Warframe: 2020, The Year of Fixing stuff

[Vespilan]

The year 2020 should be the year of fixing stuff. 
While YouTube creator Rahetalius' video mainly focuses on Kuva Lich, a lot more and especially alot less recent Warframe content needs touch-ups. While this does include weapon rebalanaces and Warframe reworks they are only minor aspects. The big fish are really the gameplay modes.

 

Why bother reworking gameplay modes?

As Rahetalius explained, reworking existing content has various upsides;

1. Old content could be linked in with newer one,making the system more cohesive as a whole. When done properly, instances such as Railjack which's reward system and gameplay is almost completely cut off from the rest of the game, should not exist and replayability and variety is encouraged. As anyone who played Warframe for a while would know; Replayability is very important for missions.
2. New content would not have to build on a fundament of content that is straight up outdated, both functionally and design-wise and thus limiting the vision the developers had for Warframe.
3. Times between major updates become much more enjoyable if the base-content is. 
4. Players would be encouraged to touch upon content they possible never have before or which they disliked to an extend where it was unplayable to them.
5. DE would get the possibility to rebuilt the trust some have lost to them due to half-baked, buggy and ultimately left-behind and disconnected content.
6. Reworking early- and midgame allows to build a foundation for a more challenging and more entertaining endgame, which Warframe desperately needs.

 

So what should be reworked then? 

Everything that is a detriment to either the artistic vision of Warframe or it's game design. This most notably includes, but is not limited to, the following;

• Conclave; Remove entirely or rework so that it appeals more to Warframes PvE nature. Not every game has to have a PvP mode.
• Dynamic Events; We need more of these! The "Change of plans!" intermission you sometimes get from the Lotus is a good start, but this has potential to be expanded on to include currently disconnected content like, for instance, Railjack or Archwing. The "integration" of Archwing to PoE and OV is barely recognizable as such since it basically just functions as a taxi. 
• Syndicates; Wear a sigil, do everything as usual, get stuff. This could be expanded upon to be more challenging, make syndicate missions relevant, harder and potentially more rewarding for endgame. They can also serve as a great vehicle to deepen the lore, 
• Kuva Liches; See Rahetalius. 
• Archwing; Not the controls, but the system. Archwings should be able to use the same mods as Warframes to encourage modding variaty and not giving the player the feeling they have to grind for the same mods twice. This is deserving of it's own forum topic. 
• Warframes and Weapons; Not individually but as a system. For instance; Is limited ammo really still a relevant mechanic in Warframe's game design? Should augment mods receive a very own mechanic instead of being mod cards to encourage more diverse gameplay styles and builds? Should the polarity system and capacity sytem in modding be re-thought?

Individual player opinion should be largely disregarded. Bold claim, isn't it? Let me tell you why;
A thing like "unified player opinion" does not exist and there will be people upset no matter what reworks go through. Reworking conclave to appeal more to the PvE nature of Warframe and, as possible consequence, thus to a larger player base, will inevitably upset the two people who unironically play conclave. Players will always find something to disagree and should not even given the illusion, that their opinion will be a decisive factor in the design of content, leaving less room for them to be upset.
If it was up to most players, everyone had a different vision of Warframe, different demands but claim to their demands being more important than others, proven by me so confidently stating this and you, possibly, so confidently disagreeing.
This is not, (and I format this in underlined because I know someone will somehow manage to not read this and then rant) NOT to say that player opinion should be ignored entirely! There should be found new ways like a majority vote from DE's side to get the majority opinion on a hot topic from players instead of making big ingame changes based on a few loud voices in the forum. DE, therein, not only decides what topics they can extract useful data from the players on, but also communicates to us what even the options are.

 

 

I'm leaving it of at this since this is already enough of a wall of text.

[kapn655321]

I think we'd all love to see them refine existing systems, though there's evidence that their success hinges on pumping out new things. We may feel we appreciate that less, but the company struggles to run without it. My classic Warframe experience involved a lot more updates and fixes.. but there's a limit to how much they can spend in development, just polishing things that players will consider of no worth once completed. I'd be ok with that, but I'm not hurting for new content. Updates like Melee reworks, the Lich, etc, are all meant to augment and develop toward revising the existing systems.. be it the worth of existing or future quality of content. ..Revising enemies to be more fitting to a challenge, making neglected weapons competent, etc.

