Now that Fortuna will attract new players, can we remove some of the "noob traps"?

[Antiphoton]

I've tried introducing my friends to Warframe many times, without much success. There were, among other things, two common frustrations they all had, and I think this is the most important piece of feedback I can give from my experience with them:

- Warframe/weapon slots
As soon as they see that you need to purchase them with plat, they feel lost and disappointed. I think it wouldn't be bad if you could give new players one extra slot, together with a clear pop-up message saying "this is how this works, you need slots to use the stuff you craft. Here's one for free, but the next ones you will have to purchase with plat. Plat can be bought in our store, or traded with other players".
I found that reminding them that they can trade for platinum with anyone is very encouraging. ESPECIALLY considering that most games with premium currencies do not allow to trade it. Most players do not expect to be able to do it here.

- Orokin reactors/catalysts
Same as above. Maybe don't give them for free to a new account, but at least add a pop-up the first time they get into the modding window, telling them that those can be obtained from alerts that happen a few times per week. They may not know about those alerts until they stumble upon one by chance, and until then they will think that you cannot use your warframe's full potential unless you spend plat.

I know, new accounts have enough starting plat to buy some of these things. It doesn't matter, by the time I wanted to warn my friends about the best way to spend it, they had already purchased syandanas.

I think this is specially important now that Fortuna will bring an influx of brand new players.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Antiphoton

[GnarlsDarkley]

So many people wish there was a Tutorial for the basic stuff...but the only solution right now is content creators or google.

I tried to make on myself:

http://gnarlsdarkley.forumprofi.de/guides-in-english-f17/?sid=d8108150148c5fe80ab9f3ea060cc590

Hopefully your friends can get over the beginning 🙂

 

As for the "removal". Won't happen, no matter what you try. It's not much what you get with a new account but it's managable. Also you get 50 plat which is 1 warframe slot and 4 weapon slots.

Potatoes are given out frequently after Devstreams with easy enough missions and pretty often through Invasion or Alerts (4 or 5 in the last 7 days)

[TheResult]

DE could definitely work on making information available to players (we still have a lot of people who don't know how to find the Ventkids, because honestly, there's nothing in the game that tells you about them). It's why they kept tweaking the tutorial, because they're not.. great at making things obvious.

[Antiphoton]

6 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

Also you get 50 plat which is 1 warframe slot and 4 weapon slots.

Potatoes are given out frequently after Devstreams with easy enough missions and pretty often through Invasion or Alerts (4 or 5 in the last 7 days)

I know this. My point is that new players don't, unless they go out of their way to search for details, which many won't because they are immediately discouraged.

[Antiphoton]

2 minutes ago, TheResult said:

DE could definitely work on making information available to players (we still have a lot of people who don't know how to find the Ventkids, because honestly, there's nothing in the game that tells you about them). It's why they kept tweaking the tutorial, because they're not.. great at making things obvious.

Yep. I don't expect them to explain everything, but when trying to introduce several new players, these two issues are the most problematic from what I've seen.

[Gerdaro]

I have 780h played and very often i feel lost. Literally.

I learn something new every single day i play. Its insane.

[(XBOX)calvina]

16 minutes ago, TheResult said:

DE could definitely work on making information available to players (we still have a lot of people who don't know how to find the Ventkids, because honestly, there's nothing in the game that tells you about them). It's why they kept tweaking the tutorial, because they're not.. great at making things obvious.

I believe the problem is that they continue to add/change things so often that the tutorial that was originally created would end up having to get updated and/or entirely reworked in the future every update. (A rework of the tutorial pretty much overdue, vor's prize is so old, like, Parkour 1.0 old)

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by (XB1)calvina

[TheResult]

Just now, (XB1)calvina said:

I believe the problem is they add/change things so often that the tutorial that was originally created would en up having to get updated and/or entirely reworked int he future. (which by now is pretty much overdue, vor's prize is so old.)

I mean, I also think it's because DE communicates with the Warframe community so much that they forget "word of mouth" isn't good enough when designing a game. Don't get me wrong-- I love how open and informative DE are with us, how much they talk to us, all that good stuff. We get a lot of information early, and we get to spread that information early because of it. But I also feel like they might rely on "word of mouth" and the community too much?

Information still needs to be available in the game, after all.

[Phatose]

It would definitely be a good idea to have something in Vor's Prize to guide players about the need for slots, as well as to tell them about potatoes - how important they are, and how they can be obtained. 

At the very least, having an inbox message from the Lotus to new players covering that should be sent as part of the intro.  A full on tutorial would be better, of course, but an inbox message should be able to be added much, much easier and at least give newbies a heads up.

