MORE Loadout slots!!!!

[MarkusMallius]

DE give me slots or ill cry i would donate all my money to the cancer quest if i could just have more slots too 

 

[igyman]

Honestly, if there's one thing in this game that currently brings down the overall impression, it's inventory capacity and the fact they charge for warframe/weapon/archwing/necramech/companion/loadout slots, There should be enough loadout slots to cover the total number of warframes (not counting prime versions) and there should be enough inventory slots to allow players to, in theory, collect one of each warframe/weapon/archwing/necramech/companion.

There's nothing worse for me than waiting 3.5 days for a warframe to be crafted only to be faced with a "Buy a warframe slot for platinum" pop-up the moment I try to claim it from the foundry. (Same example for weapons and loadout slots). It's pretty much the only monetization element that brings down the game as it truly feels like nickel and dime-ing players for something that's essential - i.e. inventory slots.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, igyman said:

There should be enough loadout slots to cover the total number of warframes (not counting prime versions)

There are. You need to get to MR 30 and you have 50 Loadout slots available if you want them.

2 hours ago, igyman said:

and there should be enough inventory slots to allow players to, in theory, collect one of each

There are technically infinite slots for you, but they do cost Plat. Luckily you can get Plat from other players, and you don't have to buy any yourself.

[igyman]

19 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

There are. You need to get to MR 30 and you have 50 Loadout slots available if you want them.

What I'm saying is there is no valid reason for gating inventory capacity with MR, or platinum or anything else. I just reached MR 16 the other day. According to Steam, only 5.3% of players have reached that MR. That's not exactly good, if you ask me. And why do you think that percentage is so low? Because you only gain MR by max leveling warframes, weapons, companions, archwings (and their weapons) or necramechs. Obtaining any of those is very time consuming, as is max leveling each of them. If you want to get to MR 30, you very likely need to unlock all of them one way or the other. That means spending platinum on inventory slots at the very least and potentially loadout slots, if you don't want the unnecessary overhead of loadout management. It's an overall terrible gating system and it's not the only ridiculous gating system in the game (looking at you, daily standing cap), but it's the one with the most negative impact, in my opinion.

19 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

There are technically infinite slots for you, but they do cost Plat. Luckily you can get Plat from other players, and you don't have to buy any yourself.

Again, same argument from my side - the "base" inventory capacity of a "looter" game like Warframe should allow the players to, in theory, at least be able to fit one of each unlockable items (warframe, weapon, companion...) without the need to expand the inventory capacity. I don't mind still having the paid inventory capacity expansion option in addition to that for players who want/need duplicates for whatever reason, or want to keep both prime and non-prime versions of unlockables in their inventory.

Warframe generally has a pretty fair monetization setup for a free to play game, but this whole business with the inventory and loadout slots is something I haven't seen even in greedy mobile gacha games. Not that none of them charge for inventory capacity expansion, but those that do still give you more than enough base slots that you hardly even need to think about expanding.

In Warframe, every time I craft something I have to account for the platinum cost of inventory expansion before I claim the finished item. If it's a warframe, I also had to take into account the cost of a new loadout slot (until I hit a cap on paid loadout slots :/ ). Nothing kills the hype of trying out that new unlockable - that you invested time into gathering blueprints and materials and then waiting for it to be crafted - like a sudden pop-up asking for platinum to allow you to claim and use the item.

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 hours ago, igyman said:

What I'm saying is there is no valid reason for gating inventory capacity with MR, or platinum or anything else.

There is. You just don't like that reason.

Gating things behind progress or purchases is a completely valid tactic for the stated goal of a free-to-play game, that purpose being 'keep people playing over time'. The other stated goal is 'make enough money to keep making the game over time', but that doesn't really apply because of this:

It's part of one of the most fair-to-players systems in the current game sphere. This is because you can trade Plat between players to get what you need and never pay anything for the game.

If you put some of that time from the crafting wait into just cracking some relics and getting 5-10 Plat for a couple of parts from Trading, (which you will get, because there's always players that want stuff) then you'll have your 20 plat for a Frame slot, or your 12 plat for weapon slots by the time you claim the frame.

