Empyrean and the decline of Warframe

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

On 2019-12-13 at 3:30 PM, Awazx said:

After a year of drought of new content and after the questionable Lich system, Empyrean expected as a necessary breath of fresh air that Warframe desperately needed. How wrong I was.

What is Empyrean? It is Archwing 2.0. Nothing else. Did Archwing accept at the time? No, because this is Warframe. However, DE continues in its attempt to continue adding micro-games and game systems parallel to the main core (that Warframe-based core that made me fall in love with the game in 2014) and that does not contribute anything nor enrich the central experience of the game.

DE, you have spent 2 years of development at Empyrean. You could have spent that time creating a whole new solar system, with new planets, enemies and mysteries to discover. You could have improved and redesigned all the game systems that you have in the habit of leaving to action after its launch, from the syndicates to the focus system. You could have improved all the missions of the solar system and get it to play something other than defense and survival.

What do I have in place? The possibility of piloting a ship in an “open space” for 4 players, extinguishing fires and necessarily using my (forgotten) Archwing. Again, more grinding, more RNG, more new resources, more things disconnected from the true Warframe universe. For my part, I am not going to play Empyrean and I am not going to build my Railjack.

You are burning Warframe. You're burning faster than a Railjack burns under enemy fire.

Hold up. You havent even built your railjack and you're gonna poop all over this? Troll detected.

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

Archwing had no reason to play it outside mastery.  Now it does with railjack since you do fly your archwing out there in space with gear that is better if you spent forma on it.  Empyrean is a much larger system and they aren't going to abandon it, they are going to put more stuff on top of it I can guarantee it they spent years of dev time on this I doubt they spent that much time on archwing system hell the rush mission drop tables are still dumb where you can't get an a, b, and c reward for killing all the transports in that mission so if you want a b rotation reward you have to kill 2 and wait for the time to run out.  

Every major release is like this at first, DE will patch it out over time as per usual same as fortuna and PoE.  Come back in a couple months and there will be changes I can guarantee that.  

[844448]

On 2019-12-14 at 10:45 PM, DerGreif2 said:

So when do we get new REAL content?

So what is REAL content?

[nslay]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)COA Altair said:

Archwing had no reason to play it outside mastery.  Now it does with railjack since you do fly your archwing out there in space with gear that is better if you spent forma on it.  Empyrean is a much larger system and they aren't going to abandon it, they are going to put more stuff on top of it I can guarantee it they spent years of dev time on this I doubt they spent that much time on archwing system hell the rush mission drop tables are still dumb where you can't get an a, b, and c reward for killing all the transports in that mission so if you want a b rotation reward you have to kill 2 and wait for the time to run out.  

Every major release is like this at first, DE will patch it out over time as per usual same as fortuna and PoE.  Come back in a couple months and there will be changes I can guarantee that.  

When I saw the Railjack demo at Tennocon, I had a reason to play Archwing... to collect all the mods! Well, I also had to play non-Archwing missions to get all the mods too, like Razorback, Profit Taker... as well as kill Tusk Thumper Doma (Kinetic Diversion) no less than 50 times. I think I spent most of my time doing Rush and Caelus... and yeah, it's dumb that you are rewarded with worse rewards if you kill 1 or 3 transports in Rush. But if you kill 2 transports? Perfect! Hmm, I think I had to do the mobile defense missions too... I forget why though! Probably some specific enemy dropping a useful mod (Archwing mobile defense has no notable rewards).

[Paradoxity]

44 minutes ago, Or4ngeClaw said:

do you really think de would spend 2+ years developing a system only to release it have everybody hate it and never touch it again?

 

Oh, they probably would, if it's received poorly enough. It's happened before, though I'm not sure they spent quite the same ammount of time on other forgotten parts of the game as they have on this. 

But I think we haven't gotten the whole picture yet, either. We know there were three phases of this, and we've gotten 2 so far (TOB and now Empyrean) 

#3 probably won't be huge and ground-breaking, but ideally it'll take the other two and build on them to form a cohesive unit. Ideally it'll give us enough of a taste to see where we're really going with it, so we can make more informed calls. 

That said, Right now, Railjack looks to have a lot of potential as-is, without hilarious amounts of reworking to core premise or systems. I mean, admittedly it needs tweaking kinda badly, but that's probably part of us not playing with the whole deck, either. 

 

[dirtysmile]

5 hours ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

and last time, it would seem.

Alexa, play "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen..

Seems like a common theme for warframe players

[White_Matter]

I agree  that the grind is a bit too excessive but that isn't enough to rule out Railjack.

