Nightwave concept is shafting new and casual players

[Toran]

Am 28.2.2019 um 20:56 schrieb Newplayer317:

Dear DE,

I've just started playing the game a few weeks ago and can't help but notice that the new alarm system is overly hard on newer players in several ways; see below. And yes, this is a secondary account as I intend to provide frank and honest feedback without being haunted by the forum warriors afterwards.

So, from a relatively new (MR8) player's perspective:

1) Starmap/quest/general content access is MR-gated. Fact. The occasional heat dagger, pangolin, dark, jaw or plasma sword blueprints from the old alerts all helped towards advancing in MR, which for new players was obviously a good thing. Free stuff! Also those weapons contributed to the fun for a newbie - regardless of weapon effectivity, it was nice to see their animations and handling (the pre-Europa content is thankfully forgiving) and advancing in MR was a good (and needed) side effect. For someone new, these things were all fresh and had a good time/reward ratio - spend a little time in an alert, often solo-shooting for 15 mins with that MK1-Paris, and get a new shiny. Happy new player! Alas, no more.

1b) Now to remedy the loss of that part, people could in theory just join a clan earlier to have access to researched weapons, however in my region, most recruitment messages have a minimum MR5 - you simply wouldn't get enrolled before. It seems clans want to see a certain degree of dedication before enlisting someone, which I guess is fair enough. However, without the alert weapons, that MR5 has become harder to reach, which means relatively more players will be lost before even making it to the clan stage. Even if clans relaxed their MR requirements over time (not likely), most weapons in the dojo lab have a relatively higher material cost.

2) All Nightwave offerings drawing from the same resource pool (currently wolf cred) is excessively punishing for new players. Newbies have a high need for Orokin reactors/catalysts. However, they'll also need the occasional mod (auras), stuff to rank up MR with and later on Nitain. Veterans need NONE of those and thus don't care much about this aspect - they're nitained out, they're geared and experienced enough to make plat ingame for market potatoes and they've gotten all the mods long ago. I've read some quite disrespectful comments towards new players since the debating about Nightwave started. It's a tad sad, as new players are the lifeblood of every multiplayer game. But I digress. For an inexperienced newbie, the potato supply on this side of Gifts of the Lotus has simply run dry. I'd have to grind 150 wolf cred just to get a pair of reactor/catalyst which equals a whopping 120.000 Wolf standing! For a newbie, that's mountainously insanely much. Probably two weeks or more - newbies can't even do the 5k sortie or eidolon tasks due to gating mechanisms. Plus, that amount of grind is simply off-putting. Moving potatoes so much out of noob reach is frankly damaging to Warframes F2P reputation.

3) The new system is hard on casual people, too. The true rewards like that umbral forma (whose usefulness I cannot even assess on account of being new) are at the very end, but I have to spend time at work and with my family. That's a fixed fact and not negotiable. I'd rather have a linear time-based share of random rewards like under the old system (it's fair as it rewards screen time in a straight time for opportunity fashion) than have a guaranteed nothing due to not being able to put in the hours. I simply cannot grind that much for a set two-month period. And then (not) do it again for the next two months. Do you really want to punish people for having jobs by systematically denying them the end-loaded, "exclusive" goodies? Forever? Create an artificial gap in gearedness in your playerbase?

4) The sense of freedom gets lost. With each old fashioned alert, I had a choice, and choice feels good. If I decide under the new system to try and grind something out over 6-8 weeks, I'll be forced to do those tasks that are technically available to me but you know what? I don't like all aspects of this game equally. Forcing me to do these by way of carrot lowers my average fun per time. It'd feel like a chore. Players dislike 'Do or lose out' scenarios, it wears them out. And having to do "only" 65% to reach the end is also misleading if the highest-end activities like friend-sortie & eidolon hunt are way overproportionally rewarded. I technically cannot do these! I've done the math and without those I will not be able to make it by the end of the event. It's effectively hard-locking newer players out, and "new" stretches prob'ly at least to MR 10.

5) The new alert system is atmospherically well-implemented, but, sadly, it's geared to reward only established veterans for what they're doing anyway. Everybody else loses: The new player gets way less than before as he is in no position to even participate sufficiently; the low-on-time player gets content denied, and you are factually trying to milk both of those groups harder than before.  I'm quite certain you currently get plenty of new players/fresh income due to Anthem comparisons in current media coverage (I'm one of them), but the current Nightwave design catastrophe will lose you an unnecessary share of them. You're prominently shoving a message in their faces stating "This content is not for you". Working as intended?