The new updates are trying to tick both boxes at once.. Making old content new, and new content bring new meaning to the old. It's going to take a long while for this to catch up with itself. They've mentioned things like Primary kitguns, and in doing so may come in tandem with a gun update, or at least give them better usage and understanding of what we want from them.

As for things like PvP, I have no comment. That's up to the PvP crowd to discuss.. I'll almost certainly never interface with it, regardless of rewards or reworks, since I'm only in this for Cooperative PvE. I absolutely agree that trying to get players to agree on what content they ultimately want, is impossible. The more someone puts together a suggestion that encompasses everyone's interest, the less appeal there is to agree, as each individual player doesn't get to be the champion of that idea. That plays a considerable role in why, "DE doesn't listen to us," because in large part, "We," don't even listen to, "us."

I haven't watched the video, so I also can't speak to the Lich system proposals.. Content creators are often fueled by hype, hyperbole, and click bait, so they're often of little use for actionable changes.. they're not within the company understanding why things come out as they do, and it doesn't benefit them to be reasonable in their requests. Nothing personal against this creator, but that's the name of the game in that sphere, and it's often so tabloid and polarizing for dramatic effect, that the point is either lost, or the reasoning against those points is drowned out with mob sentiment. I'm sure they have good points, though they have every incentive to be so over the top that they don't account for potential logistic faults, and get expectations whipped into a lather if the impossible is not met to their liking. As you say about individual player opinion.. they're an individual who gets paid to be as rash and hype as possible, whether or not they take full advantage of that.


TL;DR: I'd be all for them re-tooling and polishing existing content, if it wasn't necessary that their focus be on releasing new things to stay afloat as a business.

Edited January 8, 2020 by kapn655321

[peterc3]

37 minutes ago, Vespilan said:

making big ingame changes based on a few loud voices in the forum

This doesn't happen. Votes of the players will never determine what is done with the game.

That video's been posted before and all of this is irrelevant given DE cannot just fix things. It's literally a death sentence.

39 minutes ago, Vespilan said:

• DE would get the possibility to rebuilt the trust some have lost to them due to half-baked, buggy and ultimately left-behind and disconnected content.

The game is a work in progress. Things get added, later they all get tied together or something better is implemented. You will never play any game that does not have bugs. I either play a game or not, I don't trust any dev. This is a bizarre relationship to have with a game and a game developer.

42 minutes ago, Vespilan said:

• Conclave; Remove entirely or rework so that it appeals more to Warframes PvE nature. Not every game has to have a PvP mode.

The existence of Conclave affects nothing at the moment, so there's no reason to remove it. There's also no reason to make it PvE since... it's specifically the PvP part of the game.

[(PSN)Esbald]

I skimmed over the OP. I have seen this kind of post posted a few times and I gotta say: I don’t get this mentality. Plenty of developers with teams smaller than Digital Extreme’s manage to work on improving their game and develop new content at the same time. There is no need for “a year of nothing but fixing things”, because it can be assumed that they have employees whose sole purpose is to fix the game. This is why the game receives somewhat consistent reworks and new versions of old systems.

The issue seems to he more that the fixes are not what people expect, as opposed to them not existing.

 

[DrivaMain]

While I appreciate an "Operation : Health" to the game, it's currently impossible to pull it off without losing a chunk of players and delaying new projects in the process because DE doesn't have enough manpower (300 people strong, but how many programmers?). Warframe relies on frequent new content to keep it alive, I still prefer they're doing it both at the same time even though fixes or tweaks are a bit slow.

[MysticDragonMage]

some argue that polishing old content will risk DE neglecting a majority of a playerbase that prefers more content.

at this point, DE are experts at turning old content into new content.

for example, compare melee in warframe's earliest development to melee now. farming for primed items is also completely different than what it used to be with keys and tiers. heck, they turned their a basic menu into an entire personal space ship. They gave Excalibur a exalted weapon for crying out loud! we went from using momentum exploits to gravity defying super jumps and double jumps!

if this is DE's method of "polishing" content, then i dont see why doing so wouldn't be appealing to both sides.

Edited January 9, 2020 by MysticDragonMage

[Vespilan]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb MysticDragonMage:

at this point, DE are experts at turning old content into new content

That is exactly what is generally called a rework, yes. Turning something old and outdated into something new and more fitting to the current game state.
What I am asking for is of DE to do just this. I am not looking for a complete overhaul of literally everything, if that was the impression. As they did with the melee system: It did not match their vision of what they had in mind with melee. Players were not supposed to spin2win through walls. So they changed that. The changes may have been controversial, but ultimately sensical and to the benefit of most melee weapons. 

