Open Letter To Digital Extremes, Your Problem Solving

[Wellwisher]

Take a look at how many hours some of us have put into this game. And this is just ONE game. You realize how much experience that gives us in End User Content? We may not know what numbers have to be put in what code, but you can't say that we don't know gaming.

 

WARNING: INCOMING POTENTIALLY STUPID ANALOGY

 

If DE made Ice Cream, we may not know how to work the machines or how to get the purest ingredients, but we are more than qualified to report to them that Cotton Candy and Asphalt do NOT mix.

On that note i would like to point out that it is not a rare occurance for devs to severely underestinate the playerbase. An example would be inferno in d3 being completed in a matter of days instead of the weeks/months blizzard promised.

In short: listen to the players that put a lot of tine into the game an their critique of it, they are clearly invested and if most of them agree they are probably right.

[Aigloblam]

On that note i would like to point out that it is not a rare occurance for devs to severely underestinate the playerbase. An example would be inferno in d3 being completed in a matter of days instead of the weeks/months blizzard promised.

In short: listen to the players that put a lot of tine into the game an their critique of it, they are clearly invested and if most of them agree they are probably right.

Exactly. And quite honestly in this thread there have been some of Warframe's heavy hitters in terms of time spent and personal investment.

[LongDraw]

They did a lot of great things with Update 10, but now that it has been out for awhile, now I'm seeing the things that are not-so-great....

 

1). The new Clan Research is just insulting. DE has said that they don't want Warframe to be about farming, but yet they put all the new clan research items in behind two farming gates: a), Have to farm Derelict Keys to b). Farm Mutagen Samples because they removed them from Jupiter and Eris. And with you need 100 of them for a melee weapon (Dual Ichor), and it is "LOL, wuuuut?" kinda response. Not to mention the Credit vacuum, which leads me to...

 

2). DE MASSIVELY nerfed credit rewards from Void. The veteran players might finally sink some of their credits, but now Newbies face this ridiculous impassible credit vacuum wall that they're never going to overcome on a piddly 10-15k credits per mission when you need 500,000+ for a single clan melee weapon. Instead of giving us a credit dump that actually worked (hello, Transmutation is still not fixed? Seriously?), they decided to massively nerf credit income and put ridiculous cost on all the new items.

 

3). DE apparently did not learn from past lessons, and again tried to nerf player movement. The outcry was large enough to yet again cause them to repeal some of the nerf. DE, when will you learn that players do not want to move slower? This game greatly encourages fast play. That's the way you made it. Parkour is meant for SPEED. You cannot have Parkour in a game and expect people to go slow. You cannot introduce mind-numbing grinds and expect people to not want to go fast. You can't do it. Anytime you try, people WILL get angry.

 

4). Still no new newbie fixes, even though Scott himself said he tried the Newbie Experience and said it "needs attention"? Hopefully this is like the armor rebalance, and that it is "shortly after u10". I did notice you reduced the level of the first couple Saturn levels. That's a start. Now, where's our Napalm fixes (last I checked, they still hit you through solid walls for example)?

 

etc etc etc etc.

 

EDIT: ~350 hours, Rank9 (well I would be Rank9 if the new Rank9 test wasn't so asininely ridiculous)

1).  Agreed.  Only reason I started our clan's research on these new weapons is because we all need to mastery something new to increase Mastery Rank on our profile.  Doesn't matter that the new weapons bore me to the point of wanting to drill a hole in my head.

 

2).  Yeah, I've seen other game companies do this.  In the end, they all do the same exact thing.  Boost income on newbie kills.  End result?  Everyone is poor except for the top 1% of the top 1%.  Kinda like real life actually!

 

3).  Technically, parkour isn't about going fast.  It is about using all surfaces possible for movement, and not just a floor.

 

4).  Yeah, I keep having to help out the new players to this game because the new player experience borders on useless and detrimental.

 

**About 500 hours here.  Rank 10 (I agree about the rank 9 test.  My advice.  Cheat.  Don't even try to land on the platform.  It's all I can say here.)

[mcryseria]

+1 all my thoughts exactly OP.

[MeteorKing]

     I understand what you and Wellwisher have said, Aigloblam, but I think that you guys are looking at things very plainly.  Yes, there are some poor decisions made, and they do deserve the critique of the community, I absoloutely agree with that.  Beyond that, though you have to look at everything else that is a part of those decisions.  Why did DE impliment a seemingly inane mechanism for which stamina was to work?  I dunno!  I really do not have an answer, but I'm sure that somewhere in their processing, they had one.  They're not going to spend time working on something if they think it's going to adversely affect their game.

