Nightwave concept is shafting new and casual players

[ARKANOiiDe]

System is great, but not perfect. I in some way agree with OP, what i would tweak is - give us more daily tasks, so that if a casual/pretty new player if doing all of them daily can reach the end, just like everyone of those players could do in old alert system - everyone could do a quick lvl 30 defense or exterminate mission for the reward they wanted. Now i think what turns off most low rank MR players is focus on the weekly and elite tasks, and they think that if they cant complete it, they cant get good rewards and are missiing out compared to old alert system. So, implementing more daily challenges for lower MR/casual players i think would solve this issue.

[Skaleek]

@Newplayer317

Incredibly well written post sir. I didn't really consider a lot of the problems that this system introduces to new players. It's sort of a conundrum. The veterans have access to everything but need nothing, and the new players have access to nothing but need everything. Makes the system feel somewhat backwards.

Even had you posted on your regular account, there's no reason high level players should be giving you trouble for giving your experience as a new player. We aren't new players, and we haven't been for a long time. We have no idea what the landscape is like for newer players anymore. I'm so separated from when i was a new ranking player that often i have to read forum posts like this to understand and comprehend your experience.

The reality is the game is so very different than what it was 5+ years ago.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Skaleek

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

20 hours ago, Newplayer317 said:

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.
 

 

I like how you made an alt just to post salty feedback in the wrong subforum.

[ThumpumGood]

17 hours ago, Softballbryan said:

 This new system is a good system once it gets the kinks worked out of it. It currently isn’t very friendly for new players and is a little grind heavy and needs some balancing. I think it’s important to look at the bigger picture and realize the system has a lot of potential for all of us. It simply needs more work and refinement. 

Look at reward 29. Umbra forma. It's meant to be grindy in order to gate things like that. The lower level stuff, including the frame slots, is easily obtainable in a week. And that's the other thing. You and I may have done them all in a day or 2, but they are meant to be available all of the time for people who cant just log in any time for an alert. That's the point of this whole thing. People who have serious real life time constraints that miss out on a lot of this stuff. There's nothing to work out.

[(PSN)Zero_029]

Really? I know a bunch of new players on both PS4 & NSW & they all LOVE the Nightwave system.

All my coworkers who play did last night was rave about how cool, fun, & etc Nightwave was.

Many of them bought me a Coka Cola, offered me lunch...

Then very nonchalantly asked me to solo a Hydrolyst for them...

Damn it!!!

[(XBOX)Papa Requiem]

Oh my god! No one is getting shafted in this! A casual player can get all of the rewards by only doing 60% of the challenges.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)RevenantRequiem said:

Oh my god! No one is getting shafted in this! A casual player can get all of the rewards by only doing 60% of the challenges.

If the casual isn't doing at least 1 elite weekly every week they may not be able to reach the highest rank since 15k is 35% of 43k. If they miss anything else at all during the 10 week period they will be short of rank 30. The math simply doesn't support casual or new players in its current format as the elite weeklies account for too many of the available points.

[(PSN)Zero_029]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)RevenantRequiem said:

Oh my god! No one is getting shafted in this! A casual player can get all of the rewards by only doing 60% of the challenges.

I think the veterans have come down with a mass case of "Change is Scary" or as the meme sfrom when I came back to WF full time: "Old Veteran Syndrome" ie: "It was better in Vanilla.", "Stacking Frost Bubbles was a test of skill.", "Revive costing plat was totally fair.", "Limbo is a bad frame.", & etc

Alerts being removed is a HUGE change though...so their panic is both to be expected & respected. In time they'll cool their jets.

Or...they'll go full AGGP & attack everyone & everything then play the victim card when someone sets them straight.

Hmm...probably that last one.

[(PSN)wintersfrozen]

1 hour ago, (XB1)RevenantRequiem said:

Oh my god! No one is getting shafted in this! A casual player can get all of the rewards by only doing 60% of the challenges.

