General Feedback on Warframe as a whole

[ZStormWizard]

To start this lengthy post, I'd like to say that I will probably get flamed and receive a lot of negativity, but I hope that I can explain myself in a way that will make everyone seriously consider the future of the game, and maybe we can start seeing something change. I don't hold very high hopes of this happening, but I love Warframe, and the potential that it has. 

Unfortunately, that's all that it has. Potential. Warframe is a game full of potential, with the developers squandering that potential on useless filler features, the most recent of which being the Shawzin. Warframe holds a reputation of being one of the best free to play games of all time, and I still believe that it is. However, it has a long way to go before it can be considered a truly "great" game. I understand that Warframe is free. I understand that DE is a third party developer and a fairly small studio, however there is no excuse for the direction they have been taking the game. I've never seen a developer care as much about shadows and cloth physics as Steve has, when he has far more pressing issues, like the horrible enemy scaling, total lack of an end-game reward system, terrible new-player experience, and multiple large content updates to be working on. Just recently, in their rush to please the masses, they decided that instead of holding to their original plan to release Gauss and Grendel together, they instead pushed Gauss out because Grendel was, "too far off from being ready," or something dumb like that, assuring us that they're still best friends, even though Gauss left Grendel in the dust with this update.

I could go on and on about DE rushing updates, DE not giving us a proper end-game, DE's tendency to implement bugs as "features," etc, etc, but really, I'm here to suggest a potential solution, assuming DE cares to try to fix the many issues that players are having across Warframe.

Digital Extremes needs to take a break from forcing content, because that's just what it is. They're forcing content, they're out of ideas, and they're taking far too long to release the content we get promised. TennoCon 2018 promised Railjack and The New War. It is now September 2019, and we've not seen either of those updates released, and we won't until the end of 2019. This is RIDICULOUS. What has DE been up to for over a year? The "hotfixes" and "updates" we've received in the past 16 months can't possibly be what's holding them back. They had a playable mission for Railjack in 2018. But, I digress.

What I am proposing is a break from forcing content, and instead turning their focus to fixing the gamestate. The game has a horribly confusing new-player experience. The game has literally no end-game reward system for players who want to min-max and get everything they can out of their frames. The game has horrible enemy scaling, where any frame without invisibility, damage reduction, immunity, or some other form of absorbing insane amounts of damage is just rendered useless after a certain point. I'm proposing an Operation Health, for anyone familiar with Rainbow Six Siege, and Ubisoft's season dedicated to fixing the game. Warframe needs to be fixed. Give us proper damage/armor scaling for enemies. Give us rewards for high tier players. Give new players a chance to learn the game on their own, give us a means to find information without relying on the wiki. Give us a game, DE, not a trainwreck of broken parts strung together loosely with a frame and some nodes.

Sincerely,
A concerned Tenno.

[Uhkretor]

2 minutes ago, eXSive said:

To start this lengthy post, I'd like to say that I will probably get flamed and receive a lot of negativity, but I hope that I can explain myself in a way that will make everyone seriously consider the future of the game, and maybe we can start seeing something change. I don't hold very high hopes of this happening, but I love Warframe, and the potential that it has. 

Unfortunately, that's all that it has. Potential. Warframe is a game full of potential, with the developers squandering that potential on useless filler features, the most recent of which being the Shawzin. Warframe holds a reputation of being one of the best free to play games of all time, and I still believe that it is. However, it has a long way to go before it can be considered a truly "great" game. I understand that Warframe is free. I understand that DE is a third party developer and a fairly small studio, however there is no excuse for the direction they have been taking the game. I've never seen a developer care as much about shadows and cloth physics as Steve has, when he has far more pressing issues, like the horrible enemy scaling, total lack of an end-game reward system, terrible new-player experience, and multiple large content updates to be working on. Just recently, in their rush to please the masses, they decided that instead of holding to their original plan to release Gauss and Grendel together, they instead pushed Gauss out because Grendel was, "too far off from being ready," or something dumb like that, assuring us that they're still best friends, even though Gauss left Grendel in the dust with this update.

I could go on and on about DE rushing updates, DE not giving us a proper end-game, DE's tendency to implement bugs as "features," etc, etc, but really, I'm here to suggest a potential solution, assuming DE cares to try to fix the many issues that players are having across Warframe.

Digital Extremes needs to take a break from forcing content, because that's just what it is. They're forcing content, they're out of ideas, and they're taking far too long to release the content we get promised. TennoCon 2018 promised Railjack and The New War. It is now September 2019, and we've not seen either of those updates released, and we won't until the end of 2019. This is RIDICULOUS. What has DE been up to for over a year? The "hotfixes" and "updates" we've received in the past 16 months can't possibly be what's holding them back. They had a playable mission for Railjack in 2018. But, I digress.