     I play quite a bit as well, do not get me wrong.  Nearing 300 hours and I'd be rank 11 if the mastery test wasn't bugged.  I understand the concerns fo the community, because I am part of that community.  I am on your side, I really am.  I didn't like the stam changes, but I adapted to them and figured out how to play with them (they were then reverted and I no longer had to think about my green bar).  I'm not at all a fan of the supposed grind wall of the dere ships, but I worked together with my guild (and offered to help people in recruitment) and I've got Nekros done in like 10 hours.  I've got about 8 muta mass made in preperation of the infested dojo weps, but I refuse to make them until something is done with the Forma situation.  I get it!

     But I also get that DE's got our best intentions in mind and we shouldn't be bringing out the pitchforks.  Calm, collective, constructive criticism laid out in an easy to read and understand manner.  "Here is the issue.  This is why it's a problem.  This is how I think it should work.  This is my suggestion to fix it."  Why is that so uncommon on these forums?  There are the good posts, and they pop up on the front page quite often, but they pale in comparison to the whine and complain threads that do nothing but spiral into off-topic discussions.

     I want our voices heard.  I do not want to be part of an angry mob.

Edited September 18, 2013 by MeteorKing

[Estred]

I would rather they make more involved Parkour courses. Have the tilesets include Pakour Shortcuts. People rush because there is no reason to kill enemies unless, like me, they just enjoy killing virtual enemies.

 

Clan Reaserch is appalling. If Dual Ichor are going to cost that much and so is Embolist then they had better be DARN good weapons but I hear the Embolist is weaksauce. Power is relative to time invested to aquire.

 

Soma: Should be Rank 5... ALL weapons should be given a new rank system to reflect the time to get them. It should not just be materials. For automatics I see no problem with Gorgon, Grakata, Burston and Braton as being rank 1-2 weapons the you have the Latron at rank 3 then Hind at rank 4 and Soma at rank 5, easy way to address that power issue by properly categorizing it.

 

I agree that the Transmutation system was a good idea, poorly implemented. There should be recipes and combinations to get specific mods that we can push for. Heck maybe special Transmutation Items that boost a recipe up to a new tier or type? That would have been a good credit sink as it takes 4 mods and makes 1 which also means it's a timesink.

 

I keep going to Mercury through Earth helping new players out (meaning I walk with them not rush murder everything) because damnit someone needs to help them because it seems the company is not. I hate typing that.

[Wellwisher]

-Snip-

I don't know why you keep insisting that people are trying to incite a riot, most posts here are written quite calmly with their issues and (sometimes) proposed solutions of said problems laid out in a rational manner.

The atrocious communication with the community is also one of the biggest critique points that people have. Had DE clearly said what their i tentions behind the stamina changes were then the outcry would have been far smaller. Also if the stamina change was part of a larger plan introducing said change without the rest can only end in frustration. At the moment it looks like these changes were made in the futile attempt to make the new stamina related mods viable.

Considering you have the same exact problems with U10 as (almost) everyone else I don't understand why you are so keen on letting de continue down this path without letting them know what you think of it. There is no angry mob here just a bunch of heavily invested players who want to let DE know that they are currently working against both the vision of said players for the game, as well as the vision that DE has led us to believe they had for Warframe.

[MeteorKing]

     You're right.  Perhaps I'm still a little offput by friday.  I wasn't sure I'd be returning to the forums after that. I've been pretty busy, and seeing the forums turn into a cesspool of anger was not the stress reliever and communication of ideas that I come to these forums for.  

     Maybe I have too much faith in DE?  I choose to think not.

[Wellwisher]

 

     Maybe I have too much faith in DE?  I choose to think not.

I don't know, maybe I have to little faith, but from these past couple of patches, the misleading/false promises during livestreams and especially DERebecca's shoddy posts in this thread I'm led to believe that Warframe's future looks rather bleak.

[LittleReshiram]

Sorry for picking a post apart, again, but I just need to adress some things..

But I also get that DE's got our best intentions in mind and we shouldn't be bringing out the pitchforks.  Calm, collective, constructive criticism laid out in an easy to read and understand manner.  "Here is the issue.  This is why it's a problem.  This is how I think it should work.  This is my suggestion to fix it."  Why is that so uncommon on these forums?

It is because we, players, paid and concerned players, got sick and tired of waiting.

For months DE made the same mistakes over and over by "promising" an update, and the next day we got something else that is totally unrelated to the past promises.

You may say you can adapt, and I can too. Hell, most of people here who is mentally healthy will adapt in split-seconds. But that's not the point.