This issue with the 60% is that not all NightWave missions are created equal. The 40% you can skip is your daily's not your elite. You skip your Elites then your not getting everything unless something changes within the next week then ya a fair amount of people are going to get the shaft.

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by (PS4)wintersfrozen
put 60% twice the second needed to be 40%

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

Shafting casual players in a casual game.  

 

Negative ghost rider, the pattern is full.

Edited March 1, 2019 by (XB1)Thy Divinity

[DazedMattress]

They took out the old system and replaced it with something that works completely different. Of course some people will be upset, duh. 

My only question is, why they didn't just keep alerts and introduce this system along side. Something for everyone and everyone has a reason to be happy.

Peace Love Unity. 

[GrimAtrament]

9 minutes ago, DazedMattress said:

They took out the old system and replaced it with something that works completely different. Of course some people will be upset, duh. 

My only question is, why they didn't just keep alerts and introduce this system along side. Something for everyone and everyone has a reason to be happy.

Peace Love Unity. 

because the point of the new system was to Replace not tied to. the old

[Wolfways]

I wouldn't mind the grind...if I wasn't already grinding Fortuna and Cetus rep, and grinding relics before they are vaulted (Axi's just refuse to drop), another "limited time" grind that I hate.

Having a lot of variety of things to do in a game is great. Having limited time things at the same time is horrible.

[KosmicKerman]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Hiero_Glyph said:

If the casual isn't doing at least 1 elite weekly every week they may not be able to reach the highest rank since 15k is 35% of 43k. If they miss anything else at all during the 10 week period they will be short of rank 30. The math simply doesn't support casual or new players in its current format as the elite weeklies account for too many of the available points.

 1. New players never had access to all the alerts or invasions because later planets would always be out of their reach. Once you’ve completed the star chart completely, you’re not really “new”. 

2. Casual players also didn’t have access to most of the alerts because they were casual and rarely played. You have be to logged in to run the alert. 

Edited to add - of course some players won’t get all the rewards but those same type of players were never getting all the rewards. It’s no different now. How about those players who start week 5 of WoSS? Who’s thinking of them?  Some people will never get everything.

After reading a ton of these threads here and on reddit, I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the people upset about this change had the ability to farm most of the alerts and did so with minimal effort spent.  Apparently, a lot of those same players also don’t like Warframe, don’t enjoy playing Warframe, and only hate-play Warframe for easy rewards they don’t actually need since they don’t play Warframe. So, I’m not really seeing the problem with the new system. It rewards people who regularly log on and play the game.  Most of the objectives are completeable by most of the player base. The people most harmed by new system are those who only logged in to run alerts.  Once again, I don’t see how this system is a bad thing. 

Edited March 1, 2019 by KosmicKerman

[Chad1661]

20 hours ago, hazerddex said:

Ranks are not resetting every week just the shop rotates every week. Who told you ranks were forced reset every week?

From the Nightwave announcement:  Make sure to complete all 30 Tiers before the Series is over to earn all rewards!

That is how I understood this to mean.  I guess we will see how it plays out

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by Chad1661
update

[GrimAtrament]

4 minutes ago, Chad1661 said:

From the Nightwave announcement:  Make sure to complete all 30 Tiers before the Series is over to earn all rewards!

.. and I just got restarted.

 

series doesn't end untill 10-11 weeks

 

no you didn't your series doesn't end till 10-11 weeks where a new story will start.

 

edit: also its not a reset thats just the end of that series and the start of the next.

Edited March 1, 2019 by hazerddex

[BeldarTheBrave]

As someone who started the game just a few weeks ago I will add my voice and say that I do not like Nightwave at all. Before I could get a reward for a ten minute mission, but now I have to grind for weeks in order to get a temporary vapor currency. It's a huge turn off and makes it less likely that I will be a long term player.