The whole format is wrong and won't please anyone. Some of vets will complain they're done two weeks early, many players, for a multitude of reasons, on the other side won't manage to advance far enough before the event times out (those will be extra frustrated as they'll feel their time investment will have been lost as they didn't get the umbral forma/current carrot) and some, regardless of outcome, will be unhappy as they felt forced to do game activities they dislike, losing the fun feeling.

If at least it had been an additional system, leaving the old alerts alone. And why remove the extra affinity from mission challenges (get 10 headshots etc.) on top? Why? Did any good come from that?

Regarding the Nightwave format, I'm just not sure what your expectations are at this point. If it's just about raising sales I wouldn't even mind, but there's genuine fun and player retention at stake here. Nightwave will be stirring up your community who is feeling the net loss and either cannot or doesn't want to play to the pace/degree needed to actually reap the rewards in time. You're effectively asking your playerbase to either play at 4000 rpm+ to stay on top of each the Nightwaves, get frustrated instead or simply not play. Parts of your playerbase /will/ chose the latter. The Nightwave mis-design is forcing a part of them out of your game.

Please consider. Thanks.
 

 

Great post, you pretty much hit the nail from all aspects, newcomers ans veterans alike.

2) Absolutely. Nightwave lets the casual player and newcomers suffer for good. Many tasks you simply won't be able to do (do 10 perfect catches on Fortuna), some you can only hope to get dragged along by a power team (Eidolon Hydrolyst). About the F2P part you're probably right. I always defended Warframe as the most free to play game I know. It's more like a rather F2P now with the changes.

3) The Umbral forma is hardly worth it. It allows you to optimize exactly one Warframe for the use of Umbral mods (or a weapon if you're that dumb). I do the boring nightwave busy work mainly for the cosmetics. As the other rewards, it's nothing that I need but something that I don't have yet. Other than some tasks being damn annoying it doesn't offer challenge to a Veteran. Best reward I got already: the Rank 5 noggle...

4) So true. I kinda feel obliged to do the stuff because I can. In 6 weeks I'm through. To be honest, as newcomer I'd probably be pretty turned off by Warframe with this system being my best option to free stuff other than having a patron.

5) Love the atmosphere as much, who's Nora's voice actress? She sounds so familiar to me. I don't know what to think of the new system - is it really a change in policy or DE's usual trial and error approach (I hope for latter).

[(XBOX)Tatakai no Kami]

1 hour ago, Wolfways said:

So you don't find anything hard as long as you use specific frames and/or get carried.

Okay... 😏

That is how the game works. The right frame for the right mission.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 hours ago, VanFanel1980mx said:

It would be great to have more alternatives for standing (like sigils) than just the three fugitives at random, hell, now a few eidolon hunts lose some time because those guys appear even twice in the same run, personally I am not doing 1 hour missions ever, so much for the bite sized content which is another great divide among players, I rarely play for one hour straight and I don't like the game's difficulty scaling system so I avoid any high level mission that is not a Sortie or the occasional ESO for leveling up, Nightwave offerings are OK but having the tokens expire puts pressure on me, it looks like I won't reach rank 30 this time around, another problem I have is, despite owning a ghost clan with people on it and having a few friends on my account I tend to play solo or with randos, so much that I almost never touched "endless mode" alerts or syndicate missions because they usually require the equivalent of two runs (ie, 10 min), this is the usual Warframe issue, people like me don't like to be trapped in a mission for X amount of time when there are missions where you can play at your own pace.

In short, make the Nightwave sigils give some standing at least.

Just want to point out that you won't do 1 hour missions but eidolon hunts are 50 minute missions.

[(XBOX)Tatakai no Kami]

1 minute ago, Zilchy said:

Just want to point out that you won't do 1 hour missions but eidolon hunts are 50 minute missions.

Eidolon hunts are 5-minute missions, Tridolon 15ish
 

If you mean the night cycle is 50 minutes and most teams do multiple hunts then I get ya.

[--LA--Vengeance]

4 hours ago, Wolfways said:

So you don't find anything hard as long as you use specific frames and/or get carried.

