Nightwave Feedback

[Klokwerkaos]

BACKGROUND

MR 26, almost 5k hours in mission, completely maxed out all challenges on nightwave at present, waiting on the timer.

GENERAL FEEDBACK

Nightwave is a comprehensive overhaul to alerts and it's pretty great overall.

The incentive to have higher end rewards is pretty great, since it gives vets something to do.  Umbral forma and cosmetics are spot on.  Win on that call.

Allowing people to get ancient cosmetics (alt helms) and basics like nitain are great.  Big ups on including slots also, I don't need them but new players do, and frankly I'm a little jealous they get them... "all these young whippersnappers don't know back in my day we had to grind a million hours for enough plat to get a slot, now get off my lawn!" 😛  All in all though, good move, super big ups on that.  You finally made this game legit FTP for realsies and mega applause for finally making that move.  With that said, my criticisms are few, but I think, important to consider...

FEEDBACK ABOUT NEW PLAYERS

I think it would be good is to bring back the non purchaseable with wolf cred components alerts for 2 reasons.

Firstly if players can see them (except on luna) but can't do them (because they are greyed out) this provides incentive to progress the star chart long before they are ready to touch arbitration, and that's super important because there are a lot of players (probably most even) that just skip stuff not realizing why completing it is important) and then they find out about arbitration after second dream or so, and have 2 weeks worth of missions to catch up on since they can't solo carry a 4 man for most missions in under three minutes at that stage of their progression.

Additionally, having these other piles of resources (rubedo, oxium, etc.) really really really helps players along the way to build warframes they want (which is THE MAJOR PRIORITY early on), and while I know you don't want too fast progression, my gaming experience of over three decades says most players will quit out of frustration for feeling they aren't progressing at a rate that simply "feels good".  There are enough frames and things to do in the game now where we really shouldn't be locking stuff behind artificial grind walls so much as when the game was new, especially stuff that a vet player can farm 100x as much or more in the same amount of time (and they don't even need it unless maybe they are building a Moon clan dojo with max deco).  A new player has about 3k hours of content ahead of them, if the grind wall vs reward feels like it did when we had a handful of warframes it feels like "I'll never complete anything in this game, so why should I try? I might as well quit".  That's a player retention problem.  Letting players get a bundle of 400 rubedo makes very little difference in anything since nobody with any brains is going to pay plat for it, if they know anything from gaming, they'll join a clan and farm it with the clan members that can earn 200x as much together as they can solo.  The plat bundles for resources are simply there for SUPER whales that just feel like being super lazy (or if you want to go the predatory route, players that don't know better) that's it and I'll bet a real dollar your data shows this.  Nobody else in their right mind will buy them since the value vs price is insane.   If I got 100x as much oxium, I'd think about it for dojo deco, but otherwise, nah, not at that price, I have plat coming out of my ears.  For a new player they are saving for the warframe that they think looks the coolest, not alloy plate.

QoL FEEDBACK

For QoL I would say it needs to be a priority that we can mute the radio updates.  We get a flash indicator on screen, hearing her talk every five minutes is repetitive and annoying and it doesn't serve the purpose lotus does (to tell you about your mission).  Since it doesn't serve a gameplay function, like ordis we need to be able to mute her outside of cut scenes.  I'm sure I'm not the only one that's sick of her voice already, and we supposedly have her in our ear... forever?  I would stab myself in the ears with rusty scissors if I have do deal with this for a solid year, I'm already sick of the audio updates that are meaningless dribble.  If she said something pertinent to the game like "hey there are some dudes that spawned, you should go whack them" or whatever, that would be useful, but instead she's just encouraging us like we're basically five year olds that need constant encouragement to continue and it's super annoying.

VETERAN FEEDBACK

Umbral forma are super cool... but the grindwall is out of whack.  I know we're looking at power creep but it's already here.  Lets consider real quick the math on this:

Your'e MR 26.  You have every frame.

