Please End Nightwaves

[Ceadeus]

This isn't necessarily a direct Warframe feedback, but I would like to say that battlepass culture is going to kill gaming if it continues to gain dominance.  I'm being put into a position where I have to actively abandon games that I can't justify putting the time into because of their battlepass systems, because so many games continue to adopt this toxic monetization system that I physically don't have enough time to divide between them all without burning out on them and negatively impacting my own physical and mental well-being, both from the stress of games now feeling like a job that need an allotted amount of time to be dedicated to them to even get what I already paid money for, as well as the disappointment of missing out on content if I simply don't have that time.

Games that would otherwise have earned a place in my library and even the occasional purchase had this content simply been made a permanent installment are now being deleted because they simply don't offer enough outside that battlepass to outweigh the previously mentioned negatives.  I have more free time than most and I still don't feel like I have the time to manage all of these, I can only imagine the extent of an unhealthy lifestyle that is forced upon people who have other responsibilities if they choose to try and juggle all these different games trying to force both a time requirement and limit into their pricetags.

It hasn't come to that for Warframe yet, as I still greatly enjoy the game even without Nightwave content and the fact that Nightwave content is free, however, the more of these time limited content methods games adopt, the less time players will have to divide between them.  I do believe that it was once stated previous Nightwave content would return in some form - though that may simply be referring to the few items we see during intermissions - but it would be nice to get some clearer elaboration on the intent and vision of Nightwave with these repercussions in mind.

--- Edit ---

To clarify, since I'm seeing a lot of similar replies:  This is not an attack on Warframe or DE or the way that DE has done Nightwave.  Nightwave is without a doubt probably one of the most respectable implementation's of a battlepass system to date.  This post is about players being forced to juggle several different games all at once that each have their own battlepass that demands your attention or risk losing content, you may have more than enough time to complete Nightwave or maybe even Nightwave + another game's battlepass, but with new and old games alike continuing to develop their own battlepasses, it means the number of games you have to allot time for is only going to grow.  Will you still be able to juggle them when it's 7 different games you need to play not even because you necessarily want to, but just because you need to keep up with the challenges to get the rewards you want and likely have already paid money for?

Edited June 13, 2020 by Ceadeus

[kevoisvevo]

Can you give a tl;dr version? I don't really care about your life history.

[AltairFerenc]

7 minutes ago, kevoisvevo said:

Can you give a tl;dr version? I don't really care about your life history.

not everyone has enought time and feels like a chore and fastens burnout time.

and all of those true

[CxLL]

A person comes into the bakery and says "please stop selling sesame bagels".
Sesame bagels are the bestseller in the bakery.
"but i can't afford the sesame bagels due to having issues in private", says the person.
Yet this very bagel seems to be getting a rather positive feedback from most other customers.
"Why not just... get another bagel?" people wondered, but the person sighed in desperation "You see, I keep coming to this bakery. And they are there. They are simply there."
 

[kevoisvevo]

8 minutes ago, AltairFerenc said:

not everyone has enought time and feels like a chore and fastens burnout time.

and all of those true

Amen to that. Rather that tying the reward to rank they should just put them in a store. Letting us choose our own reward. Let's say we will be able to buy the nightwave rewards with nightwave credits and each mission spawns the special enemies for the credit grind. Rarer rewards would need more nightwave credits. Scarlet spear had the right idea.

[Grimm]

you dont have to do it. its free, the items will show up again in intermissions. and its 100x better then alerts were as it lets you do it on your own time. 

[Teljaxx]

30 minutes ago, CxLL said:

A person comes into the bakery and says "please stop selling sesame bagels".
Sesame bagels are the bestseller in the bakery.
"but i can't afford the sesame bagels due to having issues in private", says the person.
Yet this very bagel seems to be getting a rather positive feedback from most other customers.
"Why not just... get another bagel?" people wondered, but the person sighed in desperation "You see, I keep coming to this bakery. And they are there. They are simply there."
 

Why not get another kind of bagel? Because, for some reason, the store will only give you the kind of bagel you want after you have bought enough sesame bagels. You want Nitain bagels? Catalyst bagels? Helmet bagels? You better be ready to chew through weeks of sesame Nightwave bagels first.

