Why I think DE should focus more on already existing content.

[MorteNexus13]

After reading this post on Reddit and watching videos of people reviewing and criticizing DE's actions in recent months, especially with Empyrean and The Old Blood, I came to the conclusion that Warframe does have content that both new and veteran players can enjoy, and DE has it in front of their noses but they don't realize yet that all they have to do is polish it.

Imagine Warframe is like an abandoned and dusty mansion from the 20s or 30s and DE is the person who bought it. That person has the opportunity to turn that mansion into a tourist place and remodel it a bit so that it looks like it was in his old glory days (some would find that vintage design attractive, and more striking than the modern day designs, like veterans and people who have been playing Warframe for years, and one or another new player), but instead the person (DE) remodels that mansion (Warframe) so that it has a more "futuristic" and/or design striking for the current and young audience. It’s not a bad idea, but if we compare it with the competition, we would see it as one more mansion that would not stand out at all in being "unique" in its class, because there are other mansions with the same theme (with the difference that admission is free in that mansion). Personally, that mansion would have more recognition if the person who bought it did the first thing, and if it succeeds in that (which it had before and shortly after The Second Dream), expand that mansion with that "futuristic" design to call the attention of the young public and once they "chop the bait", make them curious about the “vintage” part of the mansion.

Tl;Dr: Fix and improve the current content of the game, and then add new content to get the attention of new players so they see that there is much more content to know.

Earlier I said Warframe does have content. What content? Let's see:

• Star Chart (Standard missions, Archwing, Free Roam, Empyrean).

• PvP (Conclave and Lunaro).

• Activities to obtain resources and standing (Conservation, fishing, mining, k-drive races).

• "Hobbies" to take a break from the game (Shawzin, Fashionframe, Mandachord, Ludoplex).

• Within the standard missions we have variants to make those missions more interesting (The Old Blood, Void Fisures, Nightmare, Index and Rathuum, Elite Sanctuary, etc.).

• Advanced missions for experienced players (Arbitration, Sorties, Kuva Flood , ESO).

And I haven’t entered into more details or say the word “Raid”.

If someone says that Warframe has no content, or has not played enough, or simply has not played Warframe.

But obviously Warframe has its problems, of which 4 of them stand out most: Bugs, host migration, grind and RNG.

I would like to talk about it, but I will leave it for future posts talking about how to improve the content we currently have and make Warframe's problems less noticeable (host migration, grind and RNG will continue to exist in the game, but the idea is to make those problems don’t frustrate us, especially grind and RNG)

In summary: Warframe has content and we should thank DE for all the work they have done in these 6 years (almost 7 years), but DE should think more about what they already have and improve it, not generate so much hype with what they want to do (as happened with Railjack) but show what they are capable of doing, and above all listen to us, the "losers" who spent hours and hours in the game and are the ones who know more about how to improve the game, especially their Warframe Partners that for some reason are. They are human beings as us, and they are not perfect as us, is not the same being a programmer than a gamer, so I think it would be nice to have empathy for them.

Edited February 20, 2020 by MorteNexus13

[bad4youLT]

As much as I liked to see pvp get much needed touch to make it something people might be interested most people would view it as total waist of time , resouce and of course instant threads of " omfg DE , why are you forcing us to play pvp !?! " .

[MorteNexus13]

13 minutes ago, bad4youLT said:

As much as I liked to see pvp get much needed touch to make it something people might be interested most people would view it as total waist of time , resouce and of course instant threads of " omfg DE , why are you forcing us to play pvp !?! " .

I also want to see PvP as something relevant in the game, but it doesn't have to be something necessary to progress in the game (unless you want cosmetics, such as syandana, skins and armor). I have seen videos of how Conclave was in early 2015 (pre-Parkour 2.0) and it is currently unplayable, not only because of the small number of players but also what the game has currently become with the melee 3.0 (good for PvE, bad for PvP).  But I'll talk about that another day with more details.

[Lightel03]

51 minutes ago, bad4youLT said:

As much as I liked to see pvp get much needed touch to make it something people might be interested most people would view it as total waist of time , resouce and of course instant threads of " omfg DE , why are you forcing us to play pvp !?! " .

 

31 minutes ago, MorteNexus13 said:

I also want to see PvP as something relevant in the game, but it doesn't have to be something necessary to progress in the game (unless you want cosmetics, such as syandana, skins and armor). I have seen videos of how Conclave was in early 2015 (pre-Parkour 2.0) and it is currently unplayable, not only because of the small number of players but also what the game has currently become with the melee 3.0 (good for PvE, bad for PvP).  But I'll talk about that another day with more details.

