Encouraging words from Rebecca on Warframe's difficulty problem (GameSpot interview)

[Ephemiel]

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

A story that had all the rewards removed just so people would rather buy into the expansions to unlock more and better exotic rewards. Not to mention they call their game F2P when in reality it is nothing but a demo+ version of the game, that really means very little since it is a looter shooter arpg where rewards and being able to invest chunks of time are the key parts. A "free" version that brings you barely 100h before you are bored out of your mind since you figured out that no matter how much you grind equipment, you arent really getting much stronger due to how light levels are nothing but power levels with a new name, and most things scale based on it.

Bungie pretty much took the word "F2P" and completely failed to understand the cornerstones of what makes them a success on the western market and what makes them bring in revenue to their companies.

Is that why Destiny 2, which was already F2P in Blizzard's launcher, is completely eclipsing Warframe?

YOU thinking Bungie "completely failed to understand" means nothing, and it means even less than nothing when the game is thriving while Warframe has been steadily failing to the point its own content creators, people with a near-direct line to the developers, are flatout quitting the game.

Edited October 14, 2019 by Ephemiel

[Loza03]

27 minutes ago, Ephemiel said:

Is that why Destiny 2, which was already F2P in Blizzard's launcher, is completely eclipsing Warframe?

YOU thinking Bungie "completely failed to understand" means nothing, and it means even less than nothing when the game is thriving while Warframe has been steadily failing to the point its own content creators, people with a near-direct line to the developers, are flatout quitting the game.

D2 just came out on steam, just went pseudo-F2P, and just brought out a new expansion. They'll be in an early adoption boom.

Give it a month or two, then we'll see something closer to the actual numbers we can expect.

[bibmobello]

3 hours ago, Loza03 said:

And Rage.

And Zenurik.

And, in co-operative, which this game IS built around, infinite energy frames like Trinity or Harrow. Plus, DE have said and demonstrated numerous times that higher level (100+) and endurance runs aren't what they design around.

Again, see above, endurance isn't what the game's built for. This is basically working on the logic of 'this is broken, but if we break it this way it kind of works, so everything's fine.'

Most of the game is designed around the 30-100 level range. Most of the playerbase enjoys that and most play that. Most of the effort should be on improving that, not improving the minority point where things are already less broken.

I actually like Nullifiers in concept, but spamming them to the point of functionally removing AoE abilities isn't going to work either. If DE just works off the idea of an arms race between their ability to nullify cheese tactics without addressing the source and the players ability to use and generate them, it's going to end badly, with the meta becoming more all-consuming, not less. Consider the Wolf. That was an enemy clearly designed for min-maxers. Anybody who liked metagaming a lot had a great time. People who didn't think that carrying some combination of a high-crit radiation setup, damage buff or armour strip to every match was much fun, didn't appreciate the Wolf. Designing only for min-maxers hurts the self-expression that myriads of playstyles allow for.

The issue isn't difficulty, it's the fact that we have tons of opportunities to never interact with enemies or to make those interactions irrelevant. Lazy Tank Inaros is just as harmful as Saryn, even if the effects aren't as tangibly felt on the rest of the population.

This proves my point.

Just pushing the power creep of enemies to match the ludicrous power creep of players will do little for absolute min-maxers who will use strats like infinite invisibility (therefore never at risk of dying because nothing shoots them) and further forces people who were quite happy not to min-max (and may already be getting a satisfactory play experience and level of difficulty!) to go further and further into the meta.

Every game has a meta. Right now, that meta is very, very easy to get into (A large number of frames fringe on it, as well as several weapons) and ludicrously above the baseline experience, leading to an unsatisfactory experience for people stumbling into it. We need to bring the effectiveness of the meta down to the intended experience, not bring the intended experience into the meta.

 

That's also not counting other balance issues like the weird reversal of First-order-optimal strategy design, where instead of offering the low-effort, mid-reward strategies at the start of the curve to ease players in and phasing out those strategies by offering higher skill but importantly, higher reward options down the line, Warframe tends to offer lower reward for higher skill. Consider weapons. Bows require a pretty decent amount of skill - most only target one enemy (the Lenz has self-damage in its place), and they all have both travel time AND projectile drop, making aiming more difficult. Assault Rifles also only really target one enemy at a time, and have a fairly low TTK and effective range (being so-so at both long and short ranges, excelling mid-range) compared to precision weapons, and also aren't as good at killing multiple targets, but are better at killing hordes than precision weapons and (ideally) should better at single-targets than AoE weapons. These are some of the first weapons a player is introduced to.