And, just because something is popular, doesn't mean its good. It just means its got that lowest common denominator appeal. McDonalds is the biggest restaurant chain in the world, yet no one would ever call it gourmet. Just like how Fortnite, the main game that popularized the battlepass concept, is one of the most popular games in the world, despite being little more than an advertising platform at this point.

Battlepass systems are not designed to be fun. The are designed to keep people playing for longer than they normally would. That's why they offer a slow drip feed of rewards over a long time, to keep your Pavlovian drool flowing. But this also adds a stressful deadline to the game. If you don't play RIGHT NOW, you might miss all that cool stuff you want at the end of the season. And this is even worse if you don't have all that much time to play.

The whole gaming industry is basically choking itself to death like this. Every single big game wants to be the only game you ever play. They are all designed to completely monopolize all of your free time. That's what all the things like limited time events, seasonal rewards, and constant update cycles are designed to do. They make it so that if you ever stop playing, even for a little while, you miss something cool. So you pretty much have to just choose a single game, and completely ignore all the others if you ever want to be able to make any decent progress.

[DebrisFlow]

2 hours ago, Grimm said:

the items will show up again in intermissions

Nope, if you lose the umbra forma you lose it forever. In the intermission you get another one. So you end up with less and no way to catch up.

Edited June 12, 2020 by DebrisFlow

[Ceadeus]

2 hours ago, CxLL said:

A person comes into the bakery and says "please stop selling sesame bagels".
Sesame bagels are the bestseller in the bakery.
"but i can't afford the sesame bagels due to having issues in private", says the person.
Yet this very bagel seems to be getting a rather positive feedback from most other customers.
"Why not just... get another bagel?" people wondered, but the person sighed in desperation "You see, I keep coming to this bakery. And they are there. They are simply there."
 

A better analogy would be a bakery you are a regular customer at and have grown fond of decides to change their recipe, you notify them that it's not as good as the old one and if it doesn't change back you'll have to reluctantly move your business elsewhere.

This all applies less to Warframe since its "battlepass" is free like I said not to mention it has the best free to play monetization model in my opinion, but that doesn't exempt it from being potentially cut out if other games that are providing a more engaging experience adopt similar time constrained content that demand more.  As for the "positive feedback" I believe you're confusing acclimation with excitement; if you had told people a decade ago that you could buy a gun skin for $20, they'd call you a sellout and a scam, but today if they slap it in a bundle with a bunch of other mediocre skins you likely would otherwise have no interest in buying, tell you you have to play X amount of hours just to get the content you paid for, and that if you don't within their arbitrary time limit then your investment is effectively forfeit and you may never see that content again, somehow that's what you believe people want?

Like I said at the beginning, this doesn't directly pertain to Warframe, but they're also not exempt from the consequences of entertaining an industry monetizing people's raw time on top of their investments.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Ceadeus

[ES-Flinter]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb DebrisFlow:

Nope, if you lose the umbra forma you lose it forever. In the intermission you get another one. So you end up with less and no way to catch up.

Truth be told if someone doesn't have the time to do nightwave he will probably never meet enemies where a umbra build is needed.

[K4RN4]

I did not spend more than 2 hours a week in most Nightwaves to do enough tasks to get to the final reward tier (Rank 30) It's not that hard

[Ceadeus]

2 minutes ago, K4RN4 said:

I did not spend more than 2 hours a week in most Nightwaves to do enough tasks to get to the final reward tier (Rank 30) It's not that hard

You're missing the point.  The problem is not any 1 individual game or their battlepass, the problem is how widespread they are becoming.  Even if you only spend 1 hour every day to catch up on them, if you play 2 or 3 or 4 different games that have them, that quickly adds up, and these aren't even necessarily games you want to be playing at the time but you may not want to miss the rewards, that further feeds into burnout and actively lessens time for genuine enjoyment in a world where people spend an average of 2/3 of every day of their lives working to get by.  In most games an upfront monetary investment is made to get a battlepass so even acknowledging to simply not play the content can be equated to actively throwing money away because that content is timegated and not able to be done entirely at your own pace.

