DE's New vs. Reworked Content Dilemma

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

22 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Honestly, I couldnt agree more. I really want a system where we muck up the lich's mooks and goons, beat the info out of them and then heading to the lair of our "nemesis" to smack, bam, pow, snikt and ratatatata him to pulp. I wouldnt mind if our nemesis would show up during missions where we beat up their henchmen, but it shouldnt be the way we encounter them only and definently not the way we beat them. And yeah, parazon is highly "meh" for me. Too bad we use it for everything now that involves finishers, I prefer seeing a nikana or a pair of venka ripping through the enemy, or having their skull penetrated by the tip of a scythe blade.

The lich system would be much cooler if the objective of the mission also had a far larger impact on murmur gain. Spy missions could give a massive amount that scaled up based on number of rooms we crack, extermination and survival could have a far higher presence of thralls, heck, they could remove exterminate and have those missions be survival instead. they could even implement the kuva design in those missions, where we modify a life support tower to become some form of spy beacon to help us get intel of the lich position, the more we convert the higher the murmur yield at the end. Would fit perfectly with interception and disruption to, the more effective we are the more we get. They could possibly skip interception as a thing and create a lich excavation mode instead where we are hacking into communication arrays used by the lich's forces instead of digging for cryo.

Small small tweaks that could go a long way.

Why would they value our time  and make a game more interesting after all the forums have little to no sound suggestions.????Am I right?

[SneakyErvin]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

Why would they value our time  and make a game more interesting after all the forums have little to no sound suggestions.????Am I right?

We just post suggestions in the wrong part of the forums. Mostly because I'm lazy myself and can live with what we have.

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

25 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

We just post suggestions in the wrong part of the forums. Mostly because I'm lazy myself and can live with what we have.

Yes and no. Imo general discussion is just as vital as feedback 

[SneakyErvin]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

Yes and no. Imo general discussion is just as vital as feedback 

Not if you wanna get the attention from DE. Which is kinda the only way to see changes wanted by the players. GD is more to spitball ideas with other players or simply discuss different opinions on something. Feedback is the place to go if you want DE to change something or implement a new thing.

Sure you can Hail Mary it on GD, but dont get upset if DE doesnt see it.

[Hypernaut1]

33 minutes ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

Yes and no. Imo general discussion is just as vital as feedback 

GD is probably noted for it's noise, that's it. I doubt the devs comb through toxic post for any actual ideas. If anything, maybe someone will translate ideas from GD into a coherent post in feedback. 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

33 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Not if you wanna get the attention from DE. Which is kinda the only way to see changes wanted by the players. GD is more to spitball ideas with other players or simply discuss different opinions on something. Feedback is the place to go if you want DE to change something or implement a new thing.

Sure you can Hail Mary it on GD, but dont get upset if DE doesnt see it.

For them not to survey all parts of their forums makes no true sense. I agree that it’s more likely to be seen in feedback yes. But I feel as if it’d be ignorant to not skim through or search through GD

[HelmetTooTight]

15 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

Railjack is intended to be an entire half of the game going forward. They spent the last two years working on it

So everything in your post after that question? They will have to do that. It's Railjack 2.0 or death for DE

I don't believe this is the case. Seeing the state Railjack was released (where it had significantly less content than their demos at TennoCon), I don't think DE spent much of the two years since its debut working on it (seeing there were other large updates dropped in between: The Sacrifice, Fortuna, Profit-Taker, Jovian Concord, etc.). They were testing the water in December, and they found that the water was boiling. Just looking at Railjack's lack of integration into Scarlet Spear makes me highly doubt that this will be the lifeblood of Warframe. DE may very well just decide to cut their losses instead and invest into tried and true standard content updates (e.g. Deadlock Protocol probably) and let Railjack and Liches fade away. I hope that's not the path they take, hence my original post, as I do think there is potential.

 

Some of you are saying to just fix the starchart by making an elite version. That's not "new" content in the sense that new players won't be attracted to this. Again, even if this is done correctly, players will still leave, but maybe at a slower rate. The point of big content drops is to attract hordes of new players to compensate for overtime player loss, and a star chart rework won't be able to achieve that more than Warframe's current PR can.