However, the premier AoE weapon, the Ignis Wraith, IS good at single targets with plenty serviceable crit, status and raw; works just as well at close range as mid-range, deals wonderfully at AoE, has marvellous ammo efficiency and requires basically no skill to use as it has no self-damage, no travel time and functionally 100% accuracy so long as you aim in the general direction of a target due to the sheer size of its effect. You will get better performance out of an Ignis Wraith than most weapons in most scenarios with less effort. Also bear in mind that most shotguns in Warframe aren't too fond of firing more than 10 or 20 metres, and from my calculations the average range of a beam weapon is about 27 metres. The Ignis Wraith, including the Blast Radius, has a range of about 30 metres. Whilst certainly not the last weapon you can get, you get this at MR 9, which means you've probably gone through a not insubstantial amount of the game by this point. The first weapons are not only weaker (reasonable, good design for a looter), but also take more skill and effort than the ones obtained later.

In other words, the game rewards you more for playing it less.

Mine wasn't a critic to play more than 20 minutes, i am writing the same you are. Everyone would like a more balanced game with higher level difficulty and less nuke or cc ability spamming. Noone wants an hardcore game(if the game was balanced they should add it like a bonus), overall considering this is a looting game but it's not fair to have zero difficulty on many missions. Seriously on a sortie 3 extermination i had inaros, using the phone, watching the tv and pressing random buttons i completed the mission and dealt more damage!

Yes i downloaded D2(but i already knew that wasn't my kind of game)  i played few matches but i don't like it at all, i don't uninstall it only because it was almost 100GB...

Edited October 14, 2019 by bibmobello

[Ephemiel]

43 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Just went pseudo-F2P

Wrong there, the default game was F2P for quite a while on the Blizzard launcher.

[Loza03]

29 minutes ago, Ephemiel said:

Wrong there, the default game was F2P for quite a while on the Blizzard launcher.

I remember there was a F2P base game promotion (that's where I first picked it up) but I was under the impression that was a limited time offer.

Either way, the big, widely advertised 'DESTINY 2 IS NOW FREE TO PLAY' is recent, as is the steam release, as is Shadowkeep, as is the first two expansions as a part of new light, so again, D2's in an early adopter spike, so the main point still stands.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

There are several reasons Destiny could attract more people than Warframe that don't equate to one doing a better job than another at providing a good game.

Destiny has a more broad visual appeal. Some people just think Warframes look weird.

Destiny is PVP focused (with almost all balance changes made based on PVP), and there is a competitive PVP market out there. While Warframe has PVP, it's properly relegated to a niche, happily not impacting the PvE focus on the rest of the actual game.

Destiny's PvE is very non-growth oriented, despite the range of possible gear you can find - because you get effectively "leveled down" to be on par with content you have passed in light level, and reaching light level "entry minimums" are like "you must be this tall to ride this ride" height checks at amusement parks - if you are below those levels, you are at a disadvantage, but above them does little to help (as the aforementioned level-downing that happens just keeps you at their desired encounter strenght.) Thus, you never really get strong in Destiny (either D1 or 2, from my experience)... you just "keep up". In Warframe, you can feel your power as you get stronger and wipe out areas that were once a challenge. Some people like the constant sense of being on even ground with their opponents, others like to feel powerful - they're pretty vocal in the Warframe community about wanting "balance" and "challenge" ... which, I think would change the very nature of Warframe, at this point, into something that it very much is not.

Destiny's classes have been watered down to be very "balanceable" in PVP. All the power they had in D1 has been stripped away, and power generation to use the abilities has been reduced to a dribble. Ammo in guns has been reduced to almost nothing so you have to rely on picking up more ammo from the ground all the time, just to balance PvP (last I played, anyway.) So you're almost always in a state of resource starvation and conservation to "tactically" use your strong weapons and abilities... while spending the rest of the time shooting your guns. Whereas Warframe is very free with energy (after a certain point in the game with the right mods and focus schools and gear), allowing each Frame to freely use their abilities and weapons, allowing them to show why you chose to be that frame, rather than any other mobile gun platform. Some people like tactical shooters, some people like power fantasy.

Destiny's encounters are very scripted and set up with cover and enemies take many shots to kill in most cases. Aside from encountering hordes of thrall, encounters are generally against a limited number of stronger foes than seen in Warframe's horde shooter environment where it is the entire "horde" that acts as your opponent, rather than individually stronger units (which it still has to some degree.) Some people like focusing on headshots to take out each enemy, peeking out from behind cover once in a while to watch and wait for the enemy to stick their head out from cover and get blown off... while others like the fast paced horde-slaying action of Warframe...