When you bought a game back when you immediately owned all the content in it, it didn't matter how long it took you to get it, you made an investment and now it's yours, anything else would come later as DLC that you would make another investment and you would get it.  Now you make an investment to effectively perform labor to get the goods you already paid for or they're forfeit, often for the price you used to just pay to own the goods outright.

[Kaotis]

hace 3 minutos, Ceadeus dijo:

You're missing the point.  The problem is not any 1 individual game or their battlepass, the problem is how widespread they are becoming.  Even if you only spend 1 hour every day to catch up on them, if you play 2 or 3 or 4 different games that have them, that quickly adds up, and these aren't even necessarily games you want to be playing at the time but you may not want to miss the rewards, that further feeds into burnout and actively lessens time for genuine enjoyment in a world where people spend an average of 2/3 of every day of their lives working to get by.  In most games an upfront monetary investment is made to get a battlepass so even acknowledging to simply not play the content can be equated to actively throwing money away because that content is timegated and not able to be done entirely at your own pace.

When you bought a game back when you immediately owned all the content in it, it didn't matter how long it took you to get it, you made an investment and now it's yours, anything else would come later as DLC that you would make another investment and you would get it.  Now you make an investment to effectively perform labor to get the goods you already paid for or they're forfeit, often for the price you used to just pay to own the goods outright.

So... you complain that you have something to do in the game every week? Also you didn't buy this game ... i'd be grateful towards DE for the free content they pup out every update....

You trow a lot of "paid this" and "paid that" in just a coupe of lines of text if you have gambling problems you should seek help m8.

[Ceadeus]

1 minute ago, kaotis said:

So... you complain that you have something to do in the game every week? Also you didn't buy this game ... i'd be grateful towards DE for the free content they pup out every update....

You trow a lot of "paid this" and "paid that" in just a coupe of lines of text if you have gambling problems you should seek help m8.

Are you intentionally ignoring the parts where I explicitly said I wasn't talking about Warframe in reference to the paid elements and also the part where I explain that I'm talking about juggling multiple games?

[Ceadeus]

2 hours ago, Grimm said:

you dont have to do it. its free, the items will show up again in intermissions. and its 100x better then alerts were as it lets you do it on your own time. 

To an extent yes, I agree.  I'm incredibly proud of DE for making it free and it's nicer than alerts, but it's still not entirely on your own time, you have a limit and if the only method of reintroduction for content is intermissions, that's still a time limit and for all we know they may only be rotated back in once and then replaced with the rewards from the next season.  This also ties into the other problem: Nightwave has unique content.  Missing alerts really didn't matter because the content they had was always regular in-game content that could be gotten any number of other ways, but missing Nightwaves means missing actual content of the game.

So I will admit we still don't fully know how DE plans to handle the future of Nightwave and cycling content, but there are very few options that both keep Nightwave relevant and aren't subject to the same problems I've already discussed.  Even if DE allots us plenty of time to complete the Nightwave content within their timeframe, the question is does every other game that also wants us to spend X amount of time a day playing it, especially if they've already gotten a monetary investment from you and whether or not you're willing to sacrifice that.

[DebrisFlow]

11 minutes ago, ES-Flinter said:

16 minutes ago, DebrisFlow said:

Nope, if you lose the umbra forma you lose it forever. In the intermission you get another one. So you end up with less and no way to catch up.

Truth be told if someone doesn't have the time to do nightwave he will probably never meet enemies where a umbra build is needed.

And the main point of OP is that the battlepass system discourages players with less time to even give a try to the game, acting in the opposing direction of player retention (which is the supposed aim of the battlepass). Getting and using an umbra forma is now, to all effects, active part of the game experience and wheter and umbra forma is needed or not, as you argue, is a no-point. The game is founded on experiencing build diversity and the battlepass is hindering its achievement to that slice of player population that doesn't like the stress of constantly following the game.

The battlepass is a relatively new addition to Warframe that radically changed the pace at which a player is supposed to experience it. No more playing at your pace and desire but following a working schedule. Warframe in the 5-6 years before was NOT this.

