Open areas shouldn't block a new player's progression.

[Izadored]

Good morning.

I've been playing for two days now. 

Inspired by that heart-pounding intro ( needed that excalibur ninja ), and easy to understand tutorial, my first steps were fairly easy. My first obstacle came in the form of two cities, which I understood were optional content. 

Cetus blocked my path to the right half of the Earth and to the Mars junction. Fortuna prevented me from using an excavator on Venus. Neither experience was enjoyable, and I seriously thought it was time to uninstall. 

Even within the "prove yourself" missions ( 5 - 10 ), I found myself hard pressed and burning through my lives. Filling out my broken mods and obtaining some 5/10-dot ones, did little to help. Drop ships and floating mobs, destroyed my objective within seconds. 

Having a player's face flush red from frustration, shouldn't be part of a game's introduction. You're literally stuck on Earth, because the Grineer's turrets hit harder than the Jackal boss (including his arena). This needs some serious consideration from DE. Exclude these cities from counting on the "open" counter of planets, such as the Dark Sectors are. 

But, hey. I'm just a new player in warframe, so what do I know? Right?



 

[SpicyDinosaur]

32 minutes ago, Izadored said:

But, hey. I'm just a new player in warframe, so what do I know? Right?

Not true in all cases, but in this case, yes. You don't know much yet. Not being able to drop an extractor on a planet is the opposite of a big deal. Honestly, if that would make you uninstall the game, well, there's going to be way worse frustrations in the future for you in this game.

 

I looked at Earth just now to see if it does hedge you in, and I'm not sure how it works, since PoE doesn't actually physically connect to any nodes. 

 

You might want to put your game on public, either way, as there are going to be a lot of things you can't solo, especially very early on. If you want to solo your way up, then you'll have to get a better stomach for frustration, as many things are meant for groups. 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I will concede that the game has a high learning curve. But believe me, if 2 days in you're already having that bad a reaction I wouldn't recommend Warframe to you.

You see, what you've experienced, bad or not, as it depends on a personal point of view, is just the tip of the iceberg. A very small tip. Much worse things lay ahead, since this is quite the grindy looter shooter, and one that takes quite a while to pay off.

[Izadored]

54 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

Not true in all cases, but in this case, yes. You don't know much yet. Not being able to drop an extractor on a planet is the opposite of a big deal. Honestly, if that would make you uninstall the game, well, there's going to be way worse frustrations in the future for you in this game.

 

I looked at Earth just now to see if it does hedge you in, and I'm not sure how it works, since PoE doesn't actually physically connect to any nodes. 

 

You might want to put your game on public, either way, as there are going to be a lot of things you can't solo, especially very early on. If you want to solo your way up, then you'll have to get a better stomach for frustration, as many things are meant for groups. 

 

53 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

I will concede that the game has a high learning curve. But believe me, if 2 days in you're already having that bad a reaction I wouldn't recommend Warframe to you.

You see, what you've experienced, bad or not, as it depends on a personal point of view, is just the tip of the iceberg. A very small tip. Much worse things lay ahead, since this is quite the grindy looter shooter, and one that takes quite a while to pay off.

1. You need to enter Cetus, take the "prove yourself" bounty from Konzu, complete said bounty, then Eurasia and Everest will be open to you. I wasn't here when this area was introduced to the game, so I can see how difficult it's for me to explain the obstacle I encountered.

2. I'm not a stranger to grinding/farming, or the time it takes. My point is that what I need to improve my warframe and gear, are on planets beyond Mars, which I struggled to get to, due to the hour I spent on that one bounty. ( Endo comes from mod dups ).



 

[Shalath]

@Izadored - As above WF does have a steep learning curve early on. I kind of think this is intentional as from a lore point of view you have just come out of cryosleep basically damaged and many years since entering cryosleep so the universe is completely different now. You have to essentially re-learn what you have forgotten, get yourself fixed up and explore the universe to see how it has changed.

The very first thing you should do is concentrate on replacing your broken mods and levelling up the replacements which it sounds like you are on top of already. When levelling a new frame I always add Vitality and Redirection for survivability until I have enough points to put a proper build on. If you feel you have picked the wrong starter weapons have a look in the market as you can buy a lot of weapon blueprints for credits.

Endo does come from mod duplicates but it also comes as a regular drop. If you break containers you may sometimes get an Ayatan Star which the game will actually mark for you which you can take to Maroo's relay and sell for Endo. If you keep your eyes open you may even find some Ayatan Statues which you can also sell to Maroo but you get the best return if you slot Ayatan Stars in them first. On your mini map you will sometimes see blue Cephalon fragments, Frame Fighter things and Mandrachord things (I forget the names) marked on the map using coloured symbols to make them easy to see. Memorise these locations as these are fixed spawn spots that are also where Ayatan Statues spawn.

