DE Should Be More Transparent In The Dev Process And More Open To Community Feedback About Future Content

[Jamescell]

After watching Tennocon, I've seen a lot of praise for DE reining in their ambitions and only presenting content that is within reach. An infested tileset not only addresses the great neglect and lack of visual coherence that the infested have suffered from over the years, but it also expands on the Warframe universe's lore and possibilities in a meaningful way. This new open-world area iterates on the past two, finally incorporating tileset-like gameplay via the shifting underground tunnels. For the first time in a long time, I am genuinely excited for Warframe's future. 

But while I was thinking about the positive changes to this year's tennocon, I realized, ultimately, the choice to surprise the player base with almost finished content is a move in the wrong direction. 

A lot of the tension recently between the player base and DE stems from a lack of transparency. DE would present window-dressed ideas of grandiose, but then blatantly rush the development process and often fail to meaningfully produce what was pitched. Probably the most troublesome failing, was DE's reluctance to incorporate these new features in a way that built on the already existing game. Throughout this process, DE did not create adequate avenues for players to express their concerns pre-emptively, or suggest additional meaningful features. 

I think a lot of the railjack and kuva lich mess could have been avoided if DE did more demos while these features were in active development, and perhaps even before that, did surveys of community opinion of and concerns about content ideas. 

While the Heart of Deimos may go on to be a great success, that success will probably be due to DE's refocusing on their core successes, and improving on already developed content. However, the way in which this content has been revealed does not bode well for open-communication between DE and the player base. Who knows how much better Heart of Deimos could have been if DE shared the idea with the player base from the beginning?

Being more open in the development process also means being clear with the player base the timeline for future content. By making it clear that a feature needs a lot more work, DE can shift some of the pressure to release things as soon as possible. 

The bottom line is that DE should be vetting their content to the community as they go. Lots of demos, communication on the state of development, official reddit and forum feedback posts throughout the development of each idea, and community polls. This would save DE a lot of future hassle, and ultimately make Warframe a more successful game in the long run.

[Magus_Tahir]

This is why you don't let back seat drivers direct the car at every stop. Do we go left or right? Are we going shopping or out for food? It would slow the process down even more if we had to take the time to setup and poll every idea. And let's face it people would pick a direction then get out of the car. Polls are best done yearly or bi-yearly as a litmus test to gauge general sentiment. Having the man power logistically to pour over the sheer amount of feedback while setting up and maintaining such systems is a large drain on resources and would hamper actual development.

Lastly, DE is literally one of the most transparent gaming studious out there with both Community/Dev streams, and let's face it Rebecca Ford. They are not dumb by any means, but they are human. Having been at Tennocon 2020 and seen the post interview I can say they realize they made mistakes and are getting back on track. Besides they do a lot of data collection already just because it is not as visible as people like isn't grounds to blow up the system and put creative decisions at the mercy of a community that doesn't know what it wants.

 

[Orakan]

1 hour ago, Jamescell said:

After watching Tennocon, I've seen a lot of praise for DE reining in their ambitions and only presenting content that is within reach. An infested tileset not only addresses the great neglect and lack of visual coherence that the infested have suffered from over the years, but it also expands on the Warframe universe's lore and possibilities in a meaningful way. This new open-world area iterates on the past two, finally incorporating tileset-like gameplay via the shifting underground tunnels. For the first time in a long time, I am genuinely excited for Warframe's future. 

But while I was thinking about the positive changes to this year's tennocon, I realized, ultimately, the choice to surprise the player base with almost finished content is a move in the wrong direction. 

A lot of the tension recently between the player base and DE stems from a lack of transparency. DE would present window-dressed ideas of grandiose, but then blatantly rush the development process and often fail to meaningfully produce what was pitched. Probably the most troublesome failing, was DE's reluctance to incorporate these new features in a way that built on the already existing game. Throughout this process, DE did not create adequate avenues for players to express their concerns pre-emptively, or suggest additional meaningful features. 

I think a lot of the railjack and kuva lich mess could have been avoided if DE did more demos while these features were in active development, and perhaps even before that, did surveys of community opinion of and concerns about content ideas. 

While the Heart of Deimos may go on to be a great success, that success will probably be due to DE's refocusing on their core successes, and improving on already developed content. However, the way in which this content has been revealed does not bode well for open-communication between DE and the player base. Who knows how much better Heart of Deimos could have been if DE shared the idea with the player base from the beginning?

Being more open in the development process also means being clear with the player base the timeline for future content. By making it clear that a feature needs a lot more work, DE can shift some of the pressure to release things as soon as possible. 

The bottom line is that DE should be vetting their content to the community as they go. Lots of demos, communication on the state of development, official reddit and forum feedback posts throughout the development of each idea, and community polls. This would save DE a lot of future hassle, and ultimately make Warframe a more successful game in the long run.

I am totally disaggring with you , test clusters already start working and because of the test cluster we avoided many things in last railjack rework and steel path. Only thing to the situation is better is opening the test cluster for more players , for much more time and getting feedback from experienced players instead of giving the test cluster key by luck. Besides players should have some suprises too, no need to be that spoiled .


If you wanna change things for better give constant feedback about kinda abonded content like , Lich content, The New War major quest , Steel Path's lack of rewarding and abysmal drop chance of steel escense, new content about railjack (this year should have been the year of the Railjack) , viral damage's power and lack of power on gas damage, new arcane system (which is a dire stiuation for new and middle level players cause they need to far double amount now and eidolons even in steel path are giving the same drop amount, while in dev stream they have said they will increase the drop amount and arcanes like arcane tanker nerfed 50%percent for no reason (before the rework patch came up you need 10 arcanes to get the same amount now you need 21)) Explosive weapons kinda not doing area damage which they have created for thanks to wrong feedbacks from the wrong part of comunity about the self damage system, granum void has no ever green rewards, primary weapons are totally useless on real endgame which is the endurance runs. Give feedbacks about these topics first than you can worry  about the future. Besides like @Magus_Tahir said : No body likes the back seat drivers 

[Lutesque]

I personally dont care about Transparency....

