero, nada."
Q1. How long did the sacrifice take you to complete?

Q2. How long do think it took to develop the Sacrifice?

Guarantee the two times do not even come within months of each other. The sacrifice was a smaller update, dismissed as real content apparently. No company can compete with time to consume Vs Development time. Yet you expect them to feed us content at a time span relative to ours?

 

"Both Steve and Rebbeca said "it's not a problem to go play something else for a while" you should never say that to your audience/client."

How dare they be realistic!!!

just because they took a long time to do something, doesnt mean that it will survive or keep the players interested
Anyone here still plays lunaro? they worked hard on that too
Anyone here still plays conclave?  they still update that also
Anyone here plays Warframe Fighterz still? 
Why do sanctuary when you already did khora and the vandal? Radiant Relics? already have everything
Why keep farming rep in cetus when, again, you already have everything?
your point there adds nothing, they are lacking real content, content to grab people and they know that
 

Edited October 4, 2018 by -.SP.-G43riel

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

2 minutes ago, -.SP.-G43riel said:

just because they took a long time to do something, doesnt mean that it will survive or keep the players interested
Anyone here still plays lunaro? they worked hard on that too
Anyone here still plays conclave?  they still update that also
Anyone here plays Warframe Fighterz still? 
Why do sanctuary when you already did khora and the vandal? Radiant Relics? already have everything
Why keep farming rep in cetus when, again, you already have everything?
your point there adds nothing, they are lacking real content, content to grab people and they know that
 

My point is any "real content" they add we will be consumed within days,(as with sanctuary, as with sacrifice, as with frame fighterz as with cetus rep..as with everything they have put before us....)and then will be back here WE WANT MORE .....NOW!!!!

[OrlockCedar]

1 minute ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

My point is any "real content" they add we will be consumed within days,(as with sanctuary, as with sacrifice, as with frame fighterz as with cetus rep..as with everything they have put before us....)and then will be back here WE WANT MORE .....NOW!!!!

It's not a matter of "WE WANT MORE NOW!!!" for the majority of us is just "Give us something." Or "Fix what we've been saying doesn't work for years." Honestly I would be content if they spent an entire update just improving on the stuff they have already made. Additionally, the way Warframe is made, it survives off of a steady stream of new content. That's just how Warframe is and probably will always be.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, OrlockCedar said:

It's not a matter of "WE WANT MORE NOW!!!" for the majority of us is just "Give us something." Or "Fix what we've been saying doesn't work for years." Honestly I would be content if they spent an entire update just improving on the stuff they have already made. Additionally, the way Warframe is made, it survives off of a steady stream of new content. That's just how Warframe is and probably will always be.

Totally agree. They could simply add to existing game modes or improve/fix them.

Kuva survival for example: they could add scaling rewards/new rooms in the map/new hazards/new kuva grineer enemies to spice up the action - these are just a few things that spring to mind. 

Edited October 4, 2018 by Guest

[Corvid]

8 minutes ago, OrlockCedar said:

Honestly I would be content if they spent an entire update just improving on the stuff they have already made.

What do you think the multiple frame reworks we've had are?

What about the massive weapon balance pass we got early in the year?

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

2 minutes ago, arii1986 said:

Totally agree. They could simply add to existing game modes or improve/fix them.

Kuva survival for example: they could add scaling rewards/new rooms in the map/new hazards/new kuva grineer enemies to spice up the action - these are just a few things that spring to mind. 

reminds me I had a "kewl" new idea for Kuva fortress as I did feel modifying the age-old survival system was a weak effort.
I would fully agree to have a team dedicated to fixing, while we wait.
I don't think I'll ever agree that constant (2-3 month) updates which offer only minutes/hours/few days of content will trump a 6-month wait for real content.

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

1 minute ago, Corvid said:

What do you think the multiple frame reworks we've had are?

What about the massive weapon balance pass we got early in the year?

