Nightwave + alerts removal feedback

[xTerrain]

Alright, I've posted a few of my concerns on another thread.  Let me just attempt to reiterate here:

Nightwave is an interesting concept.  I've seen similar daily challenge type systems work in several other games.  It's a viable addition to a game of this type.  However, it should be an addition.  not a replacement for the randomly generated missions that were Alerts.  This removal was unneeded, and ultimately was a bad decision.  Alerts were a great way to get on for quick, casual bouts when you didn't want to consign yourself to hours of gameplay, or deciding what aspect of gameplay you wanted.  You didn't need to decide on a specific goal to work towards, just get in and have some fun.  Without them, you need enter into the task of finding a mission with a clear picture of what you want to do, what faction you want to be fighting and what level and/or tileset you want to pursue the action in.  Which can be a chore when you're bored and just looking to entertain yourself with something.

They also brought in other rewards that were not exclusive to them.  You could do an alert for 300 Oxium if you were needing the resource.  That's a decent amount of Oxium, and a break from tedious farming the same mission continuously and/or over and over.  This was an important aspect of Alerts, and it made the game liveable for middling players who aren't yet resigned to grinding the same thing for hours on end.  The problem wasn't the randomization of these missions and their rewards, that was a good system, and much more unique to Warframe than Nightwave's daily/weekly challenges are.  The problem was that there were some rewards unique and exclusive to these random missions.  With Nitain Extracts being next to exclusively from Alerts meant that they couldn't be consistently obtained without a frustrating amount of sitting on a the mobile app/a tracker-site/ etc.

(On the other hand, I did actually like the idea of a Warframe that came through them.  It was hardly the only Warframe that isn't consistently available (e.g. Nyx from Phorid), but I'll also admit that I've never really cared for Vauban, so I may not be the best voice on this topic.  I digress)

Giving consistent access to these rewards is a good thing to do, but I fail to see why that meant removing the previous system, which gave significantly more than just those rewards that are now more available in the cred exchange aspect of Nightwave that is now replacing it.  It also gave some feeling of self-motivation to the Tenno as a faction, since nearly all other objectives are at the behest of some other syndicate or group, including Nightwave with Nora's involvement in giving the objectives.  So in my preference, bringing Alerts back would not involve them with Nightwave at all.  It's not needed, and to be honest, I would not like to see Nora put into more of the game.  She is annoying enough already.

I also have concerns with the 'with friends/clanmates' challenges.  I can appreciate the attempts at getting players to socialize, but it doesn't belong in elite challenges.  If it were a standard weekly of 'play 10 missions with a friend/clanmate' or a daily of 1-3, without any specific requirements as to what mission or what level of a mission, this would work much better.  You'd have newer players, who are not established in their clans or their ways, adding friends which could last their entire Warframe Career, or get involved in clans that might actually play together, rather than create their own new clan just to get themselves the Dojo labs, and their associated weapons.  Putting this requirement on an already-elite challenge, for a relatively large Nightwave reward, is just alienating players that would otherwise be all over the 'elite' label, by right of their soloist tendencies, not as opposed to them.

You might also consider replacing it, or adding to it, an 'in a group' in general, as opposed to having specific relations with the people in said group.  Half or more of the non-elite challenges should be things that people are likely to do without paying attention to Nora's screen listing them, or else they're stealing gametime from the actual play, which is in no way what daily challenges are for.

Finally, the long survival challenges.  I do find an hour of these too long.  Without refreshing the map, or changing location/tileset/enemy-type,an hour of survival is excruciating.  People run them.  People run significantly more than them, but they've historically done that to challenge themselves, not for the sake of an external reward.  Endurance running is a specific playstyle that isn't held to by everyone.  Putting an extreme challenge like that is forcing everyone to have that playstyle, which many find undesirable.  And very not worth the 5,000 standing you're giving for that sort of a challenge (sure, you can do other challenges during the mission, but you can ALSO do other challenges during other missionsAnd beyond that, you've currently had some long-survival alerts (e.g. the recent 'war with [faction]' weekends), which were only up to half that time, and didn't regularly repeat.  These now are weekly challenges.  Which means that they'll turn up regularly.  This will destroy people's desire to play the game after a few weeks, and you'll be left with only the fraction of current players that are endurance Runers.  Something like thirty minutes is far more fair as a compromise: it's short enough that non-endurance-specific players might be willing to do it 2-3 times a month, but is long enough that it does take some endurance.  And if it's not challenging enough for people, or in your eyes for the rewards being offered, put a dragon key requirement on it (a general one, not specifically Slumbering or anything; that way you can get teams with varied debuffs and teamwork becomes potentially more important).  That's always fun.