In reality you use maybe 5-10 frames.  at a minimum, to min/max your builds you need 3 forma each, assuming we're not using them on weapons for sacrificial mods and only on frames (because holy crap does that skyrocket the need for them).  So lets say 5 frames to be generous to the devs.  Lets also assume we have god tier rivens and functionally unlimited plat at endgame (about 20-50k ish in reserve if we liquidate unnecessary stuff).

So at MR 26 with 20K+ plat available and infinite resources and god tier everything... to work just our frames that we use up we need 15 of these bad boys, and lets say 2 more for one beast level melee weapon.  So 17 umbral forma minimum, with a reasonable cap at 32 for 10 frames and one melee.  If we look at the grind wall, which is time gated by the way, we're looking at about maybe 3 months per umbral forma because at super max level there is realistically nothing in nightwave that will challenge us because there is nothing in the game that will challenge us (including wolf, since he's just a bullet sponge since he can't hit hard enough to put a dent in any of my builds and that just means he takes 30 seconds to kill instead of .01 seconds like most mobs that also can't hurt us).  At that rate we're looking at a minimum of 51 months (over 4 years) as a min maxed uber kill everything character just to min/max our gear we use most.  Now lets also consider the soft cap of 96 months (8 years)... for a top end player with everything already available to them and functionally infinite resources just to get their fav stuff min/maxed.

This is an atrocious grind wall that is worse than comparable to the korean mmos of yesteryear and that's a really bad look, nothing should take that long to grind for.  And if you're not a player that already has everything and the ability to complete every challenge with ease and ultra efficiency?  Well, forget about it, you might as well quit because that wall will feel insurmountable (player retention problem again).

Additionally, the grind wall isn't worth it because any semblance of challenge is long since destroyed long before you ever get to that level.  Round about MR 18 most things in the game will be trivial, if not all.  So, there is no dire incentive, and even if there was... lets pretend for half a second that DE made a proper bit of aspirational content built and balanced around players min/maxing within one year, we need to grind for a year to be ready to play it?  No thank you.  Statistically though, won't happen because it has never happened and I'm pretty sure at this point DE just doesn't ever care to think about that based on what we saw last year with the notion of Tridolons, Orbs, SO, ESO and Arbitration, all of which were touted as "challenging content for vets" literally none of which weren't trivialized entirely within the first week of release.  So either DE just can't manage to do this, or more likely, they don't care to, since they are clearly talented developers and they would rather focus on literally anything else (like revamping the lighting in vallis for hundredth time.  We get it Steve, but the game looks good bro, move on to stuff that matters pls k thanks!).

For a realistic grind wall I'd like to see an umbral forma no more than 2 weeks minimum apart, since as an endgame player, that's really the only motivation outside of cosmetics, which are fine at 3 months... and all for an upgrade I don't realistically need to trounce the game into oblivion since I can already do that without it.  2 weeks makes it something worth working towards, but not so easy to destroy.  I can however, offer, that it might make sense to make these have a reserve in that you can add more challenges to make them earnable every two weeks, but only if you can complete every challenge and more of them, that seems reasonable (no more than +100% challenges though).  Any more than that and you're dragging it out too long or adding to much play time vs reward.

So what does that mean... it means that aspiring to spend 4 years or even 8, which, by all reasonable estimation warframe, assuming it's continued success, should be an entirely different game by then) to min max this stuff is entirely unreasonable and is disincentivised because even if we did, we wouldn't be receiving any sort of comparable challenge.  Worse yet, not counting sacrificial mods, umbral mods are entirely defensive, and sacrificial really only matters if you're going up against sentients when you consider clear speed because they don't add anything meaningful for general clear speed, just defensive, and when you're at that level, defensive mods matter in 1 and only 1 situation, endless missions for S&G's which are actually counterproductive in terms of rewards because you can get more assets, resources etc. by farming lower level stuff quicker, than beating on a level 500 with your god tier boomstick since there is no such thing as scaling rewards (booooooo!).

So, there's the math.  1-4 years, not to min max all gear, just to min max the gear you use most, IF AND ONLY IF you are already done with all other content in the game and are super OP with functionally infinite resources.

Not only does this disincentivise umbral forma for OP players, but imagine how new players will feel when they figure this math out and they are still years away from reaching the point where completing all weekly challenges is even possible for them?