I'm not saying one's bad, and the other's good... just different audiences. (I obviously have my bias toward how Warframe is, since I'm typing this up on Warframe's forum, and I'm not playing D2 anymore.) But you get my point, I'm sure.

Destiny may have found a larger audience, and it could also be due to advertising (coming originally from the team that made Halo, which I'm told was a successful franchise, though I never played it, and that team no longer works on the game, as far as I know.

So. yeah... plenty of reasons...

[Loza03]

6 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Destiny's classes have been watered down to be very "balanceable" in PVP. All the power they had in D1 has been stripped away, and power generation to use the abilities has been reduced to a dribble. Ammo in guns has been reduced to almost nothing so you have to rely on picking up more ammo from the ground all the time, just to balance PvP (last I played, anyway.) So you're almost always in a state of resource starvation and conservation to "tactically" use your strong weapons and abilities... while spending the rest of the time shooting your guns. Whereas Warframe is very free with energy (after a certain point in the game with the right mods and focus schools and gear), allowing each Frame to freely use their abilities and weapons, allowing them to show why you chose to be that frame, rather than any other mobile gun platform. Some people like tactical shooters, some people like power fantasy.

On this point, I have to disagree - kind of. There is definitely a difference, but I'm not sure it's this one. It may well have been true at launch, but from my more recent experiences, not so much.

My 'Kinetic' and 'Energy' weapon both usually feel like they're very free for ammo, as free as Warframe weapons. Whilst I almost exclusively use a sword for my Power (because... sword are cool), I do feel like I have a pretty good amount - definitely not enough to use the whole fight, but enough for a big power trip. And certainly, that's something DE have played with thus far - Arch-guns are (supposed) to run off a similar mechanic. They don't, but that's another matter.

Same for classes and subclasses. As an Attunement of Hunger Voidwalker Warlock (… lordy that's a long name for a single thing) the playstyle is pretty fun and quite powerful - constantly healing as I fight but not being invincible: I can definitely still die but I can also be very active on the front lines. And that's a good level of power IMO - Warframe does have a habit of being overly loose with how much power players can have to the point of not having to actually do the whole... playing the game thing. No, where the two differ from my experience is I am an Attunement of Hunger Voidwalker Warlock. I don't have a playstyle - I am using that playstyle. It's definitely a difference, and I can certainly see why that would be appealing to some people - it's a lot easier to pick-up-and-play. It's similar for the weapons. Sure, there are minor statistical differences and some exotics, but a lot of the weapons are very same-y. I don't feel the difference between one Auto-rifle and another - one Bow or another. Hell, I don't remember there being that much difference other than ammo when I switched between a single-shot sidearm and a hand cannon. It's more 'Halo' style, which works and is quite appropriate considering the developers.

Warframe is... liberating by comparison. For as much as I um and aah about things like "permanent invisibility means you won't ever be in danger" or "CC-ing the whole map just turns off gameplay" in ways that probably make me sound like I don't like the game, I will never get tired of racing into a room riftbound, identifying my target, launching into the air whilst simultaneously riftwalking back to reality, striking my target and probably half a dozen others in one leap then phasing back into safety as gravity finally takes hold. That's why I want more balance and 'difficulty': to make that, which IMO is Warframe at its peak, to actually be comparable compared to 'press 4'.

 

Though there is one major factor behind Destiny's larger audience I'm not sure you're considering. Four years of Activision's marketing budget. That is one way to quickly grab a large core community. Plus there's the better 'big names' community. Whilst the in-game community (where Warframe tends to shine) is quiet as the grave from what I've found, Destiny has folks like 'MynameisByf'. He, alongside other lore channels with relatively high budgets and more passion than early D2 really warranted, is probably a good 50% of the reason I even tried Destiny. 25% being curiosity and 25% being 'if it's anywhere similar to Warframe I'll enjoy it'. Which, not too inaccurate - I do also enjoy D2. I just prefer Warframe overall.

[SneakyErvin]

16 hours ago, Ephemiel said:

Is that why Destiny 2, which was already F2P in Blizzard's launcher, is completely eclipsing Warframe?

YOU thinking Bungie "completely failed to understand" means nothing, and it means even less than nothing when the game is thriving while Warframe has been steadily failing to the point its own content creators, people with a near-direct line to the developers, are flatout quitting the game.

It is a 2 week old game on Steam, it should eclipse things since it lures you with a false F2P tag. And this is compared to a 6 year old free-to-play game that is currently in between patches. Funny thing is, that at patch releases, WF and Path of Exile for that matter pull more players than Destiny 2 did at the steam release. That was also at a Steam release that was supposed to attract old players aswell with the Shadowkeep expansion.

