Squadlink and helping new Players

[Velothed]

I just stumbled upon this post on reddit and absolutely fell in love with the idea:

Posted by

u/ChineseCracker

"I was recently helping out some new players and noticed how empty most of the missions on all of the planets are....

If there is no special event (farm-mission, kuva, nightmare, invasion, etc.) then those missions are always absolutely empty. This is especially frustrating for newer players, who can't really progress unless they ask for help in the chat - a lot of players probably don't even do that because they don't want to impose.

DE introduced the idea of Squad-Link that just basically boils down to giving you "buffs" during a mission. But what if Squad-Link also lets you request help so that other Tenno literally joined your current mission?

So, if you're bored, you sit in your orbiter, turn on squad-link, and get to join some random players who request your help via squad-link. More of a "Squad-Merge" than a link."

This would be absolutely incredible, I'd love this so much, a bit like the old alerts, but actually meaningfull, because there is an actual person needing help. It would do tons to help make the solar system feel more alive! Using recruiting chats as a new player can be extremely intimidating, but simply use an item during a mission?

[Walkampf]

I legitimatly dislike shooting down the idea, because in theory it's a good one.

However, there are a few reasons against it.

1. It whould be hardly more than a renamed matchmaking.

2. Difficulty is, with the exception of a few bossbattles not the reason why people can't progress in Warframe.

3. There is a reason, why people are not playing the low level missions, because they reward objectivly less than higher level versions.

4. A massive problem of Warframe is not, that it's concent is to hard, but that it's content is to easy, so highlevel players have even less of a reason to join.

5. Having high level players crush yor mission pretty frustrating. I recently played the switch version with a new account and it's compltly disheartening when a single player deal 99% of the damage, just because his mandatory mods are completly maxed out. You feel useless, basically a glorified cameraman.

 

As I said, I'm actually sad, that I can only think of negatives for this idea, but in the current game the idea is not practical. Basically everybody involved is loosing.

[FerockQuartz]

If only dedicated servers exist... 

[Velothed]

2 hours ago, Walkampf said:

I legitimatly dislike shooting down the idea, because in theory it's a good one.

However, there are a few reasons against it.

1. It whould be hardly more than a renamed matchmaking.

2. Difficulty is, with the exception of a few bossbattles not the reason why people can't progress in Warframe.

3. There is a reason, why people are not playing the low level missions, because they reward objectivly less than higher level versions.

4. A massive problem of Warframe is not, that it's concent is to hard, but that it's content is to easy, so highlevel players have even less of a reason to join.

5. Having high level players crush yor mission pretty frustrating. I recently played the switch version with a new account and it's compltly disheartening when a single player deal 99% of the damage, just because his mandatory mods are completly maxed out. You feel useless, basically a glorified cameraman.

 

As I said, I'm actually sad, that I can only think of negatives for this idea, but in the current game the idea is not practical. Basically everybody involved is loosing.

Hmm, I get what you are saying, but:

1. Which doesn't work right now, because people that actually want to play these low missions, to help newer players would have to kinda dip in the dark, as the available squad display under a node hasn't worked since forever. You'd also risk ruining the experience for players that don't want help from a high level player (see 5)

2. Difficulty is indeed a problem for many new players.

3+4. Of course, that's why the nodes are so empty, in this case however, the reason for the veteran to join would be help out a new player which in itself is an intrinsic reward.

5. As they would only appear if called (via beacon, etc.) It's completely opt in for new players. I'd also wager, that people responding to this kind of Alert, without being offered a special reward are not the type that would then try to speedrun that mission as fast as possible.

The way I see it, if this was implemented, there would be a few players calling for help every now and than and bored vets like me could jump in and help them with whatever they have trouble with. Imo it's essential that there'd be no special reward for the helping player, otherwise we'd have tons of players ruining missions for new players.

 

[fr4gb4ll]

14 hours ago, Walkampf said:

I legitimatly dislike shooting down the idea, because in theory it's a good one.

However, there are a few reasons against it.

1. It whould be hardly more than a renamed matchmaking.

2. Difficulty is, with the exception of a few bossbattles not the reason why people can't progress in Warframe.

3. There is a reason, why people are not playing the low level missions, because they reward objectivly less than higher level versions.

4. A massive problem of Warframe is not, that it's concent is to hard, but that it's content is to easy, so highlevel players have even less of a reason to join.