Of course you don't have this system in a Gatcha game, because Warframe is not one of those hellscapes of literally encouraged gambling for results, where free to play people can grind for one (1) roll of the dice at getting a high ranking weapon or character every 20 days (with a 1% chance or less of getting any character at all, and even less at getting the character they want) while paying players can get 20 rolls instantly and never miss out on limited-time rolling options that have higher odds for getting a particular character.

Warframe has one semi-mandatory method of monetisation with everything else being optional, but also this and everything else being free if you engage in Trading.

And the reason it has this is because it gets players to

1. Play the game for longer to get more things.
2. Engage in more aspects of the game to get things for free.
Or 3. Pay.

Just because you don't like those reasons doesn't invalidate them.

[MaxTunnerX]

I dont care about loadouts as theyre more pain than gain for me, they get outdated very quickly and I also keep forgetting Im on a specific loadout when I use them once in a while, which ruins the loadout (the loadout doesnt represent what I originally intended). What I want a lot, though, is more config slots. With all those helminth/subsume abilities, 5 config slots just dont cut it for me.

Edited September 23, 2022 by MaxTunnerX

[igyman]

18 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Gating things behind progress or purchases is a completely valid tactic for the stated goal of a free-to-play game, that purpose being 'keep people playing over time'. The other stated goal is 'make enough money to keep making the game over time'

I seriously doubt DE's bottom line would be negatively impacted by removing the paywall from the inventory capacity. The only purpose it serves is to annoy the players by forcing them to spend platinum in order to be able to claim/use the items they crafted. I say this as someone who doesn't have a problem with buying platinum from time to time to support the devs (when a voucher drops ;) ). But the platinum I decide to buy is aimed at spending on more substantial items from the market or on blueprints from other players. As a result, the only purpose this particular paywall serves is to, as you said, help stretch "player retention" by turning what's supposed to be a fun game into a chore. It's a tactic most F2P games resort to, but it's very jarring here because as I said (and I think you agreed) Warframe has an otherwise pretty fair and non-intrusive monetization model.

[ShogunGunshow]

Honestly idgaf about slots until they make it so you actually have to SAVE the loadout to make changes to it. It's so frustrating to have a loadout for a specific thing, and then if you make a change after a mission like equipping a different weapon, now you've automatically altered the loadout and have to remember to swap back before changing back to Default, or it's just going to be that way until you deliberately go back and re-swap the weapon, in which case why am I even bothering with loadouts. 

[Birdframe_Prime]

7 hours ago, igyman said:

I seriously doubt DE's bottom line would be negatively impacted by removing the paywall from the inventory capacity.

Doubt all you like.

I don't know either.

But this still doesn't make 'extending player play time' or 'making free-to-pay players drain Plat from paying players quicker' an invalid reason to put them there.

This is a valid reason, and just because we don't happen to like it isn't going to change it.

[igyman]

2 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

just because we don't happen to like it isn't going to change it.

There's no guarantee, I agree, but giving feedback doesn't hurt either. If we say we don't like it and explain why, it can only help. There's that old saying "The customer is always right". The saying is as true now as it ever was, it's just that some people seem to have forgotten it.

[Grav_Starstrider]

I'd settle for as few Loadout slots as we have (relatively speaking) if we just had better UI and options for Loadouts.

1. Either show us the *missing* items not visible in the Navigation menu's Loadout menu or give us a separate from-Navigation-in-Loadout-menu toggle for them (*referring to Focus School, Atmospheric Archwing and Archgun selections, Spatial Archwing/gun/melee selection, Parazon config choice, Air Support*). After all, we may want to play with the same Loadout for Terrestrial/Atmospheric combat but just want to switch the Archwing we're using when we go to Archwing/Railjack missions.
2. Give us a "current Loadout state" that isn't its own Loadout.
3. Allow us to create Loadouts that lack certain non-mandatory Equipment.
4. Allow those Loadouts to simply overwrite your Current Loadout State with only the specific Equipment/selections set in the Loadout. (e.g. a Loadout with Nekros and Smeeta would overwrite only your current loadout's Warframe and Companion)
5. Provide a "change configs" option for your currently equipped Loadout state (e.g. after you've chosen your Nova-specific Loadout, for example, you can choose between a Speed or Slow Nova build, and change your weapon's configs from their default to a faction or playstyle-specific configuration)

