Stability in Warframe (A solution to gamestate)

[Midas]

A stable path to Warframe

By Midas

 

One of the things Warframe lacks is stability. As of this year, we have had Kuva liches to grind with a hyped up New War operation behind it. Both have disappointed our community to a degree. I am going to argue that with stability, Warframe can prosper like never before. Although many may think it to be too late, I know if the developers find a stable pathway they can proceed with, they will in turn have happier fans. But because the Warframe community has so many divided opinions, I think you are going to require a "One path fits all" setup. Let me demonstrate the benefits and a quick example of a beneficial path. Of course this is my opinion, you are welcome to help add on with ideas for a beneficial pathway for our game.

The benefits of Stability

• To start, stability would allow reoccurring players this is something that we have needed.
• It would allow for a more immersive global investment into the lore, the galaxy and all the Tenno are fighting to achieve something during an operation, similar to the operation that allowed us to discover Phobos. It was a goal that we intended to reach, and we were rewarded with content.
• Enriched gameplay.
• The knowledge that every three months, a player knows they are going to get content. This is something that Warframe drastically needs
• An expectation and understanding of content they are going to get. This way players do not over hype themselves.
• Income for the developers! Obviously Devs need to make money somehow and please the fanbase at the same time!

 

Step One; Nightwave (New Players)

Nightwave would allow for New players coming to the game to get started on the pathway for new content. This would allow players to get invested into global lore quickly and for them to grind cosmetics and new items that are nice for all even Veteran players. However, this is completely directed towards new players leaving our Veteran playerbase out. This can be fixed with the constant stable expectation of an operation that will follow it. Leading to a rewarding incentive and build up.

Step Two: The Operation (Mixed bag)

Operations in Warframe can be beneficial to new incoming players and endgame players. Arcanes are rewarded to those who participate in the New War Operations (We only have one so far, I can expect there will be more.). Tenno can fight bosses or help prevent a massive catastrophe on multiple fronts, endgame players can do harder content during the operation such as a ground assault or boss fight, while new players can invest time into grinding simple and repetitive game modes that they are not experienced with because of their ingame age. This would build up to another stable game mode, raids, that would follow. This would allow Veteran players to feel like they are saving the galaxy and in turn making their way to a boss's lair.

Step Three: Raids

Now with raids, there are lots of fear of toxicity that followed with the Law of Retribution trial in 2014 onward. I believe it is time we try this again to see how the player base has fared since then. I know this solution causes a lot of division within our community, but I cannot think of a more endgame setup that requires you to know all the frames and how they work together to defeat a boss and get mad cosmetic/good loot. The new players prior to this would play the operation and the nightwave giving them incentive to grind knowing full that this will be the outcome in the end. The first trial can be simple, and the ones that follow, harder. This way new players can do one full nightwave, operation, and raid play through getting a stable idea of how stable Warframe would work.

To conclude, without stability, Warframe is doomed. There are plenty of topics in general discussion and over plenty of discords to prove this point. People will consistently be frustrated with the reskinned grind that always seems to come out of it. WIth stability, players can get what they want knowing and expecting the content to come. This way there is no frustration in the end, and always new story lore and mechanics that follow. This would allow for a stable, yet very fun and diverse game 🙂

Feel free to provide criticism and help me create something beneficial. As a 7 year player, I don't see the point in destroying a stable pathway for Warframe at this point. This is a game I love and I want it to prosper, it is currently detrimentally ill and in need of medical help.

 

Results of lack of care are as follows (My evidence of community hate, more of it spreads on reddit and discords.).

The direction our community is headed in all share a familiar opinion.

With the last one, I think it is time to end this cycle, please help me get this out there! I really think it would be healthy that ANY stability would help this game.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Midas

[DarthIronclad]

Do like that 3 stage idea, can make way for some lore expansions

[DrakeWurrum]

They need two things to address the concerns the community now has - concerns that have been growing for a long time now.

1. A dedicated live service team. Their job would be to focus on maintaining the game's content for active players. They would be responsible for things like continuing Nightwave at a regular pace, implementing Tactical Alerts and other events between big content updates, maybe even running small Operations. They would basically use features, code, and tech that are already normal for Warframe, rather than anything sparkling and new. They would have almost no influence on lore - telling only side-stories of the various organizations and entities in the system that have no real progression on the main story, nor any major reveals (beyond anything specifically put forth by the lore/writing team, wanting to use it as a vehicle). (The stories for The Wolf and Arlo were both perfect, even if they could have been implemented better)
   The purpose would be simply to give players something to do with fun new ways of earning the rewards we care about (instead of constantly grinding one map for things)
2. Quality control. It's a regular problem now: they come up with an amazing idea for the "next big thing" in Warframe, hype it up way beyond our wildest imaginations, then they run into difficulty with actual implementation. We players get impatient, they suddenly rush it out to keep us from rioting, and... we get a load of dung instead of the amazing content we wanted.

