Failing To Keep People Interested...

[ChaiVat]

need something to do besides wait for a mission/run mission

 

think about GTA or APB... you can play for hours not doing any missions and have fun socializing, driving around, doing random things.

 

the problem here is that the mission instances are the only corridor.

 

i wouldn't mind if random maps i try to initiate hardly ever populate...

Yeah, I play a little APB from time to time..pretty fun game...too many cheaters though, aim-bots etc.

[arch111]

Whatya mean, "notice how"?  There are only a couple of ways to "notice" a lack of players...for one, there are 40 people in my clan and hardly anyone logs in anymore, the 'recruitment' and 'region' chat is quiet and my regular 'friends list' of over 200 people is dead, lucky if there are 2-3 people on at one time lately.

 

Thats what I meant, clan or chat. The answer is both then.

[ChaiVat]

Thats what I meant, clan or chat. The answer is both then.

With all due respect, an answer like, "both", to your original question, would have been equally as vague as your question, I gave you a specific answer regardless. :)

[arch111]

Yeah, i was vague i guess. Why i asked is it might differ depending where you are. Im in sweden, and its been less crowded for a while now.

[Stakhanov]

I agree partially with some of the comments in here. The Random Number Generator is something that can, and does, in my experience, peeve a lot of people. I hate to bring other games into this, but I feel it is relevant.

Call me sad for using this example, but in "RuneScape", you can go to the Barrows, slay the six (or seven) barrows brothers, and claim a reward in the chest afterwards. Granted, this is a random number generator; you might end up with trash and menial supplies for your effort, or you could walk away with an item worth millions, it is random. However, when in the tunnel, finding the chest, there were other NPCs around you could slay for a killcount. If you got your killcount up higher, you could increase your chance of walking out with the millions, or leaving with menial stuff. It's this sort of play input that I think is important. A Random Number Generator will only get you so far.

I believe that players in general, and I'm not chalking anyones names up here, they like to have some degree of control over what they get. I'm not saying give everyone a choice of what they get after the end of avoid run or something, because the whole prize element is a part of the appeal and excitement about doing "grindy" as some of you have called it tasks, but I believe having something that a player themselves can do is important.

Another example, WarFrame related this time, is that if I do a Wave 5 run on Io, or Kiliken, I might expect to see a Hellfire Mod, or a Stormbringer Mod as an offer for my reward. Perhaps at Level 10 I'll get offered an Uncommon Fusion Core, maybe at 15 I'll get offered a rare core occasionally.

But when I play Endless Defence, I can get to Wave 50 solo, but between 15 and 50, I'll still get offered a Rare Fusion Core; hardly much of a reward, and there is a lot more difference between Wave 15, and Wave 50, but the RNG remains the same, it's purely luck. I'd like to see the RNG incorporate just a tad more skill rather than being so heavily reliant on luck.

[ChaiVat]

Yeah, i was vague i guess. Why i asked is it might differ depending where you are. Im in sweden, and its been less crowded for a while now.

I love you Swedes!  My wife is Swedish...

[ChaiVat]

I agree partially with some of the comments in here. The Random Number Generator is something that can, and does, in my experience, peeve a lot of people. I hate to bring other games into this, but I feel it is relevant.

Call me sad for using this example, but in "RuneScape", you can go to the Barrows, slay the six (or seven) barrows brothers, and claim a reward in the chest afterwards. Granted, this is a random number generator; you might end up with trash and menial supplies for your effort, or you could walk away with an item worth millions, it is random. However, when in the tunnel, finding the chest, there were other NPCs around you could slay for a killcount. If you got your killcount up higher, you could increase your chance of walking out with the millions, or leaving with menial stuff. It's this sort of play input that I think is important. A Random Number Generator will only get you so far.