And Destiny 2 was only free on Blizzard's launcher for 2 weeks a few months after the horrible release and all the backlash.

Destiny 2 has already dropped severly in concurrent numbers during off-hours and peak-hours have suffered greatly aswell. And that is after 2 weeks only, with a brand new expansion release aswell. It wont get much better on Steam than it did on Bnet. I do wonder who the rabid fans will blame now, Valve perhaps? It is funny that they blame Activision when Bungie themselves havent changed much in a positive direction at all. Still shallow expansions with rehashes mostly, still a horrible monetization model and to top it off, they managed to get far worse servers than they had previously and they've managed to #*!% up several bnet-to-steam transfers aswell, making people lose expansions they owned and being unable to rectify it. One guy had even contacted support, and gotten the answer that they couldnt see any indication that he owned Forsaken. In return he asked them how it was possible then that he had Forsaken tied exotics on his character aswell as Forsaken raids completed on his account. The answer from Bungie was that it was a glitch which they would kindly let slide in this instance. I mean WTF?

[zruncho]

42 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

It is a 2 week old game on Steam, it should eclipse things since it lures you with a false F2P tag. And this is compared to a 6 year old free-to-play game that is currently in between patches. Funny thing is, that at patch releases, WF and Path of Exile for that matter pull more players than Destiny 2 did at the steam release. That was also at a Steam release that was supposed to attract old players aswell with the Shadowkeep expansion.

And Destiny 2 was only free on Blizzard's launcher for 2 weeks a few months after the horrible release and all the backlash.

Destiny 2 has already dropped severly in concurrent numbers during off-hours and peak-hours have suffered greatly aswell. And that is after 2 weeks only, with a brand new expansion release aswell. It wont get much better on Steam than it did on Bnet. I do wonder who the rabid fans will blame now, Valve perhaps? It is funny that they blame Activision when Bungie themselves havent changed much in a positive direction at all. Still shallow expansions with rehashes mostly, still a horrible monetization model and to top it off, they managed to get far worse servers than they had previously and they've managed to #*!% up several bnet-to-steam transfers aswell, making people lose expansions they owned and being unable to rectify it. One guy had even contacted support, and gotten the answer that they couldnt see any indication that he owned Forsaken. In return he asked them how it was possible then that he had Forsaken tied exotics on his character aswell as Forsaken raids completed on his account. The answer from Bungie was that it was a glitch which they would kindly let slide in this instance. I mean WTF?

PoE and Warframe have never had as many players as Destiny 2. Check the steamcharts: https://steamcharts.com/

At the bottom are the all time records. As you can see Warframe and POE are nowhere to be seen. At release the servers of D2 went down so the number could have been even greater.

What do you mean by false F2P. I started as a free player and the amount of content you get free is staggering. Actually D2 made a better impression on me than Warframe did when I started it. No monetization for slots or weapons, no nerfing your power with potatoes. The only scummy thing I noticed was that they removed the exotic rewards from story quests but even this is no big gripe. There are countless ways to get exotics outside the story missions. 

It's hard to say which model is better in the long run. For players who are broke I think Warframe is better since you get everything free. The bad side of this is that monetization is always in your face. Farming too slow? Buy a booster. Want this weapon - np just buy it. Slots - plat. Building you frame taking too long - why not rush it. You get my point. Even worse sometimes this monetization can affect game design. Yes you can earn plat in game but it doesn't change the fact that nearly every aspect of the game is monetized and many things are at least partially designed into making you spend plat.

D2 on the other hand, even the free version, doesn't have F2P practices shoved in your face. You get a storage with 500 slots if I remember correctly. Three campaigns. PvP that is actually good. Gambit, strikes, free roam on all worlds even DLC ones, all year one raids. The downside is the paywall on the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions. You might say it is an extremely huge demo from which you can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment.  

Honestly as a kid I would have preferred Warframe's system since I had no money. Now I prefer the way Destiny 2 does it since I don't mind buying a few expansions but not having to deal with having everything monetized. Warframe's model has another extremely deep problem. Since everything is monetized(yes you can earn plat but can also buy it with real money) it becomes hard to balance. How can they truly change Rivens when some people payed thousands of plat for theirs? With all said I its a matter of opinion. Both models are fair.

And, please don't start about reused content. We've been doing the same few missions from Warframe's inception. Liking certain games or monetization models is a matter of opinion but if there is one place that Warframe objectively looses out to D2 it is the variety of activities you can partake in.

  

 

[AtckAtck]

I think part of the success of Warframe is also that it is kind of easy. I mean litterally everyone can unlock the whole map and finish every quest at some point.

Still i regularly see players having problems with the simplest quests and for some even enemies around 30-40 lvl seem to be a challenge.