The point is, we've made hundreds and more GENUINELY POLITE THREAD, THAT GOT DIREGARDED ENTIRELY.(just pointing out stuff here, not screaming at your face)

How could I say that? The "disregarded entirely" part? Because surely DE reads, like? No.

If you see Ember's thread, for an example, you see how it's like bacon sandwhich.

The topping is "OVERHEAT REVERT" cries with us holding lightsaber and flamethrowers.

The bacon is "Ember should get buffed damage and she now can't cc", in which we changed our sabers and throwers into more "polite" fork and torches.

The bottom, the part I personally think we're finally not being Gordon Ramsey and starts thinking rationally, is about "combine skill x + y, because -well thought explanation-."

You see what DE choose over all?

The middle one, the bacon. And it's not even a big, fat bacon, no. It's just a slither of a strip, which is basically 10% of the whole thread.

See what I mean? DE intentions WAS good, but WE have enough of their goof and want some answer.

 There are the good posts, and they pop up on the front page quite often, but they pale in comparison to the whine and complain threads that do nothing but spiral into off-topic discussions.

     I want our voices heard.  I do not want to be part of an angry mob.

Again, same reason as above.

Also, there is no such thing as "angry mob" here.

Feedbacks are feedbacks. No matter whether it's a slap to the face, a kick to the groin, a punch to the kidney, or a pat to the head.

DE couldn't just live through praise alone. Sometimes they need to deliberately accept those pain in order to achieve greatness.

Same thing happen to us, all of us.

We're humans, and basically, we will get our asses handed, because this is real life.

TL;DR:

DE shouldn't just nitpick the good over the bad and ends up giving us totally different things.

We're tired of DE's bull5hit and want some answers.

We're tired asking politely and given totally different things, which is why we do the swords and bows democracy.

If DE did what they've been promising, and listen to the community more, we won't held our torches high.

[MeteorKing]

     I'll say that I think the demand for feedback is drastically higher for this game than I've ever seen before.  You don't see people on WoW, Vindictus, MU, Perfect World, Runescape, etc. forums demanding feedback and becoming frustrated when they do not recieve any.  It's kind of just part of dealing with a company.  There are so many of us and so few of them.  That being said, I do wish we had more feedback, and I think that the livestreams are an attempt at that.

     As far as the angry mob thing, I'm not sure if you guys were around on friday night, but that could be describe as nothing less than.  Since Sunday the posts have been fairly tame, but definitely earlier last week and prior there was an awful lot of dreck being sloshed around.  People demanding free slots.  Demanding x content to be removed.  Demanding buffs or nerfs as they saw fit.  There was definite hostility, and I think it was completely unwaranted.  After livestream 12 (I think) in the livestream thread there were litereally pages of people just BASHING the devs for their conduct.  Calling them drunkards who steal their money.  While I don't condone the rowdy behavior they portrayed, it is outlandish to expect six people, who know each other very well, and are relaxing a bit and notifying their players of ideas to come, to display an heir of professionality that they not only shouldn't display, but I would be against them displaying.  DE is a company, but that company is made of people, why can't those people just be people?

     Perhaps it's me remembering the worst of times instead of the best of times?  I don't know, but those bad times definitely stick out like a sore, and embarassing, thumb.

[LittleReshiram]

I'll say that I think the demand for feedback is drastically higher for this game than I've ever seen before.  You don't see people on WoW, Vindictus, MU, Perfect World, Runescape, etc. forums demanding feedback and becoming frustrated when they do not recieve any.  It's kind of just part of dealing with a company.  There are so many of us and so few of them.  That being said, I do wish we had more feedback, and I think that the livestreams are an attempt at that.

Sorry, but, as far as I remember, those companies you've written down are pretty much "older" companies than DE. (I could be wrong on this. Please tell me if I am)

Why people doesn't even care about bugging them anymore? Because they've reached the state where they KNOW they won't get heard, and thus doesn't even care.

Their mind went into,

"The devs listen? Cool. They don't listening? Oh well okay, F*** you too, devs. But since you won't hear me I won't need to rant anyway."

You don't see CoD players crying about anything, because they know Activision won't even listen, thus they don't even care.

Warframe is fairly new. And we, the players, concerned about its future.

That is why we cry and slingshot our feedbacks with intimidation, because, honestly, I myself scared about this game's future.

A year, and the game ALREADY going downhill.

That is concerning.

Also WoW is..supposedly Blizzard? And I think Blizzard took their community's feedback quite well(?).

