Flow, progression and continuity

[Adreankael]

Here's MY issue. (MY, as in mine, not yours, not their's, not his nor her's). Warframe seems really unbalanced. A prime, hehe, example of this is requiring you to complete level 38 missions (Pluto) to get to a quest (The war within) that is level 28-29. Sure I could taxi but I don't think you can taxi to a junction can you? Sedna is a requirement for TWW. Where is the logic? Where is the flow? I understand level progression but this is almost backwards. Usually the main story is designed to; 1.) get you used to the game, 2.) power up your protagonist and ultimately 3.) get you ready for end game. What I see in Warframe is the story is the whole entirety of the game. There really is no end game, just higher level enemies in the same missions over and over again. This has led to a multitude of issues. For example; some frames beginning OP but becoming victims of "power creep".  Another example of the balance being wonky is Tigris. So you get to a low mastery rank and you get a weapon that puts weapons that require twice the MR to shame? I understand MR isn't your level, I get that, but it is a limiting factor in what you can equip. So it has all of the downsides of "levels" with none of the upsides.

Another issue is Mods/frames. The game requires you to do higher level content to get the mods/frames that you need to do that content, makes sense. The problem is that content is blocked off through story progression..... Which you can't unlock until you're already powerful enough that you don't need those mods anymore....You either spend weeks getting frustrated at being one shot by mobs in a mission you HAVE to complete to be able to do the missions to get the mods/frames you need OR you buy the mods/frames.... (An exaggeration but you get the point)

The game is F2P. I get that and I like that about the game.I understand that they need to keep players spending money to support the game. In the past three weeks of me playing I've dropped 200 bucks on stuff, cosmetic mostly, just to support the game. I like Warframe so don't think this is just me bashing the game. What I see is a LOT of untapped potential. Work on the balance and flow of the game. Give the players some sense of smooth progression. Remove the difficulty spikes early on and Include endgame content that isn't the same thing over and over again. With just a few minor tweaks here and there the game could have a continuity that feels good. 

A lot of you are going to say "Just get good". Sorry but that argument is old and has never held any merit whatsoever in an mmo. Warframe is a massively multiplayer game. To expect every player to operate at the same level is ignorant at best. The attitude of "players just need to get good" is also destructive to the game. Many players who are limited by time (90% of the people who have the money to spend on the game), disabilities etc. will just get frustrated and leave. Lowering the activity of the game and the profit of the game. Eventually that causes server merges and that is the first death throe. Warframe's active population has been on a decline lately. It's currently (at the time of writing this) at 1/4th of it's peak. 

37,873 
playing an hour ago

62,056 
24-hour peak

131,766 
all-time peak

Last 30 Days

53,016.1

-3,558.4

-6.29%

95,193

Sure it's an old game but many old games survive decades because they have what it takes. 

Anyway the tl;dr is simple. Warframe has a lot of potential and I would like to see it realize that potential.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Adreankael

[ismellpestilence]

This is one thing that we like about Warframe.

 

you say this because you don’t like the lore, do you ?

[Adreankael]

Just now, AirMaskNinja said:

This is one thing that we like about Warframe.

 

you say this because you don’t like the lore, do you ?

This has nothing to do with the lore but since you asked. I freaking love the lore. It's a beautiful narrative. I just wish the story wasn't broken up to keep the players interest. There really should be an endgame that keeps players interest.

