Scarlet Spear: why the design makes it feel bad (and FOMO)

[(PSN)Unstar]

(Note: this is my subjective experience and may differ from yours)

Events like this with unique rewards (and otherwise difficult to get rewards, like Arcanes) are fueled by FOMO, and that's not necessarily the end of the world as long as the event is designed in such a way where that doesn't feel like a problem.  I don't think Scarlet Spear currently passes that bar.

Missions Incentivize playing for over an hour

Because rewards are exponential as opposed to linear, you get more Scarlet Credits for staying in a mission for more waves.  This incentivizes staying for the maximum amount of time, so that you maximize your rewards per time.  Normal Warframe missions don't do this; they tend to cap out their rewards at around the 20 minute mark.  I feel like this event doesn't respect my time or the fact that sometimes I get thirsty or need to go to the bathroom, or that I'm not always in the mood for an intense 1-hour game session.  But if I want to get the rewards from Scarlet Spear, it doesn't matter what I want, I have to choose between those things and getting those rewards before the event ends.  That feels bad.

Add into the mix that Warframe, while it's a wonderful game that we all love, is known for its bugs.  Today I did 15 waves before running into a progression stopping bug that required we leave the mission.  If rewards were linear, this wouldn't be an issue; I could just start over and I'd be playing again, earning the same rewards.  But with exponential rewards, that bug makes me feel robbed.  I put in time expecting the chance to maximize my payout, but a bug right near the end meant that wouldn't happen.  Knowing that bugs like this can happen, I feel like playing a long mission isn't just an investment in too much of my time, it's also a gamble as to whether that investment will even see returns.

...and then it incentivizes playing even more

But of course, if I really want to get more Scarlet Credits, I need to keep working on my specific Flotilla so that it reaches the maximum amount of Murex kills.  At the very least, this requires even more time.  Again, feels bad.

But even more than that, it requires that enough players be on my Flotilla.  Today I played for about 2 hours on 1 Flotilla, and the timer to kill 70 Murex's elapsed, we had killed about 40.  So we didn't get any additional reward.  The number of Flotillas available to choose from was about 200, and clearly not enough people joined ours.  So either I need a Flotilla worth of friends (I don't have that) or I just have to hope that I get lucky and that players join and are successful.  I hope you can see how this feels bad.  Again, it's another gamble.  I feel like I don't have control.

Railjack is still broken

You can try to just do ground missions, but if Murex's need to be killed by your Flotilla and there are plenty of ground groups, you need to Railjack.  And I still can't access my Railjack's Tactical Menu (and hence no Tactical Avionics).  I feel like I haven't been given the tools I need to succeed.

So to add that all together, we've got a limited time event, with limited time rewards, and the event wants me to invest my time in multi-hour chunks so that I will have a random chance of getting a reasonable amount of rewards, and I've got broken tools and broken missions to try to make that happen.  It feels bad and Scarlet Spear has bummed me out.

If this were just normal content that I could play at my leisure here and there, none of these other issues would seem like a big deal, they would just seem like Warframe.  But that FOMO adds pressure, and I'm feeling it, and it feels bad.  Thanks for listening to my feedback.

[LSG501]

I'll sum up my issues with scarlet spear...

• 2 missions which are exactly the same every time, hell they're not exactly different between the map locations (space is essentially mobile defence) - ie no variety
• The missions themselves are rather boring....
• Cap of 5000 points per 100/100.... new points rewards mean less incentive to run more than once
• Store items are priced around getting bonus rewards when bonus rewards are not 100% certain to be paid out.  I still feel the bonus points need scrapping but other suggestions have had percentage payouts if not at 100/100...anything is better than not getting a bonus payout due to no fault of your own
• You feel like you 'need' to do the full mission to completion and personally I don't have as much time spare to do this type of mission which then links in with the below. 
• Because of that feeling that you need to do all 5 space missions etc it actually makes me not want to do the mission in case I have to leave part way through.
• Too many 'limits', we have 100/100, we have timers and we have an overall duration to the event as well.... we do not need the 2 hour timer thing. 
• Bugs....

 

In all honesty this event is a weird one for me... I want to get certain rewards from it but because of the design of the event and the conscious decisions by DE to design it this way I'm actually being put off playing,  It's literally a case of feeling "I really should do some more of these scarlet spear missions but I'm not sure I actually have time before something crops up".... that is not good game design imo.