[Guest]

Just my two cents on improving the new player experience:

- Remove starting plat

- Increase the amount of starting frame slots by 2 and weapons by 4

- Remove mod and credit packs

- Rework the entire Market UI, right now it often gives new players a false impression that it's only for premium currency stuff

 

 

[FlusteredFerret]

This game needs noob traps.

They sort the wheat from the chaff...the strong from the weak... 

 

But yeah, now that Fortuna is out, it would be nice if DE could find some time to re-work some stuff and maybe add some extra guidance to make the whole game a bit more newb-friendly.

 

[IntheCoconut]

1 hour ago, Antiphoton said:

[snip] As soon as they see that you need to purchase them with plat, they feel lost and disappointed. [/snip]

I was one of those players. When I first started playing this game, I saw that I had no slots to get another Warframe and I felt pretty disheartened. I nearly alt+F4 the game because I immediately dismissed it as another game riddled by crummy microtransactions. I think many of us are leery of games with cash shops. They are the norm now, but many of us have also learned how to recognize when a cash shop is skewed against us, and my first introduction to Warframe's monitization was "hey, you need inventory slots, and you need to pay real money for that!" I was so ready to quit right then and there. My gut was telling me I shouldn't invest any more time into this game because I was already hitting the paywall in a F2P game after only one or two hours, so naturally I didn't want to see what else I was going to be "forced" to pay for. And the cash shop is everywhere in this game. Any time I opened my equipment, I saw pages and pages of weapons/warframe I didn't own, but could purchase with real $. The game could do a better job of explaining that the cash shop isn't so predatory as it initially appears to be.

Luckily I thought that I must be missing something because there is no way so many people would be playing this game if you had to drop $5 every time you needed inventory space. So I did a google search where I learned I started with some free plat to get my first Warframe slot. I also read that I could trade items for Plat with other players, and that there were sometimes discounts on purchasing Plat from login rewards.

Since then, I've really enjoyed Warframe and I don't mind their cash shop. I actually think it's quite fair. But for many players, that first impression is the only thing they will see and they will immediately give up on the game. I was almost one of them.

Edited November 9, 2018 by IntheCoconut

[FlusteredFerret]

5 minutes ago, IntheCoconut said:

I was one of those players. When I first started playing this game, I saw that I had no slots to get another Warframe and I felt pretty disheartened. I nearly alt+F4 the game because I immediately dismissed it as another game riddled by crummy microtransactions. I think many of us are leery of games with cash shops. They are the norm now, but many of us have also learned how to recognize when a cash shop is skewed against us, and my first introduction to Warframe's monitization was "hey, you need inventory slots, and you need to pay real money for that!" I was so ready to quit right then and there. My gut was telling me I shouldn't invest any more time into this game because I was already hitting the paywall in a F2P game after only one or two hours, so naturally I didn't want to see what else I was going to be "forced" to pay for.

Luckily I thought that I must be missing something because there is no way so many people would be playing this game if you had to drop $5 every time you needed inventory space. So I did a google search where I learned I started with some free plat to get my first Warframe slot. I also read that I could trade items for Plat with other players, and that there were sometimes discounts on purchasing Plat from login rewards.

Since then, I've really enjoyed Warframe and I don't mind their cash shop. I actually think it's quite fair. But for many players, that first impression is the only thing they will see and they will immediately give up on the game. I was almost one of them.

As with all F2P games, they have to make their money somehow. You are going to hit a paywall sooner or later, depending on just how deep you want to go.

You either buy a premium account (Prime Time in this case) or you buy plat to spend in the shop. Or you can buy cosmetic stuff like skins.

 

Reality is there is no such thing as a totally free game. It has to be supported somehow. Warframe is fairer than most as they give regular discounts on platinum.

 

If new players are really that put off by the idea of paying for stuff in games, they need a bit of a reality check.

 

In one sense I actually like the idea that the complexity can put off casual players, as it means that hopefully only those prepared to think & explore & learn will stick with the game. Of course, we know this isn't the case, as you can see by some of the stuff that gets posted in the forums, but one can hope...

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by FlusteredFerret

[IntheCoconut]

6 minutes ago, FlusteredFerret said:

As with all F2P games, they have to make their money somehow. You are going to hit a paywall sooner or later, depending on just how deep you want to go.

You either buy a premium account (Prime Time in this case) or you buy plat to spend in the shop. Or you can buy cosmetic stuff like skins.

Reality is there is no such thing as a totally free game. It has to be supported somehow.

 

If new players are really that put off by the idea of paying for stuff in games, they need a bit of a reality check.