[(XBOX)B1ueKarou]

i agree with a lot of what you said, and to me it has been feeling like theres something missing from warframe. something that was there a couple years ago around the tower key days that just isnt there anymore. the word "endgame" in terms of content though.... thats pretty much just a buzzword at this point. you hear youtubers, streamers, and veterans throw it around but... if you were to actually ask each of them what it means, it would just be a ton of completely different half baked ideas thrown around. thats because what endgame content really is, its completely subjective to the persons playstyle, tastes, and personal preferences. yes, the story structure and... structure of aquisition(?) of the storyline quests needs to be re-thought-out by DE, but once you get past that? some people find endless fascination and entertainment from just obtaining endless loot that looks shiny, even if they have it a ton. just look at destiny. yeah the raids were their endgame sort of, but if you boil it down it was just a 30 minute thing to do with a chance to get some drops. eidolons, spiderlons, and even the trials might have been able to be done in a third of that time, but the end result is the same. objectively speaking, destiny raids and warframe trials, hell even World of Warfcraft raids were just the exact same mission that people play over and over again and end up with rng based loot that is actually decent. granted WoW had a TON of different raids, but we have, again, eidolons, spiderlons, soon^tm we'll have both of the trials back. spectres of the rail stuff has been talked about for years (but ive kind of given up on those seeing the light of day again)... at the end of it all, the idea of endgame content... its undefineable and otherwise... kind of meaningless. some people find their endless fun in trade chat and ripping people off. others like to challenge time/wave records in survivals or defenses. we have speed runners, boss killers, loot hunters, and on and on. me? with my thousands of hours of in game time, i still always go back to hunting for the random pickup modules in the void capture missions. thats just my thing though. and these are just my thoughts. cheers.

[Adreankael]

40 minutes ago, (XB1)B1ueKarou said:

i agree with a lot of what you said, and to me it has been feeling like theres something missing from warframe. something that was there a couple years ago around the tower key days that just isnt there anymore. the word "endgame" in terms of content though.... thats pretty much just a buzzword at this point. you hear youtubers, streamers, and veterans throw it around but... if you were to actually ask each of them what it means, it would just be a ton of completely different half baked ideas thrown around. thats because what endgame content really is, its completely subjective to the persons playstyle, tastes, and personal preferences. yes, the story structure and... structure of aquisition(?) of the storyline quests needs to be re-thought-out by DE, but once you get past that? some people find endless fascination and entertainment from just obtaining endless loot that looks shiny, even if they have it a ton. just look at destiny. yeah the raids were their endgame sort of, but if you boil it down it was just a 30 minute thing to do with a chance to get some drops. eidolons, spiderlons, and even the trials might have been able to be done in a third of that time, but the end result is the same. objectively speaking, destiny raids and warframe trials, hell even World of Warfcraft raids were just the exact same mission that people play over and over again and end up with rng based loot that is actually decent. granted WoW had a TON of different raids, but we have, again, eidolons, spiderlons, soon^tm we'll have both of the trials back. spectres of the rail stuff has been talked about for years (but ive kind of given up on those seeing the light of day again)... at the end of it all, the idea of endgame content... its undefineable and otherwise... kind of meaningless. some people find their endless fun in trade chat and ripping people off. others like to challenge time/wave records in survivals or defenses. we have speed runners, boss killers, loot hunters, and on and on. me? with my thousands of hours of in game time, i still always go back to hunting for the random pickup modules in the void capture missions. thats just my thing though. and these are just my thoughts. cheers.

I get what you're saying but the raids were not the same type of missions you were doing leveling up. But even they can become repetitive without something new. The word endgame can be summed up as something outside the normal playing of the game that requires the good gear and competent players to accomplish. Dungeons, raids, etc. fit this definition but just adding higher level enemies of the same type within a mission with the same goals doesn't. It doesn't even have to be group oriented really. There is endgame in Warframe with the addition of eidolons and profit taker and those are fun. Warframe needs more though. It needs a smoother feeling of progression and accomplishment. 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Adreankael
spelling

[ismellpestilence]

1 hour ago, Adreankael said:

This has nothing to do with the lore but since you asked. I freaking love the lore. It's a beautiful narrative. I just wish the story wasn't broken up to keep the players interest. There really should be an endgame that keeps players interest.

Tee hee, there is A LOT of Lore still waiting for you, c’mon, keep up till you get to Sedna and get that Lore you need ^^

 

 

i am hungry for lore too, we understand each other. 

