Mogamu DE interview

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

DE for the love of the Ark of the Covenant...please add a Indiana Jones race variant to the non combat PVP...I never laughed harder or had more fun in PVP than when I had a giant ball of death chasing me and 15 other players down a obstacle course...

Edited March 28, 2019 by (PS4)FriendSharkey

[Softballbryan]

1 hour ago, Sibernetika said:

I forgot mogamu is a thing since I started avoiding his content when all he did was complain (it was around the time the Corinth was released) and for once the youtube algorithm actually did something I wanted it to... Remove mogamu from my recommended, suggested or ever showing up on my screen.. Hope this doesn't Jinx it

I agree with you... I stopped watching him for the same reason so I was surprised that DE paid him to come interview them... I liked the interview so far. 

[Skaleek]

What was the answer to the endless farming question?

[Kontrollo]

5 hours ago, nslay said:

Yeah, that's one way to do it. But you need to be careful in more ways than that! Blizzard has a public test realm for D3 where they likely gather these numbers in relatively large quantities (need a large sample to do statistical analysis!). The limitations of this, aside of practicality (need to download another 10GB game, the test client), is that 1) few players actually want to test new features and lose all progress in the test mode, 2) the test realm is time limited which may not be enough time for players to learn effective builds and strategies.

Compound that with the massive size of the Warframe universe and mods, weapons, frames that many potential testers would not have access to. I think DE can work around this by making special test mission nodes for each game mode that reward potatoes/adapters with a Simulcrum-like equipment device at mission start to prepare for different phases of the test (e.g. 15 waves of survival, 5 current game, 5 warm up with new changes, 5 recorded with new changes). 

Rule of thumb I'd say is do it 50 times and you're already in a decent spot. That's of course in a "controlled environment" (play mission X with loadout Y a few times), and we're talking about a game and not scientifically meaningful observations.

I'm sure with the number of public sessions that are played and that they have access to on top of their internal playtests, they already have all the data they need to make meaningful decisions. On the other hand, there might be a lack of manpower to properly analyse all that and find all those needles in the haystack.

[Aldain]

7 hours ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

I just hope there won't be ludicrous AoE spam/infinite adds/invincibility phases or any other cheap tricks

You forgot to mention un-stripable armor and 90% natural damage resistance while also tied with a timer forcing players to use a very small pool of viable weapons or fail before they start.

[(XBOX)Opiate42]

When I'm back in Canada I need to go for a few beers with the DE crew.

HEAR THAT DE!!!!???!? RAILWAY CITY BREWING!! BE THERE!!!!!

[BornWithTeeth]

On 2019-03-27 at 5:43 PM, dragnhuntr666 said:

Best rework for her is fixing the screw up they did to WoF. That was the reason I stopped using Ember Prime, and now she sits on my shelf collecting dust. A simple fix would be to either sacrifice range OR efficiency, but not both. And to remove the build up to 100% damage. It should be 100% right from the start just like all the other warframe abilities, and the longer it's used, the less efficiency or less range.

Coming from someone who mains Ember and is going to be giving her an Umbra Forma at first opportunity...a rework is gonna have to include DE acknowledging that World On Fire is just not an ability that they want to have in the game, and replacing it altogether with something better, something which both unites other aspects of her kit and hopefully grants her more survivability.

 

In other words, not just reverting the nerf but moving beyond it.

[SilentMobius]

5 hours ago, Skaleek said:

What was the answer to the endless farming question?

"Try to make sure people have a range of things to do"

I mean, what answer is there, "Grind" is totally subjective and is functionally identical to "gameplay". Either you are playing the game or you aren't and it's totally impossible for any studio anywhere to keep up with the overwhelming desire for new content so it must be designed to need to be repeated.

 

Edited March 28, 2019 by SilentMobius

[Skaleek]

3 minutes ago, SilentMobius said:

"Try to make sure people have a range of things to do"

I mean, what answer is there "Grind" is totally subjective and is functionally identical to "gameplay". Either you are playing the game or you aren't and it's totally impossible for any studio anywhere to keep up with the overwhelming desire for new content so it must be designed to need to be repeated.

 

Cool thanks.

[Wolfdoggie]

If you're revisiting unsatisfactory reworked frames, well; I want Ash's 4 reworked to a less annoying functionality than spasming your mouse everywhere to each enemy 1 by 1~ Give it something like a cone target like Mesa's 4 or wide line like Nidus's 1 and a single press. I dislike it's current form so much. It makes it difficult to want to play one of my favorite frames.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Wolfdoggie

[Atsia]

Well look at what procastination has brought me, I have parts 2 and 3 to summarize now. Well first off, both links for those intersted.