Okay... 😏

Do I actually need to draw to u or what? In case someone finds it hard to do solo, these are solutions. And since he/she finds stuff challenging and needs help, answer was directed to him/her. If that is so hard to understand then I dunno what else to say. U can do with legit any frame 3 waves of ESO or capturing animals, but these are the easiest solutions/tips. If u got nothing smart to say, skip my comments please.
And yes, imagine that frames has own purpose lol. Jesus christ...

Edited March 6, 2019 by Vengeance_A

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 hours ago, (XB1)Tatakai no Kami said:

Eidolon hunts are 5-minute missions, Tridolon 15ish
 

If you mean the night cycle is 50 minutes and most teams do multiple hunts then I get ya.

Yeh that's what I meant. Just pointing out that people queue up to do 50 minute Eidolon hunts all the time but 60 mins in a survival? No way Jose. The answer is simple, they value the rewards from Eidolon hunts more than they value the rewards for this. To them I just say, if you don't place that much value on it, don't do it. Easy.

[(XBOX)Tatakai no Kami]

4 minutes ago, Zilchy said:

Yeh that's what I meant. Just pointing out that people queue up to do 50 minute Eidolon hunts all the time but 60 mins in a survival? No way Jose. The answer is simple, they value the rewards from Eidolon hunts more than they value the rewards for this. To them I just say, if you don't place that much value on it, don't do it. Easy.

Couldn't agree more.

30-minute survivals are mindnumbing enough.

I think though with the Eidolons they are not as repetitive as Survival runs, where you are not really required to think. Eidolon hunts have different stages which you have to be awake for,

[Wolfways]

44 minutes ago, Vengeance_A said:

Do I actually need to draw to u or what? In case someone finds it hard to do solo, these are solutions. And since he/she finds stuff challenging and needs help, answer was directed to him/her. If that is so hard to understand then I dunno what else to say. U can do with legit any frame 3 waves of ESO or capturing animals, but these are the easiest solutions/tips. If u got nothing smart to say, skip my comments please.
And yes, imagine that frames has own purpose lol. Jesus christ...

My point is that new players might not have multiple, or even the right frames, and being carried... well to me that is never an option. If you're being carried you aren't playing the game, you're just following someone around.

[(XBOX)Tatakai no Kami]

10 minutes ago, Wolfways said:

My point is that new players might not have multiple, or even the right frames, and being carried... well to me that is never an option. If you're being carried you aren't playing the game, you're just following someone around.

So then maybe they should go do the assassinations and other missions to earn the frames they need to make the other modes easy? It is what everyone else has done.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Tatakai no Kami said:

Couldn't agree more.

30-minute survivals are mindnumbing enough.

I think though with the Eidolons they are not as repetitive as Survival runs, where you are not really required to think. Eidolon hunts have different stages which you have to be awake for,

Well tbh that depends how many you do. When you're doing 5x3s each night, the only fun part left is the banter on voice chat with clan mates :)

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

1 hour ago, Wolfways said:

My point is that new players might not have multiple, or even the right frames, and being carried... well to me that is never an option. If you're being carried you aren't playing the game, you're just following someone around.

Newer players will have no choice but to follow someone around if said someone is wiping the tile before the new player even gets there.

[TioMegaManX]

6 hours ago, Zilchy said:

Just want to point out that you won't do 1 hour missions but eidolon hunts are 50 minute missions.

You can do tridolons in less than 20 minutes, as I said, these missions are tackled at your own pace, there is no infinitely respawning enemies with tons of health and armor, not a fragile objective or a timer with life support on them, you can either do tridolons for 50 minutes or just teralyst a few times, rewards are not on a timer, etc., as you said, don't like it? don't do it, well, I don't, that's why it would be good to have sigil standing bonus to cushion whatever challenge you won't do, it may not fully compensate but help a little.

Edited March 6, 2019 by VanFanel1980mx

[(PSN)Yderil]

Have been reading a lot about how bad Nightwave is for new players and thought I would chip in.

I am a new player, I play solo on the PS4 (due to being on call solo play is just a lot easier for me) and can play for an hour or so each night and sometimes longer on a weekend (not sure what people define as casual).
Had Excalibur as first frame, got twitch rewards and also managed to build Rhino and Hek and a few other weapons.
I bought a Garuda frame and a Ballistica with a 75% discount and also bought the Ember/Frost Prime package as was best value and felt at that point I was enjoying the game enough that giving DE money felt right, and then bought the Paris Bow with plat as liked the fantasy around using the bow  wanted an upgrade to the Mk1 version.