[GrimAtrament]

Just now, BeldarTheBrave said:

As someone who started the game just a few weeks ago I will add my voice and say that I do not like Nightwave at all. Before I could get a reward for a ten minute mission, but now I have to grind for weeks in order to get a temporary vapor currency. It's a huge turn off and makes it less likely that I will be a long term player.

you only started a few weeks ago and so i'll inform you how wrong you are.

timed RNG alerts were bad you would miss stuff you wanted or needed, simiply because you were at school, work, sleep, etc

imagine a 25 minute catalyst at 3 am where you live. that you missed because you were asleep. now imagine that happening 90% of the time.

[BallisticSalsa]

I like it.

New players don't need the higher tiers anyway. You don't need 20000 kuva or a bunch of cosmetics.

I took care of all my weekly stuff in about 4 hours. Only thing I havent done is hydrolyst kill. Easy to do over the weekend.

[KosmicKerman]

10 minutes ago, BeldarTheBrave said:

As someone who started the game just a few weeks ago I will add my voice and say that I do not like Nightwave at all. Before I could get a reward for a ten minute mission, but now I have to grind for weeks in order to get a temporary vapor currency. It's a huge turn off and makes it less likely that I will be a long term player.

 

Setting aside the fact that you’ve misrepresented how Nightwave actually works (reward every 10k standing, wolf creds can be spent as soon as you earn them), If you don’t enjoy playing the game or grinding for some things, Warframe is not for you. That is what a looter shooter is.  The game loop is the game loop. 

Most of the objectives can be completed by just playing the game.  

Edited March 1, 2019 by KosmicKerman

[Coverop]

34 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

you only started a few weeks ago and so i'll inform you how wrong you are.

timed RNG alerts were bad you would miss stuff you wanted or needed, simiply because you were at school, work, sleep, etc

imagine a 25 minute catalyst at 3 am where you live. that you missed because you were asleep. now imagine that happening 90% of the time.

Nightwave is possibly the 3rd worst implementation to the Warframe I've seen. 

Alert missions had its own charm, quick in n out. 

Those were completely optional, but fun nonetheless. 

 

Nightwave is just a BattlePass under freemium layer that adds more Grinding to already Grindy game. 

You need to focus on grinding those challenges to get enough points/creds to buy catalyst or whatever. 

 

Its not fun, Its a chore. 

Warframe should be FUN again, but isnt. 

[BeldarTheBrave]

50 minutes ago, hazerddex said:

you only started a few weeks ago and so i'll inform you how wrong you are.

timed RNG alerts were bad you would miss stuff you wanted or needed, simiply because you were at school, work, sleep, etc

imagine a 25 minute catalyst at 3 am where you live. that you missed because you were asleep. now imagine that happening 90% of the time.

I understand how alerts worked and I liked them better. How can my own opinion about what is right for me be wrong? I work a full time job and would rather miss some things than grind for silly wolf credits.

 

43 minutes ago, KosmicKerman said:

 

Setting aside the fact that you’ve misrepresented how Nightwave actually works (reward every 10k standing, wolf creds can be spent as soon as you earn them), If you don’t enjoy playing the game or grinding for some things, Warframe is not for you. That is what a looter shooter is.  The game loop is the game loop. 

Most of the objectives can be completed by just playing the game.  

I haven't misrepresented anything. It takes hours of grinding for any reward vs getting a reward for each alert. I don't like it and it makes me not want to play. It also encourages me to do things I don't want to do for the reward. I don't like it on multiple levels.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

2 hours ago, KosmicKerman said:

 1. New players never had access to all the alerts or invasions because later planets would always be out of their reach. Once you’ve completed the star chart completely, you’re not really “new”. 

2. Casual players also didn’t have access to most of the alerts because they were casual and rarely played. You have be to logged in to run the alert. 

Edited to add - of course some players won’t get all the rewards but those same type of players were never getting all the rewards. It’s no different now. How about those players who start week 5 of WoSS? Who’s thinking of them?  Some people will never get everything.