Look on the brightside, you are at least grinding on a completely fresh game mode. 

Unlike Kuva lich where you are basically grinding regular star chart missions. The same old.

Give Railjack some time. I think they might reduce the crafting costs, or increase material acquisition rate or something. I'm playing with resource booster and I still don't have enough copernics to repair a mk2 weapon. 

[DreisterDino]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Or4ngeClaw:

But there is something we as a community need to understand before flaming DE for giving us something broken (even though we kind of forced them to push it out).

Railjack and the lich system is that de will probably spend most of next year building on, who said that this was railjack? that this was all that it will be because it definitely wont be, at tennocon they showed railjack and the lich system in one, i think in devstream 134 they said they will still make all the things from tennocon happen so why all the hate when this is just the biginning of a whole new way to play the game, its not like they wont change those wreckage values down a bit and fix the bugs.

After 1 1/2 years i think we can expect more than Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish (I'll stop here).

They will probably add a bit more here and there, but we shouldnt expect too much.

If this is what they can come up with in 2 years, what will they add?

 

People said the same with PoE / Fortuna.

Still, these OpenWorlds are out for 2 (1) year(s) and they didnt add a single interesting new Bounty or new Events (Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls).

There have been a few tweaks and additions, but will the OpenWorlds become what they could be? no, never.

vor einer Stunde schrieb Mikhael222:

.....This is only the beginning.

This game mode opens up a universe of potential. 

I am sick of potential tbh.

And whatever they release, it will always stay in the "it has potential" zone.

Because once its released, we can only expect minor tweaks here and there (remember last Devstream? Question: Are you planning to do more changes with the Lich System? Short and precise answer from the Staff: No.)

 

And people will defend it "they are working on The New War, New player experience, ...)".

Railjack has been the excuse for them to not properly work on the Open Worlds, and now the 2 things mentioned above will be the excuse why there wont be major changes to Railjack, a few minor changes here and there and the necessary (!) bugfixes, but thats it.

 

Note: If you already enjoy anything of the Content mentioned above, thats fine and i wont argue with it.

But dont be a fool and expect major changes next year and say "it will become awesome", if you dont like it now, you wont like it in the future.

Edited December 16, 2019 by DreisterDino

[(XBOX)Lost Frames]

I'm sadly shy on resources so I won't have my own Railjack for quite awhile and that kinda bummed me out

[Or4ngeClaw]

2 hours ago, DreisterDino said:

After 1 1/2 years i think we can expect more than Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish/Skirmish (I'll stop here).

They will probably add a bit more here and there, but we shouldnt expect too much.

If this is what they can come up with in 2 years, what will they add?

 

People said the same with PoE / Fortuna.

Still, these OpenWorlds are out for 2 (1) year(s) and they didnt add a single interesting new Bounty or new Events (Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls/Ghouls).

There have been a few tweaks and additions, but will the OpenWorlds become what they could be? no, never.

I am sick of potential tbh.

And whatever they release, it will always stay in the "it has potential" zone.

Because once its released, we can only expect minor tweaks here and there (remember last Devstream? Question: Are you planning to do more changes with the Lich System? Short and precise answer from the Staff: No.)

 

And people will defend it "they are working on The New War, New player experience, ...)".

Railjack has been the excuse for them to not properly work on the Open Worlds, and now the 2 things mentioned above will be the excuse why there wont be major changes to Railjack, a few minor changes here and there and the necessary (!) bugfixes, but thats it.

 

Note: If you already enjoy anything of the Content mentioned above, thats fine and i wont argue with it.

But dont be a fool and expect major changes next year and say "it will become awesome", if you dont like it now, you wont like it in the future.

i do really like railjack aside the bugs and tweaks to some of the costs i think its a great adition to the game im just hoping that some extra planets and maybe and inclusion of the lich system will be made next year i mean its only been out for like a week and i cant imagine them working hard over the weekend so most of the bugs should be gone by next week and when it comes down the the tweaking of enemy damage to archwings (aka oneshotting anything that isnt amesha) and the ridiculous resource cost i have no clue, but when we all said the liches were too much of a grind they signifially toned it down so maybe there is hope

[Softballbryan]

On 2019-12-13 at 6:56 PM, ty91 said:

I started playing and loving this game for the hack and slash gameplay, with this new update I don't understand why i was looking forward to it since it has nothing to do with why i liked this game in the first place

I agree at the moment. It’s new and different... but it’s not all that fun right now... maybe DE will tie it all together better. i was hoping the Railjack would be a means to new systems/galaxies. Fight I a ship to get to harder or different battles... stuff like that. 