Part 2:

Spoiler

 

Part 3:

Spoiler

 

Let's start with Part 2: How to Free to Play, which starts off which Reb confirming that Wisp had broken animations when she was showed off last time and will be keeping the cloth on her helmet. Big Talking points were:

How do you avoid the stigmas of live service? Reb interestingly replies to the common criticism of "unfinished" with "but we don't promise a finished product is the first way to avoid it". Steve then gets into WF monetization, using Nightwave as an example of something completely un-monetized, it has no intentions to get money out of us, just give us something to do. He then says " How will the community react if xx happens, if xx is hard to get, whatever they say, we do." He says theye do their best to stop any potential adminstrative level of "would be nice if we got more money" and keep icky things out, and if they do do icky things, they have a good track record of removing it. Reeb says you'll probably find 5 or 6, but only that many in a 6-7 year game is an accomplishment. They then bring up another example in Equinox Prime is how, logically, that grind should be the same as the regular grind, but they chose not to. They aim to have a "lifetime value", where they get a someone to play for years, so they HAVE to keep monetization low to keep you in for the long haul. Mogamu states how mod packs are an example of a more archaic system, and it's good to remove them. Steve states his thought process behind them was similar to Magic: the Gathering booster packs, but then became more like a lootbox.

Prime Access changes? (Steve begins with explanation of distaste in the word monetization, and it's not used and doesn't come up much in discussions) they delve into how they make stuff like PA or the Vault monetize, with scarcity as a main driver for the purchaes, then ask Mogamu what he would like to see in changes. He explains the different camps, one player who just "take my money DE, just give me something good", a second player "I don't have time to this, here's my money cause I like the game", and the the third player "I could play your game for free or give you my 60$, but I could take my money and get another game, like Spider-Man". Steve then says, conventionally, the third players are the types who never spend money at all, while the first two are the types to support WF with cash. Reb then says, the co-op experience of WF needs to free play though, since they generally have more knowledge and can help guide the players who just show up to buy items, "they make the world alive". Steve gets into how much information should they give out to make informed decisions, such as them giving out their drop table to help. Reb gives Tennogen as an example of  a success through support, how some artists have their lives changed just because they're fans.

The answer to the question about endless farming. Steve gives Nightwave as a microcosm of the issue. Some players are fine with just being given a list of things to do is engaging for them, as you always need something to do. Plain farming is a way to disparage playing the game during events, etc. Steve admits their mmistake is making grinds that are too repetitive, just doing the one thing over and over again. Reb brings up another example in the Orb Vallis standing caps. DE aims to make it less repetitive, but is tricky, as they don't want us to just burn through it and be left with nothing to do. It's a very uncomfortable balancing act between, "do we cap it, do we gate it?" etc.

Can you open the shutters in the Orokin by default for the clans who can't make solar rails? Steve says he has this as a note for Dojo changes to be done whenever.

Favorite frame theme/ability idea that was never used/given up on? The only idea that comes to mind that they haven;t used is a shapeshifter frame, mainly cause they didn't have the tech for it at the time. Mogamu brings up the old idea of a four-legged/spider frame, which DE would like to do whenever they can.

Ability you wish you had? Invisibility is the classic answer, and Reb gives Razorwing, and then the appeal of Limbo Stasis, but it requires 2 abilities to use.

Rebalancing of enemies exponential stats scaling? Reb ties this answer to this back to the frame reworks, and Steve says it's something they want to try this year, they would do it earlier but Melee 3.0 took up that time, and the design team was at an impasse of how much do you want to nerf things/give bad news to your audience, especially with other games coming out? Steve says there are certainly things to change, with stats and graphs to back it up, but that would be a Devstream, hopefully able to come this year, and it's certainly on his mind.

Any plans to give more countermeasures to Tennos overwhelming power? Obviously, the entire point of the existence of nullifiers. Reb gives the Exploiter orb cut-scenes as an example of keeping the power fantasy feel in the game, and balancing that against the damage phases, coordinating against it, etc. Steve ties is back to the damage exponential changes, which will be nerfs against some things, which they aim to communicate before they come. Steve then confirms(?) that they'll go they way of difficulty settings to address some of the issues, going back to ideas from early game 2012-2013 Warframe.

Railjack when? "When it's ready"- Rebecca 2019

Custom running animations? With Wisp getting some, the floodgates are open, with them just finishing a fan contest for Moa animations

Armory weapon screen update? Their currently working on one for the Frames screen.

