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Put Empyrean 100 hours deep into the game, DE.


NaoEthelia
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6 hours ago, NaoEthelia said:

Take a look at Destiny 2's DLCs.

Interesting how you note about that. Because I recall that when Destiny 2 released their biggest DLC that wasn't just more raids, they also introduced a 'catch up' option, where new players could accelerate their progress up multiple levels precisely so that they could take part in the new content.

I mean, it's true that a lot of rolling updates for online role-players are meant to add to things like level caps and higher level dungeons and raids, but that's because the purpose of those games is to reach max level.

While different people will have different opinions on what the point of Warframe is, one thing the point certainly isn't is to reach your max cap in order to take part in the content. The content doesn't need you to be max, only higher than a set point, with plenty of room to grow above that point.

Gating the content based on how much progress you've made is a smart move that has shown a lot of benefits in Warframe, yes, you're not wrong in concept. You're just wrong in application of that concept, the statistic you want to use.

Hours in Warframe are not a way to gate any of the content, we've already had the feedback to content gated behind actual time, such as weapons hidden in the Daily Tribute system, which people hate, and Focus being a system that takes more than 50million points to clear, but even the highest ranked players in game right now can't earn more than 385k per day without Eidolon farming, meaning that there's literal months of grind ahead.

Besides that, it's like MR, it doesn't indicate the actual skill of the player or their ability in the game, it certainly doesn't dictate whether that player is one you would want on your Railjack with you.

Content is the way to gate Content in Warframe. It doesn't matter how many hours it takes, if you say that players can't access Empyrean until they've completed up to The Sacrifice, then that means they have to start the game, progress through the nodes to complete the Junctions to unlock the next planets, complete the Quests necessary to complete those Junctions, rank up to at least MR5 for The War Within, and so on. These are not quick and easy tasks. You can't just taxi to the nodes you need, because the Junctions are the things that grant you the relevant Quests to access the content.

This way a skilled player, one that you would want on your Railjack, who learned how to mod and learned how to play, would breeze through the game content and be able to take on Empyrean with you in only 30-50 hours of game play (that's been shown to be possible, quite easily if that player is actively learning and getting sound advice from their clan). Meanwhile somebody who isn't committed or skilled will struggle through, learn slower, and will naturally not finish the requisite content for 130-150 hours instead.

Gate players based on how much they can do and have done, not on how long they've been here.

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7 hours ago, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

I disagree here. I think DE focuses on what the largest requests are while building new content at a slower pace. The community barked very loudly about the new player experience and they are correct.

Players talked about making the game easier for new players to understand. Not clutter it up with more stuff.

 

7 hours ago, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

Whenever they attempt to please vets, it's met with, honestly, such a wide mixture of input, complaints, whines and addiction based comments that it just wouldn't be smart to allocate more resources to them (especially end game) until the next massive, lore involved update happens. 

Because they've pretty much never made such an attempt.

They've in fact stepped on their Veteran players consistently like the Excal Prime Vs Umbra poke I made. Rift, Sigil, Gamma Color and everything else in the game that could define a player as Veteran is non-exclusive. There's no game driven difference between a 1 month player and a 6+ year player. The only difference that used to exist was knowledge and use of the game's mechanics but the game doesn't ask that of it's players anymore. We're fighting the same level enemies we were fighting in 2014.

There literally is no Veteran content in Warframe.

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This will just be the shiny new toy like Plains and Fortuna. It will provide lackluster content that vets don't need as their current gear is overall better and the new players/casuals will play it for a little before going back to playing other games.

DE keeps giving us milk and cereal on paper plates. It tastes good, but its not as good as a proper bowl and the paper plate falls apart if used too many times.

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2 hours ago, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

Never heard of a one month player finding and/or earning the same as what a 6 year vet has collected. That is just not a true statement. 

Proven fact; a player can reach MR18 in 19 days. A player actually streamed it back when MR20 was the highest possible as a challenge. Did take over 8 hours a day playing, they did have to time their rank-up Mastery tests very carefully (hence 19 days rather than 18), and it was a player that knew what they were doing, in a clan where the other players did help them with ranking up weapons, and they definitely didn't Forma anything, but it's actually really easy to get Stuff(tm) in Warframe.

You can't get everything that a 6 year Vet can get, and there are definitely things that are exclusive to Events and similar that you would need to wait for, but you can get most of it.

That's why the rest of us are saying that even Time isn't a very good gate for the Empyrean content. You need to put it behind things that take time to get to, but are more based on how good the player is in the first place; content itself.

A player making a second account after having reached, say, MR27, then is somebody that you would actually want with you on an Empyrean mission when they reach that point, and that experienced player would know how to power through the content enough to reach that point quickly. But a new player wouldn't know what content exists and would need to follow the usual paths and learn the game before they actually got to the content necessary to unlock Empyrean.

See?

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Although I understand where you're coming from, it still validates my point. If a player is doing anything that long for that many days with group assistance and, assuming Hydron, then that player is not actually "playing" Warframe but simply exercising extremities... which is weird but ok.

