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

[JakCrow]

They can learn not to shovel the content drought responsibility off onto the players that make tennogen stuff (while only getting a 30% cut mind you) like Rebecca kinda did on the dev stream last week. I think that rubbed more than a few people the wrong way 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Syln said:

Content Drought is a great thing ! You can take a break, play something else and comeback !

I am sure DE don't share your same enthusiasm. The whole design of the game is centered around dedicated daily/regular play. I'm pretty sure they don't want people to take a break, that means they are not in the game and not able to spend money.

Daily standing, daily tribute, sorties - see where I am going?

If they moved to a more regular content release schedule like other free to plays, then they stand more chance of keeping more players in the game, spending money and helping them grow.

But at the present time? They release one giant slab of content, let all the players bleed out and then hope for them all to return with another giant slab. And let's be honest - is that really going to happen again after Fortuna? I don't even think as many players will return for Fortuna as they did with POE.

[(PSN)purpleskullgamin]

3 minutes ago, arii1986 said:

I am sure DE don't share your same enthusiasm. The whole design of the game is centered around dedicated daily/regular play. I'm pretty sure they don't want people to take a break, that means they are not in the game and not able to spend money.

Daily standing, daily tribute, sorties - see where I am going?

If they moved to a more regular content release schedule like other free to plays, then they stand more chance of keeping more players in the game, spending money and helping them grow.

But at the present time? They release one giant slab of content, let all the players bleed out and then hope for them all to return with another giant slab. And let's be honest - is that really going to happen again after Fortuna? I don't even think as many players will return for Fortuna as they did with POE.

Hell, even making the weekends baro's not around doubler weekends would be useful. 

Maybe bring back the GOTL alerts like once a month.

 

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, (PS4)purpleskullgamin said:

Maybe bring back the GOTL alerts like once a month.

Gift of the Lotus happens every Prime Time, right? Do you mean the Design Council alerts that seemed to demonstrate why they don't have players design missions?

[TheErebus.]

6 hours ago, Syln said:

Content Drought is a great thing ! You can take a break, play something else and comeback !

Except that most (if not ALL) game devs WANT you stay with their game and not go to another one. It's like if Activison/Any of the 3 CoD devs went "Y'know what, just go play battlefield for a little bit whilst we work on somethin big, go on then it's fine"

 

[(PSN)Sgt_Buttscratch]

I think this discussion of a "content drought" is wack.

What we can learn from this:

DE has been transparent about venus, rail jack and gas city remodel for months

We know the size of PoE, we know this is way bigger.

Sacrifice was released 4 months ago...

 

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

[(PSN)purpleskullgamin]

1 hour ago, peterc3 said:

Gift of the Lotus happens every Prime Time, right? Do you mean the Design Council alerts that seemed to demonstrate why they don't have players design missions?

Yeah, sorry design council and I don't know those were kinda fun. Hectic at times but fun.

[-.SP.-G43riel]

The MAJOR PROBLEM with warframe is that there's not really any competitive spirit to keep large CLANS and/or ALLIANCES engaged in long term.
Most of the BIG MMO games have at least some sort of competitive aspect to keep players playing, like CLAN WARS or something like that

we used to have the DARK SECTOR RAIL WARS which a huge part of the community nowadays never saw or even knows about.
They've said that it would return someday, but never got back at it, maybe after the new war?

Spoiler

 

 

 

CONCLAVE "balancing", aka nerfing,  is what made most people move away from it.
LUNARO ?  it was interesting but it didnt have any reason for anyone to keep playing it.

Warframe can't really survive alone on ALERTS and ENDLESS MISSIONS
Destiny 2 has some of that competitive aspect, which is kind the only variable that Destiny trumps Warframe

 

1 hour ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

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.

Edited October 3, 2018 by -.SP.-G43riel

[mikakor]

34 minutes ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

I think this discussion of a "content drought" is wack.

What we can learn from this:

DE has been transparent about venus, rail jack and gas city remodel for months

We know the size of PoE, we know this is way bigger.

Sacrifice was released 4 months ago...