I think fixing Conclave can have a huge positive change for Warframe, and how that can happen is to integrate Conclave into PVE, making Conclave supplement PVE content instead of being completely separate from it, that can be done by adding incentives for ALL players to play it, and to actually make it fun to play.

There are simple ways to make every player want to play Conclave, just add 30 (or less) minute boosters as reputation rewards, soon enough Conclave would become a part of the normal Warframe gameplay loop. Instead of grinding for resources/ credits/ experience for hours, you can play Conclave for a bit and get a booster to help you out, until it runs out and you have to go get another one, rince and repeat.

But those boosters won`t matter if Conclave is garbage, so we need to make players have fun in Conclave, which mostly comes down to balancing. This has become a very complex issue, especially with the current melee system. There`s people who think we should push for PVEVP modes, similar to the Gambit mode from Destiny, and that is a good idea, just needs some cool examples for actual good modes. I support the creation of these kind of modes, but I do think PVP has it`s place in the game, and I suggest it be fixed this way:

(sorry for making it so long)

A good way to side step the insane amount of balancing and tweaking that is needed to fit warframes and weapons into conclave, is to make it so that, in conclave, all warframes and weapons are available for the player to use, but they are all already modded to a certain playstyle, and the players will not be able to mod these weapons or warframes.

Depending on how the modding of warframes and weapons is done by DE (big understatement), balancing will no longer be something to worry about. 

As an example for this system:

A player goes into conclave, and in their loadout, they see that they can choose any warframe or weapon, let`s say he`s a weird person, so he picks Ivara, she is modded for survivability, power strenght and duration at the cost of efficiency and range. This would make her invisibility and sleep arrow abilities much less of an issue, while still letting her be able to survive with invisible arrows and the survivability buff. And as for a weapon this person picks an arca plasmor, it is modded for corrosive damage and status, aswell as a bigger magazine size at the cost of a longer reload time, and no base damage mods, it would serve as an armor stripper instead of a radiation bfg as we see in PVE. This kind of treatment would then go on to other frames and weapons. And yeah it would still be alot of work, but it`s much more simpler and less work than the balancing of individual frames and weapons while accounting for all possible mod variations.

With this system in place, I do believe that, not only will more players go play it to test out all frames and weapons, but also will solve almost all of the balancing issues or gameplay annoyances that the conclave has at the moment, if it is done right. 

It won`t fix the melee tho, and I don`t know how it is possible to do so without removing it entirely. So... frick.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

*checks off box on bingo board*

[(XBOX)Red Dough Boy]

Positive change is always good, I wouldn't mind mixing things up at this point. Warframe for me has been a game where I can play it sparingly for a while, get something to bring me back and play it a lot more. It's new and not old content being redone but I'm hoping the New War adds a campaign kind of thing and has us ally with some former enemies against a more sinister threat. If anyone remembers the part from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where you have to aid several cities with their Oblvion gates to have them send troops to fight one of the main gates in a large scale battle, that would be cool to see in Warframe and would use the same star chart that people already have access to, and wouldn't require a new system as it's basically a different version of an invasion. 

[kapn655321]

47 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

*checks off box on bingo board*

I wonder if anyone's made an actual bingo card yet.

That aside, I would also love they nurture their existing assets. When they do, it's often ridiculed as lazy asset flipping. It's way cheaper to do that, so long as it's not too costly to income to make it worth it. The successful balance to sustaining the business seems to be in large part to releasing new things every 3 weeks or so. When they don't, a considerable portion of people just aren't impressed, and stop spending. If there ain't new shinies, the community shrinks.. if the new shinies aren't enough, the community shrinks. DE having done this for 7 years, one may assume that they are making the best of it. They could have 4000-8000 players who love the game deeply and could wait it out, but they can't possibly pay for it all alone.. or they can jazz the audience for the quick thrill, because that's all most of them are going for... and that can fund the whole infrastructure and chipping away that they do now. The stingy drops, the gimmicks.. they're the only thing that keeps this thing humming along some days, and we need that. Like it or not.. they're not doing it to be clueless goobers. There is a lot of value to be pulled from improving on what we have to sustain long term players, and we're not entirely without those updates, either. They're just sparing, and we'd all love more if they get the chance.

There's also the part where they still haven't gotten to add main story elements they've (DE) been hoping for since early on.. because that's about how often they need to detour to keep the people busy. With all that, does come a sense that it's shallow busy work updates, but it's also part necessity to afford operations and stay relevant.. so the only way to really ever get the chance to round out the content we want, is over a decade of slowly chipping at it each free chance they get. I feel pretty confident that if they were able to just perch up, polishing what they've made, they would. MANY of us (myself included) would be Totally cool with that, but they do also have plans for years ahead, and are doing what they feel it takes to get there. Whole lot of factors in running a multimillion dollar game company.