Change in playerbase = influx of players (new/returning) - outflux of players (leaving veterans) = net flux of players (what Steamcharts measures )

DE's marketing model is to drop a big update every 3-4 months hoping there will be a spike in player influx, followed by 2-3 months of "content drought," where there is a bunch of players leaving and not many joining. Let's say they rework the star chart. This may decrease the amount of veterans leaving, but it won't stop newer players from leaving (due to sh*tty new player experience) and it won't attract new players because it isn't "media-worthy." So overall, the change in the control volume (playerbase) is still negative (maybe instead of 10,000 players leaving each month it's just 7,000). DE can't afford that, so they still need new content updates.

I'll pull some numbers from Steamcharts (https://steamcharts.com/app/230410). If we look at Railjack update, which dropped last December, we see that there was only a total change in playerbase of +1,000. In comparison to previous updates (Jovian Concord +13,000, Profit-Taker +16,000), this is really small.  Either the influx and outflux of players was small during this time (unlikely), or the influx and outflux were both large during this time. More likely than not it was the latter; it got considerable media attention, which attracted new players, but it left many existing players extremely cynical, so people left at higher rates. In the aftermath of this sh*tshow, you can see that Warframe was at the lowest peak players this January since the drop of PoE two years ago.

The outlook is that if they continue sh*tty new releases, they will get high influx of players in (due to attention) and high outflux of players (due to bad gameplay and cynicisim), with an overall negative net flux, thus a decreasing playerbase. If they drop "standard releases" and let Railjack/Liches rot, they may continue on their usual trend of influx spike followed by passive outflux afterwards. The problem right now is that the passive outflux is higher as a consequence of Railjack/Liches in their current state. Let's say they take my suggestion and overhaul these systems in a "new content" fashion. They will see their standard spike of influx of players, but they will also remedy the high outflux as gameplay may be improved and veterans aren't as disgusted by the new content.

 

Also, I posted this in general discussion because this really isn't "feedback" per se. There's enough people on the forums complaining about Liches and Railjack and I don't really feel the need to add to that. I'm not giving my personal opinion on Railjack/Liches nor am I making individual suggestions on how they can improve it; rather, I'm making an observation on how they can rework things while still implementing "new" content.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by HelmetTooTight

[Redlove108]

I might be weird but I actually like both the Railjack and Lich content.

Mind you, it is not what we were promised but if you exclude that and view it as is, this is a new and interesting dynamic to the game that could be expanded upon in the game.

Railjack itself is a fantastic idea that can slowly re-work and re-release warframe's older content into something more immersive and exciting to play through. The fact that we saw Railjack in Scarlet Spear proves that Railjack isn't a stand alone island and going forward they are designing things with Railjack in mind.

So I look forward to their new content and re-imagining of old content.

[Hypernaut1]

1 hour ago, HelmetTooTight said:

I don't believe this is the case. Seeing the state Railjack was released (where it had significantly less content than their demos at TennoCon), I don't think DE spent much of the two years since its debut working on it (seeing there were other large updates dropped in between: The Sacrifice, Fortuna, Profit-Taker, Jovian Concord, etc.). They were testing the water in December, and they found that the water was boiling. Just looking at Railjack's lack of integration into Scarlet Spear makes me highly doubt that this will be the lifeblood of Warframe. DE may very well just decide to cut their losses instead and invest into tried and true standard content updates (e.g. Deadlock Protocol probably) and let Railjack and Liches fade away. I hope that's not the path they take, hence my original post, as I do think there is potential.

 

Some of you are saying to just fix the starchart by making an elite version. That's not "new" content in the sense that new players won't be attracted to this. Again, even if this is done correctly, players will still leave, but maybe at a slower rate. The point of big content drops is to attract hordes of new players to compensate for overtime player loss, and a star chart rework won't be able to achieve that more than Warframe's current PR can.

Change in playerbase = influx of players (new/returning) - outflux of players (leaving veterans) = net flux of players (what Steamcharts measures )

DE's marketing model is to drop a big update every 3-4 months hoping there will be a spike in player influx, followed by 2-3 months of "content drought," where there is a bunch of players leaving and not many joining. Let's say they rework the star chart. This may decrease the amount of veterans leaving, but it won't stop newer players from leaving (due to sh*tty new player experience) and it won't attract new players because it isn't "media-worthy." So overall, the change in the control volume (playerbase) is still negative (maybe instead of 10,000 players leaving each month it's just 7,000). DE can't afford that, so they still need new content updates.