[Adreankael]

3 hours ago, AirMaskNinja said:

Tee hee, there is A LOT of Lore still waiting for you, c’mon, keep up till you get to Sedna and get that Lore you need ^^

 

 

i am hungry for lore too, we understand each other. 

Already beyond sedna. But yea love the lore.

[ismellpestilence]

4 hours ago, Adreankael said:

Already beyond sedna. But yea love the lore.

Great then why did u complain XD

[peterc3]

11 hours ago, Adreankael said:

The game is F2P. I get that

Yet again, people write this but don't actually understand the least bit of it.

11 hours ago, Adreankael said:

Remove the difficulty spikes early on and Include endgame content that isn't the same thing over and over again

Funny, I seem to remember WoW end game being running the same bloody thing over and over again to get better gear to do the same thing, just harder.

[mrEkli]

The difficulty spikes between quests and nodes is due to restructuring the story / quests into Star Chart progression. They could fine tune it. The issue here is that you're beelining through the content. This roadblock should've made it open you up to the other options the game has. If you got to Pluto, do some of the other content and come back. Lean into the mod system, you could get stronger without necessarily "getting good".

[Adreankael]

11 hours ago, AirMaskNinja said:

Great then why did u complain XD

I simply made a suggestion for improvement. Just because something CAN be accomplished doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. I didn't think the mission was difficult just that requiring you to complete a level 38 mission to unlock level 29 content is, to put it mildly, strange. 

[Adreankael]

10 hours ago, (NSW)mrEkli said:

The difficulty spikes between quests and nodes is due to restructuring the story / quests into Star Chart progression. They could fine tune it. The issue here is that you're beelining through the content. This roadblock should've made it open you up to the other options the game has. If you got to Pluto, do some of the other content and come back. Lean into the mod system, you could get stronger without necessarily "getting good".

The difficulty spikes aren't to restrict players progress if the difficulty spikes are backwards. Level 38 mission being required to start a level 29 quest for example. Yes I'm progressing through the story at a rapid pace why? Well this IS my second time through the game. Two accounts. AdrenKael and Adreankael. One 4 years old one 11 months old. You should ask about someone's loadout before telling someone to "Lean into the mod system" though. Other then Primed and umbral mods I'm pretty much done with Nidus, Rhino Prime, Frost, Trinity Prime Loki Prime, Volt prime and a few others. 

[Adreankael]

10 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Yet again, people write this but don't actually understand the least bit of it.

Funny, I seem to remember WoW end game being running the same bloody thing over and over again to get better gear to do the same thing, just harder.

Yes I do understand the f2p model. A little too well. I used to work with a company designing f2p games for mobile platforms. For almost 5 years in total. 

I love how you cherry pick something to point out without taking into account the whole post. I'm not saying raids aren't repetitive but, usually, they are outside the scope of what you did to "level up". Repetition isn't a problem, it helps people learn their roles better and understand their character/frame better. However, when you only have a few types of content, that content becomes boring. That's why we now have the plains and Fortuna now. Both of which I love and want to see more of.

[mrEkli]

On 2019-05-10 at 11:39 PM, Adreankael said:

The difficulty spikes aren't to restrict players progress if the difficulty spikes are backwards. Level 38 mission being required to start a level 29 quest for example. Yes I'm progressing through the story at a rapid pace why? Well this IS my second time through the game. Two accounts. AdrenKael and Adreankael. One 4 years old one 11 months old. You should ask about someone's loadout before telling someone to "Lean into the mod system" though. Other then Primed and umbral mods I'm pretty much done with Nidus, Rhino Prime, Frost, Trinity Prime Loki Prime, Volt prime and a few others. 

We're not opposing each other in opinion. It was addressed in the first part of the statement. DE lazily restructured quests in the Star Chart and junctions, which caused lots of discontinuity and level gaps. I was commenting on beelining Star Chat nodes alone, not quests or story.