I believe that players in general, and I'm not chalking anyones names up here, they like to have some degree of control over what they get. I'm not saying give everyone a choice of what they get after the end of avoid run or something, because the whole prize element is a part of the appeal and excitement about doing "grindy" as some of you have called it tasks, but I believe having something that a player themselves can do is important.

Another example, WarFrame related this time, is that if I do a Wave 5 run on Io, or Kiliken, I might expect to see a Hellfire Mod, or a Stormbringer Mod as an offer for my reward. Perhaps at Level 10 I'll get offered an Uncommon Fusion Core, maybe at 15 I'll get offered a rare core occasionally.

But when I play Endless Defence, I can get to Wave 50 solo, but between 15 and 50, I'll still get offered a Rare Fusion Core; hardly much of a reward, and there is a lot more difference between Wave 15, and Wave 50, but the RNG remains the same, it's purely luck. I'd like to see the RNG incorporate just a tad more skill rather than being so heavily reliant on luck.

Well said, I agree.

[alocrius]

For a game, surprisingly, Warframe has an almost complete absence of strategy or tactics.  I think it's safe to say that's why it won't be retaining it's audience for long.

Edited October 6, 2013 by alocrius

[arch111]

More maps and modes can help that I hope.

[ChaiVat]

For a game, surprisingly, Warframe has an almost complete absence of strategy or tactics.  I think it's safe to say that's why it won't be retaining it's audience for long.

I agree.

[arch111]

There could be more rock paper scissors at play.

Many weapons are similar, enemies weaknesses could be refined at class level.

So that gun A is better against Corpus than gun B, but gun B has bonus against Osprays.

There are possibilitys with mods combinations, frame+mod+gear unique boons.

Enemies could have a set of tactics and randomly vary so we stay alert.

Enemies could move in formation, flank with lone snipers, ambush or hide.

Enemy ai could target a frame by its Danger rating.

Good AoE frames would be targeted first, forcing the team to strategize.

Enemy ai could use the map to their advantage, cutting of escape routes, using cover-fire while melee units advance.

If overwhelmed ai could retreat to spawnpoints, or specific markers.

Right now we have straight lines with a few spawning grounds and ambush sites.

All factions try to overwhelm, with little regard for their own safety.

I have yet to see combat that forces tenno out drom their comfort zone.

This goes both ways. The game should make us think twice, and not have the biggest BFG there is.

We should not have situations where as long as Frost and Ember is there, you are good to win.

Do we dare let go of Ogris and kill all powers?

[rohver]

Burnout is the major issue. A lot of people are fed up with trying to farm a specific part but not getting it. Many of my clanmates and friends have taken a break. GTA 5 helped in that too. 

[ChaiVat]

A major reason for me quitting (for now) is the fact that you fight the same 3 factions from beginning planet to the final planet. Nothing interesting ever happens to them and it only takes a few encounters to figure out how to cope with each enemy. This game needs new enemy factions, but not even that would make it more interesting because you can still faceroll across your #4 key and clear room after room instantly. This game needs a lot of rework >.>

I hear that.

[Cheseit]

To me, its the balancing factor that i suspect has made the game lose levels of difficulty. Yes there is a complete lack of lore( but plenty of potential. ) , And yes the game is a grind. I feel like it would be more ok to be a grindy game if it got harder, and presented more unique challanges. Like for example, You start out a crap braton. Mk-1. You really cant kill much of anything with this. Even with it modded to hell. And you shouldnt be, its versatile enough to handle up to ~ 40's for an inexperienced player, but past that it gets to be impractical.

 

Thats where the balanceing aspect comes in. It feels like mastery rank is so hollow because past the braton, all the guns rather than representing a level of difficulty in the game, instead represent a play style. I think it needs both. Guns shouldnt take days to build. They should take days to get. That boss should be so hard that it eats your face off, while at the same time be able to be killed by someone out tiering it. Cap. Vor should present a real problem for new players. Nearly un soloable. That way people would need real genuine co operation to down him. And while Vor is fairly like that, again like the braton it doesnt change. Jackle is just as hard as Hek who is just as hard as Krill whos just as hard as J-3 Ect ect.