As an early player credits will be in short supply so look at dark sectors missions as these have higher payouts. Also, your first mision of the day will have a double payout so use that to your advantage by picking the highest paying mission you can.

The wiki really is your best friend and you should study the page that explains your Warframe's abilities as there are some interesting bits in there that the game doesn't explain to you.

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Excalibur#Abilities

Early on I'd suggest killing Jackal and getting Rhino. He is a great all-rounder and if you find certain missions tough, open worlds especially, he will get you through them if Excalibur can't (though Excal is an awesome frame as well when used correctly). He is also a great example of reading up on abilities as it isn't immediately obvious when when you cast his Iron Skin you get a few seconds of complete invulnerability and any incoming damage during this phase is added to Iron Skin's health pool. Iron Skin will save you from being sniped from half-way across the map in open worlds.

Don't spend your starter plat on anything other than Warframe or weapon slots. As you progress you will learn about relics where you can obtain prime parts which you can sell (along with certain mods and a few other things) to get plat for free so you can buy more slots if you don't want to pay real money. Other than the founders items there is nothing in the game you cannot get for free. If you do fancy dropping some cash on the game to ease your progress wait until you get a 50% or 75% discount coupon as a login reward.

It is tough as a new Tenno but push through and you will find it is worth it!

[SpicyDinosaur]

1 hour ago, Izadored said:

1. You need to enter Cetus, take the "prove yourself" bounty from Konzu, complete said bounty, then Eurasia and Everest will be open to you. I wasn't here when this area was introduced to the game, so I can see how difficult it's for me to explain the obstacle I encountered.

Hmm, I don't even remember that. I would have thought you'd have to do Saya's Vigil or something like that instead.

[Reifnir]

3 hours ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

Not true in all cases, but in this case, yes. You don't know much yet.

It has nothing to do with not knowing much and being new.

 

3 hours ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

I will concede that the game has a high learning curve.

It's not a learning curve, it's p1ss-poor progression planning (which, mind you, could've been fixed with a small hotfix if only they had a mind to it) and overall godawful new player experience. 

I can very much relate to the OP, but not from personal experience (I was around MR25+ myself when Fortuna came out) but rather, from an experience of trying to talk a friend into playing Warframe. He was fine (excited, even) when he first started. MR0, Vor, getting the first few missions, walking around the Dojo, farming Jackal for those Rhino parts...

Then he had a solo play session while I was at work and tried tackling Fortuna. He failed the introductory quest. Five times in a row. Yes, the solo part, where going Public isn't even an option. He quit the next day, never to log in again, because apparently, only very few players like to play the frustration game. For what I gathered, he did not appreciate being destroyed for no apparent reason at all.

 

To provide an analogy, walking into open world content (especially Fortuna) after Earth and normal Venus missions feels like playing a twisted version of Super Mario, where you start you level 1-1 normally, learn some cool tricks, like bumping green shells into other baddies and finding stars to make you more powerful... The good stuff. You then clear your first "dungeon" (obligatory "Princess is in another castle line here) and proceed to enter world 2-1. It's fine above ground, but as soon as you descend down a pipe you're suddenly  in Super Meatboy with dozens of spinning deathtraps, the first green shell you try to stomp grows tentacles and tears your leg off and you have a 10-second timer to clear the entire level or else. 

Bottom line is - open worlds are NOT beginner-friendly. PoE is barely bearable for a newbie, Fortuna is not. They really should be locked much, MUCH further down the progression line, like, post-Sacrifice, at least - this is a simple fix. The harder (and better) fix would be reworking new player experience and early starchart progression from scratch, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, it seems... 

[SpicyDinosaur]

2 minutes ago, Reifnir said:

It has nothing to do with not knowing much and being new.

 

It's not a learning curve, it's p1ss-poor progression planning (which, mind you, could've been fixed with a small hotfix if only they had a mind to it) and overall godawful new player experience. 

I can very much relate to the OP, but not from personal experience (I was around MR25+ myself when Fortuna came out) but rather, from an experience of trying to talk a friend into trying Warframe. He was fine (excited, even) when he first started. MR0, Vor, getting the first few missions, walking around the Dojo, farming Jackal for those Rhino parts...

Then he had a solo play session while I was at work and tried tackling Fortuna. He failed the introductory quest. Five times in a row. Yes, the solo part, where going Public isn't even an option. He quit the next day, never to log in again, because apparently, only very few players like to play the frustration game. For what I gathered, he did not appreciate being destroyed for no apparent reason at all.