You guys... I love DE, I love warframe.  You're really doing a disservice to your fans with this kind of grindwall and lack of appropriate challenge to compensate as well.

The problem remains the same as it always has.  Lack of appropriate aspirational content for the rewards we already have, as well as scaling rewards.

CLOSING REMARKS

People often give DE a free pass on this because they were a small indie developer (not anymore) and the game is FTP, but I think the time for that is over.   It's been six years warframe has been growing and succeeding.  It's really time you guys put in some appropriate aspirational content, and an umbral forma isn't content, it's a reward, it's a tool, and a tool that we not only don't really need (even though admittedly I'm excited to get my first one) because there is literally no content to support it.

Lets cover simple game design of challenge vs reward.  As the player continues to invest, the rewards need to scale, and with the reward scaling, the challenge too, must scale, otherwise people get unhappy and leave the game.  If you didn't learn that from the steep drop off from after the first few weeks of fortuna, I don't know that you ever will, because people have been saying this same old thing since the beginning of the game.

I know Steve goes to conferences and such about game development... but lets learn from actual examples that succeeded.

When was WoW at it's peak?  WotLK.  Why?  Because challenge and reward scaled effectively.  After that it never once hit the same kind of growth, it got bigger, but slower, and that kept dropping off until today where the project is on life support and literally nobody cares about WoW anymore because they stopped making challenging and appropriately scaling content in favor of a larger audience, which was a quick step forward, but ultimately, was ten steps backwards.

Who else is comparable to Warframe?  One example of a thriving success comes to mind, that's honestly killing it lately, and that's Path of Exile.  Also FTP, games as a service, and frankly, the gameplay experience blows compared to warframe (it's a top down looter like Diablo 2 back in the day, only better) and their team is smaller, so why are they killing it so hard?  It comes down to one thing, reward VS challenge loop.  They don't need 3D experiences and fast paced action packed bullet jumping because the game play FEELS REWARDING, and not at just the beginning of the game, all the way through to the end game content, not to mention they were smart enough to put seasons into their game which resets the economy which makes it easier on them, something I don't think warframe could do without a top down revamp.  It's not that PoE doesn't have issues, they do, but side by side, the experience of the game is something I'm comfortable labeling objectively better, even though warframe crushes POE on game mechanics and graphics.  In PoE, you're always learning and adapting and being rewarded for that.  In warframe you're learning and adapting till second dream, and then your hit by a giant grindwall for loot/rewards that is increasingly trivial as you play.

A year, even for most hardcore players, is too long to earn something in a game, unless that thing is "aspirational content" of which warframe still has none.  And for a casual player, the kind that thrive on the mobile market and EA FIFA/MADDEN releases, forget about it.  Bring down the grind wall on this, first, and second, develop some content that is an actual challenge for endgame players.

Consider this:  You have a community organization team.  You have a team of partners that are already min/maxed endgame viable experts on your game.

Get them to NDA this project for a game mode, put 4 teams of 4 in, see how they do after 2 hours with a mini boss.  Give them 2 hours a day with the content by matching them up with who has similar schedules.  If they are struggling to complete it and failing but still making progress after a week, that's where the damage numbers need to be, and the attack speed, and health, and timing for telegraphed attacks for bosses.  If they ace it in the first hour, you did it wrong and you need to rebalance.  Then go ahead and throw in more content so they only saw a piece of it and THEN release it (because they need to be surprised when they play it on steam for the first time too).  If you do that and listen in on their head sets and see what strategies they come up with and how they try to do things, I think that could really give you a ton of insight into how to manage making legit aspirational content, and then you probably wouldn't feel so much need to gate umbral forma and everything else behind grindwalls that are functionally impossible for a new player to consider.

This is legit the main issue with the game at the moment.  More than anything else this affects your bottom dollar with player retention.

TL;DR:

-Bringing back bulk resource alerts for new players is good.

-Need to mute radio in mission as QoL

-Umbral forma grind is out of whack based on maths and needs less grind wall, or alternately, an additional source (plat, rare boss drop, etc.)

