Reputation Grinds are a Crutch for Lazy Game Design

[Izera]

Reputation Grinds have been a popular method of slowing player progress through new content for several decades across every genre.  There is a good reason Reputation grinds have been so popular for so long among so many Game Designers.  They are a quick and easy solution to the problem of pacing player progression through new content.

If These systems are so successful at what they do why are they so inherently bad for games?  While these systems may look successful but there is a hidden cost to implementing these features.  Reputation Grinds generate Negative Fun for players.  New content and quests locked behind older reputation grinds tend to have a greater impact on player enjoyment for newer or returning players.  These players who might otherwise wish to play with their friends will ultimately abandon the game when they hit this wall and realize they can’t play with their friends without doing a boring reputation grind for a month, in content that no one wants to run anymore.  These Systems negatively affect player retention in the long run.  They build up player resentment when too many of these systems are used in conjunction as a means of gating player progression.  Across all genres of games These systems have been universally hated by Players, and yet game developers seem to unwilling or unable to innovate and come up with new and refreshing solutions to the problem of slowing player progression.  Instead, they just taking the lazy approach to the problem by adding yet another reputation grind.

With so many negatives that result from such a system why do you insist on locking new content behind a boring reputation grind in Fortuna?  I helped liberate these people and yet Little duck does not trust me enough?  I helped little duck exterminate Sentient ships but that does not matter to her either does it.  Because I did not give Little duck her stupid little bobbles, she thinks I am garbage.  It does not that I helped save her people from oppression.  All Little Duck cares about are those stupid little bobbles she requires to reach the requisite Reputation level.

I hate Reputation grinds of all kinds.  I have always hated Reputation grinds and if you are going to continue locking new and exciting content behind reputation grinds, I will have to find my self a new game to play because it looks like I won’t be playing this one too much longer.

Thank you and maybe see you in a future patch.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

I don't mind rep grinds in games as long as it's efficient and maybe something youll do naturally.

Conclave is a awful grind and so is vox solaris.

Vox solaris didn't have to be awful. If they had set it ip to work the same as the quils people would do it.

Edited June 12, 2020 by (PS4)Kakurine2

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

 

See the problem is that while everyone understands that you want all the nice shiny things, if you are just given them all at once, we'll see you vociferously complaining about having nothing to do, and about the lack of content. 

Remember you're looking at this from a player standpoint. The developer stand point is that they're constantly working on new and improved stuff, but that takes time to produce. Many of us can easily blow through new content in a ridiculously short time. We've even got the whole "ants can solve the travelling salesman problem" type of thing going on, because we all share our knowledge and ideas for how to do something, and that rapidly produces the meta loadouts and tactics, even for brand new content. 

And yes, finding yourself a new game is a great idea because it is going to help you to spend a bit more time between burnouts if you split the time. Honestly hope you find a good one that you can enjoy. 

 

Have fun, Tenno. 

[Crystles]

Omg this. So much of it. 

I have personally just this year brought in 8 people to try and play warframe with me (because the game is horribly boring for me to play alone). Of those 8, 2 quit within the first week because they were just utterly lost and confused because the game doesnt explain anything. 5 more all left when they realized how long and how much work it would take their MR 4-6 characters to wade through the grind to reach the otherwise interesting content like that hidden behind Cetus and Fortuna rep (let alone the other syndicates) because of how tedious it is. The only one left is now MR11 and on the edge of quitting because of how much crap they still gata wade through to catch up and play with me and havnt gotten them to log in this week. That's just this year.

Despite my efforts, I literally cannot bring anyone new in, and that should sing songs as to the state of things. The new player experience is utterly horrible. Theres absolutely no reason that old syndicates should still be rep capped or why there should still be multi-day long wait timers for required progression quests, not to mention the bugs they keep running into during them. Seriously wtf is up with that? Not one of them didnt have some issue along the way...

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Remember you're looking at this from a player standpoint. The developer stand point is that they're constantly working on new and improved stuff,

Except that some of the reputation grinds are so stingy that unless you purposely farm for them, they take years.

Syndicates have no reason to have their reputation locked anymore. Everything in the syndicates players want can be traded just about. Cetus is old at this point and has no point in having a reputation cap either.

Most players have 10-20k standing they can get per faction each day. If they want something, they low key have to wait anywhere from 5-10 days.