It would be a plain nightmare for these players if difficulty suddenly increased, they probably would stop playing.

The basic difficutly is fine as it is, for beginners.

When it comes to decently equipped players, thats a whole other story. Content begins to be interesting at 100+, becomes challanging at 150-200 lvl and suicidal after that.

Certain frames cannot even reach this high content, as when it comes to weapons there are not many choices left when you want to engage lvl 200+ enemies...

While i think that the general scaling from hitpoints and armor is fine to begin with, the damage monsters deal becomes a 1-shot for anyone not wearing a tank-frame a some point. Personally i feel the damage if 200+ enemies should be reduced a lot. At the moment it is permanent stun or some other crowd control or instant death. Being useful for crow control frames is a good thing, being mandatory not. It just all needs to scale a bit better without the usual mandatory high lvl stuff.

So apart all the talk about difficulty i think weapons should be taken a look at again and i think they should be upped to similar lvl so everything is at least somehwat useable for high lvl content.

Now back the difficutly, opening lith relics is boring, but its easy. Now if i could choose the starting difficulty, still nobody would do it just "for the fun of it".

There needs to be a similar increase in reward in order to make players consider doing it the hard way.

So if i want to start at wave 30 of a defence mission, then let me open 6 relics at once already. But make it interesting, for jumping ahead, if you should fail at any point because you are too greedy you loose all 6 relics/rewards you started with and every reward gained after that. And done, we have a challenge.

Also i really like the augumented armor, eximus stronghold modificators from the sortie. They scale good and are a fun challenge. I would like to play normal missions with that for lets say a higher loot multiplicator reward.

The other mods like weapon restictions and damage resitance (up to the point where you do zero dmg) are simply not fun. It is not hard to work around the resitance mechanic, just annoying.

The nightmare mission are all boring, energy reduction is just a pain in the back, low gravitiy and anomalies are just funny, death detonation and vampire you cannot even feel.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

On 2019-10-08 at 6:29 PM, (XB1)Kuljack said:

This isn’t a real issue.

We will always, in every game, eventually hit this point where we are more powerful than the content. It’s a combination of acquiring mods, weapons and skill in the game over your playtime.

We can make the game more challenging for ourselves while waiting for new content that has stronger enemies, by reducing our own power, and by result further increasing our skill.

Step away from pure damage, experiment with CC and other weapons. Support the new player base, step outside for some fresh air or just binge a netflix series.

Content takes time to develop, test and push out. If there were less posts whining about content and needless wants, they could spend more time reading posts that have actual value to the games progress.

Meaningful & productive conversations lead to Meaningful & Well-implemented content.

Finally someone said it. Even the worst players can excel at an online game if they play it for years and get all the best gear etc. We've all done it multiple times, even back in the Final Fantasy 7 hitting for 9999 days.

"Oops, I got too powerful again....darn it."

 

You can even use your own skill after years to get content done. Things like actually moving around instead of face tanking make a huge difference. Kiting, shooting around corners, using our awesome mobility to hide in little corners above to get a second to breathe etc.

 

Sorry you guys got too good at the game. Maybe stop slide attacking lol.

Edited October 15, 2019 by (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, zruncho said:

PoE and Warframe have never had as many players as Destiny 2. Check the steamcharts: https://steamcharts.com/

At the bottom are the all time records. As you can see Warframe and POE are nowhere to be seen. At release the servers of D2 went down so the number could have been even greater.

What do you mean by false F2P. I started as a free player and the amount of content you get free is staggering. Actually D2 made a better impression on me than Warframe did when I started it. No monetization for slots or weapons, no nerfing your power with potatoes. The only scummy thing I noticed was that they removed the exotic rewards from story quests but even this is no big gripe. There are countless ways to get exotics outside the story missions. 

It's hard to say which model is better in the long run. For players who are broke I think Warframe is better since you get everything free. The bad side of this is that monetization is always in your face. Farming too slow? Buy a booster. Want this weapon - np just buy it. Slots - plat. Building you frame taking too long - why not rush it. You get my point. Even worse sometimes this monetization can affect game design. Yes you can earn plat in game but it doesn't change the fact that nearly every aspect of the game is monetized and many things are at least partially designed into making you spend plat.

D2 on the other hand, even the free version, doesn't have F2P practices shoved in your face. You get a storage with 500 slots if I remember correctly. Three campaigns. PvP that is actually good. Gambit, strikes, free roam on all worlds even DLC ones, all year one raids. The downside is the paywall on the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions. You might say it is an extremely huge demo from which you can get hundreds of hours of enjoyment.  