Nightwave is potentially a good addition to the game.  It needs some tweaking on certain challenges, to make them more doable and worthwhile, given the rewards listed, but otherwise it could be good.  As an addition.  It should not be replacing alerts.  I say again, that's a bad move.

So, massive post.  Thank you for the time it took you to read that.  I hope it helps

[(NSW)ForTheGhostsWithin]

Before tweaking any challenges, put the alerts back into the game along with Nightwave.
They are just too different to replace each other. And, Nightwave contains too many exclusive rewards in it. Not only the alerts rewards, they also have much more newly added rewards. So most of players "have to" progress it anyway and feel forced to do. The diversity of playing style and pace is the beauty of Warframe. Please don't throw it away.

[KroneVanguard]

Can you pls restore the Alerts? I really enjoy pop up the game and playing normal missions with random players. That was really fun for me, without any ambitions, just playing a nice entertaining game. I don't like this "achievements/challenges/homeworks" thing to do and can't find it interesting at all. Also the story and the radio thing, I'm sorry but I can't find it interesting and it gives me zero input to complete the challenges. I only would like to play the nice, funny Alerts as it was before if it is possible, than you can do whatever you want with this new content. I also would like to see more story like quests like Umbra, that was very good, it left me something to think about. Thanks in advance.

[Vahenir]

I don't like this system at all its far too heavily designed to make people feel they /must/ complete the challenges each week or miss out on the big prize. As an alert replacement its absolutely terrible and it really should have been added on top of the now previous system instead. Even if some specific alerts, such as the ones for potatoes, may need to be removed to keep supply of stuff somewhat constant. But it was nice to see a good alert pop up during a session and always be able to jump into a public group to complete it and get the reward.

 

What i think would fix a lot of the issues with the current setup is if the tiered rewards were entirely removed and put in the cred store instead and have the challenges give cred directly. To keep supply of the items the same the store could easily have limits, like you can only buy one umbra forma for the entire season. On top of that a better way to slowly open the rewards would be to simply have the store unlock more or change its inventory weekly. That way people would have more of a choice in what to get and those that miss a lot of the challenges could still get something they want while someone that does complete them all could clean out the entire store.

If this was done it would change how at least i see the challenges, turn the ones that seem fun and interesting into something ill find worth doing rather than having the lot as a list of chores that needs to be completed to make the 30k standing required for the week. It would also help in such a case that a player returns near the end of the event, while they could be unable to get the top tier reward they could at least get something they see as worthwhile. Hell it could make way for a weekly "nightmare" challenge that could be ludicrously hard for the people that want to do such things.

 

Just my two cents on this.

[(PSN)thefallenloser]

3 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Ayatan Challenges - too RNG dependent.

Really the only one that needs to be changed.

3 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Survival Challenges - too long in one sitting.

Cumulative time would make up for this, or shorter time.

3 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Friend / Clan Challenges - "I have no friends/my friends don't play Warframe". 

Recruiting chat fixes this, people will friend you for challenges.

[ReaverKane]

1 hour ago, Tangent-Valley said:

I thought that was the point of Endurance running, to push Enemies TO that point and still take them out with your Cheese "Pro-Skills". To break the math of the game in your favor and prove you can do it.

At this moment there's no point to do Endurance. Just for "fun", or bragging rights, because the game doesn't handle it well, and there's literally nothing to gain by doing it.