That's not asking for more Loadout slots beyond just the one (Current Loadout State) that the Loadouts just overwrite (either wholly or partially). This just makes them able to be slightly more granularly controlled, so that if you had one favorite Warframe or weapon with a config for each major faction, you don't need to make Loadouts for each of all of them, you could have one Loadout with both of them, or just two Loadouts with literally just each of them in it, so that you could exclusively change the Warframe and single weapon out of your Loadout back to your favorite and to the proper configs, without having to go all the way into your full-on Equipment menu and scrolling or searching through all of your options and then ALSO opening up the Upgrade/Modding screen just to swap their configs to the right one.

I know I currently don't use Loadouts even though I tried very hard to put 42 Loadouts together, but presently I can't even put together a Loadout per each Warframe, let alone afford to make 3 different ones for my same most-favorite Warframes, because I'm always mixing up what I'm using together. But I'd love to slap just Skiajati and Bronco and Daikyu onto whichever Frame/Companion/FocusSchool I already had equipped. Or my favorite Glaive and Pistol, without changing my Primary or Warframe. I'd love just selecting one or two individual favorite Primaries, Secondaries, or Melee as Loadouts, so I can just always quickly switch one of my weapons to that instead! And I'd like to stop accidentally changing a themed Loadout instead of my "Custom"-designated Loadout, and I'd like to have to stop switching to my Custom-Loadout just to feel like I can equip whatever I want without ruining an existing thought-out Loadout build.

And if they do this, they could make game modes or mission setups where you're allowed to access either the entire Loadout menu between stages or linked missions, or at least between configs (that'd be useful for my Proxima Heist suggestion). This could also be an Air Support that's called in. Selecting two Loadouts in a row could give you a very mix-and-match approach to equipping your next mission's Loadout via the component parts of what you already had equipped, and what each Loadout click changed for you.

[Frendh]

I would be fine if they just added 30 or so more slots for plat. But I would prefer if it was 50.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2022-09-25 at 12:53 AM, igyman said:

There's no guarantee, I agree, but giving feedback doesn't hurt either. If we say we don't like it and explain why, it can only help. There's that old saying "The customer is always right". The saying is as true now as it ever was, it's just that some people seem to have forgotten it.

Feedback is all well and good until you're not just beating a dead horse, you're trying to complain to the horse's manager.

'The customer is always right' is a genuinely toxic marketing tactic that has caused more problems for workers world-wide than it has ever solved anyone's problems. It's pure entitlement. As somebody who ran a small shop for 14 years as a volunteer, the amount of times people tried to throw that in my face can't even be counted, and I have come to the defense of so many poor volunteers that were the victims of the attitude that uses the phrase. I do not tolerate it.

Practicality and common sense are what drive these situations.

And in terms of practicality, DE's basic drive to make a game last, have a revenue stream, and to have people keep playing it using methods such as time gating and even soft pay-gating (because the currency can be attained for free), does actually outweigh the desires of 'I want it now' and 'I want it for even less effort' from the player base.

[igyman]

3 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

'The customer is always right' is a genuinely toxic marketing tactic that has caused more problems for workers world-wide than it has ever solved anyone's problems. It's pure entitlement.

It's a very blunt way of communicating the basic rules of supply and demand. Nothing more. Is it open to misuse/abuse? Sure, like pretty much everything else. Doesn't make the phrase wrong though.

[Grav_Starstrider]

4 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

'The customer is always right' is a genuinely toxic marketing tactic that has caused more problems for workers world-wide than it has ever solved anyone's problems.

True

42 minutes ago, igyman said:

It's a very blunt way of communicating the basic rules of supply and demand. Nothing more. Is it open to misuse/abuse? Sure, like pretty much everything else. Doesn't make the phrase wrong though.

Also true.

 

They're literally a live service game with microtransactions. If they don't put in what we want, we can leave and leave them broke. It's in their best interest to do whatever cost-effective things they can do to keep our satisfaction high so that we stay and continue giving money to them.

I think they should consider it worth their time to make what should fundamentally be a time-saving feature into an actually time-saving worth-using feature. It's hardly even "we want this now", it's more like "why was this not implemented years ago??", the second-best time for them to implement it will be "finally" in a few weeks' time.