What would really make the game much better for me is two major things. One is new maps. I love the new desert (Dessert?) map. Its beautiful, and a huge refreshing break from the floating tin can. But i want moar. I want to experience the envirorment. Bend the rules a bit. Not all the planets have to be floating rocks. Make biolabs or something. Incorperate some smexy vegitation. Something fresh

Second is tiers. An imbalance, because it should exist. Like, conclave removes any reason not to have upgraded frames. Like for example, A trinity might be the lowest in a 3 - 4 chain of healers. Make abilitys better with more hp and regen. Just generaly better With a twist of haveing something new. Like instead of the raw blessing, well of life which are more direct heals, maybe have a healer type warframe that works off absorbtion. Personal shield boosts and restores , or someone that works off an aura type mindset that buffs your damage taken/done/drops/armor. Something new like that. Something to give them a way to make Significantly more difficult mobs. new types and such

[bejuizb]

^ Absolutely agree. I need the game to get more tactical. It's pretty commonplace now to see people running Mag with Somas for boss runs. Just use Bullet Attractor, and let loose. Absolutely no skill required. The 4 man squads are rendered obsolete because of the lack of any necessary tactics. Bosses should be very tough to fight. I don't mean like they should just be able to one shot you or it takes you 5000 shots to kill them. I mean introduce traps and maneuvers that prevents players from just roflstomping every boss in the game. A game I remember mainly for the boss fights is Ninja Gaiden 2. The most memorable and challenging boss fights ever. That coupled with Armor 20 and the Cell concept (which is flipping amazing. Props to the person who thought of that) can bring soul back into the game. Also, scrap RNG.

[ChaiVat]

I don't t hink anyone has mentioned this, but it would be cool if there was a common place that all players could attend, to make purchases, trade items, sell items etc. like a town square, where people can also enjoy eachothers personal frame designs, walk around, talk to eachother, via text-bubbles or something.  I may not be explaining this like I want to, but when you're in a mission with 3 other people, no one takes notice of 'you', we're always so focused on what we're doing, indiviually...there has to be a 'gloat factor' (check out my armour and stats etc) in the game somehow.  Something needs to slow the game down too, these missions are not only mundane, repeptative and frankly uninspiring, but they're completely impersonal especially when we're supposed to be a community, doing co-ops together.

[Geig3r]

I think even before a story (and stories/narrative won't hold value outside of theme-park experiences unless they are living/breathing and impacted by our actions), players only purpose is attached to very thin game mechanics.  

 

For example, if you do a simple comparison between say Path of Exile and Warframe.  Simple differences make a big difference in replayability of the two games.  Note, I'm not saying PoE is perfect, just pointing out the slight differences that makes it more interesting for repetitive play.

 

First Item Rarity/Randomness

- POE has a variety of items with many possible stats/ranges/combinations

- Warframe used to have a system where you could get green/blue mods with the blue ones having up to 2 stats on them.  Even with the max of 2 stats, minimal variance in stat amounts (like 74ish and 99ish version of a mod, rather than a mod that could have a range of 60-110) and the issue of finding blue mods with worse stats than their green counterparts, I and others farmed Xini like mad for them.  Once the mod system changed, I took a break and when I returned had all the important mods in less than a few days of playing.  The change killed the majority of the reward value of items

 

Second Simple Mechanics (with more randomness)

Containers

- POE every container has the potential to drop any item, including rare.  That means there's always potential value in opening/breaking them

- Warframe, while there has been some limited improvements, there is almost no anticipation or mystery value in interacting with those containers (on top of the aforementioned nuking of item reward value)

 

