At What Part of The Game Do You Think The Majority of NEW Players Quit The Game?

[SayikVindal]

1 hour ago, FrostDragoon said:

The two things I will say about that are (1) if your opinions are poorly formed due to incomplete/bad information, you can't pin that on the game itself--at least not entirely. There's a certain amount of this where it is reasonable to expect the player to put in some time/effort/thought in order for that player to successfully engage with the game. In a similar vein, (2) you provided suggestions that you believe may help, but if they are based on the same flaws as those previous opinions, it is on you to fully understand the issue or the game better before those suggestions have much merit.

None of this is intended as a personal attack of any kind, but the point of asking why new players might leave is only useful in the scope of "What can the game do better to encourage those players to stay?" When people are leaving because of things that are more to do with them than the game, it's not that useful toward that end.

 I appreciate your candor. Though you make a good point as far as flawed thinking on the part of new players I don't think you understand the nature of the question.

The question quite frankly is why are players leaving, or more accurately why do we think they're leaving. Just like most games when a player starts a game they are pretty ignorant to the game mechanics. This is usually abated somewhat by a good tutorial.

This game generally lacks that IMO.

 Foolish or not new players do perceive the game in a certain way and that perception can cause them to leave. Leaving for flawed reasons is still leaving after all.

 The reason that I feel players leave may not be accurate, but I'm not basing those assumptions on faulty information... I'm basing them on my first impressions of the game, which were obviously and definitely flawed.

 But as a new player I am assuming that my view of the game wasn't that much different than what others have experienced or will experience, and therefore base my opinion on that premise.

 So, should a game change in order to cater to brand new players that are not really fair in their views of the game? Perhaps not, but if player bleed is serious enough this might be something that they have to look at.

L2P has no place, therefore in this particular discussion.

Edited October 19, 2019 by SayikVindal

[FrostDragoon]

If you try to ignore the L2P side of it, you end up having to dumb the game down to such a point that it's no longer fun. This is what ruined WoW in the long run and why their player count tanked when MoP dropped (and every expansion after). That's only one easy example off the top of my head, but I have seen it happen repeatedly. Player perception is also something that every game has to contend with, but it's not some carte blanche excuse to think that every reason someone leaves is valid with regard to the health of that game's population. I generally take the attitude that if a player clearly understands what's going on and still finds faults with it that cause them to leave, those are legitimately worth looking it--and we have seen many of those kinds of reasons in this thread already.

[SayikVindal]

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

If you try to ignore the L2P side of it, you end up having to dumb the game down to such a point that it's no longer fun. This is what ruined WoW in the long run and why their player count tanked when MoP dropped (and every expansion after). That's only one easy example off the top of my head, but I have seen it happen repeatedly. Player perception is also something that every game has to contend with, but it's not some carte blanche excuse to think that every reason someone leaves is valid with regard to the health of that game's population. I generally take the attitude that if a player clearly understands what's going on and still finds faults with it that cause them to leave, those are legitimately worth looking it--and we have seen many of those kinds of reasons in this thread already.

Fair enough. We simply do not agree on this. If players are leaving early on before they learn the game, the problem is the game, not the players. This game is not friendly to new players IMO period.

[Grimm]

given my experience in helping new players i say alot of them give up on there first glitch or when they cant do a junction. alot will get stuck at mr 0 unable to complete the plains node as it requires mr 1 to complete. others will get stuck on a junction they cant complete because they havent learnt how to mod thus can not understand how to defeat the junction, others will quit once they have all things and are bored as hell and will return when new content comes out just to vanish again after completing all the new content.

[FrostDragoon]

8 hours ago, SayikVindal said:

Fair enough. We simply do not agree on this. If players are leaving early on before they learn the game, the problem is the game, not the players. This game is not friendly to new players IMO period.

