What is the purpose of "downtime" between Nightwave seasons/intermissions?

[Oreades]

6 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

It’s better for them to take a week to make sure everything will actually work.

...... then they should be doing that the week(s) prior. 

Again if they want seamless releases across platforms that's the price they pay. 

Just like getting to an appointment, If you know there is going to be traffic, you leave early. 

Edited October 7, 2019 by Oreades

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, Screamlord_Star said:

y'all do realize the ACTUAL reason there's downtime in between nightwave season 2 and intermission is because they need to sync up the start of it with all platforms (which goes through cert on consoles) and intermission exists so we dont have months of nothing to do while they work on season 3... right? 

If there is a system to replace Alerts, an integral and important part of progression for Aura Mods/Nitain/Vauban/Weapons/etc., it should have 100% uptime with no exception. There is no reason why Intermission cannot be held right after the Emissary ends. It's not like Intermission has any cinematic portions or lore. Nora Creds are already implemented since last Intermission and the challenges are exactly the same. The only thing that needs some thought is rewards, but given there are only 15 Ranks, it is not super hard to add.

Nightwave in my opinion feels exactly like Sortie seasons. They feel thrown together as it goes. It would be nice if there was a structure like Prime Access. Nightwave seasons last say 60 days (2 months), a 4 week Intermission, and then the next season starts.

Edited October 7, 2019 by Voltage

[toafarmer]

17 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

It's just a week where nobody can get any Nitain, Aura mods, or Vauban parts. Who benefits from this? Why can't the next season/intermission simply start immediately after the last thing ends?

They give you a few weeks to do nothing while you wait for the new season so that you can do exactly the same thing for the exact same "rewards".

[elmetnuter]

First, there is people working on this game's content. Second, they have thrown a few alerts during that week before the intermission the last time. Please, don't panic.

[toafarmer]

Just now, elmetnuter said:

First, there is people working on this game's content. Second, they have thrown a few alerts during that week before the intermission the last time. Please, don't panic.

Whew, now I'm chilling again. After almost a year with basically no content we now have people working on it.

[elmetnuter]

2 minutes ago, toafarmer said:

Whew, now I'm chilling again. After almost a year with basically no content we now have people working on it.

Don't talk at me. I don't make this game. I was replying to the OP. I don't share your frustration if it's what's your trying to convey.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

Everybody saying that the downtown between seasons and intermissions are for DE to work on the next one have to be trolling. That makes literally no sense. Nightwave challenges and rewards are clearly chosen at random. Just let the bot choose one more set of challenges and rewards. Even if they are actually hand picked, it couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes to sort it out. 

Edited October 8, 2019 by (XB1)Erudite Prime

[EmberStar]

34 minutes ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Everybody saying that the downtown between seasons and intermissions are for DE to work on the next one have to be trolling. That makes literally no sense. Nightwave challenges and rewards are clearly chosen at random. Just let the bot choose one more set of challenges and rewards. Even if they are actually hand picked, it couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes to sort it out. 

The challenges are probably randomly generated.  But they need to make any adjustments (like how they deleted the "With friends" condition) and that takes at least some amount of time.  They also have to potentially adjust the Nora store (such as to include the alternate Gauss helmet.)  It seems like that should be simple, just slap it in.  I know just enough about programing to be pretty sure that saying "It's so simple" is like saying that to make a fusion bomb you just need to make something explode *really hard.*

In any case, an entire week without Nightwave or Nitain is hardly the end of the world.  It's annoying and inconvenient, especially if someone *is* somehow not paying attention and doesn't spend any remaining Nora credits right now.  Although since this week there's literally nothing unusual at all in the Nora store and the credits self-destruct on the 13th, you may as well grab all the Nitain (or reactors, or helmets, or whatever) as you can.

The one change I'd make to the system is to leave the store available for some time *after* the season ends, to allow people who have unavoidable bouts of Real Life that make it impossible to log in every week to spend any credits they'd been saving.  (Unplanned illness, military service, technical issues like their Internet going down for three weeks while their ISP happily insists that everything looks fine from their end.  I've actually experience the last one, along with "planned" medical downtime in the form of spending a week in the hospital due to surgery.)

As someone else mentioned, they also have to coordinate with the console updates - anything that needs to be changed has to go through the console approval process.  This costs money for each build submitted, and the most cost effective way to do it is to roll the changes in with the most up to date hotfixes.  The price for submitting a console build is not trivial, something like $30,000 to $50,000 dollars *per attempt.*  There are games that can and do work around this - I believe it's often because they're built as client-server games, where the customer doesn't actually have much more than a UI for accessing the data on the server.  For that kind of program the devs can change the data on their own servers without needing to get console approval.

