Mind Over Mission: Big Game - - - No Viewers. Why?

[TheWhitterMatter]

Hello again my fellow Tenno! It is the new year and a new experience for warframe. What better way to start off the new year, than share a few examples and ideas of how to increase Warframe's popularity on streaming services and just... the game in general.

So I'm gonna be really serious.... rrreeeaaallly serious. 

This game right now as I look at it, as a little over 2k viewers. Yesterday, when I looked at the numbers, it was also about 2k viewers. Why does one of the most popular free games, the biggest competitor to Destiny and up-coming Anthem, and the strongest community have only 2k viewers on twitch. There are pretty much one-two streamers I watch that are warframe related and those same guys as YouTubers. I often don't even watch the streams for the content, I watch them for the streamers because they have interesting things to say and they are pretty chill dudes.

I think that may be the reason other people watch the warframe streamers. Maybe I'm wrong, but there has to be a reason there are only 2k people watching warframe streamers while there are games I have never even heard of, way higher than Warframe, the mass competitor of a AAA game (maybe games).

While I love warframe to the bottom of my heart, I find small reason to play it right now. Yes I can finish my standing for Fortuna pretty easily and fight some orbs, but there is no... uh... reason for me to do it. There is a grind, and lots of mods I can still obtain, but there is no point. Why? All the enemies that I ever need to fight, die in one hit. All the bosses I might need to grind for (except eidolons, maybe orbs, I dunno) pretty much die in one hit. Arbitrations you may ask? Don't care, I'll just buy the mods if I decide I want them. I don't really need endo at this point either.

No there is no real reason, because there is no end game. I don't have to worry about fighting a boss that is mechanically difficult, where I can and feel like I lost an opportunity or like maybe I failed. There is no point to prepare for an actual end game boss, because there aren't any. The eidolons feel like a real step in the right direction, but while they drop slews of Arcanes, it turned Arcanes into a rather trivial thing, instead of a potentially exciting thing someone would receive from the old raid.

Now I'm going to talk about my favorite game to play right now. I currently have 4k hours into Path of Exile. I'm not a pro at the game, niether have I done all the end game content, but.... wait... did I just say endgame? Path of Exile is a very different game than Warframe, but I'm going to talk about both of these excelling ftp games.

Path of Exile is growing very well, not only as a game, but as fun watchable content. I have spent some good hours watching path of exile streamers, learning from them, trying to understand their methods of farming, trying to mimic there builds. I might be a bit of a casual at the game, and even though I've been playing since its official release not a month after (before?) Warframe. I actually started playing both games within about a week of each other (3.5k hours in warframe). Since then I have always been learning something new and interesting to improve my game play. Even some of the streamers often discover new things and spread it to the community through by-weekly podcasts which sometimes certain people are invited onto the stream because they excel in knowledge that no one else on the stream knows. 

Path of Exile does endgame right. There are really hard bosses with lots of mechanics to dodge, both easy and difficult alike. They also hurt a lot. Before a player gets to the end game, they must make there new character, level up to the beginning of the end game content, and begin the grind for better armors and weapons. To make this easy to understand, just think of the characters gear as mods from warframe. The gear that each character has by end game, usually includes something like, maxed out elemental resistances, increased armor and/or energy sheild plus life is brought up as much as possible. While the average player at end game might have about 4k to 5k life, or 5k 7k energy shield, the people who end up fighting the end game bosses will have close to 6k life and at least 8k energy shield. These guys are #*!%ing badass characters than can handle just about anything you you can throw at them, but they can still get hit hard by the end game boss.

The loot that is dropped at higher levels, makes it worth while to grind and try to get as high on the grind ladder as possible. I am being honest when I say I believe its okay that the top 1-5% of players have the best gear in the game. They earned it and they worked hard for it. While someone is grinding for end game gear, much like warframe, they will gather other things that are worth selling and gain actual currency to build up their character to be strong. Warframe has plat as pretty much the only trade-able resource, while Path of Exile has about 10 different types of currency and 3-4 methods of trading. While that may sound complicated, its really not. The currency in PAth of exile can be used the same way that kuva is used to change properties on riven mods. This currency never scales based on how may times you re-role and item, meaning that, after a time, you will finally receive that item you've been trying to get for a long time much sooner. Every potential item is like a riven mod, but it can be a lot more rewarding with time put into the content. This opens up things like controlled rng, where the player can keep certain rolls on a pierce of gear and add/remove individual modifiers to make the perfect item. This can get massively expensive, but you have control of your destiny.

The reason I am talking about loot in a completely different game, is ,I believe, one of the exact reasons Path of exile is more popular to watch. When someone is farming a random high there zone, and a valuable item drops, its exhilarating. It's time well spent and it's fun. There are about 24k people watching PAth of exile, a smaller game with a smaller team, than Warframe. The loot in warframe feels fairly invaluable compared to riven mods, but the perfect rivens are layered behind 4 levels of grind, and you still have a chance of spending 100k kuva on a handful of rivens.

Another thing. There is no game-play loop in Warframe except when formaing weapons and warframes. Path of Exile is designed around a game-play loop. When you get done with the current build your playing, you simply use the currency you gained from one character and the items you've found on your next build.