It isn't that I entirely disagree. I mentioned earlier that I can easily see room for the game to improve certain things about the new player experience, and I would prefer that the frustration they feel would only be from difficulty rather than confusion. Where we do disagree is that I see these as low level complaints from people who likely quit anything real easily. The suggestions you offered are like taking some soft classical music that you listen to at a volume of 2 or 3 and ramping it up to 11 and then putting a megaphone next to the speakers. It's unnecessary and will make a lot of people upset. Instead, turn it up to about 4 and change the station. To move out of the analogy and into specifics, I don't think it would be hard to include a pictographic Help index on the main menu (one spot above Exit/Quit). Plenty of games do this and it works out pretty well without requiring huge overhauls in the game's systems to accommodate players that need it spelled out a bit more.

Here's one from PSO2 explaining how Rings work:

It's pretty straightforward, so it just has to cover relevant topics for brand new players:

- How MR works

- How the Star Chart works, especially junctions

- How quests and the Alert window work

- Modding tutorial (though I found this to be self-explanatory, personally)

- How to find blueprints in the shop that you can build along with weapons that don't need to be built (without spending plat)

These would all be good to address, even if the only thing that isn't obvious to most players I've met is how MR works.

 

I spend a lot of my play time either farming for gear I don't have or helping new players get on their feet. I'm sure people might take the tone of some of these replies as dismissive, but it's simply a matter of, "How much effort are you willing to put in to understand the game?" The vast majority of the game is designed like the old Mega Man games--learn by doing. You will make mistakes, but you learn better from mistakes than by any other means.

The biggest criticism I've always levied against DE with regard to new players is how much p2w sh*t is thrown in your face when you just start the game. Unless those players have the wherewithal to ask in chat about that stuff, they will get a very wrong impression about the game. Despite the trolls we regularly see in chat, there are plenty of people willing to give advice, answer questions, and help people out. Huh, weird... it's almost as if it's an online game or something.

[Killa_Byte]

when they find out their is nothing to do then farm relics

[Pikaapooo]

On 2019-10-18 at 1:49 PM, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

I figured it out in a less than 2 minute youtube video. 

 

You dont even have to watch full videos: you skip ahead past all the dumb talking.

How do you make guaranteed spawn on Natah scan targets in 2 mins?

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

46 minutes ago, Pikaapooo said:

How do you make guaranteed spawn on Natah scan targets in 2 mins?

If something doesn't spawn, it takes 2 seconds to restart a planet mission. But if I remember correctly, they spawn by having the quest active, needless to say. It's the grineer sea lab, so it was some mission on Neptune or Uranus wherever it was. There's a group of blue drones floating around. You get a stealth scan by not running around blasting everything like a loudmouth. Edit: and there's a sound when the drones are in vicinity

 

Is that what you're referring to?

Edited October 21, 2019 by (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu

[Zebiko]

Really difficult to pin down one reason. But all major games will have a huge amount of people trying it, but will eventually quit. I bet if all the biggest games made a graph of (number of players quitting) x (time spent playing), it would look like a negative log function. It would show an exponential decay as time increases. 

I feel like they all try to make changes to the early game to try to deminish the loss of new players, and warframe isn't an exception. When I first started, all the missions were on the same tile set on Earth. Now, if you start a new game, almost every mission, until the end of the first quest, has a different tile set on earth. 

[Uber.Munchkin]

I think it's the crafting wall that does it for a lot of new players.

I have persuaded several of my friends to try out the game over the years I've been playing but only 2 of them have stuck with it.  All the others looked at the crafting times for new gear and decided that it was "a waste of their time".  Now, I don't really agree with that, I think that in a free to play game having a time barrier that can be removed with currency is a reasonable thing to do, it doesn't block you from getting the content, it just makes you wait a bit.  Although 3 days for a frame is a bit much.

But yeah, apart from the crafting time thing the only other things I've reliably seen people complaining about as reasons why they have left are the really bad/missing explanations for how to effectively mod weapons/gear and the MR Tests, I had one friend (playing on console) who got to one of the sharpshooter MR tests and found it basically impossible to do with a console controller and just quit the game.  