 

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

Prime is merely content. Hoooo, shiny dev streams. Nice. But this thread isn't "wack" . Denying that there was a lack of content is ignorant. And you know what? Even the DEVS said that there IS  a content drought. I suppose they are also ungrateful and whiny? Or maybe they are aware that the game lacked attention recently. The LIVE game, not what is being developed. If a game stops all meaningful update for 5 years to focus on developing something, no matter how you look at it, is. It. Content. Drought. 

[MysticDragonMage]

7 hours ago, MartianGHunter said:

Lastly: PvP that suits Warframe

Now before you say it that Warframe is PvE and has no place for PvP, I think this is a little shallow minded. I believe that a PvP mode that could work for Warframe is less of a players killing players but rather players competing against other players in a series of challenges that test parkour, aiming, use of abilities to complete challenges in teams of 2, 4 or even 8 in a game mode similar to Destiny's Gambit (its a good game mode yes with flaws that could work for Warframe) with its own unique Warframe twist.

i agree with this, though i still believe PvP is possible for warframe.

i think the main problem is that they try to bring too many aspects from the original game to their PvP environment. for example, i know warframe is all about obtaining enough energy and resources as well as modding your warframe to gain an advantage, but this IMO does not work for PvP. thus, we get people who are hogging all of the energy from both sides and people who can abuse to modding system (modifying weapons and warframes to a point where they have no downsides). plus, you have so many weapons to keep track of; and again, i know warframe is all about the weapons, but this is not working out.

personally, i think a cool-down system needs to be implemented (not to specifically the abilities, but maybe energy could increase at a certain rate with no more energy wells) and maybe limit the amount of mods a player can place on their weapons and warframes to make the system more manageable and fair (a different modding system). i also think health, armor, movement speed, and shield capacity needs to be the same for all warframes (and not mod-able), making their abilities the only thing that makes each one different and making it far more easier to balance each warframe (you can play rhino with the same stats as ash, but still be a tank with iron skin). i know what i said about weapons too, but with what ive already mentioned implemented, i say leave the weapons themselves be for now.

[MasterBurik]

This may not be the case, but it appears (from my community-side view) that DE is lacking structure on both sides of their current development paths: Creating new content, and refurbishing/rebalancing old content. It could explain why their content reveals tend to be sporadic bursts, interspersed with shallow dives into better developed content (K-Drives being the most notable right now). Even if this is not the case, engaging the community in the development process a little better would do wonders for both sides. Having the community vote to help prioritize aspects of content currently being worked on (or in the immediate pipeline) could help DE focus on content that interests large portions of their playerbase, and reveal the nature of their players far better than frame usage and mission time statistics. It also gives the community a sense of consistent progress, and injects a little reality into the development process. Plus, having this focus gives the Community Managers something tangible to discuss with both the developers AND the community, rather than a constant influx of questions regarding a number of "promises" or "ideas" previously mentioned, but low in development priority (or still in pre-concept).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

I think this discussion of a "content drought" is wack.

What we can learn from this:

DE has been transparent about venus, rail jack and gas city remodel for months

We know the size of PoE, we know this is way bigger.

Sacrifice was released 4 months ago...

 

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

3

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

And yes we know all of these new things they are busy with. We can see it, get excited for it, want it. But we can't play it. We don't have any of that content.

Sacrifice was much shorter than the War Within and the Second Dream and introduced no new game mechanics. Umbra and the umbral mods was about it.

No one is whining here. No one is being petty here. All I see is constructive feedback and ideas.

 

[stormy505]

7 hours ago, GinKenshin said:

Imo this is DE’s number 1 issue. The game keep getting bigger every year, but the staff is hardly getting bigger...sure, the equipment and tech is, but that can only do so much 

 

  They are sorta aware of it, like when telltale company disbanded, they offered jobs (though it seemed more of a curtesy and standing by them than focusing on getting more people). They’re working on it but it’s obviously isn’t important for them, they need to dedicate staff to it 

 

   Iirc Steve said the team is a family, and I know it’s hard to welcome new members in, but they need to do a reality check here and look at the big picture. If they really love the game, then they should drop the ‘we can handle it’ attitude and make the right call, by the game and the players 

Tbf training and catching new employees up takes time and resources as well... They would have to take away from some of there current projects to train newbies

[Nirrel]

2 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Gift of the Lotus happens every Prime Time, right? Do you mean the Design Council alerts that seemed to demonstrate why they don't have players design missions?