Maybe we also don't want to see them get burnt out by being up against deadlines every day. I'd be very happy if they could develop as casually as I enjoy the game and the forum. Breakneck paces that lurch from one flashy update drop to the next is about the safest course. As I like to remind people, they're a bunch of good hearted Canadian goofs that like manga, programming, and videogames... who just so happen to be running a multimillion dollar international company, in one of the most volatile sectors and consumer bases out there.. and trying to keep it free. No biggy.

 

Edited January 12, 2020 by kapn655321

[(XBOX)The Repo Man151]

7 hours ago, bad4youLT said:

As much as I liked to see pvp get much needed touch to make it something people might be interested most people would view it as total waist of time , resouce and of course instant threads of " omfg DE , why are you forcing us to play pvp !?! " .

Those threads always get me scratching my head in confusion. DE has never ever ever ever forced players to do any sort of PvP in Warframe. You can go from MR0 to MR28 without ever touching conclave. 
I also don't see how it is a waste of resources. The Conclave Community is by far the most dedicated community in Warframe. They have went years without any serious updates and still play the game almost as an obsession. With how much work has been put into Conclave so far, I would argue that it has one of the best return on investments of any content produced by DE for Warframe.

[MysticDragonMage]

DE are experts when it comes to taking old content and turning it into something new (and noticeably quick about it if they treat it as a first priority). i have no doubts that a year of polish would appeal to both sides and produce satisfying results.

the entirety of melee used to be a simple "quick melee" attack back then, for example. its amazing what its become so far. imagine what systems like archwing missions or invasions could become.

i do think that its time for polish. i think they have tried the best to satisfy a loud minority of veteran players that want more content to speed run and criticize later for its rushed creation and lack of polish only to ask for even more content afterward.

Edited January 13, 2020 by MysticDragonMage

[George_PPS]

It would be great If DE could release a special and separate edition Warframe with the features from 2017-2018 before all the nerfs started to show up in nearly each and every update for the sake of fun killing nerfs disguised as balancing since Update 25 and especially Update 26. It’s simply unplayable in its current state comparing to 2017-2018 with ever increasing player count.

Why so many players joined Warframe and asked their friends to join in 2017-2018 and why the player count has been plummeting since then? 

[kapn655321]

17 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

fun killing nerfs

I know we're bound not to agree on this.. but I may have a perspective that helps explain it.

Those weapons being so overpowered meant nothing else had any purpose or worth.. if it wasn't top 2% meta, it was wasted development. For anyone who chose to use something not in that strata, the difference was so tremendous that it inspired (meta) players to resent those non meta weapons for being in game. The non meta players were faced with nearly 7 years of, "My weapon isn't good enough, and people hate me for it." They traded that situation for, "The OP weapons are no longer OP." If you feel like your forma for your old meta was a waste, then that's alllllmost what everyone else had to deal with for the better part of a decade.

Secondly, the players using those top combinations were getting aggressively insulting about the game being too easy. The only way to appease them with content, was to make enemies and missions that specifically Could Not in any way be done with anything But the meta... or it would be too easy. So.. remaining as-is in the game split the player base, development direction, and overall intended game experience so dramatically that it risked the fundamental stability of the game's future. There are so many factors that made it absolutely critical that they changed those stats around. Players having wasted 20 or so forma on weapons that can kill God itself, paled in comparison to players having pissed away Hundreds of forma to learn everything off meta was a straight up waste that made other players hate you for trying.

No move can satisfy everyone, and it is very regrettable that you found yourself on the worst side of those updates. If at this point you think I'm totally out of line, insane, or annoying, by all means just set me to ignore.. I won't hold it against you for having that opinion. I'm genuinely not trying to rile anyone up. This subject gets out of control some times.. It's not meant as anything personal.. more like a, "welcome to the club," except, this club is still better than it was pre-update.
 

Edited January 13, 2020 by kapn655321

[ciTiger]

Fixing yes, nerfing no.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

16 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

After reading this post on Reddit and watching videos of people reviewing and criticizing DE's actions in recent months, especially with Empyrean and The Old Blood, I came to the conclusion that Warframe does have content that both new and veteran players can enjoy, and DE has it in front of their noses but they don't realize yet that all they have to do is polish it.