What I am proposing is a break from forcing content, and instead turning their focus to fixing the gamestate. The game has a horribly confusing new-player experience. The game has literally no end-game reward system for players who want to min-max and get everything they can out of their frames. The game has horrible enemy scaling, where any frame without invisibility, damage reduction, immunity, or some other form of absorbing insane amounts of damage is just rendered useless after a certain point. I'm proposing an Operation Health, for anyone familiar with Rainbow Six Siege, and Ubisoft's season dedicated to fixing the game. Warframe needs to be fixed. Give us proper damage/armor scaling for enemies. Give us rewards for high tier players. Give new players a chance to learn the game on their own, give us a means to find information without relying on the wiki. Give us a game, DE, not a trainwreck of broken parts strung together loosely with a frame and some nodes.

Sincerely,
A concerned Tenno.

So~, you basically wanted Railjack, The New War, with both Gauss and Grendel like they mentioned before and are annoyed for not getting the whole package, with the whole mass of bugs that would come with the full release... I'm not going to ask if I am right, because that's what I got from it all.

 

Anyway, once you're done venting, you can keep company to the masses from within by waiting for the rest like everyone else.

With that said! I'm gone, kthxbye.

[Loza03]

Early 2018 called, where they tried something not unlike that - taking some time out to try and fix the game.. Over the course of that year, Warframe's general player curve (line of best fit within the peaks and troughs) turned downward, at least on steam. I'm not too worried because this has happened before, again on steam, but still.

Also:

9 minutes ago, eXSive said:

They had a playable mission for Railjack in 2018

No they didn't. They had some smoke and mirrors using the very base technology without anything else. The whole mission was entirely pre-scripted. It was a tech demo with some better textures and voice acting slapped over it.

[Gods_Eye]

Just now, Uhkretor said:

So~, you basically wanted Railjack, The New War, with both Gauss and Grendel like they mentioned before and are annoyed for not getting the whole package, with the whole mass of bugs that would come with the full release... I'm not going to ask if I am right, because that's what I got from it all.

 

Anyway, once you're done venting, you can keep company to the masses from within by waiting for the rest like everyone else.

With that said! I'm gone, kthxbye.

You completely misunderstood what's been said. He's annoyed that all we get is forced content that isn't complete, also not happy that the Devs aren't showing signs of legitimate consistency to rectifying their issues with original release ideas. No one is saying "RUSH IT", but what is being said is to get the game on point with all the bugs that are here, to fix the issues with the game as they are now, and then to move on to new content.

The fact that when they release new content with bugs they haven't fixed.. like I still randomly lose my 2nd jump when I clearly pressed jump once, or exploiter still bugs out, etc.. etc.. I'm for the idea to have DE chill out, sit back and get their priorities straight, the game issues handled, then to move onto new content.

[ZStormWizard]

6 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Early 2018 called, where they tried something not unlike that - taking some time out to try and fix the game.. Over the course of that year, Warframe's general player curve (line of best fit within the peaks and troughs) turned downward, at least on steam. I'm not too worried because this has happened before, again on steam, but still.

Oh no, a few players left because DE stopped giving us new content for a couple months-- oh wait, they already do that! Maybe they should focus a bit harder on it, next time. We've been seeing teaser after teaser of a new player experience rework, of The New War, of Empyrian, and we've not seen any of it. They're overpromising, and underdelivering, on top of all the other issues we see within the game.

[Wolfglaive]

Seems like you need to learn to pay attention. We weren't "promised" Railjack OR the New War in 2018, they were teased at most, much like the Duviri Paradox was teased at TennoCon 2019. Most of your other complaints also seem to either be a disingenuous reading of events or based in a lack of understanding.

[Sloan441]

Funny, I remember seeing exactly this same sort of post back in, oh, '13 and '14. 

We're still here (and the Imperial 'we' is still here at 6K+ hours). 

Who knew?

[Loza03]

12 minutes ago, eXSive said:

Oh no, a few players left because DE stopped giving us new content for a couple months-- oh wait, they already do that! Maybe they should focus a bit harder on it, next time. We've been seeing teaser after teaser of a new player experience rework, of The New War, of Empyrian, and we've not seen any of it. They're overpromising, and underdelivering, on top of all the other issues we see within the game.

 

20 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

(line of best fit within the peaks and troughs)

This isn't the normal cycle. That persists (although it did stagnate during the period they were doing that in). But the average has begun to go down from the after-effects of that time frame. The highest peak in 2018 was 131,000. The highest at the relative point in the year for where we are, 121,000. This year, the biggest peak is 115,000, but with similar troughs.