[(XBOX)AMONGTHEWEAK]

I feel like sometimes DE be swinging in the dark

[notlamprey]

Just to comment specifically on the alleged "decline" of Warframe, the steam charts are actually kinda interesting.

Looking at the past 3 months, compared to the 1-year and 2-year charts, the most recent batches of new content simply are not holding the interest of players in the way that Warframe had been before.

The player count curve shows much more rapid spikes and dips lately, compared to the longer tails of major updates past. While that probably isn't enough to support any claims that the sky is falling, people don't seem to be sticking around in the same numbers as 2017 and 2018 - or even spring of 2019.

 

 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

On 2019-12-13 at 5:45 PM, Daziri said:

It's your fault you have forgotten your archwing, meanwhile I happen to enjoy my Amesha.

DE left aw out to the birds and expects players to be suddenly interested in it and grind Mods and weaps to be viable in the new expansion.... It's de's fault for not going back and making or fixing arcwing to make Players feel inclined to grind it out for future content 

[Awazx]

Il y a 5 heures, (XB1)Ohh Camper a dit :

I'm sadly shy on resources so I won't have my own Railjack for quite awhile and that kinda bummed me out

That is not a problem friend. I offer you to add me as a friend in the game. In 1 or 2 days you have all the necessary resources. I help you with pleasure.

[realmzjetter]

I just really can't get behind the controls of the thing. Even for a mouse flight thing it has no flow, things don't move like they should. I understand that Steve didn't want a flight sim, but a railjack just feels like a worse archwing. Also they are honestly the ugliest things I have ever seen, all three skins of these things are just awful.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

9 minutes ago, realmzjetter said:

I just really can't get behind the controls of the thing. Even for a mouse flight thing it has no flow, things don't move like they should. I understand that Steve didn't want a flight sim, but a railjack just feels like a worse archwing. Also they are honestly the ugliest things I have ever seen, all three skins of these things are just awful.

Your lack of coordination isn't their fault, and what does you not liking a skin have anything to do with anything at all?

If you were given a free car would you not drive it because of the color?

[Awazx]

il y a une heure, realmzjetter a dit :

 Also they are honestly the ugliest things I have ever seen, all three skins of these things are just awful.

Completely agree. 

Edit: Besides, they are not only horrible on the outside, they are also ugly on the inside. I don't feel that I am inside a spaceship.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Awazx

[Awazx]

il y a 17 minutes, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu a dit :

If you were given a free car would you not drive it because of the color?

It depends on the color. If they give me green with pink polka dots, I wouldn't drive it

 

 

except if they give me the opportunity to paint it.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Awazx

[tobiparty]

It seems that empyrean is divisive, LIKE ALMOST ALL WARFRAME UPDATES/REWORKS.

I like empyrean, it needs a lots of work and time to get better. It needs to pull the game together and unite it, as advertised by DE.

[realmzjetter]

45 minutes ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

Your lack of coordination isn't their fault, and what does you not liking a skin have anything to do with anything at all?

If you were given a free car would you not drive it because of the color?

Coordination has nothing to do with it, the "flight" in Warframe is poorly implemented, archwing is testiment enough to that and Railjack handles even worse. No I would not drive a new car that some how handles worse than the crappy one I already have. Even worse, now that they've moved on to something else DE will make almost zero changes to the awful Lich system, won't look at tweaking vauban or any other recent frames that still need help, and will just push ahead on Railjack until they get tired of that and drop it like they've dropped every single other game play mechanic they put into the game. Warframe desperately needs an "Operation Health" but one that actually does something.

[(PSN)GinjiAmanoGB]

The biggest rinse and repeat with Warframe isn't the grind it's the the hate train. I've been playing since launch on PlayStation and it's always been the same. New content drops and the super vocal 5% of the fanbase can't wait to get on the internet and complain about every little thing. 

I don't have the full Railjack update yet but I'm still looking forward to it despite the few people who would prefer everyone else agree that it sucks rather then enjoying the experience.

I play Warframe because I like the grind, the wacky Syfy story and the complexity of the experience. If you don't like it go play something else because DE isn't likely to change its core grind loop it's had forever just because of you.

[Awazx]

il y a 5 minutes, (PS4)GinjiAmanoGB a dit :

If you don't like it go play something else because DE isn't likely to change its core grind loop it's had forever just because of you.