[FrostDragoon]

5 minutes ago, Uber.Munchkin said:

I think it's the crafting wall that does it for a lot of new players.

I have persuaded several of my friends to try out the game over the years I've been playing but only 2 of them have stuck with it.  All the others looked at the crafting times for new gear and decided that it was "a waste of their time".  Now, I don't really agree with that, I think that in a free to play game having a time barrier that can be removed with currency is a reasonable thing to do, it doesn't block you from getting the content, it just makes you wait a bit.  Although 3 days for a frame is a bit much.

But yeah, apart from the crafting time thing the only other things I've reliably seen people complaining about as reasons why they have left are the really bad/missing explanations for how to effectively mod weapons/gear and the MR Tests, I had one friend (playing on console) who got to one of the sharpshooter MR tests and found it basically impossible to do with a console controller and just quit the game.  

I honestly find the MR tests to be dumb and pointless, but that particular one isn't hard. I've done it repeatedly on both PC and console. Not to be too much of an a**hole about it, but that one really is just a matter of "git gud" or have a friend do it for you, lol.

[Uber.Munchkin]

9 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

I honestly find the MR tests to be dumb and pointless, but that particular one isn't hard. I've done it repeatedly on both PC and console. Not to be too much of an a**hole about it, but that one really is just a matter of "git gud" or have a friend do it for you, lol.

People who play games have different levels of skill.  I didn't find that MR test hard either, but my friend did and the whole process of doing it was so frustrating that she quit the game.  I didn't think the point of this thread was to post "Get Good Scrub" but to talk about what we think the barriers to new players are.  The MR test is absolutely one of those barriers, it doesn't really serve any purpose (I agree there) but DE seem to be committed to keeping it regardless, so it remains an annoying barrier.  

Edited October 21, 2019 by Uber.Munchkin
Spelling

[FrostDragoon]

26 minutes ago, Uber.Munchkin said:

People who play games have different levels of skill.  I didn't find that MR test hard either, but my friend did and the whole process of doing it was so frustrating that she quit the game.  I didn't think the point of this thread was to post "Get Good Scrub" but to talk about what we think the barriers to new players are.  The MR test is absolutely one of those barriers, it doesn't really serve any purpose (I agree there) but DE seem to be committed to keeping it regardless, so it remains an annoying barrier.  

I wasn't saying the point of the thread was to post that stuff, but I've seen many, many cases where people simply give up too easily instead of looking for solutions. Aside from the preachy bull**it about not going through life like that in general, I find it pretty sad that so many people miss out on how much this game actually has to offer for such a pitiful reason. The one thing about the MR tests that keeps them from being total cancer is that you can practice them as much as you want until you're comfortable taking the qualifier. I can tell you that some of them can be pretty frustrating, but you just keep trying until you get it. Some of them have clever ways to get past them too. You also "technically" don't need to be any higher than MR 16 for most of the stuff in the game, which isn't really that high of a climb.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

That MR test in particular required me changing all my settings for look and aim speed, which I promptly changed back after the test was done... no getting gud, because the rest of the game is nothing like that.

 

[FrostDragoon]

7 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

That MR test in particular required me changing all my settings for look and aim speed, which I promptly changed back after the test was done... no getting gud, because the rest of the game is nothing like that.

 

How low are your settings, lol? It doesn't go that fast. 😉

[Crasharr]

MR 9 test

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

5 hours ago, FrostDragoon said:

How low are your settings, lol? It doesn't go that fast. 😉

Look Sensitivity, Aim Sensitivity, Scoped: 45 each

Going too high just makes everything spin out of control when I'm trying to precisely aim and target where I want to go. Had to bump them up to 70ish for the test, at least for me.

[FrostDragoon]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Look Sensitivity, Aim Sensitivity, Scoped: 45 each

Going too high just makes everything spin out of control when I'm trying to precisely aim and target where I want to go. Had to bump them up to 70ish for the test, at least for me.

