New Player Experience Suggestions - 4 Months In

[Goblinman32]

I started playing Warframe 4 months ago, and, while I was lucky enough to have the time and energy to invest into learning it - and glad I did - it's still a beast of a game to figure out. So I've been thinking of some suggestions for things that might make the early-game experience more accessible without just holding new players' hands.

1: An Armory: My absolute most desired feature would be a place to test out weapons and warframes before you own them. Unlike the Simulacrum, this would not let you simulate enemies - just test weapons and warframe powers against a limited set of testing dummies. I use the Warframe wiki religiously, but, even so, it's often difficult to figure out what all the descriptions and stats mean in practice until you actually get your hands on the gear. An armory would allow players to do more hands-on research.

This feature would work best if it was unlockable early (maybe as a dojo feature). Though it might need to be unlocked in segments - I'm not sure it makes sense to, for instance, have prime weapons immediately available for testing.

2: Spy Missions: Security Stays Active on Failure: Spy vaults are usually fairly easy once you figure them out, but doing that can be a pain in the ass. One of the most frustrating things about them, to me, is failing a vault early and then not being able to figure out the rest of the route. So my suggestion is to leave ALL the security systems active if you fail a vault. That way, if you wanted to, you could work your way through the rest of the vault and figure out how it works. Triggering more alarms would get more ambushes, and reaching and interacting with the data console would open the quick exit (with no additional reward).

3: In-Game Warframe Acquisition Info: When viewing a (non-prime) warframe in the codex and/or the market, it should tell you how to acquire that frame in game. For instance, if you wanted Rhino, it'd tell you "Defeat the Jackal on Fossa" and "Purchase a Rhino Blueprint from the Market". Optional info would be drop-rate percentages for each component, if applicable, and a checklist of ingredients needed for crafting.

The next few suggestions would actually allow new players to be more powerful, so they're more iffy.

4: More Starter Frame Choices: I know it seems like it could make things too easy for new players, but, if you're playing solo or in a duo, like I was, and aren't able to spend lots of money on new frames, it can feel like a massive slog being stuck with one frame that you're not really into for hours of gameplay - which, for me, translated to weeks of real life.

The frames I'd pick as potential additional starter frames would include: Rhino, Frost, Loki, Ember, Valkyr, Nova, and Trinity. Probably not all of them, but a few more would be nice.

5: Make Every Node an Alert: This would be a redesign of the entire alerts system. The idea is that every node in the game would always grant additional resources on mission completion, as though it was an alert. Like alerts, the rewards would be drawn from a shared pool and would change regularly.

Some caveats:

One, this may or may not apply to the bonus credits alerts currently give - it depends on if allowing additional credit rewards for most mission completions seems balanced or not.

Two, this would only apply to normal resources - not things like blueprints or nitain extract. Special resource alerts would have the same chance of appearing as they do now, and would be the only things flagged under the Alerts tabs.

As for why this would be helpful for new players: With more "alerts" active, that means more access to certain resources (like, for instance, nano spores) earlier on in gameplay - but only in a limited amount, and only if you're paying attention. One of the most soul-draining aspects of early gameplay, for me, was realizing that, sure, I could get the components for something I wanted to make easy, but I'd have to unlock multiple entire planets in order to get access to the resources needed to build it.

My last suggestion is an aesthetic one:

6: Clean Up the Early Story Missions: Let's be honest, the first few story missions in Warframe are fairly bland, and really don't compare to what comes later. This gives the impression that Warframe doesn't really have a story, and that the story it does have won't be worth paying attention to. Going back and upgrading some of the older content could go a long way towards keeping new players invested.

[peterc3]

12 minutes ago, Goblinman32 said:

Rhino, Frost, Loki, Ember, Valkyr, Nova, and Trinity

These include some of the worst frames to give new players. Rhino is already close to the beginning of the game to unlock. Loki is no longer a starting choice because he is very hard to work with before you get the right mods. Trinity promotes bad habits. Nova trivializes enemies. Valkyr is straight up immortal, if modded correctly.

15 minutes ago, Goblinman32 said:

5: Make Every Node an Alert: This would be a redesign of the entire alerts system. The idea is that every node in the game would always grant additional resources on mission completion, as though it was an alert. Like alerts, the rewards would be drawn from a shared pool and would change regularly.

This is just a flat buff to resource acquisition. This would have consequences, specifically for the players you are supposedly helping with this.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

2 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Trinity promotes bad habits

Healing your team and giving them energy?

[BlackCoMerc]

3 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite God said:

Healing your team and giving them energy?

More like using Link to stand in the middle of crowds. Start doing that early on, and you will soon start dying non stop while using other frames. Rhino's Iron Skin can also cause this, if its relied on heavily early.

[(PSN)teacup775]

38 minutes ago, BlackCoMerc said:

More like using Link to stand in the middle of crowds. Start doing that early on, and you will soon start dying non stop while using other frames. Rhino's Iron Skin can also cause this, if its relied on heavily early.

If frame acquisition required a series of missions using that frame, DE could provide challenges that let newer players explore a frames abilities. For newer players they could have the basic mods as pseudo mods (perhaps ranked on mr. 

Sacrifice had us get a frame half way through the quest. No reason more lore and story could be wrapped around frames.

unfortunately I don’t see DE devs caring that much about lore to do it. Their game engine and production chain likely also is not at all geared for that kind of endeavor.

[(PSN)negativ21]

7 hours ago, Goblinman32 said:

suggestion

2 and 3 are actually good/interesting ideas, especially 2. 

1 - this one may be controversial. Also I predict it wont help as much as you expect it to for choosing weapons. 

4 - there has been talk of at least 1 more starter, but not more. 

5 - also controversial. WF and it's playerbase have a history of supporting it's own steep learning curve. 

Note: You don't wanna baby the noobs too much bc although the game does make a lot more sense as you progress, the grind doesn't get any better, and if they aren't used to that they will just fall flat later on.

[Fallen_Echo]

8 hours ago, Goblinman32 said:

An Armory: My absolute most desired feature would be a place to test out weapons and warframes before you own them. Unlike the Simulacrum, this would not let you simulate enemies - just test weapons and warframe powers against a limited set of testing dummies. I use the Warframe wiki religiously, but, even so, it's often difficult to figure out what all the descriptions and stats mean in practice until you actually get your hands on the gear. An armory would allow players to do more hands-on research.

This feature would work best if it was unlockable early (maybe as a dojo feature). Though it might need to be unlocked in segments - I'm not sure it makes sense to, for instance, have prime weapons immediately available for testing.

Dont quote me on this but im sure that the very reason why we dont have this is because it would decrease the cash inflow for DE.

Just imagine it:

You see a great looking weapon in the market. The stats look good and the weapon has a nice look.

You go and get yourself 250 plat and buy it.

The weapon is trash but because you never had a trial period with it you are stuck with your investment and DE gained cash from it.

 

 

Now for the second part i fully support a primitive shooting range lets say at maroo. No enemies, only some targets and dummies to shoot at.