5. Having high level players crush yor mission pretty frustrating. I recently played the switch version with a new account and it's compltly disheartening when a single player deal 99% of the damage, just because his mandatory mods are completly maxed out. You feel useless, basically a glorified cameraman.

 

As I said, I'm actually sad, that I can only think of negatives for this idea, but in the current game the idea is not practical. Basically everybody involved is loosing.

well, it's a bit of a two edged blade, that's true. but OP is right about the feeling new players have when opening up the map - it's very rare to get another player joing a pug there. i just recently noticed this when i helped my 2 nephews getting started in warframe - something i didn't experienced years back when i was new to warframe (also, i indeed done nearly all the map missions in solo back then and only started pugs regulary after that).

as for your 1. counter statement, i think it would be actually a better way toward a real lobby-system (something i sure would like to see in warframe) and reminds me of 'old' diablo 2 days where something like that was already in use... though it would need to 'remove' the condition about upto what point one could 'jump in' to help (time/objective wise) to be effective and maybe put some restriction toward the 'helping' player too - otherwise it might be too easy and discouraging for the 'helped' player.

as for the rest, i fully agree with you.

[(PSN)BloodyHell]

Capcom added something similar to this with the Iceborne expansion for Monster Hunter World, which they called Hunter Helper. Here's a video that gives an overview, but the gist of it is that low rank hunters can call on high/master rank players to aid them in a quest, and the assisting player will get a small bonus reward for joining. Along side that they can earn pendants after helping out in a certain number of quests, which are purely a cosmetic reward.

If done right I could absolutely see something similar to this being included with the squad-link feature. The major hurdles with this would be a) trying to come up with rewards that are worth enough to want to accept the call but not anything that that would make doing other missions irrelevant, or be open to abuse, b) what determines who is eligible to assist (Is it MR based? Clearing the star chart? Rank of your warframe/weapons?), and b) balancing player levels so that the assisting player doesn't come in and nuke the level/boss for new players.

If I could spitball for a moment, I could see the bonus reward for the assisting player being a relic much like you get for playing any mission in the void, with the tier of relic being tied to the planet. And, like the pendants in MHW, if you complete a set number of Squad-Link Helper calls, you can earn exclusive cosmetics. I'd refrain from making the reward chance based because that could lead to toxicity or frustration from assisting players not getting what they want and put them off from engaging with the mode entirely.

The bigger challenge would be balance, and I might have a solution. If you are joining, your warframe, weapon, companion, everything has a capacity drain cap of 30, unforma'd. This would prevent an influx of endgame builds, with the only advantage being knowledge and skill. Now the immediate issue would be a lot of peoples warframes and equipment that they've installed potatoes and forma in would become invalid, and asking players to go farm for more frames/gear and buy slots for them is excessive. A workaround for this could be a separate loadout screen like for Conclave, where you can create your Squad-Link Helper loadout/s as if everything has been reset back to Rank 30 with no upgrades. So you'll be able to take your favorite warframes with you without having to farm and rebuild a new one. You'd still be free to use all your mods as you like, but the extremely OP builds you commonly see wouldn't be making an appearance.

This is all open to tweaking and balancing, but as a rough idea of how it could work I think it's generally in the right direction. The rewards make it attractive enough to do but not too attractive that players will overly abuse it or players that can't assist yet will be resentful, and by limiting capacity drain it not only evens out the playing field but it creates a new challenge for vets, having to rethink their builds and engage with older content more thoughtfully.

[Velothed]

2 hours ago, (PS4)BloodyHell said:

The major hurdles with this would be a) trying to come up with rewards that are worth enough to want to accept the call but not anything that that would make doing other missions irrelevant, or be open to abuse, b) what determines who is eligible to assist (Is it MR based? Clearing the star chart? Rank of your warframe/weapons?), and b) balancing player levels so that the assisting player doesn't come in and nuke the level/boss for new players.

Imo the best thing they could do would be not to add any other rewards. Because even if it was only a sigil that maybe changes, like the Tactical one, would definitley result in "come in and nuke the level/boss for new players."

I would also not put any requirements on to that, it's a call for help, the Vet helping scenario I only mentioned because it would apply to me personally, but any kind of player could come and help.

The way I see it, it would only apply to a minority of the playerbase, but it could satisfy two important groups:

New players, that feel overwhelmed with the game and might quit before getting adjusted.

Bored vets, that just want something to do.