Malicious Intent and Incompetence are equally despicable as far as Im concerned. 

3 hours ago, Jamescell said:

 

I think a lot of the railjack and kuva lich mess could have been avoided if DE did more demos while these features were in active development, and perhaps even before that, did surveys of community opinion of and concerns about content ideas. 

They have a Test Cluster now so this should help 🙂

 

[Tsukinoki]

8 hours ago, Jamescell said:

But while I was thinking about the positive changes to this year's tennocon, I realized, ultimately, the choice to surprise the player base with almost finished content is a move in the wrong direction. 

I actually disagree with you here.

By actually only informing us of ideas when they are closer to being finished DE avoids two things:
1) The constant whinging and complaining and, at times, even threats that appear on social media, reddit, and the forums, when an idea doesn't launch "fast enough".  I mean they have in the past shown "Here is an idea that is in its very early stages!" and then when it doesn't launch in 2 or 3 weeks everyone is up in arms yelling "HOW DARE THEY SHOW THAT TO US AND TEASE US WHEN IT ISN'T READY FOR RELEASE!" and even going so far as to threaten DE with physical violence if it takes too long for it to be developed.
DE is surprising us with nearly finished content because that is what the player base has forced them to do for their own sanity and safety.  If the player base in general was more mature about being shown early content that won't launch for a while then maybe i could agree.  But that's not how this player base is.
Additionally to this in the past large amounts of the player base has requested that DE only show us things "Closer to completion" because they were getting tired of being shown systems that were 6 months to a year out in development still.  And DE is listening to them because that is one of the saner requests that have been made.....

2) The vocal minorities trying to drive the content in their own direction and fighting against each other.  In the past when DE has shown things in the early development process you would have 3 or 4 very vocal groups demanding certain changes before it launched...and then guess what happened when their specific ideas weren't implemented?  They would go to social media, youtube, reddit, and the like and yell and whinge and complain "DE never listens to its player base!!!!!  We all demanded these changes and they never listened to us!"
Regardless of how stupid their ideas were or how impossible they would be to implement.
Again you can chalk this up to the immaturity of the player base as well as the actual threats of physical violence that DE has received in the past when what they showed off was far from completion or DE didn't implement every single idea that was suggested on the forums.

8 hours ago, Jamescell said:

The bottom line is that DE should be vetting their content to the community as they go. Lots of demos, communication on the state of development, official reddit and forum feedback posts throughout the development of each idea, and community polls. This would save DE a lot of future hassle, and ultimately make Warframe a more successful game in the long run.

Again I disagree.
This would just slow down the development process quite heavily, piss of large numbers of the community more if DE didn't listen, even if DE found very good reasons why they couldn't listen due to limitations and the like.
You would also have so many people yelling "Why isn't this done yet?  They showed it to us a month ago, it should be finished!  How dare DE tease us like that."

You would also have only a very small fraction of the playerbase even responding to the polls and feedback posts...and those players would just attempt to skew the system super heavily in their direction.
I mean for example have you ever noticed that the forums have a very vocal portion that demand a stalker mode invasion system be added to the game?  And that while it does occasionally appear elsewhere its no where near as asked for and even occasionally thrown out?  How can you accurately judge that ideas popularity?  And it gets even murkier if you try to bring in the rest of the general playerbase.

In the end you have to ask:
What vocal minority should DE listen to?
The people on Reddit who are only ever on Reddit and social media for the game, and refuse to touch the forums?
The people on the forums who are only ever really on the forums?
Especially since their ideas and goals are rarely aligned.

Basically you're just asking to piss one group off because they were "ignored" and turn the game into something where the backseat drivers are in control and nothing makes sense or is well thought out because one month its "DO THIS OR ELSE!" and the next its "HOW DARE YOU DO THAT, DO THIS!"

[Steel_Rook]

Trying to include players at every step of development is a bad idea for a few reasons. First of all, players by and large suck at game development. Ask industry professionals and they'll tell you just how useful player feedback is. That is to say - players are actually really good at identifying design problems, and actually really bad at offering solutions to them. Taking feedback on unfinished content is largely useless as players predominantly point to missing features which developers already know about and are working on. I know we all like to think we're uniquely talented in game design and there's something simple we can suggest that they haven't thought of, but by and large this simply isn't the case. Letting a whole bunch of backseat drivers in on the development process just bogs things down as players rarely even agree with each other.

Secondly - and I can't stress this enough - developing video games is DE's job. This is what we - collectively as a playerbase - pay them for. Outsourcing development to the community is missing the point. I expect them to be fully capable of creating their own content without necessarily NEEDING my help. I'm obviously going to offer my opinion on it when it's out, but I wouldn't want to BE on the development team actually making it. Again - I know we all fancy ourselves amateur developers who could do DE's job better than they do, imagining how much better content would be if we had a say in it, but that's not the case for the overwhelming majority of us. Individual contributors, yes - some people are genuinely qualified to pitch in. That's not most of us, however.

At the end of the day, Digital Extremes is a professional game development studio with paid staff. They ought to be able to design a game on their own.

[LuckyCharm]

I think they are mostly transparent with some things like frame design, but a lot of this sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for tidbits of info on other things especially when it comes to discussing the direction the game is heading definitely feels like we're kept in the dark a lot. 

A huge part of this last year for example feels like some of the things like the new war have been taken in a direction completely different to the original tease with no real explanation as to why or if we're still getting the war side of it coming.