Staggered Quarterly Content Cadence + Nightwave Standing Cap

[dpencil]

I have two suggestions I would like to make in this post. The first is regarding regular content drops, and how to space them throughout the year. The second is in regard to Nightwave challenges and standing.

1. Staggered Quarterly Content Cadence:

There are three primary categories of content that have a timed element attached to them: Prime Access, Nightwave, and New Content (Operations, etc.). I suggest that each of these be spaced in 3 month intervals, staggered every month. Prime Access already lasts 3 months. I suggest that Nightwave seasons would also last 3 months (12 weeks), and New Content drops would fall on the following month. So the order would look something like this:

Jan - Prime Access (Mesa Prime)
Feb - Nightwave (Wolf of Saturn 6)
Mar - New Content (Operation: Buried Debts)
Apr - Prime Access (Equinox Prime)
May - Nightwave (Season 2)
June - New Content 
July - Prime Access
Aug - Nightwave
Sept - New Content
Oct - Prime Access
Nov - Nightwave
Dec - New Content

As you can see, the cadence is already close to this. I think if DE could officially state this is the way the content cadence will flow through the year, it would give clarity and focus to the player base.

2. Nightwave Standing Cap

The basic suggestion here is that players are given more challenges every week, but that there is a weekly standing cap of 43,000. Any fugitive captures or other similar mechanics would be excluded from the standing cap. It would only apply to challenges. Any additional challenges completed would not offer standing, but rather an affinity bonus, similar to the affinity bonus challenges we used to get within missions. This way, we could get something like 3 daily challenges each day (21 total), 21 weekly challenges, and 9 elite weekly challenges, providing more variety and player choice in what activities they choose to do to gain standing, and providing more challenges overall for players to complete for extra affinity if they choose.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

What happens when there are unforeseen delays? If they commit to a schedule and cannot keep it..... 

[dpencil]

For some added perspective, I come from Elder Scrolls Online, where they also have quarterly new content releases. The 2nd quarter is usually their big new "chapter" while the other quarters are either small zones or new dungeons. It's a system that works pretty well for them.

[dpencil]

2 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

What happens when there are unforeseen delays? If they commit to a schedule and cannot keep it..... 

You plan to release at the beginning of the month, and if delays pop up you have wiggle room. I don't see any reason why the Prime Access and Nightwave seasons would ever get delayed, so even if the New Content drop had to get pushed back a few weeks once in a while, it wouldn't completely throw off the calendar.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

3 hours ago, dpencil said:

You plan to release at the beginning of the month, and if delays pop up you have wiggle room. I don't see any reason why the Prime Access and Nightwave seasons would ever get delayed, so even if the New Content drop had to get pushed back a few weeks once in a while, it wouldn't completely throw off the calendar.

Do you know how long it took to just port Fortuna over to consoles? And that's with the code already written and mostly working for the PC Tenno. 

This is all stuff that they're working on up to the last minute. (And the hotfixes we get after tell us that they still don't get everything done.)  It's not stuff that they just have in boxes sitting on the shelf and just have to pick one when the day rolls around. 

 

I think that it is what they're hoping for, but committing to a specific schedule may not be for the best. 

[peterc3]

Why is PA on the same level as NW or Operations/Quests/etc.? PA is, more or less, cosmetic. NW, if the template demonstrated by WoS6 holds true, is a side story and ultimately is driven by doing existing content.

The only "new" content in your proposed schedule are Operations and Quests or similar content.

11 hours ago, dpencil said:

As you can see, the cadence is already close to this. I think if DE could officially state this is the way the content cadence will flow through the year, it would give clarity and focus to the player base.

Players have demonstrated an inability to objectively deal with stated release dates or schedules. I don't know why DE would ever give us something to beat them over the heads with when something inevitably goes wrong.

[Steel_Rook]

21 hours ago, dpencil said:

The basic suggestion here is that players are given more challenges every week, but that there is a weekly standing cap of 43,000. Any fugitive captures or other similar mechanics would be excluded from the standing cap. It would only apply to challenges. Any additional challenges completed would not offer standing, but rather an affinity bonus, similar to the affinity bonus challenges we used to get within missions. This way, we could get something like 3 daily challenges each day (21 total), 21 weekly challenges, and 9 elite weekly challenges, providing more variety and player choice in what activities they choose to do to gain standing, and providing more challenges overall for players to complete for extra affinity if they choose.

I agree with this. More challenges with a weekly cap means we get to pick-and-choose what to do without simultaneously constantly falling behind. I'd also propose releasing the challenges across a longer period, as well - a month if not the entire season. I keep bringing up Steam Sales, because this is the exact lesson Valve learned. For a few years, they tried the whole "staggered release" approach with their Steam Summer Sale, and it ended up with people not buying games for fear of missing out on a discount or an even bigger discount. These days, Summer Sales just dump all of the games on sale right at the start and leave them all on sale for the duration. While Steam Summer Sales have no "weekly cap" to them, I think it's safe to assert that most people's WALLETS serve the same purpose in that design.

At least that way, you won't get blindsided with a "Use 4 Forma" objective the day after you already used 3 Forma.

[NezuHimeSama]

Warframe tends to have bigger delays, probably because of a looser and more flexible development pipeline.

Sometimes, things just never come out. I don't think they're going to commit to a specific schedule.