Weird. Most of my settings are 35-50 and didn't find it too slow at all.

[Pikaapooo]

On 2019-10-21 at 12:15 AM, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

If something doesn't spawn, it takes 2 seconds to restart a planet mission. But if I remember correctly, they spawn by having the quest active, needless to say. It's the grineer sea lab, so it was some mission on Neptune or Uranus wherever it was. There's a group of blue drones floating around. You get a stealth scan by not running around blasting everything like a loudmouth. Edit: and there's a sound when the drones are in vicinity

 

Is that what you're referring to?

You didn't answer the question.

[FrostDragoon]

On 2019-10-20 at 8:28 PM, Pikaapooo said:

How do you make guaranteed spawn on Natah scan targets in 2 mins?

I'm not sure if you can "make" it be a guaranteed spawn, but they spawned every time I ran the Capture, Exterminate, or Sabotage missions when I had the quest active. Hope that's an answer you can use.

[Excaulibar]

On 2019-09-11 at 5:44 PM, --Brandt-- said:

Judging by Reddit and being in Twitch streams, a ton of new players complain about the crafting times and waiting 3 days for a frame. So they stop playing.

Yeah so I was thinking, maybe depending on the difficulty of getting the frame it would vary how much time should be spent...

Ex. MR1 starts to build a frame say Rhino, if he or she doesn't quite have godly weapons for their MR then the time for the blueprint should be taken down. However if the same MR1 has the godly weapons for their MR then make the components crafting time 3 hours shorter and the build time for the blueprint vary. 

Now for a MR 27, it is different. they know that they basically have found the godly weapons required to get them the components and blueprints faster. But the lessen the grindiness for some of them. but they will still have to wait 3 days for it since they have a higher rank.

Now making the grindiness for everything slightly lower, by increasing the percentages. 

Ex. Ash. You farm the same mission, yet have a small chance of getting a part then a low chance of getting the one part you need.

Ex. Primes. Farming bounties should have a greater chance of getting a part, a better chance of getting the relic of the prime you want, a change might help. Same goes with missions

Edited October 23, 2019 by Excaulibar

[Excaulibar]

On 2019-10-19 at 11:41 AM, FrostDragoon said:

It isn't that I entirely disagree. I mentioned earlier that I can easily see room for the game to improve certain things about the new player experience, and I would prefer that the frustration they feel would only be from difficulty rather than confusion. Where we do disagree is that I see these as low level complaints from people who likely quit anything real easily. The suggestions you offered are like taking some soft classical music that you listen to at a volume of 2 or 3 and ramping it up to 11 and then putting a megaphone next to the speakers. It's unnecessary and will make a lot of people upset. Instead, turn it up to about 4 and change the station. To move out of the analogy and into specifics, I don't think it would be hard to include a pictographic Help index on the main menu (one spot above Exit/Quit). Plenty of games do this and it works out pretty well without requiring huge overhauls in the game's systems to accommodate players that need it spelled out a bit more.

Here's one from PSO2 explaining how Rings work:

It's pretty straightforward, so it just has to cover relevant topics for brand new players:

- How MR works

- How the Star Chart works, especially junctions

- How quests and the Alert window work

- Modding tutorial (though I found this to be self-explanatory, personally)

- How to find blueprints in the shop that you can build along with weapons that don't need to be built (without spending plat)

These would all be good to address, even if the only thing that isn't obvious to most players I've met is how MR works.

 

I spend a lot of my play time either farming for gear I don't have or helping new players get on their feet. I'm sure people might take the tone of some of these replies as dismissive, but it's simply a matter of, "How much effort are you willing to put in to understand the game?" The vast majority of the game is designed like the old Mega Man games--learn by doing. You will make mistakes, but you learn better from mistakes than by any other means.