Honestly as a kid I would have preferred Warframe's system since I had no money. Now I prefer the way Destiny 2 does it since I don't mind buying a few expansions but not having to deal with having everything monetized. Warframe's model has another extremely deep problem. Since everything is monetized(yes you can earn plat but can also buy it with real money) it becomes hard to balance. How can they truly change Rivens when some people payed thousands of plat for theirs? With all said I its a matter of opinion. Both models are fair.

And, please don't start about reused content. We've been doing the same few missions from Warframe's inception. Liking certain games or monetization models is a matter of opinion but if there is one place that Warframe objectively looses out to D2 it is the variety of activities you can partake in.

Maybe it is time to realize that Steam isnt the only PC launcher option for WF and PoE. The Steam numbers show around half of the actual concurrent numbers for WF and PoE. So yes they have been up there and past Destiny 2 several times over. The servers going down also means nothing for the concurrent numbers, except in the actual negative for Destiny 2 atm, since if you account for higher possible concurrent due to servers going down, then they have lost far more in less than two week that they actually have.

False F2P is exactly what Destiny 2 is. You get a very basic demo experience that isnt even tailored towards new players. You get a quick power trip where everything is hidden away regarding the actual story. And if you do find the story you get nothing from it. Monetization for slots, inventory or whatever else is 100 times better than getting something very barebones for free. In order to actually get something out of Destiny 2 you need to shell out up towards $60 in one go, especially if you wanna remove the risk of getting locked out of weekly activities on a regular basis aswell as not being able to get the majority of exotics. In WF I'm not even sure I've spent $60 yet over 2500h of playtime. I think I'm somewhere in the $30 region atm and I've bought slots that I need, cosmetics I want and some other things. And dont forget we can trade for plat here, so we can pretty much get everything for free. In PoE I havent spent a single penny and gotten plenty out of it, including endgame for several hundreds of hours.

The best model is the WF and PoE model because it will be the most player friendly and it will be the one that brings in the best revenue since you have more items that arent just big one-time-purchase items like expansions. Expansions that not only have a high buy in cost so is less likely to sell, but they also split the community. Currently Dest2 is split in 3½ ways. F2P, Forsaken owners, Shadowkeep owners and those that own Forsaken+Shadowkeep. And not to mention that the 100% free content model has a far easier time to attract new and returning players, because they dont require you to buy in to try the latest updates etc. I can skip WF for 2 years and come back where I left off, with no need to buy anything in order to try whatever new has been released. If I skipped a game like Destiny 2 I'd likely have to pick up 2-5 DLCs and possibly 2 expansions.

And while you may get hundreds of hours from the huge demo, that means extremely little when you play a looter shooter or arpg in general. Games that should attract you for thousands of hours if done right. Reason I couldnt stay in PoE for more than around 500h is because I kinda grew tired with league play and starting over time and time again. If it was a non-season based game I would have probably played it for several thousands of hours much like Marvel Heroes (4.5k hours) and WF (2.5k hours atm) or for many years like I played WoW that just kept on going. Destiny 2 already struggles with a bland and poor gearing system that kinda removes the point and feel of actual progression. So I'm not sure how long I'd last if I really tried. Some people are gear out after about 100 hours of gameplay. It still has the same weak progression it had on Bnet and the same short endgame before being fully decked out.

Rivens dont need to be balanced, they are just extra cream ontop of the cream and needed nowhere.

And re-used content is an issue with Destiny 2. They demand a high price for rehashed crap. I'm also not finding the variety in Destiny 2. Where exactly does it offer more than WF?

Destiny 2: Nightfall, strikes, gambit/prime, pvp/iron banner, raids and open world roaming. Several being of zero use if you want to actually progress and find items. Not to mention they completely cut the leveling experience and shoved you straight into endgame.

WF: PoE+Hunts, OV+Orbs, Defense (3 types with different parameters and mechanics), Survival, Defection, Disruption, Excav, Assassination, Capture, Mobile Def, Rescue, Interception and Exterminate. All bringing different things that you need as you progress. Could they be done better? Hell yes. Are they few? No.

[Atsia]

19 hours ago, Loza03 said:

I remember there was a F2P base game promotion (that's where I first picked it up) but I was under the impression that was a limited time offer.

Either way, the big, widely advertised 'DESTINY 2 IS NOW FREE TO PLAY' is recent, as is the steam release, as is Shadowkeep, as is the first two expansions as a part of new light, so again, D2's in an early adopter spike, so the main point still stands.

Yeah, D2 had a very basic F2P that only took you to level 7. Then they released the base game for free, but you still had to pay for expansions. It's just now that it's almost entirely everything for free.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Atsia

[Loza03]

Just a reminder, Destiny in general DID have four years of Activision's marketing team.