-Umbral forma necessitates power creep, which FURTHER necessitates aspirational content, please build some for really realsies.

BONUS ADDITIONAL PERSISTENT ISSUES:

-No collission on ANY vallis deco or plaguestar statue topper (though I see you finally fixed the newest grey statue deco, +1 there)

-Grindwall on vallis dojo (3 and 4 tier) colors  (and tower white) is still obscene (can maths that for you too if you like)

-Not a fan of destroying combo counter damage output moved to power attack, will make 1000s of plat worth of melee rivens functionally useless (if you think the push back on the kohm rivens was bad, wait till you try and destroy our endgame zaw rivens since melee is functionally more useful meta), mega unhappy there.  Would be happier if you could scale it somewhat while building up power attack.  Not to mention if you end up nerfing that (as well as melee range, GRUMBLE) all you're doing is killing your new melee system and making everyone shift to guns.  People use melee because it's functionally better at clear speed.  When that stops they will shift to what is better at clear speed, and that will be guns and your new melee system will go the way of charged attacks, stamina and other cut content.  SIMPLE LESSON:  Players will choose the path of least resistance 99/100 times, and if there is not enough or far too much resistance on that path, they will go play something else.

-No aspirational content is a forever problem for warframe that hurts player retention.  Qualifier: If your player community can trivialize it (see orb solo fights under 3 min routine) within a week of release, it's not genuine aspirational content.

-Inbox players after they complete second dream to tell them to complete star chart for arbitration.

-Kill your chat mods and guides programs, start from scratch with functional guidelines (you know why they need to go, but I'm not sure if you're aware that this is becoming a ballooning PR issue that they still aren't gone after all this time that is negatively impacting the reputation of DE as a whole, since it's not your fault for what they do, but it is your fault they are still there, and it's spreading to more and more media sources.  At this point it's less of a "is this nepotism" to "why hasn't DE done something, STILL?").  I understand someone's feelings may get hurt, but this is getting to the point where it's going to start noticeably affecting the reputation of the company on a wider scale, especially as the company continues to grow larger and see more success (more haters and eyes at attention).  If it's not dealt with better than literally everything you've done to date, don't think EA won't buy an article in IGN to do a hit job on warframe.  As their games like Anthem continue to struggle, they will be looking for scapegoats.  I'm not saying that as any sort of threat, but as a word to the wise.  Most AAA publishers aren't full of nice and kind Canadian folk, they are full of wealthy oligarchs from the US, and those aren't nice people (speaking as an American with a degree in business).  If you let this continue to slide, it's going to bite you eventually, not just with player outrage either.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[Tails_lol]

i think this is true i think the alert system should be back but it should give nightwave standing or tokens .

it will be the best of both worlds.

[(PSN)kmckinstry]

Nicely presented review.

Now for my two cents... BTW I'm using the PS4, hence some of my references ...

I have heavily supported the programmer's for creating a game that is better than most "AAA" games. I feel that a game that you can get for free, and get just about everything for free, while playing, is a game that deserves to be supported.

Personally, I see it as a worthless grind to get the same items that were in the the regular alerts. Yes, they have included some other items, but nothing worthwhile for my grinding time; which, so far, I have everything (and plenty of them) that is in Nora's items - other than helmets that I have no interest in getting. So liked your part about the old Alerts being better for the new players. Now add the fact that that after the end of a particular series, this currency will expire and the next Nightwave series will introduce a new currency to spend. More frustration from a grind that must be accomplished, or your accomplishments basically become worthless; for me that's a: No Thank you!

Add on another complaint. I use the extractor's regularly. Why has that been usurped by Nora's Episode? Yes, I can press L3 to get to the Resource Drones, but IMO, I should have that as my primary and have to press L3 for Nora's Episodes.

I was able to turn off Nora's irritating comments, when I am playing alone, but in some missions, while in with others, she still comes through! I really want a way to shut her off! She irritates me.

[MegaGasm]

please bring back the alerts

[Tails_lol]

i think this is true i think the alert system should be back but it should give nightwave standing or tokens .

it will be the best of both worlds.

should add credits and resources too in rewards