Last week I got an affinity boost or 3 days - so had planned to just rank up as many of the frames and weapons as I could over those 3 days Thursday night thru Sun - was a clear weekend so knew had the time to do that)
Did this by running the Interception Mission on Earth, Gaia - may not be the most efficient way but was fairly relaxing to do and could watch a stream on second screen while doing it.
So I am now just hitting my MR7 test, have just unlocked Jupiter - now have the Neural sensor sI needed so am building Mag, another frame to rank up at some point.

This gives you an idea of how "new" I am.

I am enjoying the Nightwave experience.
Will I get to rank 30? No of course I wont and I know this already as I know I will skip most of the Elite missions, but I should hit somewhere around 15 - depending on the missions offered and also if the prisoners become more frequent (must have got at least 1000 standing from them just appearing in missions I was already running).

I was a little lucky last week.
Firstly with the Socket the Statues one as I had 4 statues in my inventory but never added gems to them, and found another 1 in my first capture mission - actually had to look up how to socket them since the interface wasn't obvious that you have to place the cursor over the socket to get the prompt to add the gem to it.
Did the 3 capture missions - chose esier ones on Earth and completed those realtively quickly - which was the only thing I did that I hadn't planned to do.
As I was running the interception mission for XP ranking this gave me the 500 standard kills and the 100 eximus kills and most of the dailies - place glyph, kill sliding, get 8 mods, scan objects, which added a little to the missions themselves.
With a few prison captures I had already Unlocked rank1 and was close to unlocking rank 2

This week have done the dailies for cold, heat and blast kills.
Have done 3 assassination missions, unlocked 3 relics, as well as kill 30 eximus.
Also done 4 syndicate missions (2 each night) so should finish those by the weekend.

Have now unlocked rank3 and working towards rank 4, so on track for hitting rank 15 which would net me in total 150 wolf credits, 2 weapon slots, warframe slot, forma bundle, orikin catalyst the Grakata augment mod, 20,00 Kuva (no idea what this is used for yet) plus the various cosmetic rewards.
Also this will be another 32 platinum I have been given free by DE for playing their game.

The main difference I can see between Alert system and Nightwave is that with Alerts I was not aware in game of what I was missing out on, unless I went actively looking somewhere online for it or looked at the App continually,
With Nightwave I get to see everything I can get and know what I have to achieve in order to get the, am learning each week/day what I need to do to achieve them - but even the Elite missions which I cannot do gives me something to aim for so that when the next season starts I can try to be in a position where more of those are achievable for me.

For me the big one is the Aura mods.
With the alert system I had never seen and therefore not only dont own any of them, but also wasn't even aware that they should be available to me at my progression point - esp playing solo and not trading with other players.
I now see these in the Nightwave credit store and see that they appear to be a significant power boost and I now have the credits to buy them, but I will have to choose which one(s) I want and buy them when they appear in the rotation and have to continue doing the daily/weekly activities in order to earn the credits to get more.

Will I get everything I need to complete everything in the game in the first 10 weeks of this? No
But also at the moment with the pace I am setting I currently have no need for Nitain (sure that will come) or Kuva, and although the orikin reactor/catalysts will be needed it is not an immediate need as a lot of my frames and weapons have them due to the drops/prime vault/purchase for plat coming with them already, so is only the ones I build that will need them and this is a decision as to which of those I use and would invest that in and whether that is worth more to me than say buying the Vauban blueprints.

 

[SenariousNex]

On 2019-02-28 at 3:18 PM, Rawbeard said:

seems like DE is a subsidiary still, so... yeah. It saddens me to see how DE switched from making content for their players to content that shareholders would be excited about when they sold themselfs. and the way the abandon "old" stuff like PoE the moment they announce the next "hype" like Fortuna is really not helping that impression

This is wrong. PoE is getting a massive facelift. Watch the devstreams. 

[--LA--Vengeance]

5 hours ago, Wolfways said:

My point is that new players might not have multiple, or even the right frames, and being carried... well to me that is never an option. If you're being carried you aren't playing the game, you're just following someone around. 

