WF's Player Retention Epidemic

[_Summit_]

Concurrent Players From Sept. 2017 - Nov. 2018

The graph above is rather telling, many players did not continue playing warframe even just 2 weeks after Fortuna's release. Where-as there was a significantly more gradual decline after the releases of both POE and Umbra. Warframe needs to have content that's re-playable. And the most tried and true way of implementing re-playable content is having content that not only challenges the player but also rewards them for overcoming the challenges.  I outline a way to do this in this video ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bH1WYelU0Q

The first step to finding a solution is recognizing that there is a problem. My goal is to open up a discussion on how DE can implement re-playable content and hopefully find middle ground between "endgame players" and the more casual community. 

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by _Summit_

[EudokiaTheScribe]

I am the literal best.

[Famelhaut]

raids 2.0 😛

[BoscoIsHere]

I so agree every update i play for like a week then get bored and go back to other games i just feel like theres really nothing that i can do thats not only fun but also rewarding for my efforts and isnt just some brain dead level 20 survival i want something hard ! i want to fail and fail and fail till i pass i want to improve over time and right now it doesn't feel that way 

[Voltage]

Spider fights in Orb Vallis will give people a reason to play more.

Likewise, I am not sure what kind of "replayable" content you are looking for as we have Arbitrations and other things. Even if we got Trials 2.0 with more accessibility, it would always stay the same in terms of player counts. 

Warframe is successful when they continue pumping out content. The players who continue playing between these droughts are the ones that enjoy the foundation of the game (even though that needs work too) and the inert gameplay experience. I would enjoy more high level missions, and Arbitrations are a great start.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Voltage

[Wind_Blade]

Trials 2.0 .... that all we need an setient/orokin raids with tenno and railjack gameplay

[_Summit_]

3 hours ago, Voltage said:

Spider fights in Orb Vallis will give people a reason to play more.

Likewise, I am not sure what kind of "replayable" content you are looking for as we have Arbitrations and other things. Even if we got Trials 2.0 with more accessibility, it would always stay the same in terms of player counts. 

Agreed once they release them there will be more of a reason to play. But in regards to arbitrations they are significantly easier then regular endless gamemodes. For example at wave 100 enemies are lvl 270 compared to 1700 in regular defense. Arbitration rewards also do not promote re-playablity. Adding new mods are nice but it's get 1 and done, a system like I proposed in the video would remedy these issues. 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

14 minutes ago, Voltage said:

The players who continue playing between these droughts are the ones that enjoy the foundation of the game (even though that needs work too) and the inert gameplay experience. I would enjoy more high level missions, and Arbitrations are a great start

Agree here. I have been enjoying the arbitrations. We just need more rewards for them. I would  like to see every faction have an arbitration of some sort with their own unique rewards. 

Edited November 24, 2018 by (XB1)RDeschain82

[ZarTham]

Elite star chart with higher rewards

[Wind_Blade]

We still need to see the player count after the new content get released with update 2

[Gabbynaru]

...Didn't Fallout 76, Battlefield V and Hitman 2 get released between Fortuna and now? Look, I love Warframe and all, but, some (many) people will migrate to these new, big releases (regardless of how s*it they may or may not be).

EDIT: Oh, and the Switch release. Maybe PC players just migrated to Switch, hence why the numbers dropped slightly.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Gabbynaru

[Xzorn]

Part 2 Fortuna won't be much different. I expect a bigger grind but mostly just hoping for something to take back to the rest of the game.

That's the same attitude I had with PoE. Arcane Elevate x2, some Zaws. Done. All that work DE put into it and I've no reason to go back. That's how a lot of content DE adds goes and it's for a number of reasons. Rewards for most players. DE extends content like PoE by putting new items there fishing a player to go back. The content itself isn't.