LOL, to be fair, some of them was fun and it's not like DE does any better... just look at the last event, wich was totaly regular defence and interception

for 30 minutes with inexsisting spawns. i'll take the counsil design any time over that crap.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Nirrel

[OrlockCedar]

One of the things I have heard people talk about, and what I feel strongly on is for DE to go back and make fixes to the game modes that have been out and need some serious attention. Yes, this is coming from a "veteran" who watched the game grow through the course of five + years.

One of these is Archwing. Archwing is arguably the biggest for me, because I was around for the hype of Archwing. It was going to take Warframe to a place we never expected (back when all we had were going from randomly generated tileset to tileset. It was taking us into space. With the trailer we got, we teased the Fomorian and ship raids with our Archwings. What did we get? Basically a big room level that looked like space and very little motivation to even try to improve Archwings because, for the most part, they had no continuity for the rest of the game, and the levels simply were not fun. If there is something I want on an Archwing mission, I actually groan with disdain because that means I have to go through cramped ship levels that archwing never really felt like it was meant for. Like the rest of Warframe, Archwing is meant to be fast paced, which doesn't mix well with a lot of the tilesets for Archwing that we have now. One of the other things that really put a downer on Archwing was the fact that, ultimately, I was playing the same old game modes with a different skin on it. I know I talked only about Archwing, mainly because that's the one I feel the most passionate about. I'm not a fan of PvP nor have I really tried onslaught. Bottom line here, a content drought could easily be prevented or staved off if, during that time, they released some small stuff here and there, and went back to fix the other game modes that have been left in the dust the perpetual "backburner". 

  

[(XBOX)Grimsley Clause]

4 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Gift of the Lotus happens every Prime Time, right? Do you mean the Design Council alerts that seemed to demonstrate why they don't have players design missions?

If you're referring to the final council mission that had all those Nullifiers, Ospreys, and other Moa types, that was debunked as DE switching the results of the mission with their own, as they believed the original option of the Oxium Ospreys was just our way of giving players tons of Oxium.

Besides, at the time, they were the hardest possible starting missions outside sorties and the then-trials, something people were and are still asking for.

Edited October 3, 2018 by (XB1)ALG Minuscule36

[Syln]

Il y a 3 heures, TheErebus. a dit :

Except that most (if not ALL) game devs WANT you stay with their game and not go to another one. It's like if Activison/Any of the 3 CoD devs went "Y'know what, just go play battlefield for a little bit whilst we work on somethin big, go on then it's fine"

 

it's "unhealthy" for a game to try and keep its playerbase as long as it possibly can by drowning it with content. 

Why ? Because the core gameplay is still the same and permanent addition are ephemeral and contribute to slightly increase the burnout that is growing inside every player which could (will) lead on a far longer break than it could have been, 

I'm only talking on personnal experience, i played this game for many years now and the first break i took 2 years ago last more or less four months which never happened again since i take a few weeks/days from time to time.

So yes Dev should think about that, there will always be a more or less constant flow of new players and trying to keep their older players base by any mean might be the wrong way to do it, most of us will always comeback due to the absurd amount of time we spent on this game and the respect we have for DE (atleast for me)

Beside activision might be the worst exemple imo : i spent so many time on wow, diablo 3, starcraft, warcraft series and now i despise this actiblizzard so much i didn't touch these games for years.now.

TL;DR : As long as DE keep their integrity and continu to deliver a reasonable amount of content each year (which they do) i'll still play warframe and i don't think i'm the only one at all.

[TheErebus.]

1 minute ago, Syln said:

it's "unhealthy" for a game to try and keep its playerbase as long as it possibly can by drowning it with content. 

Yes, you are correct in that if they keep flooding a game with content the most likely outcome is that the content being added isn't up to snuff and means nothing in the long-run but my point remains valid, DE right now is doing the complete opposite; they're not adding any worthwhile content for us to get into. A new warframe and new weapons aren't cutting it, because they're just the bare minimum standards of content. 