I'm fairly sure Warframe is built as a stand-alone client that connects to the server when necessary, such as to update your profile with what rewards you just got in the mission.  The missions themselves are run as peer-to-peer, and are actually being hosted on the computer of one of the players.  I'm fairly certain that I've been in a solo mission and lost my Internet connection, and didn't notice an issue until I tried to exit the mission and the game attempted to save my rewards.  (Which failed, obviously.)  It might seem like a trivial or irrelevant detail, but it has a huge effect on how patching and hotfixing works, and therefore whether or not any changes have to be submitted for console approval.  It's also at least a part of the reason why (according to the most recent devstream) crossplay between PC and consoles isn't something they're currently even researching.  The game just isn't built with it in mind, and adding it would mean ripping apart everything and possibly rebuilding a lot of the code from scratch.  Rocket League and Fortnite were designed with crossplay in mind.  Warframe was not.  And like it or not, that does affect things like how new Nightwave series are made.

[seprent]

if DE does the week break then intermission most likely they will at least 1 nitain alert up for players to do like they did last time if my memory serves me right during that week break with no NW active there is also the halloween event that had the bat ephemera reb showed up granted that varies on priority lists from person to person but we have no release date for that but impo i want that ephemera as halloween is the best holiday 

[Teljaxx]

This is just one of the many ways Nightwave is inferior to alerts. Alerts were extremely low maintenance, so they could run nonstop and required very little attention from DE to keep them going. But Nightwave takes a fairly large chunk of DE's development resources to keep it going. Every single season means a new set of story related things, new reward items, and new balance tweaks and features. I guarantee that Nightwave is a fairly large part of why all the other updates have slowed down so much. They can't focus 100% on the big, important updates, because Nightwave is constantly demanding part of their attention.

6 hours ago, EmberStar said:

It's because it takes time to set up the next Nightwave story.  Apparently the person (or people) who create the little diorama scenes and code things like the various NPCs spawning into normal missions is also working on "other things."  Nightwave isn't their main task.  And when Season One ended, it actually took quite a while before they even had time to slap together the Intermission so that players could continue to get Nitain. 

It's also to give people a break from feeling like they "need" to grind for cosmetics or unique rewards like the Umbra Forma.  A week (or month, but this time they said a week) with no grinding required at all, and then the Intermission so that newer players have a source for Nitain and the Orokin reactors for building Warframes.  People who don't need those resources are free to ignore it, and since the last Intermission capped out at rank 15 and had no Prestige afterwards there's a maximum amount of grinding built into the Intermission anyway.

In any case, the breaks in between are on purpose to give players a chance to wind down between Nightwave series.  A little break now and then isn't a bad thing, as long is it doesn't stretch out to the point that it is blockading player's ability to build Vauban (or anything that needs Nitain.)  And last time when the gap did drag on, DE started selectively releasing Gift of the Lotus alerts to give people a chance at the resources and such.

When you need to build a forced break into your entertainment, that is a problem. People shouldn't feel the need to take a break from the thing that is already their break from something else. You play video games to escape from the stress of real life, so what are you supposed to do when your stress reliever becomes stressful? Take a vacation from your vacation? That's absurd.

[--DSP--Jetstream]

Because the content is not ready like usual, nightwave is a mistake.

[tzadquiel]

7 hours ago, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Everybody saying that the downtown between seasons and intermissions are for DE to work on the next one have to be trolling. That makes literally no sense. Nightwave challenges and rewards are clearly chosen at random. Just let the bot choose one more set of challenges and rewards. Even if they are actually hand picked, it couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes to sort it out. 

are you 

1) 5 yo?

2) just fishing for attention?

3) really not understanding how preparing content works?

4) stirring more drama to voice your compulsory 'NW was S#&$' statement?

 

actually no matter which it actually is, addressing you is already a waste of my time. 

Edited October 8, 2019 by tzadquiel
but not more than all those poor guys above, lol

[EmberStar]

5 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

When you need to build a forced break into your entertainment, that is a problem. People shouldn't feel the need to take a break from the thing that is already their break from something else. You play video games to escape from the stress of real life, so what are you supposed to do when your stress reliever becomes stressful? Take a vacation from your vacation? That's absurd.

Welcome to the real world.  People get tired of doing the same thing over and over.  And when there is any additional compulsion (such as "you have a limited time to earn this currency / mod / cosmetic before it's gone forever") that tiredness can turn into actual burnout.  I know several musicians, and a number of additional people with artistic inclinations.  *ALL* of them take breaks, even though they love what they do.  Because if they did it constantly, that love would turn to boredom, then apathy, then potentially actual hatred.

People have commented since Nightwave was added that they find it stressful.  Whether you feel they "should" or not is irrelevant.  It's not your decision to make.  They feel how they feel, and the feeling is "stress."  Building short breaks into the system is a completely reasonable thing for DE to do, both from a game design perspective (they need time to do whatever) and also for the health of the playerbase.  (I mean "health" more in the sense of "not getting fed up and quitting forever," although the medical sense can also apply.)