[Steel_Rook]

I've often described Warframe as a genuinely good game fundamentally undermined by its own progression and monetisation system. Other than Lootboxes, Warframe has embraced pretty much all the modern Live Service bad practices, from Skinner box design to artificial exclusivity to appointment mechanics to in-game gambling and to the ever-popular Battle Pass. Nightwave operates almost exclusively on people's FOMO, using the threat of missing items which might not be back for years to coerce people into playing not just WHEN they don't want to but WHAT they don't want to. What I don't think Live Service developers don't seem to realise, however, is that these designs are becoming adversarial in the same way ads/commercials have become. Nobody likes any of these systems, but we put up with them because we like the underlying game. Any chance we get, however, we try to minimise or circumvent them. Game design has turned into a battle between developers trying to trick people into wasting our time, and we trying to trick developers into giving us rewards for little effort. And I don't think that's a battle developers are going to win in the long run.

The harder you squeeze, the more people will slip through your fingers. We're never going to get the AdBlock equivalent of Live Service mechanics, obviously, but we are still headed for a burst of the Live Service bubble. I've seen this happen before. Remember back in the 2000s when everything was an MMO? Remember when MMOs became incestuous, constantly copying each other in reductive ways, until we stopped describing them as games and started describing them as bullet lists? The breaking point for me was CrimeCraft, which described itself as "Has gear, PvP, raids, crafting, action house, instances, etc." and never once stopped to even tell me anything about theme, setting or core gameplay. "It's an MMO, it has MMO things. What more do you need?" Yeah, CrimeCraft didn't do well. Neither did Lord of the Rings Online nor Warhammer Online, nor <insert property name> Online. Wildstar was kind of the nail in the coffin there - a major release which was supposed to invoke World of Warcraft's "golden days," and it was dead within a year.

That's exactly where we're headed now. Live Services are becoming incestuous again. They've stopped developing new ideas, and instead just copy each other's monetisation practices until every Live Service looks and plays like every other one. They've also largely stopped pushing for innovative gameplay or story telling, stopped trying to attract new players. Instead, they focus on extracting more money and more "engagement" out of their existing player base. We've already had at least one major flop in Anthem, and do you know WHY it flopped? Because despite having all the checkboxes for a modern Live Service, Bioware kind of forgot to attach a game to the progression and monetisation systems. That's what I see Nightwave as - a Battle Pass system that DE never really bothered to put actual gameplay behind.

And for those saying that "it's a free game, you should be grateful" - it isn't and I'm not. There's no such thing as a "free game." At best there might be "free to YOU" games, but they're only free to you because I and whales like me foot the bill for ourselves and you. The "free way to earn rewards" is never the intended way. It's a decoy, a means of attaining the plausible deniability needed to call the game "free." The intended way of earning things is to pay for them, but the company can afford to give away free samples to people willing to waste their time with deliberately unpleasant grinds. Do you remember The Culling 2, which launched with a subscription fee and a pay-per-match system, that made the news for a few days? It was pretty clear that the developers wanted a subscription-based game. However, because those don't sell in the world of "free to play" games, they had to also create a non-subscription alternative. You can, uh... Pay for individual matches? Yeah, and also you can earn more matches by winning them? But you're still supposed to subscribe, though.

By this point, I've given up on treating Warframe like a F2P title. It is for some - usually the Secondary Market resellers whom DE use as cover in order to claim they don't sell power. For me, though? I already have a job. I'm not looking for a second one. I'm not looking for a game where I can work in order to be paid in scrip. So no, I don't intend to show gratitude to DE for deigning to let me play a watered-down version of the intended experience "for free" replete with the Live Service equivalent of commercial breaks. F2P games are no different from the Subscription MMOs of the past, just with an extra layer of obfuscation thrown on top. This one even has its own staggered subscription model via monthly Booster packs.

[Kaotis]

hace 53 minutos, Ceadeus dijo:

Are you intentionally ignoring the parts where I explicitly said I wasn't talking about Warframe in reference to the paid elements and also the part where I explain that I'm talking about juggling multiple games?

For some one that "wasen't talking about warframe in reference to the paid elements" you sure trow around the paid this paid that around

[Ceadeus]

12 minutes ago, kaotis said:

For some one that "wasen't talking about warframe in reference to the paid elements" you sure trow around the paid this paid that around

If you'll read the second part of that post you're replying to you'll see I was also talking about multiple different games, the vast majority of which have paid battlepasses rather than Warframe's free version.  If you had read any of the other information instead of assuming you know enough to be rude you might also see that this was more intended as a warning that playing part in the battle for peoples' time very well might hurt Warframe more than help it, free or not.