Challenge, Scaling, Teamwork and other aspects of what keeps a player interested cannot be realistically achieved in the current Damage system. The only thing DE can do is make status Immune enemies. Ability immune enemies and other frankly cheese methods of cheating their own Damage system. They can't give us reasonable challenge in the current state of the game and so they also don't want to give us reasonable rewards as that generosity will be easily exploited.

We need Damage 3.0 and anyone who was here during Damage 1.0 should know that doesn't just mean damage types and status effects. It involves the core of the game's mechanics and that's probably why it's not coming. It's a lot of work on a chance to keep players where DE themselves admitted that no matter what they try player retention stays the same so from a business standpoint I totally get why they wouldn't want to invest so much coding time but I believe it will be the corner stone of success for existing and future content.

[(PSN)Jedi_Arts_]

43 minutes ago, ZarTham said:

Elite star chart with higher rewards

basically exactly what I recommended in this post 👍

 

[continue]

I posted this suggestion on your video as well, but I dunno if anybody read it, so I'll summarize it:

Parkour is the only mechanical skill in this game that isn't tied to stats/damage numbers, so what if you took your modified survival idea and put parkour obstacle courses with really strong enemies between life supports? You could market this to DE as like a new derelict mission or reworked Hive/Salvage where you purge infested ships (PISS) and instead of adding oxygen, the life support disperses an anti-infested reagent, but also adds random sortie conditions as side-effects as the mission goes on and the infested adapt and the reagent has to be given in stronger doses. Newer players will just have fun running away from tough enemies and completing the first couple rounds, and more experienced players will have fun tackling the additional sortie conditions and high enemy levels. Arbitration tries to fix ESO's lack of variety in gameplay by switching between existing mission types, but there isn't yet a mission type in this game that actually challenges players' parkour gunning abilities; high level endless missions all just ask you to camp objectives, and I think that may be part of why a lot of people don't really enjoy playing endgame content repeatedly. 

[Fishyflakes]

Fix new player experience and Market?

[--END--Rikutatis]

Solution A: the easy one - Just use the assets already in game and embrace enemy scaling and endless missions, Diablo great rifts style. Something between ESO and Arbitrations, but no BS or half measure compromises this time. Throw in some mini bosses, the need to move around (like kuva survival), start at lvl 100+, and make enemies scale fast, no level cap BS.

Arbitrations came close to this, but utterly failed because enemy levels scale MUCH slower than in regular endless missions. 3h in, you're still fighting levels below 300, where in normal endless you'd be well above 1k. 

Solution B: raids 2.0. Just add more variety this time, instead of 80% puzzle gameplay. Split it between horde mode combat ESO style vs high lvl enemies, boss fights like eidolons and better puzzles and parkour gameplay. Squad coordination and communication a must. 

Rewards for either can be what Summit proposed with the rivens, plus some cool unique cosmetics, maybe unique weapon skins etc.

[_Vortus_]

On 2018-11-24 at 3:26 PM, _Summit_ said:

Concurrent Players From Sept. 2017 - Nov. 2018

The graph above is rather telling, many players did not continue playing warframe even just 2 weeks after Fortuna's release. Where-as there was a significantly more gradual decline after the releases of both POE and Umbra. Warframe needs to have content that's re-playable. And the most tried and true way of implementing re-playable content is having content that not only challenges the player but also rewards them for overcoming the challenges.  I outline a way to do this in this video ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bH1WYelU0Q

The first step to finding a solution is recognizing that there is a problem. My goal is to open up a discussion on how DE can implement re-playable content and hopefully find middle ground between "endgame players" and the more casual community. 

 

Guess we see that graph differently.   Going back the start of the bottom graph.   Ignoring short highs which are likely at each big new release.  As well as short lows which can be accounted for by other game releases among other things.  The baseline number of players appears to have steadily increased.    Not sure if this accounts for players on the consoles and players not linked to steam.  Though whether it does or not is really immaterial.   At least on Steam, it appears to be doing ok.   Not that it couldn't be better.   But an epidemic?  No.   But I am always up for them improving the game in every manner possible so more new players can enjoy it.  And more experienced players can continue to do so.