The Tenno schools for focus are even worse. Since the changes to focus, I passively get maybe 50k focus from two weeks of constant gameplay. I will never touch the other tenno schools even if I want their unbound bonuses because of how long focus takes to get.

They could add a 100x multiplier on focus generation and it would still be a large farm.

[Izera]

@(PS4)guzmantt1977  I feel you didn't read though all my post.  I'm not asking for them to give it to us instantly.  There are other games that have these time gates in place and they are much more palatable.  I get that it needs to take time to acquire to be rewarding.  My issue is it's boring.  Warframe Reputation grinds are honestly worse that World of Warcraft now.

Have you honestly tried making a new character recently?  I have and it is bar none, one of the worst new player experiences I have ever had the displeasure of plaything through.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Syndicates have no reason to have their reputation locked anymore.

The 6 main syndicates make sense being limited since they sell items that you can buy with plat in the market(DE needs to profit somehow) 

As for Solaris united, Ostrons and the other ones they lock it so that people don't just get to rank 5 easily

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

21 minutes ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Except that some of the reputation grinds are so stingy that unless you purposely farm for them, they take years.

Syndicates have no reason to have their reputation locked anymore. Everything in the syndicates players want can be traded just about. Cetus is old at this point and has no point in having a reputation cap either.

Most players have 10-20k standing they can get per faction each day. If they want something, they low key have to wait anywhere from 5-10 days.

The Tenno schools for focus are even worse. Since the changes to focus, I passively get maybe 50k focus from two weeks of constant gameplay. I will never touch the other tenno schools even if I want their unbound bonuses because of how long focus takes to get.

They could add a 100x multiplier on focus generation and it would still be a large farm.

Syndacate rep is easy slap on the emblems and just play. You'll inherently get the rep.  Running bounties on cetus and orb valis is easy to.  Quil rep kill 3 ediolons every few days you can easily get your quil rep.

And focus. My main account has 1400 something time played. A few hundred hours of that i wasn't farming focus or my trees where already all maxed.

Making sets of lenses and just playing to make focus farmning efficient was easy.

Only two reps can be legit complained about. Conclave because pvp is trash. And vox solaris because toroid farming is hell.

Conclave could be done via universal medallions. Vox solaris should work the same as the quils.

Edited June 12, 2020 by (PS4)Kakurine2

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

55 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

 

See the problem is that while everyone understands that you want all the nice shiny things, if you are just given them all at once, we'll see you vociferously complaining about having nothing to do, and about the lack of content. 

Remember you're looking at this from a player standpoint. The developer stand point is that they're constantly working on new and improved stuff, but that takes time to produce. Many of us can easily blow through new content in a ridiculously short time. We've even got the whole "ants can solve the travelling salesman problem" type of thing going on, because we all share our knowledge and ideas for how to do something, and that rapidly produces the meta loadouts and tactics, even for brand new content. 

And yes, finding yourself a new game is a great idea because it is going to help you to spend a bit more time between burnouts if you split the time. Honestly hope you find a good one that you can enjoy. 

 

Have fun, Tenno. 

There are ways to do it without adding syndicates left and right to increase grind and broaden the gap between experienced and new players even further. Story content would be better for stuff instead of new syndicates. Completed story missions leads to receiving items from characters. Good way to do it. Gives players backstory regarding the characters and rewards us for partaking in the content. 

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

54 minutes ago, Crystles said:

Omg this. So much of it. 

I have personally just this year brought in 8 people to try and play warframe with me (because the game is horribly boring for me to play alone). Of those 8, 2 quit within the first week because they were just utterly lost and confused because the game doesnt explain anything. 5 more all left when they realized how long and how much work it would take their MR 4-6 characters to wade through the grind to reach the otherwise interesting content like that hidden behind Cetus and Fortuna rep (let alone the other syndicates) because of how tedious it is. The only one left is now MR11 and on the edge of quitting because of how much crap they still gata wade through to catch up and play with me and havnt gotten them to log in this week. That's just this year.

Despite my efforts, I literally cannot bring anyone new in, and that should sing songs as to the state of things. The new player experience is utterly horrible. Theres absolutely no reason that old syndicates should still be rep capped or why there should still be multi-day long wait timers for required progression quests, not to mention the bugs they keep running into during them. Seriously wtf is up with that? Not one of them didnt have some issue along the way...

Brozime has a great video where he talks to his girlfriend about her new player experience. it is fascinating to know what new players find exacerbating and how, with DE's full steam ahead approach, the gap between players widens and how it hinders gaining new players. 