   As far as the angry mob thing, I'm not sure if you guys were around on friday night, but that could be describe as nothing less than.  Since Sunday the posts have been fairly tame, but definitely earlier last week and prior there was an awful lot of dreck being sloshed around.  People demanding free slots.  Demanding x content to be removed.  Demanding buffs or nerfs as they saw fit.  There was definite hostility, and I think it was completely unwaranted.  After livestream 12 (I think) in the livestream thread there were litereally pages of people just BASHING the devs for their conduct.  Calling them drunkards who steal their money.  While I don't condone the rowdy behavior they portrayed, it is outlandish to expect six people, who know each other very well, and are relaxing a bit and notifying their players of ideas to come, to display an heir of professionality that they not only shouldn't display, but I would be against them displaying.  DE is a company, but that company is made of people, why can't those people just be people?

Because DE promised us many things, and ends up giving us nothing.

I'm fine with that, because, really, I know it will happen.

I know big games will spawn enormous troubles.

Community already tired with devs' tomfoolery, too. That is why they're angry, bashing heads and limbs.

It's, honestly, because DE hardly communicate with their community.

IF they communicate, make a DIALOGUE between them and some represantative of the community regarding unreleased contents, asking around..well.

This thing won't happen.

    Perhaps it's me remembering the worst of times instead of the best of times?  I don't know, but those bad times definitely stick out like a sore, and embarassing, thumb.

Indeed, it was horrible.

But then again, it's not always been that S#&$ty.

I heard U6 is pretty..awesome.

Sure, Volt and Rhino got #*($%%@ hard, but aside from those two, it was really..a fair trade.

Rhino/Volt got butchered, but there's also lots of stuff added and fixed.

And by "lots", I mean "LOTS" of stuff fixed. Genuinely.

The reason why we're mad anyway, is, again, for the upteenth time, because DE NEVER keep up to their words since U8.

For example, U10, where Ember and Trin got slaughtered like lambs, and WE, the players, got NO information about "why." OR a reasonable compensation.

The only "why" is Scott's comment. His VISION. And just that. A vision of one man killed hundreds of others' minds.

No reasons aside from that.

NO ONE in the team said that Ember will get that much change, either.

It's so sudden. It's so out of nowhere.

THAT, is an example about DE's inconsistency, and it p1sses us off.

[Wellwisher]

I do agree that the kneejerk hate that people immediatly displayed is not helpful in the least, but their central message stands true. This update brought us a new tilset locked behind a grindwall, a boss locked behind another lair of grind, mostly useless mods, some standard weapon/frame addition and yet again completely broken loottables.

Thats just not cool, especially after we had been led to believe that the new golem will replace the old one (iirc they even specifically mentioned volt dropping somewhere else once golem is introduced in one stream).

DE is still at the point where people tjink they still listen to player feedback. I guarantee you that this will not be the case for much longer (we can see the telltale signs right now). This is the typical pattern with small dev teams that make it big, it always happens sooner or later. Sadly in warframe it seems to be happening before the game has a solid core.

[litlit]

Agreed.

 

 

MeteorKing: don't conflate this thread and the people in it with other people in other threads.

[Tyrian3k]

My biggest problem with this update is that the whole new tileset only has two purposes: The new Golem and getting mutagen samples.

It needs something else that drops in it... maybe some kind of orokin weapon that has been covered in infested tissue?

[alocrius]

I don't really understand a lot of the comments in this thread. There is this feeling of petulant children running a muck.

 

This is DE's game, they can change it how they please, player feedback is important when it comes to adapting the game, but it isn't required. The idea here is for DE to shake things up and take steps that might step on a few toes, in doing so they pave the way for generating additional improvements. The question here is what incentive is there to rely on community feedback when the feedback is biased, misinformed, or hostile?

 

Change is inevitable, especially when a developer is trying to create a gaming experience that appeals to multiple demographics. A majority of posts in this thread follow the pattern of "You changed these things I got comfortable with/were my favorite things, now I'm mad at you and feel offended on a personal level".

 

I don't get that impression at all.  I think most of the comments I am reading here are relevant and valuable feedback from experienced players.  You just haven't become disillusioned yet.  Give it a little more time and you'll be joining the unwashed masses once the futility of grinding through the same missions over and over and over starts to dawn on you.  Game design does not require DE to alienate huge portions of their playerbase either.  The hostility has been fomenting over the past few months as DE perpetuate frivolous updates that don't serve the game.   It's that simple.

Edited September 19, 2013 by alocrius

[Bleak_Advent]

+1 to the OP. After 300 hours of playing, the game is more of a grind now than it ever has been, clan tech is absurdly overpriced, credits are cast to the void faster than they are earned, more problems are being introduced than there are existing issues being fixed, and I just try to think how much worse a new player, who didn't invest in a founder's pack or platinum, would feel when they see everything us veteran players do.