[(PSN)solartorch81]

I hope there will no k-drive challenges. The conservation one is almost unbearable.

Non core activities should not be elite or weekly. They could be extra daily that is smaller in scope.

 

[--END--Rikutatis]

3 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

• Ayatan Challenges - too RNG dependent.
• Survival Challenges - too long in one sitting.
• Friend / Clan Challenges - "I have no friends/my friends don't play Warframe". 

Please do not remove the 60 min survival challenges. The kuva one in particular with the "cannot activate LS" was particularly interesting as it offered a twist. As you can clearly see from this forum thread, players are very divided on the topic. Some people really enjoyed the challenge, while others didn't.

What you should do instead is make sure to offer a longer list of weekly challenges, both elite and normal ones, but cap how much standing someone can gain from those. So players can pick and choose. Those who enjoy a challenge can do the more difficult and hardcore elite alerts, while those that want to be more casual about it can do the other ones. It'll give players more agency in choosing which missions they prefer doing, and it won't ruin the wolf cred economy or the time frame for the season because there'll be a weekly cap of much standing you can gain. For me this would be the perfect solution while keeping everyone happy. 

Also I think 3 waves of ESO as an elite challenge was a bit too easy, specially when you compare that with a 60 min survival or capturing a hydrolist. Should have been at least 8 waves, preferably with a twist like melee only or whatever. You guys should go crazy with these elite challenges. Speedruns, equipping all dragon keys, doing X minutes of Arbitration with a squishy frame, the floor is lava, stuff like that. 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Short and sweet: 

I want the Umbral Forma, but I don't want to wait almost 3 months to get 1.

Instead of standing let me earn wolf credits. Make the Umbral Forma 2000 wolf credits each or whatever. Then let me use the WCs to buy one. Simple. Kinda like earning coins in Anthem. 

That's it. 

Thank you. 

Edited March 5, 2019 by (XB1)RDeschain82

[Famelhaut]

Maybe an option to select your 3 weekly elite challenges out of, lets say 9, could avoid the challenges being a bit too much for some players

[Whitetiger62512]

I have to say that the survival ones are too long, I had a team and we were doing fine but at the last three minutes after having to deal with the fugitives making our life support drop low a host migration happened and the two nekros lost their pool of zombies and from there we could not recover leading us to run out of life support at 59:37 and had to extract. asking for an hour mission where a host migration could spell the end of the run and a massive amount of time wasted is not something wise. 

I have a limited amount of time to play during the week and only a bit more on the weekends. I get wanting to throw a bone to the folks who have the time and like to do hour long mission but for many an hour is way too long to spend in a mission for a measly 5000 thousand standing. 

At one point when we asked for scaling rewards to give endurance runners some love you guys told us that you wanted to "Keep the game bite size." what happened to that idea? Not trying to throw too much shade but saying that then making weekly challenges that are hour+ long sends mixed signals.

[Leon-Darkheart]

i hope one of the devs actually looked back into this thread

since they are there a lot people who already left a lot comments and emotions, ideas, feedback and critic there. I am dang freaking srs. i could go and point a lot comments out there but i dont get payed for that  and its not my job, its the job of the devs here.

Srsly go read there the comments its a fuqing long thread already and i dont need to quote and repeat at least myself again.

 

But maybe since some are lazy to do so, here are some quotes n cuts from me about the new system (remember here, some of the quotes are from the first week and others from the new second week)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by Leon-Darkheart
added now a LOTA quotes and links...

[TheFBD]

The current nightwave system is a nice system but it needs a big rework / update to even make it on-par with the old alert system. The challenges are way too "elite" and basically out-of-reach for new and even casual players (1h survival, sortie, ayatans, simaris scans). This makes the whole system a very bad replacement for alerts because the often stated 60-70% of challenges that have to be completed to reach max rank are only achievable by experienced/veteran and (sorry) "try-hard" players. Casual players will hardly reach rank 15 before the series ends - that's where i'd see myself.