 

vor 10 Stunden schrieb peterc3:

The existence of Conclave affects nothing at the moment, so there's no reason to remove it.

True, I'll give you that one. Nonetheless I think efforts should be made to make it appeal to more players. For instance, bring back the quick steel mode many enjoyed (and rework blocking in conclave before that).

 

vor 3 Stunden schrieb DrivaMain:

Warframe relies on frequent new content to keep it alive

Consider the melee rework; While it may feel odd to apply the tag "content" to it since it basically has just been revision of older content, I, at least, am still fiddling with melee changes. Figuring out the new melee, getting used to it, changing my mod setups and experimenting to this day have kept me interested more and gave me more playtime than Railjack. 

 

vor 8 Stunden schrieb (PS4)Esbald:

because it can be assumed that they have employees whose sole purpose is to fix the game.

+

vor 3 Stunden schrieb DrivaMain:

DE doesn't have enough manpower (300 people strong, but how many programmers?)

DE is not a giant AAA game developer studio. Unless you are refering to bug-fixes, @(PS4)Esbald, then no, I don't think so.

 

vor 10 Stunden schrieb peterc3:

You will never play any game that does not have bugs.

Nor did I expect to. The bugs are, oddly, what makes Warframe kind of sympathetic to me. I am asking for reworks, a reconsideration of this content with their vision in mind. 

 

 

[(PSN)Esbald]

Mayor overhauls to the combat systems, tile sets, player avatar abilities, economy and open world changes are not “bug fixes”. These are major fixes being done to the core game at the same time as new material is released. This implies that DE does have people working on overhauling old content and there is no need to reassign the team working on new stuff to it. The mentality that DE can only do one or the other is a mentality that presents the company as incompetent and ignores the work they are doing.

 

This kind of posts redirects energy to what is internal affairs, rather than constructive criticism of what needs work.

[ShadowSketch91]

22 hours ago, (PS4)Esbald said:

I skimmed over the OP. I have seen this kind of post posted a few times and I gotta say: I don’t get this mentality. Plenty of developers with teams smaller than Digital Extreme’s manage to work on improving their game and develop new content at the same time. There is no need for “a year of nothing but fixing things”, because it can be assumed that they have employees whose sole purpose is to fix the game. This is why the game receives somewhat consistent reworks and new versions of old systems.

The issue seems to he more that the fixes are not what people expect, as opposed to them not existing.

 

the reason as to why we need a year of fixing could be stemming from the fact DE is focusing way too much on newer content, leaving everything old in the dust and only dusting it off when they feel like it (seemingly), leaving everything old in need of rebalancing compared to the new content.

Not only this, but their intention to rake in new players is a bad indicator, new players are finite, and they already have a big community at their core,
I'm not saying they should ignore new player experiences at all, nor focus everything on old content, but they already have a decent benchmark, with primes getting them the most amount of cash everytime a new one is released, and with there being a finite amount of people it seems they are almost going activision, as they can never have enough new people and thus new wallets/bank accounts to open up.

Let's also not forget what OP said, the fact that a melee rework gave them more joy to explore an existing system then railjack, a new fresh system with new damage values, is also a factor that cannot be ignored. Why?
Simple, warframe has for the majority of all it's years been a third person looter shooter, with hack and slash melee on the side, deep enough to warrant it's own fanclub.

Switching that to railjack, after 6-7 years of development is gonna turn some heads, and still leave old systems in the dust even more so now that they added an entirely new one this time.

We simply need a period where the game is being looked at it's core systems, like damage, warframe balancing, mission nodes/types, and how all things that are already in the game could work much more coherent, the potential is definitely there, but DE is either not seeing it, or they are but are moving on because old systems dont rake in new players.

[Vespilan]

Something else I wanted to say on the subject I'll just say here instead of making a new thread;
Please DE. Never, never again do the pre-holiday push out. It is terrible. And it is not the first time it ruins content. Pushing something out and then going into holidays, with zero bug fixing, is just terrible and gives players more time to figure the bugs out, abuse them or get worked up over them. I would rather have holidays (which are busy enough as they are) without any new Warframe content than holidays with bugged content that is straight up not enjoyable and no fixes in sight.
Make Tennobaum the big winter holiday event and be done with it.