 

It is a lot easier to get a big playerbase when everybody knows your name. Warframe is comparatively harder to come across.

[Crasharr]

On 2019-10-07 at 6:40 PM, Jarriaga said:

This interview is a week old but I didn't have time to watch it until now. I also don't see threads discussing this.

This part of the interview with Rebecca at the 14:52 mark made me happy as she directly addressed the power scaling vs. difficulty problem in Warframe. She mentions how being able to one-shot everything up to certain point leads to boredom because the game feels too easy, and that's a challenge they (DE) want to tackle on as a team. How they go about it is anyone's guess, but it is encouraging to know that they are aware of it in no uncertain terms.

I gave them a lot of flak a few weeks ago for the Arbitrations fiasco as it felt like they were ignoring us, and I am aware this interview was recorded months ago around TennoCon and only now released to the public, but it served as a reminder to have a little faith in them. They may be slow to act, but they do know our grievances with the game.

Cheers to what Empyrean/The New War will bring.

What difficulty problem? Just because some try hards need to force S#&$ upon others doesnt make it a general concensus. I dont see difficulty problems, I'm fine with how things are, i dont need lvl 3000 reinforced-archwing-teralyst-amalgams to enjoy the game. How is it immediately good news? Isnt that very subjective?

[Aldain]

17 minutes ago, Crasharr said:

What difficulty problem? Just because some try hards need to force S#&$ upon others doesnt make it a general concensus. I dont see difficulty problems, I'm fine with how things are, i dont need lvl 3000 reinforced-archwing-teralyst-amalgams to enjoy the game. How is it immediately good news? Isnt that very subjective?

That is the other extreme, the issue of difficulty in this game is that there is no middle ground between "press 1 button to win" and "deal 7 billion damage in one hit or lose".

There is no weight to the combat after a certain point, all enemies become paper and the A.I. is basically not there at all, there isn't anything that CAN challenge a player once they get over the numbers cliff.

Forcing the entire game to be harder isn't good, but right now in any given mission a single player can do the job of 4 because of how little of a problem enemies can be.

Right now the current state of Warframe is that it both drives away new players with the initial complexity, and bores those who stick around with the lack of depth after the initial complexity is figured out.

[Loza03]

16 minutes ago, Crasharr said:

What difficulty problem? Just because some try hards need to force S#&$ upon others doesnt make it a general concensus. I dont see difficulty problems, I'm fine with how things are, i dont need lvl 3000 reinforced-archwing-teralyst-amalgams to enjoy the game. How is it immediately good news? Isnt that very subjective?

In part, because try-hards can force their S*** on others.

Simply put, if you join a pub wanting a game using that off-meta weapon you spent so much time forma-ing and even 1 person is running a nuke setup, you might as well not be there most of the time. A lot of people don't like that.

There's also a lot of other things related to difficulty that aren't immediately connected. Have you considered that low difficulty might have impacted the increase in grind and/or unfulfilling rewards? There's research to suggest that more effort makes people more engaged, making them more sensitive to the outcome. In other words, the same reward can be received very differently based on how you achieve it. Moreover, the lack of difficulty is in part due to how easily players can automate or semi-automate gameplay. This of course ties into resource grind, making the existing issues of hyperinflation even worse. DE either needs to massively increase the amount of resources required to compensate, dramatically lower the acquisition rate of rewards tied to gameplay or introduce new resources and reward structures constantly to 'reset' the economy. 

[Awakend_Craz]

On 2019-10-07 at 6:40 PM, Jarriaga said:

This interview is a week old but I didn't have time to watch it until now. I also don't see threads discussing this.

This part of the interview with Rebecca at the 14:52 mark made me happy as she directly addressed the power scaling vs. difficulty problem in Warframe. She mentions how being able to one-shot everything up to certain point leads to boredom because the game feels too easy, and that's a challenge they (DE) want to tackle on as a team. How they go about it is anyone's guess, but it is encouraging to know that they are aware of it in no uncertain terms.

I gave them a lot of flak a few weeks ago for the Arbitrations fiasco as it felt like they were ignoring us, and I am aware this interview was recorded months ago around TennoCon and only now released to the public, but it served as a reminder to have a little faith in them. They may be slow to act, but they do know our grievances with the game.

Cheers to what Empyrean/The New War will bring.

Its good to see DE wants to bring us challenge, 1 problem.
casual players (most of the players) will then complain about it because they think its 2 hard when in reality its just putting in effort instead of killing 20 enemies with the press of a button.