Ideally, having a live service team would alone help provide quality control. By keeping the active playerbase satiated with regular content, even if it's not something new and/or lore heavy (though Nightwave stories being interesting can help with that), the devs no longer feel the pressure to rush content out quickly, and instead of being torn between a dozen projects at once, can focus hard on their "next big thing" so as to get it up to the quality that they actually want to deliver.

But that might not be enough. Personally, when I speak quality control, I mean they need a team specifically dedicated to testing content before it's launched - experiencing it as the players would experience it for at least a week, if not two, before actually launching. Take the time to tweak resource economies, find and fix bugs, check if the difficulty of the content is where it should be, identify problems like "Oh, there's no actual matchmaking for this operation?", etc etc.

Edited March 27, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[Midas]

6 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

They need two things to address the concerns the community now has - concerns that have been growing for a long time now.

1. A dedicated live service team. Their job would be to focus on maintaining the game's content for active players. They would be responsible for things like continuing Nightwave at a regular pace, implementing Tactical Alerts and other events between big content updates, maybe even running small Operations. They would basically use features, code, and tech that are already normal for Warframe, rather than anything sparkling and new. They would have almost no influence on lore - telling only side-stories of the various organizations and entities in the system that have no real progression on the main story, nor any major reveals (beyond anything specifically put forth by the lore/writing team, wanting to use it as a vehicle). (The stories for The Wolf and Arlo were both perfect, even if they could have been implemented better)
   The purpose would be simply to give players something to do with fun new ways of earning the rewards we care about (instead of constantly grinding one map for things)
2. Quality control. It's a regular problem now: they come up with an amazing idea for the "next big thing" in Warframe, hype it up way beyond our wildest imaginations, then they run into difficulty with actual implementation. We players get impatient, they suddenly rush it out to keep us from rioting, and... we get a load of dung instead of the amazing content we wanted.

Ideally, having a live service team would alone help provide quality control. By keeping the active playerbase satiated with regular content, even if it's not something new and/ore lore heavy (though Nightwave stories being interesting can help with that), the devs no longer feel the pressure to rush content out quickly, and instead of being torn between a dozen projects at once, can focus hard on their "next big thing" so as to get it up to the quality that they actually want to deliver.

But that might be enough. Personally, when I speak quality control, I mean they need a team specifically dedicated to testing content before it's launched - experiencing it as the players would experience it for at least a week, if not two, before actually launching. Take the time to tweak resource economies, find and fix bugs, check if the difficulty of the content is where it should be, identify problems like "Oh, there's no actual matchmaking for this operation?", etc etc.

Much respect to this statement, hits some main problems directly.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

I like that my criticism of their less than stellar releases, and the fact that I was pinpoint accurate with pessimistic predictions is seen as "hate."

[Fellas92]

At this point I'm done with giving feedback.

DE will keep doing things the way THEY want to and keep ignoring most of the things people ask for. The further we go, the more ridiculous it gets. 
Players asked for a way to get rid of excess relics. What did DE do ? No prob fam, here's an event with a 90% chance of a lith relic per minute, for hundreds of runs, for a month. Remember the time when we asked them to stop time gating content ? DE: no prob fam, here's an event with a 3 hour time gate. The list can go on and on, but at this point, it's just pointless. 


Also DE mods feel free to flag me again and delete all of the negative stuff. You love to do that.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Fellas92

[Althaline]

21 hours ago, Midas said:

One of the things Warframe lacks is stability.

 

21 hours ago, Midas said:

To start, stability would allow reoccurring players this is something that we have needed.

 

21 hours ago, Midas said:

To conclude, without stability, Warframe is doomed.

If you want to call for stability you need to explain what that means. You want Warframe to be more "stable", and you've made that very clear throughout your post. However, I still have no idea what you actually want to happen. What is "stability" and why would it help make the game better?

[Steel_Rook]

50 minutes ago, Iamabearlulz said:

If you want to call for stability you need to explain what that means. You want Warframe to be more "stable", and you've made that very clear throughout your post. However, I still have no idea what you actually want to happen. What is "stability" and why would it help make the game better?

That's where I am, as well. What the hell does "stability" mean in this context? It feels like the OP is asking for Raids and in some way justifying them with "stability" but that link is not at all clear to me. How are Raids "stable?" Scratch that, how is Nightwave stable in any sense of the word? It's a free Battle Pass built entirely on FOMO. It's the polar opposite of stability. Nightwave is volatile by design. And yes, player backlash has made it less volatile over time, with the ability to catch up on missed time (which most other Battle Passes in most other games let you do), but it's still inherently unstable. As a new player jumping into the game mid-season with not enough time left to make much progress and without the ability to even tackle some if not most of the challenges, that doesn't seem like a welcoming experience.