 

And, yes, seeing a lot of teasers is generally what happens when a company known for communicating with their community shows something at the start of its development cycle. Also, speaking of - they are also doing the whole 'develop a lot of projects at once' thing this year. Last year, after the relative stagnation of the first part, they dived headfirst into the Sacrifice to get that out ASAP, then repeated that with Fortuna. Sacrifice was made in 3 months. This time, they're working on several things at once so when they do all release, they'll be bigger, better and more complete. New War, notably, started its active development phase in January, and began post production not long after Tennocon 2018 (Steve discusses scripts for it around that time). If they were working on that, and just that, it would have taken a similar timeframe to the Sacrifice - or at least that much stands to reason.

Game Development of the kind you're asking for just takes a really bloody long time, is what I'm saying.

[Gods_Eye]

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Game Development of the kind you're asking for just takes a really bloody long time, is what I'm saying.

That's pretty ironic, though. Considering that this game has built up its time gate play to burning people out with overly repetitive content. Not only because of there being overly repetitive content, there are bugs from content released that are still issues that eat away at ones willingness to play/enjoy the game. At this point, knowing the quality of releases have proven to be problematic and messy -- wouldn't you want them to take their long time to get it right?! Furthermore, with variety in mission/activity content (new) to help sustain not only mine and yours but others' interest to continue playing with rightfully stifled complaints?

I mean, the scaling in this game is kind of a joke as an example of many to point out for "issues with the game." Bugs... I wish to not get started, but I'll point out that there are still bug issues that still hasn't been fixed -- Where I I can't swap weapons nor cast abilities or do anything else relating to my warframe/operator -- other than run or walk (depending when the bug happened). I would have to abort the mission or sometimes full-reboot the game for it to go back to "normal." This has been a bug that's been here for years! Why?! Another, why is exploiter still bugging at the doors to start or continue the mission (how long has this mission been live)?! These are examples of many that causes grief when playing the game.

So if it's going to take "...a really bloody long time...", so be it. I would like to play knowing there is new and exciting things to come and/or do -- without dealing with issues that should have been taken care of months to years ago. 

I'd rather wait and have DE address all of it, fix all of it, and then move onto new content. Take the time, quit rushing things out! ;]

[Loza03]

31 minutes ago, Gods_Eye said:

That's pretty ironic, though. Considering that this game has built up its time gate play to burning people out with overly repetitive content. Not only because of there being overly repetitive content, there are bugs from content released that are still issues that eat away at ones willingness to play/enjoy the game. At this point, knowing the quality of releases have proven to be problematic and messy -- wouldn't you want them to take their long time to get it right?! Furthermore, with variety in mission/activity content (new) to help sustain not only mine and yours but others' interest to continue playing with rightfully stifled complaints?

I mean, the scaling in this game is kind of a joke as an example of many to point out for "issues with the game." Bugs... I wish to not get started, but I'll point out that there are still bug issues that still hasn't been fixed -- Where I I can't swap weapons nor cast abilities or do anything else relating to my warframe/operator -- other than run or walk (depending when the bug happened). I would have to abort the mission or sometimes full-reboot the game for it to go back to "normal." This has been a bug that's been here for years! Why?! Another, why is exploiter still bugging at the doors to start or continue the mission (how long has this mission been live)?! These are examples of many that causes grief when playing the game.

So if it's going to take "...a really bloody long time...", so be it. I would like to play knowing there is new and exciting things to come and/or do -- without dealing with issues that should have been taken care of months to years ago. 

I'd rather wait and have DE address all of it, fix all of it, and then move onto new content. Take the time, quit rushing things out! ;]

Believe me, I'd like nothing more for them to take some dedicated time out to rebalance the game.

But they can't.

About 3 months of doing that led to a stagnation in players - which to their investors in Leyou, looks like a bad thing, and would definitely have lead to worse things down the road - and the subsequent 'Uh, oh, CONTENT NAO' response led to content of varying degrees of quality.

DE, unfortunately, is a business. And that does mean that they have to stay afloat. Running a game like Warframe, let alone developing things for it, is not cheap. The best we can get and hope for is the gradual approach. Measure your expectations - don't expect every new thing to be some great massive update that's going to fix everything - because it won't be. I try to be optimistic whenever I can, but the bright side is only one side. Try to enjoy what you have, rather than what you might have.

As for bugs - this is a six year old MMO game that  had most of its core built when they thought it was a corporate suicide, and built on a modified single-player engine. What, frankly, do you expect?

[Gods_Eye]

As a business you'd push more often than not to get your product as close to ideal as possible because that would only bring in more business. It's a win-win situation. If we're talking business, you'd generally build to a more transparent relationship with your consumers, so when you do make fixes and/or balances -- they would be more earlier on so they wouldn't be so-compounded to the mess we're dealing with today. So, if we're talking business.. it's been poor business practice that's landed them in this situation. Now, I'm not saying the game is horrible; however, I am saying it is trash due to over-time poor decisions, where time has been invested, and the lack of accountability. 6yrs worth of time and we're still dealing with 6yrs worth of bugs.... Not okay, especially in a business.