Note I farmed the first plague star (later ones not so much) like crazy because it was 'relatively' quick to do and I could do it as and when I wanted... scarlet spear doesn't allow that 'passive accumulation of points'

Edited April 10, 2020 by LSG501

[(PSN)Unstar]

There are just so many discrete points of failure in this event; I feel like whoever designed this event only thought about how cool it would be when things worked out, but didn't put much effort into considering how things could go wrong.  Because there are so many ways things can go wrong.

You need to remove 70 Murex in 3 hours.  To do that you need:

• For enough players to choose that specific Flotilla out of a list of dozens or hundreds.
• For players not to leave.  To have this, you need players to not be lured away because:
  • they see that the Murex-to-time remaining ratio isn't looking good, so they leave, which starts a cascading effect ensuring failure.
  • they've already earned the max 5k reward that can be tripled on a successful flotilla, so they leave to another Flotilla to get more rewards that can be tripled.
• Enough Successful Space teams.  To have this you need:
  • Enough players with 3 hour blocks of time to spare that are perfectly aligned with the 3-hour Flotilla windows, and choose to spend their time this way.
  • Capable, quasi-organized Space Teams.  To get these you need either:
    • Successful matchmaking to occur.  Because the matchmaking occurs within the Flotilla's tiny population only, this tends to be unreliable.
    • To have enough players who can manually organize groups.  In my experience, I'm seeing dead air waves too often, even if i try to organize something myself.  The only "solution" might be to find a different Flotilla, abandoning those on the Flotilla and wasting all my time up until then.
  • Enough successful Ground teams.  To have this you need:
    • Players who are willing to do Ground missions even though Space missions have much faster and better rewards.
    • Successful matchmaking to occur.  See above, but note that this is even moreso in my Ground team experience.
    • To have enough players who can manually organize groups.  See above.

To put this all together, today I hopped onto a Flotilla at the start of the 3 hour window, and I joined a successful Space team through random matchmaking.  Score!  It was fun!  Then that party finished and disbanded.  That's when the fun ended.  For the next almost 2 hours, between missions I tried to use the Flotilla chat to get groups together, or to join groups, but I was met with crickets.  I joined both space and ground missions, and was matched with either 1 or no players each time, and these single players weren't good enough to do the endurance runs of this hard content (as an aside, it really sucked to feel like instead of helping these players out, i was under a time crunch that demanded I jettison dead weight so that i could have an effective squad).  After 2 hours total, with 1 hour left in the Flotilla, I saw that we had just over 35 of the Murex's taken care of.  I wasn't able to make or be matched with full squads, which in itself was frustrating.  Did I want to spend the next hour of my life fruitlessly trying to reach that full 70?  Alone?  That would me miserable and ineffective.  Getting together with other players?  That hadn't been working, and I had to wonder how many had seen that we had 1/3 of the time left to defeat 1/2 the Murex's and thought it was a good idea to leave.  It was really the only sane choice, to leave, because otherwise I would leave the Flotilla with an hour less of my life and even more anger feeling even more defeated.

So I turned off Warframe, frustrated and angry.  And the thing is, I can't resist those rewards.  I love Warframe, and given the choice between my immediate happiness and the long-term "what if" sadness of having missed out on this one-time chance for Arcanes (Eidelons for random rewards = no), I only see one conclusion: if I do not engage with this frustrating content — if I do not get these Arcanes while I have the chance — I will be left behind as the game continues to progress.  So I will login regularly during this event, and play it, knowing that each play session will end with me feeling frustrated and angry at Warframe and probably angry at myself for playing something that I know will make me angry.

I hope none of this was DE's plan.  I hope they don't want their players to be angry, to grind a joyless, miserable grind just for the sake of that being a form of "engagement".  I hope that this design is a big big mistake.  But if that's the case, I hope this big mistake can be fixed in some way.  The sooner that happens, the better it will be for players like me.  I know I'm not the only one in this boat.

Edited April 13, 2020 by (PS4)Unstar
grammars

[Unimira]

I'm farming Scarlet Spear because Eidolons are even worse, just have to accept that DE can't do events OR boss fights and work around the issues.

Best not to mention good ways to deal clear the missions though, if something becomes too popular DE will nerf it...