If Warframe revamped their items to be more like the Diablo model and added them to the containers, it would be a vast improvement. I'd go a step further and say add possible rare containers with visual differences (like a purple light instead of green) which would be an exciting visual cue and offer "oh S#&$ yeah!" moments.  On top of that, I'd add more visual cues to the existing items (imagine a mod with a purple glow popping out) simply to add more group wide anticipation before you even know what the items are and then a better reporting system (in the case of different rewards) because there's social value in knowing what everyone got and congratulating/heckling if it was something lame.  You could even take it a step further an have special containers (with the visual cues) that drop specific items, like blue prints.  Imagine seeing a barrel that you knew was a high level blue print barrel.  Basically a lot of simple ways to stretch the existing mechanics into something interesting as opposed to something just taking up space.

 

Mobs

- With the exception of the boss interactions (haven't killed one in a while), which I thought were fine, there isn't much value in the different types of foes you will face.  Warframe could easily vastly improve (once again assuming more interesting item rewards) the general play experience by having a larger variety of rare mob type events.  Like the stalker but a greater variety of possible, and more frequent, outcomes with a range of easy to really hard with rewards scaling to match the risk.  Additionally, and improving upon that of PoE, if you had mobs scaling in difficulty of 1-10, you could have the possibility of different flavors of each that would drop specific types of items.  So, you could have a difficulty 6 mob that drops general loots at that reward level or one that drops only keys, or one that drops weapons.  So lots of possible outcomes, some being more rare than others.

 

Alerts

- No alerts in PoE, it's a great concept

- Alerts have gotten better than they were before where you ignored all but the ones that had the item you wanted.  I wouldn't necessarily do away with the known reward alerts, but I'd definitely add some (sometimes themed) events that had variety of random outcomes/rewards with a high ranging scale of rarity.  Thus many parties could go in, but one might run across a holy grail of an item.

 

The following 2, PoE actually could use some improvement on.

 

Social

- I'd surface relevant social information when it presents itself.  If someone gets a cool item (again assuming an increase in the reward value of items) or any other cool/relevant social event

- Add more value in marking mods/items.  It is cool when people mark a mod to make sure you don't miss it.  Not only should they get credit for it (maybe have the name of the first person to do it next to the marker) people should get XP for it, so everyone does it

 

 

Other things I might have done differently, but probably is a bit late:

- I'd have all items come out with a stock look or a very limited set of options.  So a plasma sword with one or two general color options and if you had a fire mod on it, it would be one default color fire effect.  Then I'd make the rest of the options items(visual mods) to find/earn/be rewarded with.  Having some be more rare than others.  I.e. a green light on the sword, or a bad as red flame effect is super epic and hard to get.  Thus when someone sees another person with cool, hard-to-get effects, it actually means something.    

- As for the Warframes, that's a little tougher given the art style (which took a while to grow on me, but eventually did).

 

 

So, in summary.  Revamp mods to give them significant valuable as rewards and add a lot more randomness/rarity to the game.

[Geig3r]

I don't t hink anyone has mentioned this, but it would be cool if there was a common place that all players could attend, to make purchases, trade items, sell items etc. like a town square, where people can also enjoy eachothers personal frame designs, walk around, talk to eachother, via text-bubbles or something.  I may not be explaining this like I want to, but when you're in a mission with 3 other people, no one takes notice of 'you', we're always so focused on what we're doing, indiviually...there has to be a 'gloat factor' (check out my armour and stats etc) in the game somehow.  Something needs to slow the game down too, these missions are not only mundane, repeptative and frankly uninspiring, but they're completely impersonal especially when we're supposed to be a community, doing co-ops together.

 

Good point, some means of inspecting others would be nice too.  I've seen some people tearing it up and wondered what their setup was only to not even know what frame they were using (because new ones had been added since the last time i played).

 

Speaking of your arsenal, have recent updates given any incentives to playing specific Warframes or value to having different combinations of Warframes in a party?