The biggest criticism I've always levied against DE with regard to new players is how much p2w sh*t is thrown in your face when you just start the game. Unless those players have the wherewithal to ask in chat about that stuff, they will get a very wrong impression about the game. Despite the trolls we regularly see in chat, there are plenty of people willing to give advice, answer questions, and help people out. Huh, weird... it's almost as if it's an online game or something.

I honestly agree... with the things that you covered but I would also add more of a direct path to getting to end of the narrative, then have side quests, and after they have done those things they can go grind for more frames, do game modes or gear to an endgame.

If DE doesn't make it flop. I think though that redoing some of the main story quests leading to the second dream will help make the story better, and will make the second dream less of a shock of how poorly done most of the content is. However building up after the second dream will be beneficial because it will make the dept better and people will notice the upward trend of the improvement.

Though I feel that going from Vor's quest to the Sacrifice. When up then at the second dream, peaked, mildly went down then dropped fairly more, then came up abruptly to the level of content as Vor's Quest. It only took me like 2 days of real time to play the Sacrifice after a few breaks. I really enjoy the game and am glad for it. I just hope that the will be a mildly more distinct road map for new players.
 

And fix some of the other aging content. I enjoy it though. Although they could have made Grendel be the one to be obtained through disruption and make Gauss a quest, but it is how it has happened. But I do think that there is some more thing that can be changed but that will take a lot of text to get out and even then I might not get the right idea out. Or a practical if we are being technical.

[Excaulibar]

On 2019-09-22 at 5:15 AM, FrostDragoon said:

I have to disagree that complexity alone is responsible for that difference. Partially because older games taught you how to play through design and expected you to try all the buttons to learn the controls. The other part is because you can compartmentalize every system in Warframe into something that isn't hard to understand. I think it's more that players are too lazy/entitled to believe they should have to go look for their own answers these days, because there isn't a question that a newbie could reasonably ask that the answer hasn't been provided hundreds of times.

 

The one thing DE could do to resolve a lot of the "Vor's Prize, now what?" syndrome is to have the Lotus inbox you some tutorial directions in the form of:

-Explain what MR is and how it is raised, why it's important, and the cheap/easy methods to get more early (MK1 weapons, for example).

-Explain how the Star Chart works and how to progress in it, including Junctions.

-Explain in more depth how mods work, polarities, and the importance of increasing mod rank. Maybe even provide about 200 Endo to get them started and some pointers on how to get more.

That's it. Most of these are self-explanatory enough that just these instructions would give enough direction for players to branch out and explore to progress their game. The game itself wouldn't really need anything changed on this front.

I like that and maybe as they get better make the Orokin things less difficult. I mean I don't have much endo but I could use my excess mods to do it.

 

[Excaulibar]

On 2019-10-03 at 3:03 AM, IIWingSaberII said:

Unfortunately in the hindsight, I don't work for DE nor have comprehensive stats for it that exist before me in front of my desk where the grind is endless and RNG is my cruel mistress. 

If the player wishes to skip the progression by the paying and winning the game easily, you do realize the obvious fact, no mind will love to stick is the simple rule in the textbook which is a given fact as a dopamine in their brains being registered and shall keep seeking new content in order to get attracted. 

Essentially, here are the following thoughts of new players and vets will quit at any junction in this game according to my opinion :-