[Fire2box]

On 2018-11-24 at 2:01 PM, Gabbynaru said:

...Didn't Fallout 76, Battlefield V and Hitman 2 get released between Fortuna and now? Look, I love Warframe and all, but, some (many) people will migrate to these new, big releases (regardless of how s*it they may or may not be).

EDIT: Oh, and the Switch release. Maybe PC players just migrated to Switch, hence why the numbers dropped slightly.

Really wishful thinking IMHO. 

You can play all of those and still log into warframe for at least daily tribute, sorties, standing limits. That steam chart up there is just Warframe launcher being activated from my understanding.  

[mac10smg--Toa_of_Green]

I can't help but notice the number is always above 50k in your example.

You know, it confuses me when a game as popular as Warframe has a, quote on quote, 'retention problem', even when there is still a whole heap of people playing it. The "TF2 Effect" as I like to call it.

[Ventura_Highway]

2 hours ago, mac10smg-ToaOfGreen said:

I can't help but notice the number is always above 50k in your example.

You know, it confuses me when a game as popular as Warframe has a, quote on quote, 'retention problem', even when there is still a whole heap of people playing it. The "TF2 Effect" as I like to call it.

The Switch bump is somewhat noticeable from my end too. I'm also inclined to wait until December ends to draw any significant conclusions about the present population data. Currently the average here: https://steamcharts.com/app/230410 says we are at a net increase at the moment.

I'm going to reference Maplestory 2 here, and again perhaps some other time in this thread. If Maplestory 2 was being released on the Switch, Nexon would have had several different events going on to accelerate new player progression and jumpstart the population. I don't believe I saw anything like that for any of the console releases. I think companies like them and Jagex balance temporary and permanent content better.

EDIT: To be fair, both of those companies have far more experience at creating MMOs than DE.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Ventura_Highway

[Fallen_Echo]

I could kill for anythig what would spice up gameplay.

Just a couple ideas:

 

Enemy variations expanded: Lets introduce military roles on our enemies, scout units get movement speed bonus (+50%) and animation speed bonus (+100%), purge squads what deal fire damage with 0.5 meter aoe on all attacks, combat medics and soo on.

 

Sandbox maps expanded: We dont need to always have to fight in linear layouts, why dont we have separate levels, circular maps and multiple roads to choose from?

 

Unexpected events: You are doing a regular survival run with a bunch of pub guys when suddenly the stalker and his group of edge lords come to ambush you (drops are the same as in the event), you are messing around in a void sabotage when suddenly the infested starts to pour in because a rogue corpus squad opened a void gate to eris! Theres no need to give guaranteed chance for everything but suprise us when we play.

 

Just cast exterminatus on them: You are doing too well in that spy run so Vay Hek launched a spare fomorian to blow you up! Escape while you can or finish the mission and rush for your life. A simple change of the objective could be great if implemented well and im pretty sure this would be fitting for many missions.

 

Dojo missions: We have a bunch of great lookin dojos around, hoe aboit wr utilize them into missiom areas?

[AperoBeltaTwo]

On 2018-11-25 at 12:26 AM, _Summit_ said:

-snip-

 To know if DE even see this as a problem, we'd have to have dialog established between devs and the community. DE might very well be complacent with the current popularity of their game. From what I've been seeing, instead of developing the game and existing mechanics, DE seem to prefer easily marketable and always soon(tm) upcoming features instead of longterm commitments; and a constant flow of new - easily impressionable - players instead of building a healthy veteran community... And no, we don't have a healthy veteran community anymore. This is pretence at this point, supported by certain people straight up going after anyone who disagrees with the whole show. 

 Anyway. Policy of marketability-driven game development seem to work well enough. Listen how they're gonna repeat for the millionth time how this game is free while having "open world" and all those other features: even though most of those features are barely developed enough to justify a check mark, and only if you're feeling particularly generous. And how this free to play game has no lootboxes, or microtransactions, or slot machine mechanics, while rivens are getting more and more expensive with every passing second.