[Alohoe]

Low player activity, in general.  Anyone have thoughts?  Redundancy?  Boredom? Lacking content and game objectives?  Is this another game that went up like a blazing rocket, only to come crashing down just as fast?

 

Just curious...

this is why i rotate games.  burnout is just part of gaming.  as you evolve as a gamer, it becomes harder and harder to find games that keep your attention for long periods.  since EVERY game out there has some sort of rng grind, this is just natural.  so, take a break. play something else.  when content drops, come back.  you will enjoy the game that much more imo.

 

 i havent seen any more or less players logging in vs who were 3 months ago.  730 hours played, one weapon from having everything possible completed in this game, and im just now starting to get burnt out.  after synapse finishes and i make it. ill go play something else and wait for u11. 

 

hope this helps. =)

[arch111]

I know this game is "class-free" , but is it really?

The stats determine a great deal, as does the 4 powers.

Some are tanks, some are support casters, some are rangers, some are fighters.

If we do not have classes, could we have ranks, insignias, call-signs, whatever to define us in clan/ cell?

Something to tell others what playstyle we like,

Mod-setup and gear. Especially in lobby.

Like Ghost, Demon, Dragon, Serpent to follow the oriental theme.

A stealth run would imply Ghost and Demon for example.

While were at it, a Name for setups A, B, C.

Then its Rhino Dragons Breath. For example.

What do you all feel about this idea?

[GetAtMeMods]

Im still interested. just waiting for some shtuff to be reworked.

[arch111]

Still interested to, caus im a casual player. That is, i play maby a few missions a day.

Im still on 1 frame, still havent got a complete set of any frame so far.

Banshees helmet still eludes me. Why i why is she random and not tied to a planet? Makes no sence to me.

The most frustrating thing have been and is, the time it takes to get a good weapon.

First get the bp, and mats.

Build it.

Rank it to lvl 30.

Get mods. Fuse mods to get good gun.

Forma the gun, start over.

The same for frames.

[Jay.ID]

About the Stalker:

 

See the bastard at least once a day when it's not two or three times a day (the bastard loves me apparently) and when he drops soomething it's always the bloody Dread Bow (i hate bow gameplay) or the Hate, which i don't love one bit. The Despair knives however never got' em can someone explain that 2 me!? 

Know the feel, though it's just annoying.

[Inquisitioner]

I don't t hink anyone has mentioned this, but it would be cool if there was a common place that all players could attend, to make purchases, trade items, sell items etc. like a town square, where people can also enjoy eachothers personal frame designs, walk around, talk to eachother, via text-bubbles or something.  I may not be explaining this like I want to, but when you're in a mission with 3 other people, no one takes notice of 'you', we're always so focused on what we're doing, indiviually...there has to be a 'gloat factor' (check out my armour and stats etc) in the game somehow.  Something needs to slow the game down too, these missions are not only mundane, repeptative and frankly uninspiring, but they're completely impersonal especially when we're supposed to be a community, doing co-ops together.

 

Warframe Hotel - LOL

[bejuizb]

I've read all the stuff on this post, and I would like to summarise:

 

Remove RNG or atleast mdoify it so that it isn't truly random and luck dependent. 

Remove the grind factor from the game by making more innovative solutions to obtaining materials and items.

Allow more free reign in terms of level design.

Possibly implement or consider the Cells concept ( This is a big one IMO)

Add meaning to player actions in game so that it plays a part in affecting the overall plot of the game.

Change up the level designs and factions hopefully.

Allow missions to be challenging and really emphasize of needing teamwork to win.

Allow more socialization between players except Clans and/or Conclaves.

And (this is my gripe), make the resources drop more or reduce the item requirements. Mutagen has been the bane of my existence for the past two weeks. Luck seems to play a major part in it, because I've only gotten 100 mutagen samples so far. From a hundred Derelict missions. 1 Mutagen per mission on average is absolutely stupid. \

 

Please add any more stuff I may have missed

Edited October 8, 2013 by bejuizb