 

[Cracka95]

4 hours ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

I think this discussion of a "content drought" is wack.

What we can learn from this:

DE has been transparent about venus, rail jack and gas city remodel for months

We know the size of PoE, we know this is way bigger.

Sacrifice was released 4 months ago...

 

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

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.

Other than fortuna which is speculated for fall, rail jack is next year, we have no idea when the jupiter remodel is coming out. For all we know fortuna could just end up being a bigger PoE because we haven't seen anything about it except for K-drive and tracking down animals.

Since your on PS4 yes scacrifice was 4 months ago but for the PC players it was 5 months of nothing straight since we got it 3 weeks apart and yes i don't count mask of the revenant because that was equivilant to watching a commercial while wating for a show to come back on.

It sucks that we have a lot of people in the community scared to voice their opinion and thinks that criticism can't help the game. If you don't look at the faults of warframe it won't go anywhere and new content doesn't have to be something entirely new it can just be a revist to any of the content already in the game that nobody has a reason to touch because DE left or scrapped entirely.

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by Cracka95

[OrlockCedar]

8 hours ago, (PS4)covan2306 said:

Ungrateful and petty whining. I think we owe DE our patience. during those 4 months we have had 2 primes and a new warframe, along with several DEV streams showing us their progress.

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. 

[Twilight053]

15 hours ago, GinKenshin said:

Imo this is DE’s number 1 issue. The game keep getting bigger every year, but the staff is hardly getting bigger...sure, the equipment and tech is, but that can only do so much 

 

  They are sorta aware of it, like when telltale company disbanded, they offered jobs (though it seemed more of a curtesy and standing by them than focusing on getting more people). They’re working on it but it’s obviously isn’t important for them, they need to dedicate staff to it 

 

   Iirc Steve said the team is a family, and I know it’s hard to welcome new members in, but they need to do a reality check here and look at the big picture. If they really love the game, then they should drop the ‘we can handle it’ attitude and make the right call, by the game and the players 

It's not that simple. While they should expand their team, the reality is that there is barely any developers out there to recruit let alone experienced ones. This is not just a DE problem, companies across the globe also suffer from this problem.

Computers and technology had grown so exponentially and rapidly that it creates a massive pit that only developers can patch up, and as a result nearly everyone demand at least one developers in their companies, whether it be IT support, web/mobile developer or administrator. There are simply too much demand for developers that the society can't keep up (yet), and monolithic companies like Google and Facebook had to be tricky and started a very elaborate graduation program to scoop up freshly graduated and experienced developers left and right. The reality is hiring developers is a warzone for DE in and itself.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Twilight053

[Tazdingoo]

I like the idea of a PvP type similar to Destiny's Gambit. It's still mostly PvE but it's more of who can kill faster and smarter. With the occasional PvP disruption between the 2 teams.

Would fit very well with Warframe's style.

[OrlockCedar]

3 minutes ago, Tazdingoo said:

I like the idea of a PvP type similar to Destiny's Gambit. It's still mostly PvE but it's more of who can kill faster and smarter. With the occasional PvP disruption between the 2 teams.

Would fit very well with Warframe's style.

I think that would fit Warframe more than Lunaro does, personally. Lunaro, while an interesting concept, still has a lot of issues, along with Conclave in general. It would be nice to have that mix of PvE and PvP. Little something for everyone.

[Goodwill]

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.

[GinKenshin]

2 hours ago, Twilight053 said:

It's not that simple. While they should expand their team, the reality is that there is barely any developers out there to recruit let alone experienced ones. This is not just a DE problem, companies across the globe also suffer from this problem.

Computers and technology had grown so exponentially and rapidly that it creates a massive pit that only developers can patch up, and as a result nearly everyone demand at least one developers in their companies, whether it be IT support, web/mobile developer or administrator. There are simply too much demand for developers that the society can't keep up (yet), and monolithic companies like Google and Facebook had to be tricky and started a very elaborate graduation program to scoop up freshly graduated and experienced developers left and right. The reality is hiring developers is a warzone for DE in and itself.

Regardless of how tough it is, they’re gonna have to dive in sooner or later. They could also consider collabing with small teams/devs and assigning them to individual parts of the game with proper supervision of course