[(PSN)cardinalphoenix]

On 2019-10-07 at 12:40 PM, Jarriaga said:

Cheers to what Empyrean/The New War will bring.

I have a lot of faith that both of those things will address difficulty in better ways than simple scaling tricks can fix. Smarter ways. More interesting ways. Empyrean can make the entire game more dynamic, not just for vets, but new players to appreciate as well.

And since New War will require completing The Sacrifice and Chimera, both of which take a fairly long time to get through for anyone new to the game, New War will ultimately implement things that SHOULD be designed for vets or just people with a lot of hours invested, as you CAN'T access that content right out of the gate.

[Jarriaga]

1 minute ago, Awakend_Craz said:

Its good to see DE wants to bring us challenge, 1 problem.
casual players (most of the players) will then complain about it because they think its 2 hard when in reality its just putting in effort instead of killing 20 enemies with the press of a button.

I can only hope DE decides to ignore them. If they are aware that long-term player retention is a problem rooted in high-level boredom, they will need to learn to ignore casuals. You can't go left and right at the same time.

[Jarriaga]

15 minutes ago, (PS4)cardinalphoenix said:

And since New War will require completing The Sacrifice and Chimera, both of which take a fairly long time to get through for anyone new to the game, New War will ultimately implement things that SHOULD be designed for vets or just people with a lot of hours invested, as you CAN'T access that content right out of the gate.

This is what I'm banking on.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Jarriaga

[(PSN)cardinalphoenix]

1 minute ago, Jarriaga said:

I can only hope DE decides to ignore them. If they are aware that long-term player retention is a problem rooted in high-level boredom, they will need to learn to ignore casuals. You can't go left and right at the same time.

While I don't want DE to ignore more casual players outright, I will say...they can afford to do so more than they may think. There's plenty for casual players, newer players, weaker players to dig into and work on while they gear up and practice mechanics and learn the ins and outs of various engagements.

People who have played for a long time, on the other hand, have had barely anything to do for quite a few years now, and while breaking away and having a life and playing other games is necessary, seeing as content in just about every game is finite and eventually dries up, Warframe can be more active and add more events and quests and whatever else to work on. 

[Jarriaga]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)cardinalphoenix said:

While I don't want DE to ignore more casual players outright, I will say...they can afford to do so more than they may think. There's plenty for casual players, newer players, weaker players to dig into and work on while they gear up and practice mechanics and learn the ins and outs of various engagements.

I see no problem with DE actually catering to casuals and new players by addressing progress stoppers in the early and helping them get to where we are faster. What I have a problem with is taking them into account in, say, a game mode that was created as a direct response to low mission failure rate, or things that are so late into the game that they can't be reached by non-dedicated players by design.

Casuals don't stay or dedicate themselves to a game for such a long time. Even if you play in an occasional and relaxed way, if you have reached Arbitrations it means you have enough dedication as to clear out every single mission node in the entire game. You are not a casual player at that level of dedication.

7 minutes ago, (PS4)cardinalphoenix said:

People who have played for a long time, on the other hand, have had barely anything to do for quite a few years now, and while breaking away and having a life and playing other games is necessary, seeing as content in just about every game is finite and eventually dries up, Warframe can be more active and add more events and quests and whatever else to work on. 

Agreed.

[(PSN)cardinalphoenix]

8 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

What I have a problem with is taking them into account in, say, a game mode that was created as a direct response to low mission failure rate, or things that are so late into the game that they can't be reached by non-dedicated players by design.

If you have reached Arbitrations it means you have enough dedication as to clear out every single mission node in the entire game. You are not a casual player at that level of dedication.

Yeah, I can agree with this. I'm no pro at Warframe by any stretch, but even I scratched my head a little at how they added a revive mechanic to Arbitrations. Especially since many people who get downed only stay if the mission has lasted more than 20 minutes or a handful of rotations, many people go down and just abort. Keeping permadeath but reducing rotation time seemed like it would've been the perfect compromise. Still lots of danger, but rewards come quicker. Easy.

Maybe they'll keep iterating and make it better, though. I mean, the entire game is one big iteration, if you think about it. Nothing is staying static forever. Everything gets worked on eventually.

[Awakend_Craz]

17 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

I can only hope DE decides to ignore them. If they are aware that long-term player retention is a problem rooted in high-level boredom, they will need to learn to ignore casuals. You can't go left and right at the same time.

Don't get 2 much hope because you need to look in DE's eyes.
If they make the game more challenging the causals (most of the players) will complain and if they just don't wanna do anything they will leave and it isn't smart to focus on the smaller group of people that wants the game to be more challenging then the group thats way bigger and doesn't want the extra challenge