Anyway... it just makes me sad that warframe is #70 or something on twitch, while a game with fewer players, developers, and resources has made a game that is both extremely fun to play AND watch. There are things on warframe that have no excuse to be bad, like no scaling rewards, enemy scaling, and pvp is not good and could be more harmful right now than good.

I know this is a long post, but all of my Mind of Mission posts are long. Please comment. I want to try and get a discussion started. I will be making another post soon about some ideas me and friends have regarding potential end game rewards, while also making a few more comparisons to Path of Exile. Thanks and have a good rest of your day!

[PookieNumnums]

Firstly,  eidolons do not trivialize the use of or the feeling of reward you get when you finally receive an outstanding arcane and no trials didn't make arcane better.  

Trials were objectively terrible and people who complained about their removal were either arcane sellers,  or those who dislike operator gameplay.  

Insert contradictory outliers reply about missing them and being from neither category here. 

If anything,  the once a day reward schedule for arcanes is the only thing that could possibly make obtaining them feel more special,  or rather, i should say that the lack of variety between the eidolons coupled with being able to do them many timesa day and the 3x3 to 5x3 mentality and toxicity that comes from players when youre not a meta hunter has to a degree dulled the desire for non sellers to endure horrible drop rates verbal abuse and tedium that are very mucha part of it.  And that i can see would definitely lessen the excitement of getting an energize.  

As for twitch.  Warframe is one of the most consistently viewed non pvp games on twitch especially after major releases or during dev streams. But,  tbf, there isnt a lot about the game worth watching.  So,  if not for the steamer then for free stuff.  And tbh. Wf has the problem of the developers really catering to and supporting the yes-men in the content creating community.  

All this aside,  warframe is more of a play me game than a watch me game.  Regardless of how many people are watching on twitch, warframe still maintains a high number of players. 

Are there a lot of issues that could and should be addressed.  Ya.  Is ROI a problem? Yes, absolutely. Do we need better allocated rewards across a wider variety of existing content? 100%. Is the vast majority of the reward system in game poop? Yeah, probably. Does actually having a designated endgame that is high difficulty and non endless mean the game will be fixed or that theyre will be reasonable justification for doing it? Hell no. 

Until de decides to make warframe great again,  change how we obtain mastery, fix focus, give us more meaningful reasons to play 90% of content, stop ignoring accrued xp on maxed gear, and actually stop looking forward to fix a vast amount if what already is... then the game is just gonna remain as is on the same path to not quite stardom.

[(PSN)teacup775]

1 hour ago, TheWhitterMatter said:

The loot in warframe feels fairly invaluable compared to riven mods, but the perfect rivens are layered behind 4 levels of grind, and you still have a chance of spending 100k kuva on a handful of rivens.

Realistically people can:

get lucky; the riven drops from a sortie, then after grinding kuva, you get a unicorn roll

or buy a so so riven and play crap shoot with kuva for a unicorn.

or buy a groll

neither makes good long form (streamed) content, unless you like watching paint dry.. with explosions.

There’s nothing terribly interesting or funny that can happen on a mission, no motivation for fun builds for fun gameplay because ultimately a horde looter is nuke hoards. Endless mission are jump jump (shoot), press an ability, rinse repeat.

Enemies are never going to do anything suprising or even mildly unexpected. It’s basically a sparkly lawn mowing run.

 

22 minutes ago, PookieNumnums said:

Does actually having a designated endgame that is high difficulty and non endless mean the game will be fixed or that theyre will be reasonable justification for doing it? Hell no. 

 

While high difficulty content would be a draw (people would watch to learn and be entertained), I think much of the discussion of end game misses the point of “fun-game”. All this swag and nothing engaging to tangle with, with it.

Let’s take an example: Umbra or Paracesis. Big Monster of a frame, and big ass kicking sword and nobody to dance with. In a year or two’s time, prolly after playing Pirates of the Caribbean in space, we’ll get a stock of the same old missions (sub in sentients) in a new tileset with a few cut scenes, the it’s back to the same set of (never changing never different) missions we’ve been doing since Earth and mr 3.

The format of warframe leaves nothing fun to rip apart all sorts of ways with all the toys they constantly ladle out. There’s nothing to tinker with and do cool moves with.

Edited January 1, 2019 by (PS4)teacup775

[Hayden_Prime_Tenno]

More views mean one thing, which is "Interesting content". Warframe is interesting only for new players, for old players? it is just a grinding simulator. Or cosmetic simulator. and that is it. 

Warframe will never pass this zone neither it will become more interesting than this, no matter how unless developers prove that Evolution engine can do better. Or, change the game engine to something new. 

DE will not do the same lunaro "LEIONAYERO" mistake by improvising and developing then releasing an event that the players join more spy missions willingly over playing it. for it is poorly rendered and lack of attention. go home DE, no one likes you. lol. 

sorry to be harsh, now lets do the one thing DE never care about. "players opinions"

My opinion to make the game 100% or 200% interesting of course with maximum (Interest prime riven) disposition. And they are 1 of 2. 