What's the actual suggestion here?

[Midas]

55 minutes ago, Iamabearlulz said:

 

 

If you want to call for stability you need to explain what that means. You want Warframe to be more "stable", and you've made that very clear throughout your post. However, I still have no idea what you actually want to happen. What is "stability" and why would it help make the game better?

For certain, I'll throw that into the introduction. Warframe stability means having a firm schedule of content that is repetitive. This would allow players to expect and get hyped for a certain amount of content. New cosmetics would come, Nightwave would come, a lore intertwined operation would come, and finally a raid for endgame players to test their knowledge on frame synergies. 

Essentially stability is knowing what you are going to get always. Not waiting for some pipe dream of content you desire. Most players are interested in getting a hold of new reworks, new operations, and new content. But everytime their expectations are ruined. Stability would mean those expectations would be met with you knowing what kind of content you are getting everytime. Any other word I should use to better describe it more?

Edited March 28, 2020 by Midas

[Midas]

8 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

 

What's the actual suggestion here?

My suggestion is to provide content that we can expect not something that is overhyped then released. Other games do “expansions” de would do expansions but reskin them in the form of nightwave, operations, and raids. This would provide a stable expectation for future content + global interaction between all Tenno to prevent some catastrophic event (everyone feels like they are working to achieve something). I did state that if any had any other ideas besides nw, operations, and trials please post your ideas.

I don’t think this company can do anything that is not repetitive reskinned grind. That is the reasoning for my suggestions.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Midas

[Steel_Rook]

4 minutes ago, Midas said:

My suggestion is to provide content that we can expect not something that is overhyped then released. Other games do “expansions” de would do expansions but reskin them in the form of nightwave, operations, and raids. This would provide a stable expectation for future content + global interaction between all Tenno to prevent some catastrophic event (everyone feels like they are working to achieve something).

"Something that is overhyped then released" describes literally all major content releases for literally all major games. Do you maybe have some examples of what those "other games" did right with their "expansions" that doesn't fit what DE are doing with their major content releases? QA aside, I don't really see anything dissimilar about the way DE deliver content from the way Massive or Bungie or Blizzard or Overkill deliver their content. Video game development is not a packaged goods production line. You can't put it on a schedule and expect "One major expansion every 6 months" or something to that effect. DE tried doing that last year, showing a blackboard of "content we can expect" and simply couldn't deliver. Part of that is on them, obviously - they pissed away two years delivering jack S#&$ in terms of Railjack. Part of it, though, is just the nature of doing business in software development. You can't always predict all the new things you didn't know needed to be created.

If we're going for new content, I'd personally rather not have any of the things you're proposing. Neither Nightwave nor Operations sit particularly well with me and I'm ideologically opposed to the idea of Raids. I'd much rather have permanent additions to the game which I can go back to and play at my discretion even long after they've released. That's why I consider the Jovial Concord to be one of the best Warframe releases of the last couple of years, and why I'm looking forward to the Corpus Ship redesign. Railjack itself could fit this role... If it ever gets brought to a state where I can actually play it with my friends. I'm not interested in transient releases which show up for a few weeks, then disappear either forever or for months at a time.

If you want "stability," then I'd argue that permanent content additions integrated into legacy content is the way to go.

[Althaline]

22 minutes ago, Midas said:

Warframe stability means having a firm schedule of content that is repetitive.

In what way does Sorties, NW challenges, Syndicate missions, the Eidolon cycle, and on a grander scale Prime Access and Prime Unvault not fulfil this? Unless what you're asking for is a constant drip-feed of brand new shiny game modes, skins, enemies, and other assorted major content at strict times week in, week out? That's not a reasonable request, and I don't want to see the lifeless, uninspired cash-grab content that would result from it. We've seen it in the past, DE works best when working on the things they want to see in their game. What we see in more recent updates is the rushed out the door unfinished ideas that the community begs them to release "TODAY". Liches were unfinished on release (and still are), Railjack was unfinished on release (and still is), and it leaves a bad taste every time it happens. There's a reason DE never gives solid release dates anymore. Let them finish baking the cake before you demand to eat it.

[Midas]

I agree with permanent content additions, other games do release content every three to four months (lots of it). However, I just feel Warframe is too small to do something like permanent additions. They are just too slow and scatter brained when it comes to focusing on new content. Usually it is "we'll create this content then focus on this content and then this content all at the same time." I have a feeling that is why scarlet spear, railjack, and liches were a mess is because their workforce had split up working on all of them at once. That is my only problem with them trying permanent additions.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Midas