Exploiter type boss fight for EVERY boss? "ohhhh S#&$" from Reb. A hard maybe, with 2-3 more boss fights currently in the works, but they do seem to want more like it, mixing animation and gameplay together.

FOV increase when? They'll try to sneak it in during a light week.

New pets from conservation? Yes, Reb hopes. Plains will be getting conservation, with a new animal type (Reb calling it the weirdest thing, it has ass-wings???)

Purely Cosmetic pets? Yes, Reb hopes. Steve also likes the idea, with more copying from Paths of Exile.

Ak-Stubba called double Stubba? Yes

Infested Events? Maybe the next Nightwave. Yes from Steve(?)

L-ordis going anyway? Purple space mom will be resolved in the New War.

Focus back on being space ninjas? Reworks to give a more martial art, ninja feel. Railjack more Robotech than Sim.

Part 2 ends with the question what moment did you realize WF will be a great explansive game? God this is a wall of Text. Let me end it here then make the one for Part 3.

[Atsia]

Part 3: Keeping Players Happy

Right out of the gate, we get the most real question yet, Lightsabers and Motorcycles. DMC aside, they get straight to business:

Warframes in the works? We've got Hildryn just released, Wisp coming, and then 2 males frames in the works. (the runner?)

How long can one play WF? Free or Paid? A rough estimate of the time to do all the main quests, all your syndicates (Cetus, Fortuna, Vox, etc.), and being technical, MR restrictions needed, you can play for a good week or 2 and still need to get stuff. A running joke in DE is that the WF gets good, when you're 80 hours in.  Steve aims for the kind magic Skyrim had, where players come back just to enjoy the world. They aims for a kinds of schedule of come and play, take a break, come back to play, take a break, etc. etc. Repeats their aim to make WF front end/early game a bit more inviting, giving examples of veteran stories, "I tried to get my friends to play, but they left after seeing the starting screens and arsenal". Steve gives a reason for their new player experience being terrible as them focusing on giving the veterans a reason to come back and play. Gotta keep the game fresh and interesting, not get stuck in a rut of continuing what works, like they have with stuff like Tenno Reinforcements, though that era is maybe looked at through rose-tinted glasses. Reb also reveals she has 1600 hours on her public PC account.

Thoughts on Release Schedule? Balance of stuff like Nightwave versus the big content drop like the open worlds. Reb says it took more work to do stuff like Buried Debts, it apparently required more Saturdays of work than the open worlds for hotfixes. Though the work behind stuff like Fortuna is MASSIVE behind the scene stuff. Steve brings up how her perspective could be influenced lby how much do they #*!% up. Like the Exploiters boss fight having a stage that go between 2 streaming barriers is just a recipe for a bad weekend. Steve then asks Mogamu what event caused the most sign ups, it being TennoCon 2018, rather that stuff like PoE or the Second Dream. He then says it's the PC releases that drive the console surges and dips in players count, that the promise of stuff brings in more people than actual content drops. The reveal of stuff like PoE and Railjack shot up the count more than their actual release. Steve want to have  something new to show, not another "Warframe reveals new open world" title, He has no regrets over how content has been released with how difficult it is to predict how it'll affect your concurrency rates. He estimates Nightwave has brought is about the same amount of players as Fortuna did in terms of getting people playing. He then goes into how nightwave has cause some people to hate him in that it gives them a to-do list, taking away their intrinsic motivation, while others who have no intrinsic motivation like logging in and the games giving you a list of things to do. Mogamu compares it as Minecraft vesrus Fortnite.

Do you think open worlds hurt the game? Steve is proud of them as they really pushed DE to improve how they make the game, technically, artistically, which we'll see in the Gas city rework.

The answer to the last question in part 2, what moment did you realize WF will be one of the greatest games? Steve sees it as the collection of problems to be fixed and always more things to be added. His personal "we're gonna make it" moment was when they started hiring back people that had to be laid off.

Does DE even playtest anything before it drops? Always, every time. Doesn't stop every bug though.

Frame and Operator emotes? Yes, they are coming, being pushed into the test cluster by a group of volunteer, though the still rely on the hundreds of thousands of players logging in.

Any passion projects other than WF? DMC 5

How does DE handle criticism/feedback? Ignored, gets outsourced. In seriousness, it's really hit or miss, so they hope we see they have good intentions, to entertain.

Why can't Max speed Volt walk on PoE water? It would be easy to implement by WoS (Word of Steve)

Is Steve a flat-earther, and Yennifer or Triss? No, Steve believes in science, and Steve Triss, Reb Yennifer.