 

To provide an analogy, walking into open world content (especially Fortuna) after Earth and normal Venus missions feels like playing a twisted version of Super Mario, where you start you level 1-1 normally, learn some cool tricks, like bumping green shells into other baddies and finding stars to make you more powerful... The good stuff. You then clear your first "dungeon" (obligatory "Princess is in another castle line here) and proceed to enter world 2-1. It's fine above ground, but as soon as you descend down a pipe you're suddenly,  in Super Meatboy with dozens of spinning deathtraps, the first green shell you try to stomp grows tentacles and tears your leg off and you have a 10-second timer to clear the entire level or else. 

Bottom line is - open worlds are NOT beginner-friendly. PoE is barely bearable for a newbie, Fortuna is not. They really should be locked much, MUCH further down the progression line, like, post-Sacrifice, at least - this is a simple fix. The harder (and better) fix would be reworking new player experience and early starchart progression from scratch, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, it seems... 

I disagree with it being "piss poor progression planning." DE, for better or for worse, wants new players experiencing the open world content. But they have also gotten progressively harder. The problem being low MR players complain if they can't do the content.

 

I do agree it was poor planning to stick cetus/PoE in the middle of earth. It should be at a dead end. But I think it says more that the first thing OP wanted to do was quit, rather than improve. There's plenty of ways to research how to play better at lower MRs, like posting a topic here, which they did, but just a lot more complain-y and "I almost quit"...y.

 

I actually don't see newbies complain about this particular thing very often, tbh. Maybe I'm just missing the posts here and reddit. Who knows.

 

But there's some sound advice in the thread now, at least.

[Reifnir]

3 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

I actually don't see newbies complain about this particular thing very often, tbh.

Warframe is a free to play game, I don't think many players bother to voice their disagreement (on forums or otherwise), they just uninstall and move on. 

[SpicyDinosaur]

1 minute ago, Reifnir said:

Warframe is a free to play game, I don't think many players bother to voice their disagreement (on forums or otherwise), they just uninstall and move on. 

It's probably in their best interest to do so, then. (If that were the case, which we can't know.) Since the game has plenty of frustrating moments one will have to grind through or learn to improve their gameplay because of.

[Shalath]

9 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

DE, for better or for worse, wants new players experiencing the open world content. But they have also gotten progressively harder. The problem being low MR players complain if they can't do the content.

I do agree it was poor planning to stick cetus/PoE in the middle of earth. It should be at a dead end. But I think it says more that the first thing OP wanted to do was quit, rather than improve. There's plenty of ways to research how to play better at lower MRs, like posting a topic here, which they did, but just a lot more complain-y and "I almost quit"...y.

It is a bit of a weird choice having PoE so early in the progression. I had a friend start on PS4 and told him "don't go to PoE as you will get one-shot from miles away" and he replied that it is exactly what happened to him and it was even worse when he went out at night. This is why I always suggest new players get a Rhino early on so when they run into this wall they should then realise that they have an option to counter it which also helps teach then that certain frames are just better at certain content.

Hpefully Izadored hasn't been scared off and will realise that fellow Tenno are here to help on the forums and in-game. Most of us have many duplicates of mods newbies want and will offer them up for free if we find someone struggling.

[akots]

2 hours ago, Izadored said:

I'm not a stranger to grinding/farming, or the time it takes. My point is that what I need to improve my warframe and gear, are on planets beyond Mars, which I struggled to get to, due to the hour I spent on that one bounty. ( Endo comes from mod dups ).

IMHO, this type of situation actually forces a new player to think and advance despite the obstacles, which actually makes the game interesting. Despite all the claims in the forum, the progress in WF is relatively smooth and can be spread out over time. That is unless you are somebody who wants this shiny thing right here and right now. Normally, "grinding" is not really needed to progress provided that you are patient. Struggling is good and may eventually make you stronger. Whereas easy I-win-now mode does not help.

Basically, unless you get carried by friends or have a strong aversion to learning anything and quit right away, which are both fairly common, early WF forces the player to read, adjust, plan, learn, and be resilient, to an extent. IMHO, these are all features of a good game. IIRC, some time ago when I was doing the early star chart, it was a real pita and struggle at times, which makes it rewarding. To get back to the orbiter after a failed mission and think, well, what should I do now to get through this or that missions, well, the feeling was priceless. Simply acquiring more endo/resources does not help as you also need knowledge and experience on how to use these limited resources efficiently. Which is again, positive for any game.

Open worlds are OK, they are mostly low level friendly if you bother to avoid the areas where you should not go and things you should not do. It comes with somewhat painful experience, which will make you learn and adapt.