 

Oh I'm fine paying for stuff in a F2P game. But saying "you can't play any more warframes until you buy an inventory slot" isn't really F2P in my book. Its more of like a free trial. If any other MMO only let me play one class for free and then forced me to buy character slots, I'd drop it. Just my own personal opinion. Eventually knowing that the game lets you trade for plat, and that there are very generous sales, is a good thing that I think should be front and center.

Edited November 9, 2018 by IntheCoconut

[Antiphoton]

14 minutes ago, IntheCoconut said:

I was one of those players.

Your reply is exactly what I'm talking about. I appreciate your corroboration 😃

 

11 minutes ago, FlusteredFerret said:

As with all F2P games, they have to make their money somehow.

I'm by no means arguing against that, and that is not the idea of this thread.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Antiphoton

[SQLOwns]

If you don't want to spend money, you will need to grind, that is how all f2p games are.........

[IntheCoconut]

8 minutes ago, SQLOwns said:

If you don't want to spend money, you will need to grind, that is how all f2p games are.........

That's fine. I don't mind grinding, but we aren't talking about what Warframe should or shouldn't charge for. We are talking about new player perception.

A customer's perception is everything, and it's why some customers will - or will not - do business with a company. My initial perception as a new player was that Warframe was going to require that I drop real money every few days just to play. Why did I have this perception? Because the game doesn't take any effort to portray the cash shop any differently than something players are required to pay for. I had to do research outside the game to learn that I could trade plat. When I open my equipment, it shows me all the warframes and weapons with a plat sticker on them. The game doesn't spend any effort letting new players know that you can acquire all those weapons and frames for free, and that spending money isn't mandatory.

I'm fine with having the choice of pay or grind, but the game does a very poor job of letting new players know that the second option even exists.

Edited November 9, 2018 by IntheCoconut

[Chappie]

1 hour ago, Antiphoton said:

I know this. My point is that new players don't, unless they go out of their way to search for details, which many won't because they are immediately discouraged.

This argument keeps being made and it is misrepresented.    DE has data and data from other game developers that the addition of tutorials more easily accessible information does almost nothing for player retention.    This is why DE started making a push on this front and almost completely stopped.  They learned it was not worth the financial investment to possibly retain those players.     Simply put...either people like the game enough to stick with it...or don't.    

What finally allowed me to understand DE's position was having an oversees friend watch and American Football.    All the information is there to explain the rules and even the commentators giving some real time feedback...but he still said "meh, do't like it".   Another friend who moved here from Kenya a couple of decades is about a die-hard football fan as you can get and learned everything about the game  before wave of the internet.   He just liked it an did the work to understand it.    He loved football after seeing his first game.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Chappie1975

[Learicorn]

Tbh as much as it's easy to make plat ingame most new players will want to explore the game and try to get engaged with it before doing that so i do believe that the amount of slots that new accounts begin with is too little considering you can only get them with plat. I don't think this will affect DE's pocket that much since it will help keep more long term players, right now they're basically depending on people's friendships to convince others to stay in the game. I myself give a color palette of their choice and some slots every time a friend of mine starts playing so they have less of a reason to leave.

[FlusteredFerret]

51 minutes ago, IntheCoconut said:

That's fine. I don't mind grinding, but we aren't talking about what Warframe should or shouldn't charge for. We are talking about new player perception.

A customer's perception is everything, and it's why some customers will - or will not - do business with a company. My initial perception as a new player was that Warframe was going to require that I drop real money every few days just to play. Why did I have this perception? Because the game doesn't take any effort to portray the cash shop any differently than something players are required to pay for. I had to do research outside the game to learn that I could trade plat. When I open my equipment, it shows me all the warframes and weapons with a plat sticker on them. The game doesn't spend any effort letting new players know that you can acquire all those weapons and frames for free, and that spending money isn't mandatory.

I'm fine with having the choice of pay or grind, but the game does a very poor job of letting new players know that the second option even exists.

 

But anyone that spends a bit of time just playing the game, soon learns that gear and frames can be acquired through missions, quests etc. You don't even need to consult the Wiki for that. Matter of fact I didn't even know there was a Wiki until I was about 3-4 months into the game. I started asking questions on the forum way before then.

This is what I mean about people needing to be willing to think & learn...not just give up at the first hurdle or impression they have of the game.

I agree some aspects of the game could be made easier to understand, but I don't think this is one of them. I mean, how do you explain to new players where and how all this gear is available, without simply directing them to the Wiki?

I mean, even if you do this and they find a frame they really like the look of, can't be unlocked until they've almost completed the Star Chart, or is in one of the later quests, might they not get discouraged anyway?