[Loza03]

2 hours ago, Gods_Eye said:

As a business you'd push more often than not to get your product as close to ideal as possible because that would only bring in more business. It's a win-win situation. If we're talking business, you'd generally build to a more transparent relationship with your consumers, so when you do make fixes and/or balances -- they would be more earlier on so they wouldn't be so-compounded to the mess we're dealing with today. So, if we're talking business.. it's been poor business practice that's landed them in this situation. Now, I'm not saying the game is horrible; however, I am saying it is trash due to over-time poor decisions, where time has been invested, and the lack of accountability. 6yrs worth of time and we're still dealing with 6yrs worth of bugs.... Not okay, especially in a business.

Please, tell me about your in-depth knowledge about DE's financial and business situation across the years. Things usually aren't as simple as they seem, and only hindsight is 20/20.

For example - yes, pushing towards as good of a product as possible is the ideal. But what defines 'good'? Do you follow the good advice that will take a long time, lose you customers in the short term and might kill your game before it recovers? Or do you go for the option to try and slowly improve it over time which isn't as advisable from an artistic sense but keeps the piranhas of business from eating you alive? Or some mix? Because DE are working on it, slowly. Very slowly, but Steve's indicated that he wants to trial damage 3.0 (AKA fixing armour scaling) in Railjack.

 

And again: MMO. Six years old. Early foundational code probably wasn't as future-proofed as it could have been. Single Player engine patched into multiplayer. And then add on funding because DE don't exactly have unlimited budget to work with.

[Steel_Rook]

18 hours ago, eXSive said:

I've never seen a developer care as much about shadows and cloth physics as Steve has, when he has far more pressing issues, like the horrible enemy scaling, total lack of an end-game reward system, terrible new-player experience, and multiple large content updates to be working on.

I agree. The art team should stop doing art for the game and immediately start working on fixing level scaling and implementing a new reward system. I'm being facetious, but these are old fallacies I've been hearing for over 15 years by this point. You have the "stop developing new content and fix bugs" fallacy and the "stop working on one thing and work on a completely unrelated thing, instead."

For the former, that is not an option. Lack of new content - be it new stuff or revamps of old stuff - always comes with a major drop in player retention. Every single time a Live Service game has stopped its new content for a long period of time, its rate of burnout has cascaded. Warframe has the scars to prove it, as does every single game I've seen attempt this in the past.

For the latter, different people with different expertise work on different parts of a game. In many cases, crunch-time for one department coincides with another department kicking their heels and twiddling their thumbs. If you're working on very coding-heavy content, the programmers will be swamped by the artists will have nothing to do. If you're revamping a tileset, you're usually riding your artists pretty hard while programmers have a light load. In order to keep everyone busy, sometimes fluff content is developed, usually by people with a lighter workload.

Honestly, this post comes across as a number of personal gripes couched as criticisms of towards the studio for doing literally anything else.

[Femuru]

Maybe I'm reading something wrong but wanting to see Railjack and new war is kind of a contradiction to not forcing content and wanting to fix up the game. However I can agree with basically most of the points. 

The game has too many issues that need fixing or an overhaul such damage 3.0, melee 3.0, ehp values, enemy scaling, enemy mechanics, new player experience, veteran endgame, open worlds, mission pacing, conclave/pvp, nuke abilities, frame reworks, time gating, junction gating, story layout, maybe more map remasters. Most of their "fixes" had been too small/insignificant or done completely wrong/out of order.

I remember a time when I wanted new content cuz in most games new content usually fixes up some old issues but in Warframes case it bring new ones. Ppl told me DE took some time to fix stuff but tbh these past years after the 2nd dream, they honestly haven't. Many of the main issues still stands for several years in fact so it would be nice to see a REAL fix up. 

Looking at weapon changes its mainly based on usage rather than performance. Enemies got slightly different with the corpus but each one wasn't catered/upgraded with a purpose to play so of course we will still cheese them (but no pure immunity won't work, maybe partial). Nerfs like ember made no sense cuz there are far stronger frames while she needed more of a rework from a lazy playstyle. Adding adaptation made ehp values more strange with stacks of damage reductions. New modes only came up to die after a week or two that still hold old existing issues. Conclave changes mean nothing if the overall feel of it is still horrible. Story dont hold relevance as the 2nd dream cuz they are starting to feel like side stories that don't answer anything major or have good writing. 

Honestly idc about waiting anymore, I just want to see this product completed and not feel like its the beta oh wait it is after 6 long years. They have an amazing team with personality, a game that has a great base concept, and community that'll defend them to the point of being illogical so yea it's kinda disappointing to see where its at like a diamond being buried rather than dug. 

Edited September 8, 2019 by SutomuDrgn