After reading a ton of these threads here and on reddit, I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the people upset about this change had the ability to farm most of the alerts and did so with minimal effort spent.  Apparently, a lot of those same players also don’t like Warframe, don’t enjoy playing Warframe, and only hate-play Warframe for easy rewards they don’t actually need since they don’t play Warframe. So, I’m not really seeing the problem with the new system. It rewards people who regularly log on and play the game.  Most of the objectives are completeable by most of the player base. The people most harmed by new system are those who only logged in to run alerts.  Once again, I don’t see how this system is a bad thing. 

Taxis avoided most of the issues you mention and most clans will gladly taxi newer players to alerts. As for casuals playing less, sure but let's not make the strawman that they enjoy the game less. I have a few friends that have had real life changes that have affected their ability to play video games as much as they did previously but that doesn't mean it has any effect on enjoying the time they can spend playing.

The point being that the current system is extremely top heavy and instead of providing daily activities that will force new players to branch out in their gameplay, it basically tells them that unless they can do tridolons, ESO, or sorties then they won't be able to keep pace every week. Now add in that wolf credits are gated behind how many tiers they progress and what was a random alert on a planet now becomes a 10-week grind to try and earn anything before it ends.

Reactor on alert, who needs a taxi? Nitain extract alert, taxi anyone? Sorry, but now it's 3 tiers of progress to get 66% of a reactor. Need some Nitain Extract? You need to spend 15 wolf credits on the 5x bundle and either wait another week for the reactor (if you can do everything that isn't an elite challenge). It's just a heavily gated system when alerts were very casual friendly previously.

Personal tangent: And lol that DE cares about how much time you play when they specifically screwed over tens of thousands of veteran players that have very few logins but were almost maxed on mastery and have thousands of hours played. They now get just over 100 oxium or cryotic when they login or a 13 hour booster while someone with more logins that plays less gets far better rewards. Lol about DE actually caring about play time, they just want the daily player count.

Edited March 2, 2019 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[Nyx219]

16 hours ago, (XB1)Dic3man said:

So this boils down to roughly 3 hours during the course of a week

Which, if you can do any semblance of basic mathematics, is substantially longer than a 20 minute alert. That isn't an efficient use of my limited game time, that's a 20 minute Alert run made NINE TIMES LONGER for the same item. That's the further possible thing from efficient.

 

Man, have you people been hoodwinked and really fallen for it this time.

 

DE's best option is to run both systems just like any other system in the game -- Invasions system, Relics system, Syndicates system, Sortie system. I stand by them dropping the ball on it. The poster who said (to clarify, said in another thread) something to the effect of "Not in a position to know if you don't work for DE", same to you, bud -- you can't say it wouldn't pan out, either. Judging by existing systems co-existing, there's no logical reason keeping Alerts & adding NW in wasn't doable.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Nyx219

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

30 minutes ago, Nyx219 said:

Which, if you can do any semblance of basic mathematics, is substantially longer than a 20 minute alert. That isn't an efficient use of my limited game time, that's a 20 minute Alert run made NINE TIMES LONGER for the same item. That's the further possible thing from efficient.

 

Man, have you people been hoodwinked and really fallen for it this time.

 

DE's best option is to run both systems just like any other system in the game -- Invasions system, Relics system, Syndicates system, Sortie system. I stand by them dropping the ball on it. The poster who said (to clarify, said in another thread) something to the effect of "Not in a position to know if you don't work for DE", same to you, bud -- you can't say it wouldn't pan out, either. Judging by existing systems co-existing, there's no logical reason keeping Alerts & adding NW in wasn't doable.

To be fair DE could totally add in random alerts that reward a small amount of wolf credits. This makes the new store valuable and its rotating stock would not be a bad thing but something players look forward to each week. Also, gaining tiers isn't mandatory now for new players and they can focus on story quests and the star chart. Since wolf credit expire DE doesn't have to worry about players stockpiling them either. It would be a win-win for everyone.