• If you give everything for free, like a father who gives to the child who never works hard, they will definitely quit at any junction in order to skip challenges be in any context of a human life. Literally, spoiled minds can never appreciate anybody's work and process behind it unless the kindness is brought to halt and Devs will face endless misery of  creating new content for each update rather patching the previous ones in order to satiate every players mind. Hence, the community stays divided and starts playing spartans to conquer over here or in-game for that matter. In a nutshell, kindness is your enemy and don't go overboard with it, please.
• Excessive payment wall like booster packages is fruitful to company in terms of microtranscations as we all deliciously love food arriving from branded fast food corner in a single purchase which serves as another dopamine factor of any player's brain and brag about it to other players after joining the random public session. Seriously, are these kind of players trying to assist with salty thoughts placed towards rest of squad members, just because you bought a booster or received it for free from the sortie rewards.This point of this thinking is still bizarre apart for obvious point unless you wish for everyone to reciprocate on each statement I came across during my grind in all years of playing with randoms especially new players talk like I won a biggest lottery of my life and waiting for me to respond in false positive manner - "Hey, it's awesome to have your booster and will assist during our grind, join in, please". The cold reality truth of being vet is that we want to you to join in our squad in order to improve the drop rate that is set by game design regardless your booster and I don't try to objectify in any angles like a PvP player does for K/D in a match.
• The biggest spicy talks has been all about grind for both new players and vets as we rock in the same boat yet for some odd reason, we are united on this part. Sadly, DE turns a blind eye while drinking their wine having smug faces on the camera during a livestream. Is this some of canadian trait or culture, I prefer not to delve into this anymore over the years and remain stoic as usual nor have a choice in this matter to begin with. 
• DE loves to hear you out, if you're a star studded or a mini celebrity on the social media. If not, they are completely dismissive about giving any response to any individual unless your post get rated as hot in order to get their attention. Ultimately, what is the point being vocal on the forums since our opinions doesn't matter to them in the end. In all cases, I can never speak to a human being who shut their minds towards me and placed a wall of ignorance in front of my eyes. 
• The developers of this game has been on the following corroded path by bringing in, the true gambling factor such as riven mods which is no different from loot boxes which has made it worst in terms of grinding factors rather to focus on curtailing it anytime soon. However, the choice we have in our hands is that either accept or leave it. 

In conclusion, as I speak here from my experience and knowing the DE over the years, they couldn't care less about being any individual being vocal in any format, they will dismiss it at their discretion. As they say, give them a cake of grofit, people will listen. If not, nobody cares in the end is the cold reality we live in this world. 

P.S. I do sincerely apologize as my above points may have crucified and not a vent rather speaking my genuine experiences as individual player out here in this forums. 

I think this man deserves a Gold Medal of Honor 

[FrostDragoon]

3 hours ago, Excaulibar said:

Yeah so I was thinking, maybe depending on the difficulty of getting the frame it would vary how much time should be spent...

Ex. MR1 starts to build a frame say Rhino, if he or she doesn't quite have godly weapons for their MR then the time for the blueprint should be taken down. However if the same MR1 has the godly weapons for their MR then make the components crafting time 3 hours shorter and the build time for the blueprint vary. 

Now for a MR 27, it is different. they know that they basically have found the godly weapons required to get them the components and blueprints faster. But the lessen the grindiness for some of them. but they will still have to wait 3 days for it since they have a higher rank.

Now making the grindiness for everything slightly lower, by increasing the percentages. 

Ex. Ash. You farm the same mission, yet have a small chance of getting a part then a low chance of getting the one part you need.

Ex. Primes. Farming bounties should have a greater chance of getting a part, a better chance of getting the relic of the prime you want, a change might help. Same goes with missions

I like the approach, but not the how.

I would actually simplify it according to the drop source.

Star Chart boss drop frames: Parts build in 1 hour, complete frame builds in 3. 

Star Chart mission mode frames: Parts build in 3, complete frame in 6. (This is stuff like Ivara, Harrow, Octavia, etc)

Open world bounty frames: parts in 6, complete in 12.

Quest frames: parts in 6, complete in 12.

Post-game frames: Parts in 12, complete in 24. (This is stuff like ESO, Arbitration, Sorties, Eidolons, etc if/when they have frames from these sources.)

Clan Dojo and NightWave frames: parts in 12, complete in 36.

Prime and special variants (such as Vandal, Prisma, Wraith, etc): same as now.

Weapons should all be reduced to 12 or less, except for the variants mentioned above.

 

Granted, this is based on the assumption that DE actually wants to keep their arbitrary long build times. I'd rather remove build times entirely and remove the cash-grabby, p2w-looking "Rush" option outright.