1. Expensive solution: which require an baddazz AI that adopt to the players game and react by (reflecting, dodging, pull and push, etc.) 

2. Cheap Solution: Combine some of the alerts, eidolon hunt, fortuna content, sorties, or invasions etc. with PVP content. That is a 1 way ticket to boost your twitch streaming. 

 

**i can imagine how cool to playe a defense alert VS machine, and the other squads who are also doing defense mission in the same map you and your squad in. once you beat them you finish the alert fast and double your reward, but if they beat you you won't even be able to participate in the alert again. i would watch that over twitch to see meta builds and meta squads combinations. 

 

again, 100% sure DE won't pay attention to what said over here, and never will. 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Hayden_Prime_Tenno

[PookieNumnums]

18 hours ago, Hayden_Prime_Tenno said:

More views mean one thing, which is "Interesting content". Warframe is interesting only for new players, for old players? it is just a grinding simulator. Or cosmetic simulator. and that is it. 

Warframe will never pass this zone neither it will become more interesting than this, no matter how unless developers prove that Evolution engine can do better. Or, change the game engine to something new. 

DE will not do the same lunaro "LEIONAYERO" mistake by improvising and developing then releasing an event that the players join more spy missions willingly over playing it. for it is poorly rendered and lack of attention. go home DE, no one likes you. lol. 

sorry to be harsh, now lets do the one thing DE never care about. "players opinions"

My opinion to make the game 100% or 200% interesting of course with maximum (Interest prime riven) disposition. And they are 1 of 2. 

1. Expensive solution: which require an baddazz AI that adopt to the players game and react by (reflecting, dodging, pull and push, etc.) 

2. Cheap Solution: Combine some of the alerts, eidolon hunt, fortuna content, sorties, or invasions etc. with PVP content. That is a 1 way ticket to boost your twitch streaming. 

 

**i can imagine how cool to playe a defense alert VS machine, and the other squads who are also doing defense mission in the same map you and your squad in. once you beat them you finish the alert fast and double your reward, but if they beat you you won't even be able to participate in the alert again. i would watch that over twitch to see meta builds and meta squads combinations. 

 

again, 100% sure DE won't pay attention to what said over here, and never will. 

lunaro could be good. just like pvp could be good. unfortunately, they would have to be done much different than they are right now to really draw in players. 

the issue of competitive modes without dedicated servers also sorta ruins that, though tbh, having dedicated servers isnt going to make players' internet not suck and in which case with sucky interweb speeds theyre still at a disadvantage. not to mention that if theyre playing at less than 60 fps they probably are also at some form of disadvantage. 

off topic sure but how would i fix both lunaro and pvp? a) two modes of conclave. unrestricted warframe vs warframe murder without altered parkour and with pve modding. (meta vs meta still sure but not gimped) and b) operator vs operator lato/skana/braton or even amp vs amp. or slappers only for the memes. 

 

how would i fix lunaro? operators vs operators, no hold right click to succ ball, and no dash / swipe to knockdown. id also have larger playing fields, more complex with tiered goals worth varying amounts of points. operators might need a bit of parkour love to handle something like that, and limited void dashing. focus schools would either need to be disabled or have special lunaro only skills that do not lend favor to one over the other. (i.e. 10% chance for extra point on score from outside of 3pt line, or 10% chance for ball to explode and cause knockdown when pass is intercepted by opposing team member, or 10% chance for void dash to consume no energy)

 

all of that would mean nothing however, outside of fanbois who love that particular mode of gameplay, without proper reward and return on investment which is unfortunately an issue with muuuuch of the game's content... i.e. all regular nodes, all archwing nodes, all endless missions, eidolons outside of the few arcanes that people actually use, ostrons, quills, vox solaris, orb vallis' raknoids, hyenas, bursas, eximus... and the list goes on... nightmare missions, vault runs, simaris, teshin, syndicates outside of the few augments you really want to use and the few cosmetics you cant buy... sorties outside of rivens and if youre not a seller you dont need / want to do them everyday because its easier to buy the rivens for items you want [outside of the really expensive crud]...) and i think the lack of proper ROI is the main point in the op. 

wouldnt even ''need'' end game outside of the what we currently have (excuse me for not being an endless mode hater) and maybe some proper boss reworks, if the rewards for doing them were ample. 

(odd idea, what if amp x arcata hybrid? owo'') 

 

also i think that if they were to actually devote some time and resources to clan and alliance content as ive been suggesting / crying for over the last ... 3 years or so... that could also really boost the dedicated player base activity levels as well as the viewer/content creator numbers. 

hopefully kingpin (if we ever get it), melee 3.0, and rail jack will be much needed boosts to the consumer economy (meaning number of people invested and dedicated, who can and will support the game in monetary and non monetary ways) but also something to simply keep us engaged and feeling like hours spent dont ammount to simply nothing. 

all that rail-agent talk i keep hearing from Fortuna NPC's is making me wonder if http://www.tinyurl.com/haelion is coming our way.. or something like it. old concept but still relevant i think, especially since the main idea of it (being a licensed rail agent) is now quoted in  game (at least the phrase, no idea what they have in store).