Imagine Warframe is like an abandoned and dusty mansion from the 20s or 30s and DE is the person who bought it. That person has the opportunity to turn that mansion into a tourist place and remodel it a bit so that it looks like it was in his old glory days (some would find that vintage design attractive, and more striking than the modern day designs, like veterans and people who have been playing Warframe for years, and one or another new player), but instead the person (DE) remodels that mansion (Warframe) so that it has a more "futuristic" and/or design striking for the current and young audience. It’s not a bad idea, but if we compare it with the competition, we would see it as one more mansion that would not stand out at all in being "unique" in its class, because there are other mansions with the same theme (with the difference that admission is free in that mansion). Personally, that mansion would have more recognition if the person who bought it did the first thing, and if it succeeds in that (which it had before and shortly after The Second Dream), expand that mansion with that "futuristic" design to call the attention of the young public and once they "chop the bait", make them curious about the “vintage” part of the mansion.

Tl;Dr: Fix and improve the current content of the game, and then add new content to get the attention of new players so they see that there is much more content to know.

Earlier I said Warframe does have content. What content? Let's see:

• Star Chart (Standard missions, Archwing, Free Roam, Empyrean).

• PvP (Conclave and Lunaro).

• Activities to obtain resources and standing (Conservation, fishing, mining, k-drive races).

• "Hobbies" to take a break from the game (Shawzin, Fashionframe, Mandachord, Ludoplex).

• Within the standard missions we have variants to make those missions more interesting (The Old Blood, Void Fisures, Nightmare, Index and Rathuum, Elite Sanctuary, etc.).

• Advanced missions for experienced players (Arbitration, Sorties, Kuva Flood , ESO).

And I haven’t entered into more details or say the word “Raid”.

If someone says that Warframe has no content, or has not played enough, or simply has not played Warframe.

But obviously Warframe has its problems, of which 4 of them stand out most: Bugs, host migration, grind and RNG.

I would like to talk about it, but I will leave it for future posts talking about how to improve the content we currently have and make Warframe's problems less noticeable (host migration, grind and RNG will continue to exist in the game, but the idea is to make those problems don’t frustrate us, especially grind and RNG)

In summary: Warframe has content and we should thank DE for all the work they have done in these 6 years (almost 7 years), but DE should think more about what they already have and improve it, not generate so much hype with what they want to do (as happened with Railjack) but show what they are capable of doing, and above all listen to us, the "losers" who spent hours and hours in the game and are the ones who know more about how to improve the game, especially their Warframe Partners that for some reason are. They are human beings as us, and they are not perfect as us, is not the same being a programmer than a gamer, so I think it would be nice to have empathy for them.

Can't read what you wrote in dark theme. Next time, try stripping the formatting. 

 

Apart from that, DE has spent time reworking the existing content in the past. People complained about there being nothing new. The term "content drought" isn't particularly new. 

 

 

[George_PPS]

9 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

I know we're bound not to agree on this.. but I may have a perspective that helps explain it.

Those weapons being so overpowered meant nothing else had any purpose or worth.. if it wasn't top 2% meta, it was wasted development. For anyone who chose to use something not in that strata, the difference was so tremendous that it inspired (meta) players to resent those non meta weapons for being in game. The non meta players were faced with nearly 7 years of, "My weapon isn't good enough, and people hate me for it." They traded that situation for, "The OP weapons are no longer OP." If you feel like your forma for your old meta was a waste, then that's alllllmost what everyone else had to deal with for the better part of a decade.

Secondly, the players using those top combinations were getting aggressively insulting about the game being too easy. The only way to appease them with content, was to make enemies and missions that specifically Could Not in any way be done with anything But the meta... or it would be too easy. So.. remaining as-is in the game split the player base, development direction, and overall intended game experience so dramatically that it risked the fundamental stability of the game's future. There are so many factors that made it absolutely critical that they changed those stats around. Players having wasted 20 or so forma on weapons that can kill God itself, paled in comparison to players having pissed away Hundreds of forma to learn everything off meta was a straight up waste that made other players hate you for trying.

No move can satisfy everyone, and it is very regrettable that you found yourself on the worst side of those updates. If at this point you think I'm totally out of line, insane, or annoying, by all means just set me to ignore.. I won't hold it against you for having that opinion. I'm genuinely not trying to rile anyone up. This subject gets out of control some times.. It's not meant as anything personal.. more like a, "welcome to the club," except, this club is still better than it was pre-update.
 

Thank you for replying with sincerity. A lot of posts discussing why player count increased so much in 2017-2018 and has been decreasing since have been deemed wrong and bowdlerized. There is a silent majority who vote by actions.

Players are simple; If it’s fun and rewarding, more and more players will join. Unfortunately, the design direction of the game now generally goes against human psychology about rewards.