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by FlusteredFerret

[Autongnosis]

Il y a 1 heure, Gerdaro a dit :

I have 780h played and very often i feel lost. Literally.

I learn something new every single day i play. Its insane.

At least you can keep yourself occupied 😄

It took me upwards of 2k clocked hours, not counting innumerable tests, to really understand this game's mechanics. 

 

That said DE definitely does a bad job at explaining things to newbies. While not hand-holding players from the early modgame onwards is great, maybe some more initial pointers would be appreciated. I still remember back when i started the late nights testing and reading the wiki to understand WTF was going on xD

[Antiphoton]

27 minutes ago, Chappie1975 said:

This argument keeps being made and it is misrepresented.    DE has data and data from other game developers that the addition of tutorials more easily accessible information does almost nothing for player retention.    This is why DE started making a push on this front and almost completely stopped.  They learned it was not worth the financial investment to possibly retain those players.     Simply put...either people like the game enough to stick with it...or don't.    

What finally allowed me to understand DE's position was having an oversees friend watch and American Football.    All the information is there to explain the rules and even the commentators giving some real time feedback...but he still said "meh, do't like it".   Another friend who moved here from Kenya a couple of decades is about a die-hard football fan as you can get and learned everything about the game  before wave of the internet.   He just liked it an did the work to understand it.    He loved football after seeing his first game.

This is a well thought approach. I agree to the extent that it may not be worth it implementing a several hours long tutorial with detailed explanations.

The issue I'm more focused in here is preventing players from fleeing because of fear of a pay-wall that comes a few hours from the beginning. I imagine those frustrated players then spreading the word "meh, it's just a grindfest and it isn't free at all, it wants to get into your wallet immediately after you start".

I think that can be mitigated somehow just by changing the presentation a little bit, or adding two pop up screens or even inbox messages, with only a few lines of encouragement. Even if those players thought the mechanics were ok but nothing crazy, if they stick around until at least the 2nd Dream, their chances of staying (and purchasing plat in the future) will be higher.

Plus we currently have 37 warframes (without even counting primes) and hundreds of weapons. Giving another extra slot can't hurt that much...

[BlackCoMerc]

2 hours ago, Antiphoton said:

I've tried introducing my friends to Warframe many times, without much success. There were, among other things, two common frustration they all had, and I think this is the most important piece of feedback I can give from my experience with them:

- Warframe/weapon slots
As soon as they see that you need to purchase them with plat, they feel lost and disappointed. I think it wouldn't be bad if you could give new players one extra slot, together with a clear pop-up message saying "this is how this works, you need slots to use the stuff you craft. Here's one for free, but the next ones you will have to purchase with plat. Plat can be bought in our store, or traded with other players".
I found that reminding them that they can trade for platinum with anyone is very encouraging. SPECIALLY considering that most games with premium currencies do not allow to trade it. Most players do not expect to be able to do it here.

- Orokin reactors/catalysts
Same as above. Maybe don't give them for free to a new account, but at least add a pop-up the first time they get into the modding window, telling them that those can be obtained from alerts that happen a few times per week. They may not know about those alerts until they stumble upon one by chance, and until then they will think that you cannot use your warframe's full potential unless you spend plat.

I know, new accounts have enough starting plat to buy some of these things. It doesn't matter, by the time I wanted to warn my friends about the best way to spend it, they had already purchased syandanas.

I think this is specially important now that Fortuna will bring an influx of brand new players.

Several teens in my family tried Warframe on PS4. All of them quit playing as soon as they realized they would never be able to have more than a couple of frames and weapons without either throwing cash at the screen...or spending half their evening play time in trade chat hoping to scope tiny amounts of plat. 

Most of them play Fortnite now, or some other game that focuses on fun as opposed to anti consumer business models. 

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I hear you..I get it..see I want to play Elite Dangerous...but hell you need a bachelor's degree in economics, astronomy, and geometry to just get around the map portion...I'm like challenge accepted..and then there's the ships and setting them up..good luck jumping into that...and then my interest went right out the window when they released this one ship with an air foil on the back of what's basically a flying giant garbage truck..

 

 I found myself saying...well if you're not going to take this serious neither am I...

Edited November 9, 2018 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[Kai]

Warframe is that type of game where you get recruited by your friend who has tons of time spent in it, enough to get you through the basics and teach you through the systems that are normally not there, yet used by the game's community. Hell, I wholeheartedly agree that slots are a problem, the moment one of my friend says they're running out of slots, I'd gift them enough for them not to sell their stuff (especially Warframes).