[SirTobe]

Because they can't keep up with the "content", or they want to sync it up with other content/patches, like Empyrean. There are no dates set on how long this "intermission" will last or when next season starts. It's just a filler to whenever they are ready. 

[Kaotyke]

So we can have the usual crowd come and scream how they cant get Nitain.

[Goodwill]

On 2019-10-07 at 4:13 PM, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

Why can't the next season/intermission simply start immediately after the last thing ends?

Because DE doesn't want it to start immediately after this season ends.

[Teljaxx]

16 hours ago, EmberStar said:

Welcome to the real world.  People get tired of doing the same thing over and over.  And when there is any additional compulsion (such as "you have a limited time to earn this currency / mod / cosmetic before it's gone forever") that tiredness can turn into actual burnout.  I know several musicians, and a number of additional people with artistic inclinations.  *ALL* of them take breaks, even though they love what they do.  Because if they did it constantly, that love would turn to boredom, then apathy, then potentially actual hatred.

People have commented since Nightwave was added that they find it stressful.  Whether you feel they "should" or not is irrelevant.  It's not your decision to make.  They feel how they feel, and the feeling is "stress."  Building short breaks into the system is a completely reasonable thing for DE to do, both from a game design perspective (they need time to do whatever) and also for the health of the playerbase.  (I mean "health" more in the sense of "not getting fed up and quitting forever," although the medical sense can also apply.)

See, the difference is that those artists all take breaks because they want to. Its entirely their choice. There is nothing, and no one forcing them to stop for fear of their health. Taking a voluntary break, and a mandatory vacation are not the same thing.

The reason Nightwave requires forced breaks like this is because it is intentionally designed to be manipulative and addictive. It doesn't matter how much self control you may have, or how much you may want to take a break. Nightwave is designed to make you feel like you have to keep playing no matter what. So even when you are getting bored, when you are so tired of it that you would rather throw your computer out the window than hear Nora's voice one more time, you are still compelled to keep playing. You can't just walk away for a month and ignore it, because it will always be there at the edge of your mind, nagging you to comeback so you don't miss anything. The only way to truly get away from it is for it to not exist.

The problem lies in Nightwaves fundamental design. A game, something you do completely voluntarily and for fun, should not be stressful. But Nightwave doesn't work if it isn't stressful. And trying to excuse these breaks like this is completely ignoring the actual problem.

[Dokem83]

On 2019-10-07 at 2:43 AM, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

It's just a week where nobody can get any Nitain, Aura mods, or Vauban parts. Who benefits from this? Why can't the next season/intermission simply start immediately after the last thing ends?

I benefit from this, since I want to rest from the NW activities for some days. I could feel forced to continue if intermission started right after, even if I'm not forced to.

I already have all the nitain, aura mods and Vauban. So yeah, for me at least is beneficial/I don't care or mind to wait a week.

[toafarmer]

On 2019-10-07 at 9:08 PM, elmetnuter said:

Don't talk at me. I don't make this game. I was replying to the OP. I don't share your frustration if it's what's your trying to convey.

Don't ping me if you don't want me to talk to you.

Edited October 10, 2019 by toafarmer

[EmberStar]

On 2019-10-08 at 7:23 PM, Teljaxx said:

The problem lies in Nightwaves fundamental design. A game, something you do completely voluntarily and for fun, should not be stressful. But Nightwave doesn't work if it isn't stressful. And trying to excuse these breaks like this is completely ignoring the actual problem.

Ah, my apologies.  I misunderstood what you meant in your previous posts.  I seem to have gotten "people who need a break are just whining and therefore doing it wrong," rather than "Nightwave shouldn't be stressful and the fact that people think it is means that Nightwave is doing it wrong."

[elmetnuter]

3 hours ago, toafarmer said:

Don't ping me if you don't want me to talk to you.

You are the one to quote me in the first place... 

[toafarmer]

10 hours ago, elmetnuter said:

You are the one to quote me in the first place... 

That's true.

[rastaban75]

I, for one, welcome our new intermission break overlord.

[Fl_3]

I thought the break was to give people a chance to whinge on the forums?

Not that much of an excuse is needed for that though.

Seriously, the break is there because (I think) DE wanted to give the players a little down time before throwing even more weekly challenges at us.

I for one appreciate the change of pace that no Nightwave for a while will bring us. Then again, I'd rather have the old Alert system back than a new season of Nightwave.

[CalmClouds]

The downtime is probably there as a result of the team’s work schedule rather than a thought-out decision for gameplay purposes. I doubt that it’s a burn-out countermeasure as some people have suggested.

It honestly doesn’t matter to me either way, since I reached max rank a long time ago anyway. I can wait another mere week.