No cliff-hanger question this time, but there is a Part 4 coming, probably later today, so I'll be making one last update.

[BornWithTeeth]

Also, while no-one has said this yet, I am not always required to be the bigger person.

 

We frigging told you so.

Reworking a frame to satisfy the people who don’t play that frame, while completely ignoring the players who do and who are telling you that your proposed changes are a threadbare bandaid was not clever. You were told as much at the time, and oh look, guess who’s back on the schedule for another rework?

[Softballbryan]

Thanks for taking your time to cliff notes the videos. 

[Atsia]

It's no problem, I just wanted to get the information out there since so many players don't ever see these sort of things and the info about the game it provides. Like, how many players have seen or even knew that DE Scott had an interview with Tactical Potato at first?

[S.Dust]

little sad they announce so many plans and then get overwhelmed or are unable to produce in a timely manner leaving people to just wonder things. Also non combat pvp yay doesnt change the fact they will more than likely leave that to die just like the rest of the pvp that they don't seem to care about. 

[Chaemyerelis]

So happy they realize the i.importance of reworking player dmg and enemy scaling even if it means a nerf to us.

[BornWithTeeth]

28 minutes ago, Chaemyerelis said:

So happy they realize the i.importance of reworking player dmg and enemy scaling even if it means a nerf to us.

Which is good! They can’t just keep making the game run on bigger numbers and bigger numbers and ever bigger numbers and more damage output and higher armour values, that needs to be rebalanced eventually.

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Chaemyerelis said:

So happy they realize the i.importance of reworking player dmg and enemy scaling even if it means a nerf to us.

Indeed. Frankly, enemies especially getting recognised is especially good news - I've been saying they need to change for a little while.

[(PSN)GrahamMasterJ]

I'm Hyped for the next frame being car themed. Didn't any else here Rebecca say "I hope you like race cars". He better have exhaust pipes. Just call him Mustang, or Formula, Nitros, or Skyline. Could he be another fire element frame? 

[Cubewano]

2 hours ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Which is good! They can’t just keep making the game run on bigger numbers and bigger numbers and ever bigger numbers and more damage output and higher armour values, that needs to be rebalanced eventually.

Hopefully as Steve said they can get it to happen sometime this year, the balance in this game has just fallen apart. 

18 minutes ago, (PS4)KING_LEWIE2190 said:

I'm Hyped for the next frame being car themed. Didn't any else here Rebecca say "I hope you like race cars". He better have exhaust pipes. Just call him Mustang, or Formula, Nitros, or Skyline. Could he be another fire element frame? 

You sure that wasn't in reference to the pvp mode? Because Steve already told us that was going to involve racing. 

[(PSN)GrahamMasterJ]

10 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

Hopefully as Steve said they can get it to happen sometime this year, the balance in this game has just fallen apart. 

You sure that wasn't in reference to the pvp mode? Because Steve already told us that was going to involve racing. 

Hmmm that's strange. Because Mogamu asked about after Whisp specifically, then it was said there are 2 male frames in design and Rebecca didn't want to spoil but she did say , "I hope you like race cars". So maybe the next male frame ties into the new pvp experience.

Edited March 29, 2019 by (PS4)KING_LEWIE2190

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)KING_LEWIE2190 said:

I'm Hyped for the next frame being car themed. Didn't any else here Rebecca say "I hope you like race cars". He better have exhaust pipes. Just call him Mustang, or Formula, Nitros, or Skyline. Could he be another fire element frame? 

Just wait for the announcement of merging the Transformer universe with Warframe along with a new line of toys. New frame is: Optimus Prime. (more likely Hot Rod in this case, becoming Rodimus Prime when primed <.< >.>  )

Edited March 29, 2019 by (PS4)AyinDygra

[Cubewano]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)KING_LEWIE2190 said:

Hmmm that's strange. Because Mogamu asked about after Whisp specifically, then it was said there are 2 male frames in design and Rebecca didn't want to spoil but she did say , "I hope you like race cars". So maybe the next male frame ties into the new pvp experience.

That does seem possible, though generally DE tries to keep pve progress entirely separate from pvp. Mayhaps a pve mode making use of this new modes tech will come as well. But rewatching the clip yeah the racing comment was definitely in relation to the frame, and Steve even referred to it as 'the runner' which cements a pretty clear theme. Guess racing frame incoming. Volt mains gonna flip. 

[Redfeather75]

I like how rebecca talked about things that can be added to game to make more frames useful. It is no fun if frames are mostly graded on just aoe damage capability.