[Birdframe_Prime]

On 2022-09-27 at 12:50 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

It's in their best interest to do whatever cost-effective things they can do to keep our satisfaction high so that we stay and continue giving money to them.

There are literally reams and reams of discourse on why Loadout Slots are not more available in the game from a practical standpoint, making it very debatable whether adding more is a cost-effective thing to do, even with the revenue it might potentially gain.

It's not in the Dev's 'best interest' to put in everything we ask for, it's in their best interest to put in what will retain the most people, while giving DE the best monetary return for it.

More types of Forma? Something that players use endlessly? Something that costs their server load absolutely nothing? Sure. Loadout Slots, which the vast majority of the player base hardly use? Something that's a one-and-done purchase? Something that increases server data access costs every single time they release more? Whatever for?

[Grav_Starstrider]

8 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

There are literally reams and reams of discourse on why Loadout Slots are not more available in the game from a practical standpoint, making it very debatable whether adding more is a cost-effective thing to do, even with the revenue it might potentially gain.

It's not in the Dev's 'best interest' to put in everything we ask for, it's in their best interest to put in what will retain the most people, while giving DE the best monetary return for it.

More types of Forma? Something that players use endlessly? Something that costs their server load absolutely nothing? Sure. Loadout Slots, which the vast majority of the player base hardly use? Something that's a one-and-done purchase? Something that increases server data access costs every single time they release more? Whatever for?

I said "keep satisfaction high" with the same intent that you responded/corrected with, as "retention", not "whatever we want". We could want 50 shards up front and they wouldn't do that, lol.

But yeah. I was suggesting a system that allows us to have the same number of loadout slots, just allowing us to remove parts of the loadout that we don't want to overwrite our current one. And that lets you directly select your config.

So more of a "favorite sets" system than loadouts, unless you genuinely prefer to make full-loadout-swaps for a min-maxed cohesive kit. Just make Loadouts able to be applied *partially* (like not updating your Warframe and Companion, but just applying Daikyu and Skiajati to your Loadout, or Xoris and Pyrana Prime) to your current non-loadout (the only thing they'd need to straight up add, functionally just one more loadout total that isn't even a loadout). Because there are some favorites you'll always want to pair together, like certain melee with Naramon (for high combo counter retention) vs Zenurik (for heavy attacks), and certain Warframes with Naramon (Ash/Atlas/Excalibur/etc) and certain ones with Vazarin (Harrow, Trinity), etc. But you may not want to literally change EVERYTHING else, like your pet or necramech or archwing.

And then a "Config" menu that just allows you to toggle configs without having go go through 5+ different modding menus in the arsenal to toggle.

[Birdframe_Prime]

18 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

But yeah. I was suggesting a system that allows us to have the same number of loadout slots, just allowing us to remove parts of the loadout that we don't want to overwrite our current one.

Sooooooo... you basically aren't even talking about the OP anymore? Fair enough.

I'm only here to defend the basic premise that 'more' isn't really valid because of all the reasons stated so far in the thread, and people that just keep asking are not going to be getting because there isn't, and never has been, enough of a volume of players demanding more loadout slots to actually change anything.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Birdframe_Prime

[Grav_Starstrider]

20 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Sooooooo... you basically aren't even talking about the OP anymore? Fair enough.

I'm only here to defend the basic premise that 'more' isn't really valid because of all the reasons stated so far in the thread, and people that just keep asking are not going to be getting because there isn't, and never has been, enough of a volume of players demanding more loadout slots to actually change anything.

Yeah there are almost enough slots for every Warframe to have its own loadout so it doesn't look or feel cost effective to just increase the overall number of them, but they have incrementally increased Riven slots. But the reason Riven caps keep going up is because Rivens cause Platinum to be transferred for eventual consumption in their market at some point, and because there's still only a fraction of the slots available compared to the number of weapons people may want to use them for.

And yeah I guess I'm suggesting a twist on their initial post rather than exclusively supporting or opposing it. Isn't that what a forum is for though, to share and refine ideas and opinions and suggestions?

Making the existing system better (without increasing server/storage costs) may solve the problem  (observed by the OP) more than pure numerical increases will (that OP suggested). Or at least it'd be a consolation prize that would make the lack of increase slightly more tolerable.