I am honored that your first message in the forum is dedicated to this post. And yes, I agree, there is a lot of hate in this forum.

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

I think Empyrean is simply the latest symptom of a much larger problem with DE. They're producing less and less quest content and working more on monetizing more aggressively now. I mean, I've never really had problems with slots, but now that a ton of primed weapons are going to get their riven dispositions nerfed along with January's melee riven nerf fest, I'm becoming cynical about it. Because it really is starting to seem like DE isn't doing this for the sake of balance, but to keep the riven market flowing. 

And personally, I'm finding it harder and harder to justify to myself to invest in anything new now, because it seems that DE is just going to nerf it once people stop buying it. An old friend of mine used to play a game called Marvel Heroes that had the same problem. The devs would release new and super OP heroes, players would love the rush and go for it only to become disillusioned once the devs inevitably nerfed them later on. After a while of that, he just decided to call it quits because as I like to put it, he was just writing in the sand at the beach. 

Once that nerf tide comes in, all your progress is just flat out erased .. and in a game that's all about progress, that's pretty damn bad. I'm gonna stick around for a few more months, but to be perfectly honest, I really don't see a future for DE if they keep up this aggressive monetization strategy of theirs. 

[MJ12]

4 hours ago, notlamprey said:

Just to comment specifically on the alleged "decline" of Warframe, the steam charts are actually kinda interesting.

Looking at the past 3 months, compared to the 1-year and 2-year charts, the most recent batches of new content simply are not holding the interest of players in the way that Warframe had been before.

The player count curve shows much more rapid spikes and dips lately, compared to the longer tails of major updates past. While that probably isn't enough to support any claims that the sky is falling, people don't seem to be sticking around in the same numbers as 2017 and 2018 - or even spring of 2019.

 

 

2017 and 2018 were where they introduced the Plains and Fortuna which were very deliberately designed to attract players as quickly as possible. This is why they had their own isolated ecosystems (so veterans couldn't skip the content despite how it was intended to be immediately accessible to newbies). Meanwhile 2019's major additional content drops have largely either been system reworks (melee) or been geared towards veterans. Yes, I'm even counting the Jupiter rework there because when you're talking about F2P games, taking even a dozen hours to get there through regular gameplay is basically 'veteran content.'

Warframe's player retention problem hasn't really been getting veterans to stick with the game especially since most of the quitting veterans are people who have put thousands and thousands of hours into the game and it gets pretty hard to keep those guys, it's always been getting those newbies to stay with the game, and this year's nearly entirely veteran-targeted content is not great for that. Especially since Liches and Empyrean are super veteran targeted. To beat Liches you need to be reliably capable of grinding sortie-level content without issue, while Empyrean's enemy scaling is utterly ridiculous. 

I'm wondering if DE's pushing Empyrean/New War this aggressively because they want to have this sort of weird new veteran content available right before they do some sort of soft-relaunch of Warframe with the Dan Trachtenberg Warframe intro and the revised Warframe tutorial/new player experience that's supposed to be going into it. Or if DE's pushing Empyrean out the way it is because Empyrean's also a series of reworks of Warframe systems. Steve talked about using Empyrean as a testbed for rebalancing and there are some ideas that IMO improve on the Warframe experience. For example:

• Weapon mark upgrades that give you the majority of your damage boosts instead of weapons staying the same forever, requiring you to invest in mods.
• Core systems upgrades that reduce the impact and necessity of mods.
• The various grades of mods and the slot upgrade system make modding Railjack somewhat more interesting than modding Warframes.
• Enemies having enough health that you can do things to them, while still dying quickly enough so that if you're actually in-level for the content you can still get that horde experience.
• "Elite" enemies that need more than just shooting to kill but are fairly rare.
• "Intrinsics" giving you shared progression that improves your capabilities no matter what you're doing, and doing so without the frustrating mess that is lenses and focus boosters.
• Seamless Archwing/Railjack/Warframe integration that lets you transition between gamemodes pretty fluidly (which is a legitimate technical accomplishment and is clearly intended to be the glue that holds Warframe together).

Sure, there's also a bunch of boneheaded stuff in it (the crafting economy lol) and there's the usual painful balancing issues and a bunch of fun networking bugs, but DE is generally a two steps forward, one step back sort of developer. And the two steps here, in terms of core gameplay design, are pretty solid steps. But I wouldn't be surprised if the DE plan was basically 'test mechanical implementations for more balanced Warframe out via Railjack, and do a soft relaunch of Warframe sometime in 2020 after New War with the Trachtenberg intro + tutorial.'