These people are not willing to admit anything as content or fixes during the past 5 months. Flawed logical but they're sticking to it!!

 

[OrlockCedar]

3 minutes ago, Corvid said:

What do you think the multiple frame reworks we've had are?

What about the massive weapon balance pass we got early in the year?

I mean like game modes specifically Archwing as well as PoE. I'm a RPG fan. I love a living world, but PoE feels very dead to me, even in Cetus, and if you are going to start promoting open world areas, you are inevitably going to start drawing in RPG fans who love an open world.

Edited October 4, 2018 by OrlockCedar

[PerfectCrime]

One of the easiest solutions for preventing content drought from happening is recycling the old event (Old tactical alert, not only the reward that returning but the actual event itself is occurring again) much like the "Amazing" Plague Star event does. But please, NOT Plague Star. There are more than dozens of old Tactical Alert that already happen in the past, and I hoped at least some of them will return in the future. Also hoping if there are new Tactical Alert or Event is got even better than the previous event. 

[OrlockCedar]

1 minute ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

These people are not willing to admit anything as content or fixes during the past 5 months. Flawed logical but they're sticking to it!!

 

Last I checked we are simply throwing out our opinions, which you are more than welcome to disagree with my points as I am to disagree with yours. No need to cop an attitude.

[spirit_of_76]

More to the point they need to plan their other content releases a bit better

The Pyrus project and the unvalulting should not have been at the same time

They nezha and revenet should have been farther apart

Revenet should have had a longer balancing period

A few more tac alerts would have been nice

keep small content item ready at all times.  the types of things that can be implemented by a few people and minor events that can be completed regularly for some reward/standing in a faction that can be redeemed for a specific Item

to the community slow down have fun try a new frame go fishing and stop rushing to obtain/do everything as soon it comes out.

[OrlockCedar]

3 minutes ago, PerfectCrime said:

One of the easiest solutions for preventing content drought from happening is recycling the old event (Old tactical alert, not only the reward that returning but the actual event itself is occurring again) much like the "Amazing" Plague Star event does. But please, NOT Plague Star. There are more than dozens of old Tactical Alert that already happen in the past, and I hoped at least some of them will return in the future. Also hoping if there are new Tactical Alert or Event is got even better than the previous event. 

Something like a variation of the Gradivous Dilemma would be really nice in my opinion. Maybe the alerts could give more exclusive rewards compared to the conflicts we have going right now.

Edited October 4, 2018 by OrlockCedar

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

Just now, OrlockCedar said:

Last I checked we are simply throwing out our opinions, which you are more than welcome to disagree with my points as I am to disagree with yours. No need to cop an attitude.

Is it not true that anything that might have been considered content (other than Nehza's new underpants) has been shut down by a lot of people as not enough? Look through the thread. just about everything from this year has been dismissed in order to sustain the drought theory. Not an attitude..merely my opinion

[OrlockCedar]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

Is it not true that anything that might have been considered content (other than Nehza's new underpants) has been shut down by a lot of people as not enough? Look through the thread. just about everything from this year has been dismissed in order to sustain the drought theory. Not an attitude..merely my opinion

What seems to be the definition of content a majority of folks here is content that keeps people interested in the game (like improving game modes, etc), not to give them a reason to spend money on the game. Trust me, there's plenty of motivation for that already. I have dumped so much money on cosmetics and rushing stuff. Yes I will agree that the weapon tweaks is a step in the right direction, but I doubt that real weapon and Warframe balancing is ever going to be a thing in this game when you are more or less supposed to be a god among men. Someone else said here that Pablo worked some magic on Nezha, which (I wholeheartedly agree with) is also a step in the right direction, but there is still so much that DE needs to improve to make the early game stuff even worth it to come back to after you have what you wanted.

EDIT: Which is why I believe there is reason for the content drought, because once you have grinded / farmed for what you wanted, there is little to no motivation to go back to certain game modes.  

Edited October 4, 2018 by OrlockCedar