That said, my primary reason for arguing for the time restrictions is lore. There's a reason why DE invests so much time in lore and that's because it's vital, motivational, structural and ideal for binding direction in any given situation.

Notice the use of lore to provide a more robust end game mode like disruption? Notice how much area of play is available on the new Jupiter tileset, complete with anti rush bonuses? It provides a better platform of growth for such an enormous game like this.

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8 hours ago, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

That said, my primary reason for arguing for the time restrictions is lore.

Which is why time isn't the restriction you should be using.

Content is the restriction you should be using. Because content is already gated that way.

A lot of players really hated the way Anthem gated its story mode, if you played it, because at a certain point, out of nowhere, they introduced a grind-fest that required you to go do a bunch of specific tasks over and over again in order to unlock a door.

But DE have been doing that the entire time, it's not out of nowhere, it's literally a part of the game from the first time you see a Junction (of which there are... 13 in game) and need to complete some relevant and some rather fetch-quest tasks. After that you encounter the game asking you to complete actual Quests before accessing content, where the Quests are only attainable by having finished Junctions as well as completed some rather fetch-quest styled tasks.

Unfortunately, because the Empyrean is a Dojo, a Clan, function for building and using, players will still see it. They can't not. But what you can say to them is 'until you've done X, you can't actually go on a Railjack mission, because otherwise you're doing content out of order'.

So how's this for gating; you can't access a Railjack mission until after... The Sacrifice.

What does that entail?

  1. Reach Venus Junction; complete the Vor's Prize quest, collect 20 mods, Apply 4 mods to a single Warframe or Weapon, Upgrade any mod to rank 2 or higher using Fusion.
  2. Reach Mercury Junction; Defeat Jackal, Complete 10 waves of Defense at Tessera in one mission, Rescue a Hostage from Linea, Defeat 5 Eximus Units.
  3. Reach Mars Junction; Complete Once Awake quest, Defeat 150 Frontier grineer on Earth, Collect 500 Rubedo, Complete Suisei on Mercury.
  4. Reach Phobos Junction; Defeat 150 enemies in a single mission on Mars, Scan 3 Cephalon Fragments on Mars, Open 3 Lith Relics
  5. Reach Ceres Junction; Defeat the boss of Phobos, Defeat the boss of Mars, kill 300 Arid Grineer, Refine a Relic on your Orbiter.
  6. Reach the Jupiter Junction; Complete The Archwing Quest, defeat the boss of Ceres, 10 minute Survival on Draco, Kill a Prosecutor
  7. Reach the Europa Junction; Complete Stolen Dreams quest, complete Teshub in the Void, Craft a Specter
  8. Reach the Saturn Junction; complete The New Strange quest, Defeat the boss on Jupiter, complete Baal on Europa.
  9. Reach the Uranus Junction; defeat the boss on Saturn, Open 3 Meso Relics, craft a new weapon of at least MR1, craft a Derelict Key
  10. Reach Neptune Junction; complete the Natah quest, Defeat the boss on Uranus, Melee only 5 missions on Uranus, find all three Caches on a Sabotage on Uranus
  11. Reach Pluto Junction; complete The Second Dream quest, Defeat the boss on Neptune, complete a spy with 3 successful vaults on Neptune
  12. Reach Sedna Junction; Defeat Vay Hek on Earth, kill 5 Sentients on Lua, complete a Challenge Room on Lua, craft an MR5 or higher weapon
  13. Build your Personal Quarters
  14. Watch the Apostacy Prologue
  15. Complete The Sacrifice.

None of those, in and of themselves, are hard. The build up, however, and the actual in-game time involved? Well that can't be avoided. You can have a horrible time grinding up Rubedo in the early game, or you could die a lot on the junctions or bosses until you understand them. You could spend ages trying to find Cephalon Fragments, or the Archwing quest could throw you for a loop. You could spend ages completely unsure how to start Natah, and after you finish The Second Dream you could spend ages out trying to earn Focus for this new skill set you have. Even if you do, more stuff opens up in The War Within, and you also get to experience all the stuff you couldn't before in Cetus on Earth.

The potential time for accessing Empyrean content, the missions themselves, even though you've seen the function in game since you first joined a dojo, could be anywhere between 50 and 250 hours of game play depending on the person.

Meanwhile with just in-game hours dictating? They might not even have played a single Archwing mission, because they don't need to do the Quest for it until you want to go to Jupiter. Fine little idea, a slower player that does take their time exploring everything the early game has, collecting everything they can, doing everything they can, suddenly has access to a Railjack in their Dojo, but not an Archwing...

Time gating, in Warframe, achieves nothing. Only Content gating provides any judge of an unknown player's relative in-game competency up until a point. They might not be able to hit endgame, but they are aware of the game's systems, the way the game wants to be played (and they ways to get around that sometimes) and also they have more knowledge of what to actually expect when they take this stuff on.

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