[Crystles]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)DoctorWho_90250 said:

Brozime has a great video where he talks to his girlfriend about her new player experience. it is fascinating to know what new players find exacerbating and how, with DE's full steam ahead approach, the gap between players widens and how it hinders gaining new players. 

I know the one! It's a long one but theres a tremendous amount of good, well thought out points in it. On the note of DE's "full steam ahead" approach, I could add 2 more to the count of friends no longer playing with me, because both of them feel theres just too much to do with no real focus anymore (And one's a MR16 vet). I've been saying wherever I can that I think DE needs to just pump the brakes a bit and go back to fix up, refine and polish the old content. Warframe is turning into a mile wide puddle. 

[Hypernaut1]

so people want less reasons to play the game? What else is there to do in WF but play to grind things out to play some more?

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

48 minutes ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

The 6 main syndicates make sense being limited since they sell items that you can buy with plat in the market(DE needs to profit somehow) 

As for Solaris united, Ostrons and the other ones they lock it so that people don't just get to rank 5 easily

Not really.

None of the syndicates have anything people want anymore. All of the syndicate weapons and even the augments sell dirt cheap now. DE makes all of its money off of cosmetics, prime access and the actual new content.

Removing the syndicate cap would do nothing but benefit new players.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

1 minute ago, Hypernaut1 said:

so people want less reasons to play the game?

Incorrect.

If I told a friend that in 300 days of logging in every day that they could get this new awesome mod or weapon (Log in rewards) How do you think they would feel? Discouraged. Warframe has a literal mountain of grind to get through.

Going from a new player to everything I have? Literally hundreds of weapons, thousands of mods, millions of endo and credits. With that amount of content to grind through just to go from Mr 0 all the way to the last story quest?

To just get high enough mr to have access to it all, takes 140 weapons, or 70 warframes.

Not to mention getting the basic mods, the credits, the resources to make them all even usable.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

17 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

so people want less reasons to play the game? What else is there to do in WF but play to grind things out to play some more?

If there's nothing else to do, then that says a lot about the state of the game honestly. 

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

23 minutes ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Not really.

None of the syndicates have anything people want anymore. All of the syndicate weapons and even the augments sell dirt cheap now. DE makes all of its money off of cosmetics, prime access and the actual new content.

Removing the syndicate cap would do nothing but benefit new players.

I'm talking about Relic packs, and the recent weapon exilus adapter as well. 

Benefit new players by making them run out of things to do as fast as possible? I never see new players or low levels complaining about the system only people that already finished it or are lazy to grind it

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

15 minutes ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

I'm talking about Relic packs, and the recent weapon exilus adapter as well. 

Benefit new players by making them run out of things to do as fast as possible? I never see new players or low levels complaining about the system only people that already finished it or are lazy to grind it

Relic packs are random and don't always give you the relic you want. Exilus Adapters are so minor that it's not a big sacrifice either.  I think the vocal opinions of the grind are sufficient as of now.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

1 hour ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

I'm talking about Relic packs, and the recent weapon exilus adapter as well. 

Benefit new players by making them run out of things to do as fast as possible? I never see new players or low levels complaining about the system only people that already finished it or are lazy to grind it

I recommend watching/listening to Brozime talk to his girlfriend (who is in the games industry herself) about her new player experience. Very long, but very informative video. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by (PS4)DoctorWho_90250

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

1 hour ago, (PS4)JohnWickHitman said:

Here ya go!

Been playing a month now, and still only MR6.

The grind is HORRIBLE!

WTF wants to grind out buttloads of weapons or frames??

Not me, I only like 1 frame, and want to play a specific way.

Yet I'm being told at every turn, and hampered in leveling due to this.

WTF should I keep playing when it's going to take eons?

Let alone 200 days+ for some of the great mods?

Why do I have to grind and cap out, when I do get my "long" game sessions in rep??

Why does everything cost so much??

Can't level worth a damn, can't upgrade, as every turn, when I need an upgrade to make myself stronger, I'm out of credits, mats, or am required to buy Plat to circumvent the stupid pooty grind this game requires....

I enjoy the game, but seriously, at this rate, I won't even be MR8 by the time Ghost of Tsushima arrives.

And not long after that will be the PS5 release.

WTF would I back track to a game requiring this kind of grind when there will be butt loads of new games, and things arriving??

DE needs to remove caps, ease up on the MR 1 - 16 grind.