Alerts were random with time of day and mission type. This randomness ensured one thing: fairness. Everyone had the same chance to get an alert of his liking or need of ressouce every day - any day. We "fight" this randomness everywhere, with every relic we crack and every drop we hope for. And it gave instant gratification.

Now nightwave has taken that place and replaced the fair chance with a grind but if the challenge is out of your scope, you're out of luck. Period.

There need to be way more challenges (20+) that can be done by any player. This completely excludes anything with sorties, onslaught, teralyst hunting etc. Stats that were shown on a recent devstream showed that most players are around MR10. That's what any standard challenge should aim for, at max!

Veterans didn't care about alerts, simply because alerts were not made for them. Now replacing alerts with something that's aiming for veterans simply makes no sense. Sorties and arbitrations are purely aimed at veterans. For good reasons.

In conclusion i feel that nightwaves need more casual challenges that can be done "on the side", otherwise it's nothing else than a new syndicate to grind out. And if you really insist on "elite" challenges, then it should by no means be required to do them to get access to everything nightwave has to offer. Meaning: reward rank 30 should be reachable without doing any "elite" challenges, and not just barely, but casually. At best, those "elites" should only boost your ranking and not be included in the weekly "base-level" of standing required to finish the season properly.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Instead let us earn (WC = Wolf Credits) WCs to spend on whatever we want. Similar to how in Anthem you can earn coin for cosmetics. Simply make each achievement give (x) WCs or whatever instead of "standing" then let us buy whatever we want. That way nobody has to wait almost 3 months to get 1 UF. 

Daily give 50 WCs each

Weekly give 150 WCs each

Elite give 300 WCs each

Make each Umbral Forma 2000 WCs. 

That would make me happy. 

Thank you. 

[Faulcun]

As far as the long endless challenges go, there are two things at play here that are, in my opinion, muddying the feedback and make it more convoluted to find a real solution to a problem that may or may not exist. I propose that there is not actually an issue with the challenge.

Let me start by saying that yes, for some people the length of the mission is quite long. Some people (like myself) enjoy it, and some dont. For those that dont, fair enough. But leave it at that, skip the mission, and move on.

Then there are those who cannot complete the challenge. Thats ok too... keep trying, or leave it at that, skip it and move on.

Steve said during the devstream that you need only 60% of the challenges to max out. Therefore there should be no problem skipping a few challenges.

However, there are a percentage of people who have to have it NOW NOW NOW or are so stubborn to come across something that their meta build wont carry them through, that they provide false/misguided feedback motivated by the above reasons in an attempt to never have to actually be challenged or feel like they've failed or been "left behind".

This is how login rewards were changed, friendly fire was removed, community challenges ended, etc. Really anything that was an ACTUAL challenge no longer exists in this game now because of what i believe to be a large amount of instant self gratification feelings driving the motivation for change.

TLDR: Elite challenges should not be changed merely for the reasoning of "its too long" or "its too hard" if it is NOT required to max the system. Players deserve the opportunity to attempt more challenging content in the same way that other players deserve the opportunity to refuse it.

 

[TheFBD]

One more thing i want to point out: a few challenges already had severe influence on the game - which is imho not a good thing, at least it's pretty sad. A few examples:

• platinum prices for any ayatan sculptures have almost tripled, same for amber stars
• it's almost impossible to get to zone 4 in onslaught with a full squad at the moment because people only do 3 zones to get the challenge and exit
• syndicate missions and invasions are flooded with AFK players trying to do the challenges the easy way
• low rank players desperately trying to keep up with their ranks joining missions way above their MR
• within missions players compete for kills now because the challenges don't share kill-counters
• low-level assassination missions are flodded with veterans (especially The Sergant) going for the quick kill not really giving low-rank players a good time

All of that does not make the game more fun to play.

Edited March 5, 2019 by TheFBD
Typo

[PapaKrampus]

The 10 rare captures has so far been the worst experience I've had in any game.