I'll pull some numbers from Steamcharts (https://steamcharts.com/app/230410). If we look at Railjack update, which dropped last December, we see that there was only a total change in playerbase of +1,000. In comparison to previous updates (Jovian Concord +13,000, Profit-Taker +16,000), this is really small.  Either the influx and outflux of players was small during this time (unlikely), or the influx and outflux were both large during this time. More likely than not it was the latter; it got considerable media attention, which attracted new players, but it left many existing players extremely cynical, so people left at higher rates. In the aftermath of this sh*tshow, you can see that Warframe was at the lowest peak players this January since the drop of PoE two years ago.

The outlook is that if they continue sh*tty new releases, they will get high influx of players in (due to attention) and high outflux of players (due to bad gameplay and cynicisim), with an overall negative net flux, thus a decreasing playerbase. If they drop "standard releases" and let Railjack/Liches rot, they may continue on their usual trend of influx spike followed by passive outflux afterwards. The problem right now is that the passive outflux is higher as a consequence of Railjack/Liches in their current state. Let's say they take my suggestion and overhaul these systems in a "new content" fashion. They will see their standard spike of influx of players, but they will also remedy the high outflux as gameplay may be improved and veterans aren't as disgusted by the new content.

 

Also, I posted this in general discussion because this really isn't "feedback" per se. There's enough people on the forums complaining about Liches and Railjack and I don't really feel the need to add to that. I'm not giving my personal opinion on Railjack/Liches nor am I making individual suggestions on how they can improve it; rather, I'm making an observation on how they can rework things while still implementing "new" content.

 

It's it also possible that WF isn't a mainstream style of game and it has a plateau of new players/old players leaving?

I almost don't want it to grow if it means the devs have to cater to players not really into the kind of game WF is. 

Let them go to fortnite. 

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

For them not to survey all parts of their forums makes no true sense. I agree that it’s more likely to be seen in feedback yes. But I feel as if it’d be ignorant to not skim through or search through GD

GD is probably more of a "oh look what we stumbled on" when they do see ideas there. Too much happens on GD that makes it hard to spot ideas, since it can be anything from a thread about an idea to a post in a completely unrelated thread that has a new idea.

There is a reason they have several feedback subforums and a general one.

[HelmetTooTight]

2 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

I almost don't want it to grow if it means the devs have to cater to players not really into the kind of game WF is. 

I understand your sentiment, and I kind of agree to be quite honest (things like fishing and hunting are a huge turn-off for me;  its introduction seems completely out of place in a shooter game). I read the same thing on this reddit thread, where someone compared Warframe to a Chinese buffet with American food. https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/fqwqz0/warframe_is_built_on_a_broken_foundation/

But I also understand why DE as a company feels forced to do these expansions. F2P PvE is very hard to maintain a playerbase, because it gets stagnant pretty fast. Warframe lacks the unpredictable nature of PvP, so gameplay needs some entropy and a rewarding feeling to keep people playing even when the grind is finished. Until Warframe gets an overhaul from bottom up, I think DE will need to settle for releasing heavily reworked content in the form of "new releases" to maintain players while still addressing the base problems.

[Tinklzs]

1 hour ago, HelmetTooTight said:

I understand your sentiment, and I kind of agree to be quite honest (things like fishing and hunting are a huge turn-off for me;  its introduction seems completely out of place in a shooter game). I read the same thing on this reddit thread, where someone compared Warframe to a Chinese buffet with American food. https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/fqwqz0/warframe_is_built_on_a_broken_foundation/

But I also understand why DE as a company feels forced to do these expansions. F2P PvE is very hard to maintain a playerbase, because it gets stagnant pretty fast. Warframe lacks the unpredictable nature of PvP, so gameplay needs some entropy and a rewarding feeling to keep people playing even when the grind is finished. Until Warframe gets an overhaul from bottom up, I think DE will need to settle for releasing heavily reworked content in the form of "new releases" to maintain players while still addressing the base problems.

Fix the core mechanics of the game (that they keep reusing for new content like kuva liches, railjack (archwing exterminate with a few bells n whistles) and SS (mobile defense)), then start polishing endgame potential mission types. ESO, Arbitrations, Kuva Liches, Railjack, Derelict.  

Any new content that is added should have a 'fun factor' and 'rewarding experience' even after getting the goodies. Kuva lich, SS, and RJ are sorely missing that and a real fun factor. RJ isn't meant to be elite dangerous, I get that - but even Star Wars Galaxies had more going for it in the space category. They have hundreds of other games to reference for ideas for RJ and could incorporate them while adding a warframe spin on it. 

 

Look at Rahetalius's most receive video, one of the top comments is a series of suggestions I've given on how they can fix content they've added in the past year.  (I'd post it here but I fear it would derail the thread).