I and most I've spoken to can not, and will not commit that kind of time.

We can't, we have actual J-O-B's. This is just a hobby, time burner to leave the pooty world behind for a bit, and ignore it all.

As another said about getting friends to play, I had 9 try it...

4 didn't make it past the first mission, they hated it.

3 quit by MR3, to grindy.

The last 2 read up on guides and YToobed the game and decided it was a POS and never downloaded it.

So really, it's only you elitist that are doing anything constructive in game, and you're really doing a poor job at that.

Over priced market items, toxic behavior, go eff'n do it yourself mentality that turns players off.

And the few "new" players I've tried to run with are eff'n mutes...no head sets, just run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

I can't wait for Ghosts, so I can remove this game.

To GRINDY, to much Drama, to much BS. with no clear guidance on how to get there w/o the GRIND!

THANK YOU!!

Also, enjoy Ghost of Tsushima. I look forward to playing it some day and love Sucker Punch's games. Right now, my eyes are on Cyberpunk 2077. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by (PS4)DoctorWho_90250

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

Get good and grind it out. Oh that's right, it's easier to whine on forums than actually play the game.

Brb, I'm gonna go submit 22k worth of toroids to my Shadowy Orginization.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

5 hours ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Except that some of the reputation grinds are so stingy that unless you purposely farm for them, they take years.

Syndicates have no reason to have their reputation locked anymore. Everything in the syndicates players want can be traded just about. Cetus is old at this point and has no point in having a reputation cap either.

Most players have 10-20k standing they can get per faction each day. If they want something, they low key have to wait anywhere from 5-10 days.

The Tenno schools for focus are even worse. Since the changes to focus, I passively get maybe 50k focus from two weeks of constant gameplay. I will never touch the other tenno schools even if I want their unbound bonuses because of how long focus takes to get.

They could add a 100x multiplier on focus generation and it would still be a large farm.

"that unless you purposely farm for them"

That's the point....are you complaining about having to play the game?

I want kuva, so I purposely farm for it by going to Taveuni....

If you want a prime frame or weapon or really anything in any game, you have to purposefully farm for it.

[BRZZAFK]

You complaining about time gate is because you want to play more time or because you just want to skip the part you dont want to play?

If you want to skip content it's probably beacause the game mode has problem not the reward system.

Edited June 12, 2020 by BRZZAFK

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

Look man i agree with you, the Fortuna grind is bad.

I'm at 1200hrs, have been playing for 8 or 9 months. It took me a solid 3 or 4 months to really get going in the game, and that's a turn off for people I know, there's just a lot to know and learn mechanically....and then after you get over the hump, everyone says the game is so easy, but is it? I have to parkour and jump around like a mad man in higher level content, unless I go ivara....but theres a time a place for that.

I had to get Trinity for eidolons to get better focus, I farmed a rubico Prime, used affinity events and boosters from sorties or whatever to put more forma in my frames and weapons. Got Carried in Tridolons, having no focus so i could barely stay in void mode.

It's a process, you log on and take a frame or weapon to Hydron for 30 min, maybe do a simaris scan, then do some relics, hmm maybe level a weapon while doing relics....its just a process and you keep grinding if you want to play. It's fun for me.

[Emolition]

For me reputation or faction grinds are a life saver in most mmorpgs as that give you something to do when you hit cap level.  I rather grind out 10 factions then doing 1 raid. For it something I can do when ever I want and not just ones a week when ppl get online or having to spam 6 hours a day for a group.

*EDIT* This got to be a decent design tho and not just a insane amount that would take years per faction. But as long as they semi good missions and decent rewarding I got no problem.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Emolition

[Kokomala]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Kakurine2 said:

And vox solaris because toroid farming is hell.

Go run exploiter orb. You get a 12k rep torroid (x2 if you have a booster), hildryn parts and a bunch of fortuna crafting materials. You don't need vox standing to start the fight - just thermia from the fracture event which you've probably done to get the mods and weapon. The matchmaking bounty is locked to vox, but the fight itself isn't.

Even if you got all the parts in the minimum time, that's still 36k rep at minimum which is still a decent chunk of rep, especially since you were probably going to farm this boss anyway for frame parts. Doing it earlier means you can use this rep to help you get to rank 2. You can farm multiple things at the same time.

You'll still need to do some farming for the smaller torroids purely for tribute to rank up, but not as much as if you were should you not do some exploiter fights.