[No1Eye]

27 minutes ago, TheFBD said:

One more thing i want to point out: a few challenges already had severe influence on the game - which is imho not a good thing, at least it's pretty sad. A few examples:

• platinum prices for any ayatan sculptures have almost tripled, same for amber stars
• it's almost impossible to get to zone 4 on onslaught at the moment because people only do 3 zones to get the challenge and exit
• syndicate missions and invasions are flooded with AFK players trying to do the challenges the easy way
• low rank players desperately trying to keep up with their ranks joining missions way above their MR
• within missions players now compete for kills now because the challenges don't share kill-counters
• low-level assassination missions are flodded with veterans (especially The Sergant) going for the quick kill not really giving low-rank players a good time

All of that does not make the game more fun to play.

 

those are very good points.

and this is only the beginning.

i strongly believe it will only get worse, coz most players will be burned out faster then usual since the whole thing is a forced direction to the things we have already done many times over.

but, it is a nice addition in the game, and challenges are a nice feature, for the progressed players who want something else to do and get rewarded on the side too.

so, if adjusted accordingly and actually feel rewarded when finished, it will spice things up more.

there is no other road to take on this, the devs must realize that and act soon, before it is too late.

bring back the old alerts and keep the nightwaves.

make some tweaks to both, so to satisfy and appeal to all kinds of players alike, new, old, casual and hardcore and everybody will be happy afterwards.

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by No1Eye

[-InV-igo95862]

I have idea how to make Nightwave good for both hardcore and casual players.

Make Nightwave series not automatically expire.

Instead player will have to opt-in to next series.

This will allow casual players to take more time to get to rank 30 if they find elite challenges to hard. Hardcore players can complete all challenges to progress faster.

Players don't like being pressured with fear of missing out on exclusive items.

Players on different Nightwave series can get same challenges as there is no lore tie in associated with challenges.

This will also allow new players to catch-up.

[Reifnir]

4 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Ayatan Challenges - too RNG dependent.

Definitely. Maroo's weekly needs to be Daily to make up for that, and even then, Amber stars are still too rare/costly (it "costs" 100 minutes/waves worth of Arbitration to craft 5xAmbers). Not good at all. 

4 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Survival Challenges - too long in one sitting.

Yup. 30 minutes tops, because well, Kuva Survival is linear and boring. Or you could, you know, add Kuva reward scaling, like you've been asked for ages and at least incentivize? :)

4 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Friend / Clan Challenges - "I have no friends/my friends don't play Warframe". 

Well, there's an easy workaround of temporary firendlisting but I somehow doubt this was the thing you wanted.

How about "complete this and that in an invite only squad"? Just a change of wording, but makes it better already, at least in my eyes. 

Edited March 5, 2019 by Reifnir

[Daemonnikk]

The 1 hour survival with friends is the first time Warframe made me get angry at the game.

That feeling with you reach 40+min in the survival, get a host migrating message, then the new host throws a fit about how he “lost all his rewards cause of host migration bug” (i.e. completely misunderstanding how host migration works), rage quits and now it’s only me left in the survival is gut-wrenching.

If Warframe works on a P2P networking basis due to cost reasons, fine. Then don’t implement limited-time rewards with high desirability and impact on everyday gameplay (i.e. umbra forms, wolf credits used for nitain) where there is an overreliance on other people. 

For me, the “challenge” is not completing said survival challenge, it’s A) praying you are not grouped with a troll/idiot or B) praying that for one hour everyone in the party has no internet issues which might otherwise result in a total waste of time with no tangible rewards nor even the slightest bit of progression in relation to Nightwave.

[Fairwing]

I like the idea of removing nightwave ranks, having the rank rewards added to store and setting wolf credits and prices accordingly and letting people buy the rewards they want rather than time gating ranks.  

Ideally I would see players able to choose between very difficult challenges with rapid advancement and casual with slower advancement.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Fairwing

[No1Eye]

also @[DE]Bear, i hope the dev team is reading all the feedback and constructive criticism posted by many people on this thread --->

just saying, so the dev team won't only take this thread into account. since there is plenty of comments about it there with some very good points, suggestions and so forth.

thank you.