[NekroArts]

2 hours ago, Izadored said:

2. I'm not a stranger to grinding/farming, or the time it takes. My point is that what I need to improve my warframe and gear, are on planets beyond Mars, which I struggled to get to, due to the hour I spent on that one bounty. ( Endo comes from mod dups ).
 

That's only about 35-40% true, a lot of the power you're currently after also exist on Venus and Mercury. Progression in this game isn't exactly linear, there will be times where you have to go back to previous missions to farm because trying to get them in later levels isn't worth it when you're struggling.

 

[(NSW)BalticBarbarian]

3 hours ago, Izadored said:

1. You need to enter Cetus, take the "prove yourself" bounty from Konzu, complete said bounty, then Eurasia and Everest will be open to you. I wasn't here when this area was introduced to the game, so I can see how difficult it's for me to explain the obstacle I encountered.

2. I'm not a stranger to grinding/farming, or the time it takes. My point is that what I need to improve my warframe and gear, are on planets beyond Mars, which I struggled to get to, due to the hour I spent on that one bounty. ( Endo comes from mod dups ).

I started playing Warframe a year ago, after Cetus and Fortuna were introduced, so I can sympathise with what you are going through.

My advice would be to not focus as much on open areas, but to instead try to open up new planets. This will give you access to mode nodes and more different types of resources, which will in turn allow you to craft better weapons. It is worth noting that you need to do missions on Mercury before you can access Mars - so you want to be going inwards first.

Speaking of weapons: each junction you complete gives you a weapon blueprint. Make sure to craft it and use it: this weapon is very likely to be a big upgrade on what you currently have (at least early on). Taxon (you get its blueprint from Venus junction) is also very useful (early on).

Generally, you are expected to complete each of the nodes multiple times to get the different possible rewards from them - doing so will greatly improve your power level. If you are able to get your hands on one, install an "Orokin Reactor" on your warframe - that will double its mod capacity and hence power.

As for open worlds - try them if you like but don't bother with them too much for now. You will need to complete a Cetus bounty to get to Mars (if I remember correctly), but by the time you need that to progress you will have already gone through Earth, Venus and Mercury - so you will already have some experience and better gear.

I know it is tempting to try and complete all the nodes on a given planet, but this should not be your short term goal: completing the Oro node on Earth is only required to access Sedna, which is the last planet you'll unlock.

All in all - good luck. Warframe is a pretty fun game to play long-term, even though it does do a fairly bad job of guiding newer players through its system.

[DoomFruit]

4 hours ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

It's probably in their best interest to do so, then. (If that were the case, which we can't know.) Since the game has plenty of frustrating moments one will have to grind through or learn to improve their gameplay because of.

That is indeed the best thing for players to do. It is, however, an extremely bad thing for the long-term health of the game (and by extension, the developers' wages). As the older players get more and more bitter and disillusioned by the state of the game and DE's antics, they leave (compare the number of founders making posts in the forums now with 2015 or 2013) and stop buying things. Additionally, said bitter veterans will try to convince prospective new players to stay away for their own good - something which I most certainly do. With no new players, the money flow ends.

Making the game actively hostile to new (and old) players is not good for DE's bottom line.

[(PSN)nmt140]

I had the same experience as OP here. Went through PoE, kept dying, and it annoyed me to the point where I considered just giving up. Beginner-wise, Warframe does a crap job at introducing you to content. I had to literally look up a quest guide to know that I didn't actually have to do any Bounties to get past PoE, just the beginning mission. I also had to look up literally everything else on the wiki, from relics to rotations to reward drops to modding to weapons. I wish there was an actual tutorial for mechanics of the game, like modding, that actually introduced new players to content by having them actually do stuff like drag and drop mods instead of having them read useless 3D slideshows where it's just few generic tips strung together. 

If you're having trouble with going through the Star Chart, check out the "Quick Start Guide" in this publicly available handbook created by the WF community. Tells you what mods you should get early on and where, provides a list of good beginner weapons, gives useful tips on junction specters, and a good quest guide that tells you why you should do the quest and which rewards are useful.

Also, don't forget to upgrade your weapon mods using endo! You can do this by going to "mods" in your orbiter menu, selecting a mod, and then choosing the first option (increase mod rank)

[Proscriptor]

9 hours ago, Izadored said:

Cetus blocked my path to the right half of the Earth and to the Mars junction. Fortuna prevented me from using an excavator on Venus. Neither experience was enjoyable, and I seriously thought it was time to uninstall. 

Even within the "prove yourself" missions ( 5 - 10 ), I found myself hard pressed and burning through my lives. Filling out my broken mods and obtaining some 5/10-dot ones, did little to help. Drop ships and floating mobs, destroyed my objective within seconds. 

you need to play with other players, warframe is a co-op game