Edited November 27, 2018 by AperoBeltaTwo

[--END--Rikutatis]

On 2018-11-24 at 7:37 PM, Voltage said:

Spider fights in Orb Vallis will give people a reason to play more.

Likewise, I am not sure what kind of "replayable" content you are looking for as we have Arbitrations and other things. Even if we got Trials 2.0 with more accessibility, it would always stay the same in terms of player counts. 

...

I agree spider boss fights will give people a reason to play more, but I sincerely doubt it'll be even remotely close to endgame content as we have been asking. Honestly if anything it seems like it might be a downgrade from eidolons in terms of challenge (I actually enjoy eidolons). Apparently Steve said on twitch they were making the spider fights in Fortuna more accessible to new players than eidolons were. Yay, everything has to be accessible to new players. Because they don't have 1k hours worth of content already in the game. 

And Arbitrations like I said in my post above had some really cool features, like the no revive modifier which I loved, but ultimately failed to provide the endless challenge for vets it was advertised as, since it scales MUCH slower than regular endless missions in the Star Chart. I have no clue why they'd do this. All they had to do was leave enemy scaling the same, and maybe be a bit more creative with the rewards (personally I'm ok with piles of endo since I sell maxed primed mods). That's it. But it seems like DE is always aiming to compromise between both sides, and the result is that they can't please neither (casuals/new players are still upset with drones and no revives, and vets/tryhards upset with the lack of meaningful challenge and high lvl enemies). I really wanted to love Arbitrations, it was better than ESO and came really close, but in the end it just made it that much more disappointing. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by --END--Rikutatis

[blazinvire]

Like has been said, I think we need a good Damage 3.0, and a new style of mission generation.

Damage 3.0 would ideally make the difficulty-to-rewards scaling much more stable, because enemy difficulty should be easier to predict thus designing appropriate rewards would be infinitely easier.

New mission generation tricks would also get things going, especially if you got clever with it and figured out a way to have players create new content by simply playing the game.

An idea for that would be along the lines of giving players the building blocks so that they might craft their own missions with all the complexity and intrigue they could ask for, like some simulacrum that can be built in a Dojo, and players can just craft entire missions for their own amusement and give DE a veritable truckload of material to work with.  I mean, people are kind of already building all kinds of crazy stuff in their dojos because you gave them a few toys to play with.
Especially if you could set up a system where players could play each others missions, and have a variety of upvote buttons like the Forums here have, to give each mission a quick review like an impromptu QA team.

You'd be able to test an insane amount of variations and get a likewise insane amount of efficient feedback from them, as players would essentially stress-test the toybox you give them.

Would probably also be able to use a system like that to help figure out a new damage system, handing the tools to the players so we can test systems and numbers by the hundreds of thousands in mere days.

Communities are powerful tools.

Edited November 27, 2018 by blazinvire

[Autongnosis]

Il y a 3 heures, Fallen_Echo a dit :

Unexpected events: You are doing a regular survival run with a bunch of pub guys when suddenly the stalker and his group of edge lords come to ambush you (drops are the same as in the event), you are messing around in a void sabotage when suddenly the infested starts to pour in because a rogue corpus squad opened a void gate to eris! Theres no need to give guaranteed chance for everything but suprise us when we play.

Just cast exterminatus on them: You are doing too well in that spy run so Vay Hek launched a spare fomorian to blow you up! Escape while you can or finish the mission and rush for your life. A simple change of the objective could be great if implemented well and im pretty sure this would be fitting for many missions.

I specifically like those two. Also, i think having each mission with a side objective like vallis bounties would be a great addition. 

On top of that, you could use several different side objectives and rotate them randomly. Which could provide provide replayability. 

Even the bounties fail in this in that they're always the same.