[DoomFruit]

On 2020-01-08 at 6:34 PM, Vespilan said:

Archwing; Not the controls, but the system. Archwings should be able to use the same mods as Warframes to encourage modding variaty and not giving the player the feeling they have to grind for the same mods twice. This is deserving of it's own forum topic. 

That, I would disagree with. Modding and balance for ground combat warfarm got way out of hand through massive power creep (corrupted mods are the main offender, primed and umbral mods are almost as bad, rivens are also a bad thing). They had a chance to restart from scratch with archwing by decoupling it from everything else, and I'd say that it actually worked pretty well... at least, it did until L8 intrinsics power creep - you can get 75% efficiency with a single mod (primed morphic transformer system reroute) and no downsides.

Edited January 13, 2020 by DoomFruit
Morphic Transformer is power strength, oops

[Vespilan]

@DoomFruit Many would disagree with your idea of Archwing balance.
1. The fact that it uses completely seperate mods just adds to the problem alot of major Warframe gamemodes have; They are completely disconnected from the "main game". My idea of Archwing implies it being sort of omni-present, more relevant. The game forcing you into Archwing as per dynamic but predictable and preventable elements (such as windows blown out in survival mode, the vacuum forcing Tenno into open space -> Archwing). If the spaces of on-foot and Archwing play were intersected, naturally missions could also change so that Archwing missions hold relevant mods. But this is a bigger picture I had in mind and didn't explain here properly so thats my fault.
2. With the introduction of railjack it was made painfully obvious how much Archwing is lacking. Atleast in the Veil Proxima. It is like enemies steadily got upgrades but Archwing, of course, got nothing and gets hit in the face by the frying pan that a single flak ship in the Veil can be.
3. As you have pointed out, primed /umbral mods exist. While umbral mods atleast have the upside that they are insanely expensive to use, primed mods do not. Corrupted mods are a benefit to building; They ask of the player a deeper understanding of their Warframe /weapon than just slapping on every stat mod that exists and making literally every Archwing build look the same. You have to know and find ways to compensate for the -55% efficiency to get that +99% strength. It's a trade-off, you're getting a net +44% to stats. Just like Umbral Intensify (alone) gives +44% strength. 
Primed Morphic Transformer is strong, but is alright under the condition that Primed Auxiliary Power (+Energy Max) either never comes into existence or new mods are added that encourage builds to look more diverse (similarly how you rarely mod for high-efficiency AND high energy max on Warframes).

[DoomFruit]

2 hours ago, Vespilan said:

2. With the introduction of railjack it was made painfully obvious how much Archwing is lacking. Atleast in the Veil Proxima. It is like enemies steadily got upgrades but Archwing, of course, got nothing and gets hit in the face by the frying pan that a single flak ship in the Veil can be.

That right there is not a flaw with archwing, it's a flaw with railjack. Solving that properly means getting the railjack enemies right, not powercreeping archwing.

Interestingly enough, your wording choice of "flak ship" reminds me very much of Homeworld. There, you had fighters and bombers for the smallest vessels, then one step up you had corvettes. A multigun corvette would rip apart wings of fighters and bombers, but wouldn't do much against vessels of a similar size which carried one large, slow-tracking (or spinal mounted) gun. I'd see the archwing as a fighter-bomber hybrid which can do both equally well (because advanced Tenno tech, etc.), railjacks as a hybrid corvette (again, kills fighters and equal sized vessels equally well), and grineer having actual fighters, actual bombers and the cruise ships being the equivalent of a multi-gun corvette. Short ranged, not that good against equally sized vessels (yes, this means turning down its attack power against railjacks), but chews up fighters (this means archwings) that get close.

But actual game balance and design in railjack is another matter entirely. One for which I have very little hope.

2 hours ago, Vespilan said:

3. As you have pointed out, primed /umbral mods exist.

I know. They do most definitely exist and I don't like that they do. They're power creep, plain and simple.

2 hours ago, Vespilan said:

Primed Morphic Transformer is strong, but is alright under the condition that Primed Auxiliary Power (+Energy Max) either never comes into existence

(emphasis mine) That's the problem. Power creep. I really do not want Archwing to be ruined by the same power creep that's afflicted the main game. I don't want that mod ever existing.

 

Also, I made a mistake. It's System Reroute, a gold-rarity mod which costs 16 points and gives you +55% efficiency. Morphic Transformer is power strength (normal = +30%, primed = +55%).