I like Warframe, I've played Warframe ever since Banshee was new, I've sunk literal thousands of dollars into Warframe.  But I've never felt less encouraged to play the game than when attempting to do Nightwave content, not because it's that bad or takes that long in its own right, but because I have several other games that I'm juggling too, trying to find enough time to complete each of their version of a battlepass without completely burning out on all of them.  I've already completely stopped playing certain games entirely because while they were fun at their core, they weren't fun enough to justify putting time into them instead of using it to catch up where I'm behind.  This is the problem I'm talking about; battlepass culture will gradually choke itself out until your game has to be THE BEST game on the market to justify playing it because otherwise you're just wasting time and money not filling daily challenge requirements or whatever form they may take.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Ceadeus

[Kaotis]

hace 5 minutos, Ceadeus dijo:

If you'll read the second part of that post you're replying to you'll see I was also talking about multiple different games, the vast majority of which have paid battlepasses rather than Warframe's free version.  

Sorry to inform you this game is free to play (and only version there is actually), if you buy something is because you want to, not forced to. And talking about "other games" in a feedback forum on THIS game ... well what can i say ...

Edited June 12, 2020 by kaotis

[Ceadeus]

1 minute ago, kaotis said:

Sorry to inform you this game is free to play (and only version there is actually), if you buy something is because you want to not forced to. And talking about "other games" in a feedback forum on THIS game ... well what can i say ...

The fact that you think only quoting that section gives you enough information to properly assess - let alone respond - any of what I said confirms that you have absolutely no idea what is even being discussed here.

[Kaotis]

Justo ahora, Ceadeus dijo:

The fact that you think only quoting that section gives you enough information to properly assess - let alone respond - any of what I said confirms that you have absolutely no idea what is even being discussed here.

You are talking about how your global views on gaming don't enter in sinc with how this game has been designed and/or monetizes it's content and you want it to change to fit your global views. Why would i quote filler content that comes out from you if i don't intend to comment on it? Btw you didn't use "paid" in 2 lines of text , watch out you might get a medical condition...

Also, this thread should go to the general section(or spam if we had that) not feedback just saying....

[(XBOX)Rez090]

1 hour ago, Ceadeus said:

Are you intentionally ignoring the parts where I explicitly said I wasn't talking about Warframe in reference to the paid elements and also the part where I explain that I'm talking about juggling multiple games?

If you're not talking about Warframe, don't post on the forums for Warframe. Take the non-Warframe rant over to reddit, where it actually belongs.

[Ceadeus]

Just now, kaotis said:

You are talking about how your global views on gaming don't enter in sinc with how this game has been designed and/or monetizes it's content and you want it to change to fit your global views. Why would i quote filler content that comes out from you if i don't intend to comment on it? Btw you didn't use "paid" in 2 lines of text , watch out you might get a medical condition...

Also, this thread should go to the general section(or spam if we had that) not feedback just saying....

You really could not have created a more twisted narrative, could you?  Let me break it into something a small child should understand: If you're starving and you have 3 M&M's and 7 people want 1, you don't have enough M&M's to go around, someone's going to go hungry.  Now let's change some things: If you have 3 hours in a day and 7 games want 1 hour a day, you don't have enough time to go around, something's not getting played.  The point being that monetized or not, games are going to have to be cut from your routines.  So, as a developer, that means if your game isn't somebody's top 3, they simply won't play it because they are obligated to sink time into these other games to keep up, again, monetized or not.

The feedback is to not try to force players to divide their time and in turn make yourself compete with every other game that wants them to do the same thing, because there's a good chance you'll be the one that doesn't make the cut.

[Ceadeus]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)Rez090 said:

If you're not talking about Warframe, don't post on the forums for Warframe. Take the non-Warframe rant over to reddit, where it actually belongs.

It's a feedback for the game.  Games besides Warframe can have an influence on Warframe and its playerbase.  If your only contribution is to make unproductive comments then take it to a different post, where you belong.