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by No1Eye

[IgnisDraconis4316]

2 hours ago, No1Eye said:

 

so, you were all ready to quit and the challenges kept you in game, right?

the challenges, which are practically, go do the same things we have done many times over for a reward, right?

ok, cool, no worries, but i am afraid you will be burned out of this rather quickly, coz simply it is not a new content, it is content directing you to an existing content.

you will do it once, twice, trice, after a bit it will get old again.

hell, the new content even gets old after a bit, not the content we have already done many times over.

also, do you think the challenges are a nice alert replacement then?

shouldn't they coexist?

alerts being noobie friendly and all.

and challenges, for the more progressed players if they want some more rewards and challenges on the side?

 

Sadly friend you are straining at a knat to swallow a camel. Yes I was doing this all before but I got NOTHING out of it that I didn't already have. Now I have to work toward goals that give me new mods, new armor, umbra mod, new skins, new cosmetics.

If you don't want any armor, anything new then go ahead and just not do it. I will and I will get to show off that I was dedicated and loggin for rewards that are different then just more NANO SPORES. There are no true challenges if you don't get something for your effort and we are. You'd have to be blind to not see it.

No I have been doing it since it came out and it hasn't got boring and I am getting new things that I didn't have before.

Yes it gets old but anything to spice up the OLD content is good in my opinion. Change is KING.

And yes I feel they are awesome replacements to alerts where I had to wait MONTHS to get nitain now I farm this event and I can get what I need without waiting months to build Vauban Prime because of work.

Should they coexist. Premium alerts that give you nice rewards would be nice. But tied to what has happened in game.

Alerts being noob friendly is good because I want my new friends to play with me. That is what makes this game fun helping others get to my lvl.

and as for your last question yes. this give new rewards rewards that we didn't have before. it also gives us tons of kuva which I struggle with because of schedule. Plus it gives me something to do till Equinox Prime, mainline, and even more new content.

 

I am not a gamer that does his best to beat the game in 8 hours and then complain because I forced it down my own throat. How I play is not DE's fault but I am happy that they are providing ways to make it new and fun.

Not to mention @[DE]Bear, @[DE]Megan, @[DE]Rebecca, @[DE]Steve, I LOVE IT when Nora Night says. "The one and future BADASS." as a reward for meeting a challenge. Makes me want to flex. Keep adding new mods, new armor, new weapons, and new better rewards. I have been hear 5 years and I will stay for another 5 if you continue to make updates like Nightwave that are unexpected, new, different rewards (mods, armor, hell skins).

[Borduglas]

   The aspects of the previous alert system that I liked:

1.) Bite-sized.

2.) We revisit nodes we would never come back to once finished previously.

3.) Quick way to get nitain etc.

4.) Quick way to get the difficult to obtain kavat DNA.

I would like these aspects to be combined with the new nightwave system. Have some challenges in there that were previous alert missions. This could be implemented as an hourly type cycle in the nightwave system.

   Things I like about the current nightwave:

a.) I could get a reliable method to get nitain.

b.) A reliable way to get orokin reactors/catalysts.

c.) Rewards for getting for points in the syndicate.

   Things I do not like with nightwave:

A.) Highly imbalanced mission structure. (eg. This week we had to do 10 syndicate missions for a measly 3000 standing)

B.) Sporadic reward for wolf cred.

   My suggestions:

1.) As a guideline for mission structure, have approximately 5 minutes of gameplay = 1000 standing. The daily missions completely feel fine with me.

2.) Have additional daily missions if my aforementioned suggestion of hourly missions won't work.

3.) Why not have wolf cred rewarded every time you reach 10 000 standing?

4.) Catering to endurance runners seem really counter productive when you already have arbitrations specifically for them. Why not flesh out the fun aspects of both systems and then profit as people have fun in their own way? In my opinion alerts were never for endurance runners in the first place, and nightwave is a replacement for those.

5.) I also suggest removal of the "friend" missions. 

6.) I haven't even done the elite missions because I am not good enough for them.

7.) Have kavat DNA and other more difficult to obtain resources in the cred offerings.