Newer players are always welcome in many clans to have a guide and help with many things until they are able later on to do stuff on their own. And yes, it is like that because compared to any other rewards in the game, these are AN ACTUAL rewards for the first time (except Eidolon, maybe)

Old system: alerts on planets they didn't have unlocked was ok to everyone? Many of those ppl didn't ask to get a taxi for mission even tho they might needed it badly.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Vengeance_A

[Gentleman_Bird]

Nightwave can get boring for veteran players too. While I really like the nightwave system so far, I already finished all of his week’s challenges, and now I have nothing to do until the weekly reset. Sure, I can do the daily missions, but since each daily mission is on a 3 day timer, I might as well just not play for three days. With alerts you always have something to do.

[Tgrable]

I am a new player and I dont get a ton of playtime due to having a full time job and 19month twins.

Yet, I still manage to complete all but maybe 1 or 2 or the elite challenges with minimal effort.

I think people are just getting to concerned on what rewards others might get over them. I play this game as it was something new and have even purchased plat to do my part in supporting the game.

Now if I get to the point I don't have fun or feel the game no longer fits the niche I am looking for I will just move on to another game and give them my business/support.

Now the fact this was a f2p game means I'm not out of an initial investment and the fact I had a ton of banked twitch prime rewards for this game also helped. Anyways my point is that the value you get from this game is astounding. Just play to have fun and dont worry about the rewards that are out of your reach. You will get there eventually and there will be new events by then. 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

6 hours ago, VanFanel1980mx said:

You can do tridolons in less than 20 minutes, as I said, these missions are tackled at your own pace, there is no infinitely respawning enemies with tons of health and armor, not a fragile objective or a timer with life support on them, you can either do tridolons for 50 minutes or just teralyst a few times, rewards are not on a timer, etc., as you said, don't like it? don't do it, well, I don't, that's why it would be good to have sigil standing bonus to cushion whatever challenge you won't do, it may not fully compensate but help a little.

So you want extra standing because you can't be bothered?

[Felis_Furva]

Personally, I have no problems with completing the standing mission, a couple of evening per week is all I need. That being said, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the night wave - this is good for higher ranks and not so good for lower MR ppl or occasional players.

First of all, because many of the locations are still locked for them, so (most likely) they won't manage to get the rewards on time. Some of the comments suggest an increase of daily missions, which would be accessible to all players, which seems to be a good idea, that will help to balance things out a bit.

The second thing is - some ppl might say that this is about dedication, but honestly, is it so wrong that players want to have a steady progress (steady and fast) in game, even if they don't have a lot of time to play the game on daily basis? Some of my friends would love to play more, but as they have work and families, they don't often get an hour or two to play the game. 

All in all, I like the idea of Nightwave, but it looks like this system requires a lot of balancing, if it should work for players of all MR

[Shidonia]

I don't like the new nightwave system. First of all, 

I'm not sure whether if I will be able to make it to the end and I want the armor set syandana and umbral forma grakata mod or k drive art doesn't mean anything to me. 

Secondly pricing for wolf cred is basically too much and not everyone will be able to make it to the next patch so they will never ever actually be eligible to get the potato or accessories they need. 

Third, getting vauban is still hard and he needs a rework

I think instead of giving everything partially make weekly prizes such as first week you get all the wolf cred from the board, next weekend you get the mods and some forma and last week some sigils accessories and perhaps lore!? Giving its and bits of everything in little portions feels like I'm in a restaurant and sushi's are on the band moving back and forth on the buffet. 

Every week a certain stage should be guaranteed to be achieved or achievable. Daily challenges need some simplifing for newbies such as go use your 4th ability or get 10 headshots or maybe every special per mission challenges should be retrieved and contribute small amounts of affinity towards nora's syndicate. 

I'm a veteran and I already feel sad for future newbies who won't be aware that there's a prison named saturn 6 in probably saturn?? So please DE don't make things harder for them than 'LF taxi to Europa for orokin catalyst alert'

Edited March 14, 2019 by Shidonia

[FlusteredFerret]

On 2019-03-03 at 12:22 PM, Agent_Maine said:

Two types of people.

Yup. Its all a matter of opinion.

Thing is, people complained that the old alert system caused them to miss stuff (primarily Nitain IIRC). DE change the system...people complain that the new system is causing them to miss out...

What's a dev to do...?