the philosophy of Nightwave

[FierceRadiance]

A comment on Nightwave's philosophy.

Alerts were a way to obtain something you wanted or needed by doing a particular mission, with teammates or not, depending on your level and/or the mission type itself, within a certain window of time.

Nightwave, on the other hand, is designed to induce you to play modes, missions, endure particular situations which you may or may not have any interest in, in order to earn a form of currency that will eventually be rendered useless by design. "Earn it while it's available, then spend it before it's gone", essentially. But you no longer get rewarded for just doing the missions

When you think about it, Nightwave is designed to manipulate player behavior to get players to do things they might not otherwise do (unlike Alerts, which straightforwardly rewarded player participation). Alerts were simply the same missions as always (absent Nightmares, of course) in return for rewards that were difficult or even impossible to obtain any other way.

Put another way, I have a particular brand of drive-thru coffee that I enjoy, and they give rewards to frequent purchasers. Or rather, they used to give rewards. But as time has passed, the length of time users had to redeem the 'rewards' became shorter and shorter, and the rewards themselves began to change from free drinks, to coupons - opportunities to spend even more money at the store, rather than a 'thank-you' for doing business with them. Eventually I stopped participating, because I stopped being willing to be manipulated into behaving in certain ways (buy THIS drink which we want to promote for moar reward points, spend THIS amount of money over a particular weekend to get moar reward points, etc.).

To me, Nightwave is like my former coffee company. It subtly tries to encourage you to behave in certain ways, in return for not rewards, but reward points. Myself, I've never been a fan of being manipulated, and Nightwave seems pretty clearly designed to manipulate behaviors. So for me personally, the Nightwave missions that I would normally do in the course of playing the game, and which I can easily do, I'll do. But if I'm right, this means that refusing to bust a gut doing oddball strange scenarios like 60-minute survivals with no air will eventually mean that down the road, I'll fall just short of some Sparklie 'reward' because I wouldn't change my behaviors.

So be it.

[notlamprey]

Nightwave doesn't really work for me either.

For me it's a combination of what you described, plus the fact that Nora's writing and VO feels tonally out of place. I worry that this system will also create problems for players who either don't want to engage with it, or who "fall behind the curve" in any given season.

At that point, they may feel like giving up on Warframe altogether. DE may have created something that is more problem than solution.

[o0Despair0o]

I didn't even bother to try them out.

I just read the patch notes like: "Still no Wisp Warframe? 'kay, I'll play something else then."

 

Really, I want something new that doesn't require ridiculous grind.

[Teljaxx]

I know what you mean. My local grocery store has done basically the same thing. I used to get tons coupons for stuff I bought regularly from them, but now I mostly get coupons for stuff that is similar to what I usually get, but is more profitable for the store. It just makes me want to go shopping somewhere else.

Alerts were like those first coupons, saying "Hey, here is something you wanted anyway, may as well grab it now while its convenient." But Nightwave is more "Hey, here is a bunch of stuff you want, but to get it, you have to do all this other stuff you don't want."

Nightwave is basically the buy-two-get-one-half-off of Warframe.