[Birdframe_Prime]

5 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Making the existing system better (without increasing server/storage costs) may solve the problem  (observed by the OP) more than pure numerical increases will (that OP suggested). Or at least it'd be a consolation prize that would make the lack of increase slightly more tolerable.

You're not wrong.

But.

There's really no driving reason to for the Devs. They have more than enough to do just delivering the basic content they promised us. Quality of Life stuff for when you're actually playing the game happens around that. Other projects for the background functions happen... rarely... if ever.

Systemic expansion of the game play, unfortunately, comes at the expense of systemic expansion of the functions DE already feels are 'good enough' and 'functional enough'.

[Grav_Starstrider]

On 2022-09-30 at 1:30 PM, Birdframe_Prime said:

You're not wrong.

But.

There's really no driving reason to for the Devs. They have more than enough to do just delivering the basic content they promised us. Quality of Life stuff for when you're actually playing the game happens around that. Other projects for the background functions happen... rarely... if ever.

Systemic expansion of the game play, unfortunately, comes at the expense of systemic expansion of the functions DE already feels are 'good enough' and 'functional enough'.

I mean, they're literally reverting Self Damage on AoE soon, it looks like. They observably don't seem to be opposed to trying to fix core gameplay elements. They've professed a desire to rework mods a little bit to make certain ones far less mandatory. They rework Warframes when they're already arguably "good enough". Loadouts could just be one more core system that they've horrendously overlooked and left archaic, and like Ammo graphics, might consider looking into as soon as they realize how decrepit it's been.

[Birdframe_Prime]

15 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

I mean, they're literally reverting Self Damage on AoE soon, it looks like.

Yeah, they are, and you'll not find anyone more surprised about that than me.

This will be genuinely one of about three things they've reverted outside of the 2-3 month window after an initial update.

But you know the reason for that, right? You know that it's purely because it's the proverbial nail that stands out right now. The AoE meta is a problem, and the knock-on effects of them attempting to fix that are still ongoing.

It's not really an example of a system that's 'good enough' and they're reworking, it's considered a genuine problem.

Warframes are core content, mods are part of that content, the Melee system had a complete rework, and almost all of those came and went because there was something wrong with them.

Not just because a minority of the players wanted the changes. In point of fact, many of the reworks and changes that happened came at the cost of massive player out-cry, just like the AoE changes are from the Chinese community that like to AFK farm. Changes to Ember and Saryn, the Status changes that took Toxin damage away from Gas Procs, a whole lot of people that said Melee will be worse if Condition Overload was nerfed...

There was something problematic about the systems, frames, mods, weapons or even game modes that came to their attention and they fixed them. And fixed them despite many players not wanting those things fixed. Because there was something problematic that needed addressing.

Squeeky wheel, nail that stands too tall, whatever metaphor you want to use. Priority in DE's case will always be to first bring out new content, next to fix what's broken, and then, waaaaaaay down the list of things that fall into those two categories, is updating underlying systems that haven't had any issues for most of a decade.

So... 'not having enough' of a thing that DE says 'you aren't supposed to have that many of' in the first place? That's not a problem. That's a request they can say they've answered, and answered in the negative.

Maybe it will happen, and I'll be surprised then too. But on the grand scheme of their actual priorities? Back-burner doesn't even cover it. The system's status is shelved and not even on the sideboard to put on a burner.

[Grav_Starstrider]

23 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

But on the grand scheme of their actual priorities? Back-burner doesn't even cover it. The system's status is shelved and not even on the sideboard to put on a burner.

That's very much an opinion :V not fact. We can hope, and continue asking.

[Birdframe_Prime]

22 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

That's very much an opinion :V not fact. We can hope, and continue asking.

It's an opinion built on quite closely observing all of the changes they've made, all of the things they've neglected, and all of the things they've outright said are their priorities over the last eight years of discussing things here on the Forums.

[ricewindUuu]

Just want to say I would appreciate more loadout slots as well.

 

Also wondering why I get 52 archwing slots and can't synchronise them with a warframe, like for eidolons or whatever. Something like that with an operator slow would be nice for doing angels or specific stuff. Just saying...