I would hate to be a new player right now.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

There is of course the contested "Nightwave vs Alerts" and the awful handling of NW and its maintenance.  When I started there were plenty of alerts for Catalysts and Reactors.  I still bought a few because they certainly weren't unlimited, but there were far more than there are now.  I could go on about this, but this thread isn't about NW specifically.

There's all the grind increases.  Grind was pretty high when I started playing.  The grind for Deimos stuff made me take a hard pass and just buy the things from it off other players.  Some may say this is a good thing because it lets you skip content you don't like.  I say it's negating content and extending content droughts because all the replayability is focused on hardcore grind and tiny drop chances rather than something being replayable because it's fun.  If you have great luck the content disappears in an instant when you defy the odds and get all the drops quickly.  If you hate the content and skip the grind (which is the main portion of the content instead of being gameplay focused.) by using plat then the content also doesn't last very long and you're left with a sour taste in your mouth.  Grind increases are one of the main reasons I think players are leaving and new players aren't staying very long.

Combine the grind with the growing lack of explanation for game mechanics and overall objectives (I cannot tell you how many times I've seen new players ask "what am I supposed to DO?") and the abysmal state of the story and the problems with player retention just get worse.  Every new player I encounter, recruit or end up playing with ends up leaving after a month or two.  They don't want to complete a mostly empty, repetitive, unrewarding star chart that you refuse to update and refresh.  They have to though if they want to get to literally any of the really interesting parts of the game.  They do it and they do a lot of it solo and end up leaving because of it. 

They don't understand the whole story without looking it up or having it explained because you've left it completely out of order and half of it at least is locked behind limited-time-never-coming-back-go-read-about-it-on-the-wiki-lol events and instead of learning from this extremely obvious mistake you're continuing to release a lot of the major plot points through these events.  You put out a flimsy excuse that "The New War isn't a quest like we said it was, it's happening now with the events."  and I'm here to tell you that's idiotic.  Not just from the perspective that I think you're BSing us.  By the time you finish however many events and cinematics are going to comprise the New War, if you're lucky you're still going to be getting new players.  None of them will get to experience the New War.  They won't be able to actually play through yet another huge part of the story.  They'll get to watch some disjointed cinematics and read about it on the wiki and more game experiences will be lost.

As the icing on this cake, with the recent announcement of changes to the dev stream schedules you're cementing the schedule you've been keeping for awhile now, where the GOTL alerts that used to help out new players a lot are only going to be once a month instead of twice a month like they used to be.  There used to be all sorts of special alerts and tactical alerts and GOTL type things that really helped new players out in getting things early game.  I see less and less of them these days, and considering I called that we'd be getting less stuff and GOTL was probably going to get tapered off, I can only say that I believe it's going to get worse.  The special alerts and incentives to login even if you weren't planning to just to run whatever thing was going on are drying up like the community's good will toward you.

You have to stop doubling down on all the things you're doing that people keep complaining about.  

[JimmuTanno88]

This also becomes more of a problem considering how irritating it is to earn plat(given how most items dont sell, and those that do sell for miserably low plat), and how the new player quest still makes people get market functionality first, makes it not appealing as a 'FTP' game to people just starting.

[deothor]

6 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

the GOTL alerts that used to help out new players a lot are only going to be once a month instead of twice a month like they used to be.

no wonder it felt weird how "rare" GOTL became.

Also potato alerts, so incredibly rare now and 1 hour in and already done. Bah.

6 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

They don't understand the whole story without looking it up or having it explained because you've left it completely out of order and half of it at least is locked behind limited-time-never-coming-back-go-read-about-it-on-the-wiki-lol events and instead of learning from this extremely obvious mistake you're continuing to release a lot of the major plot points through these events. 

Aladin V is definition of soap opera character. He's been in all roles. His affiliation changed like some damn pendulum.

Best part: even DE devs responsible for the story don't even know Salads full story xD 

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

17 minutes ago, deothor said:

no wonder it felt weird how "rare" GOTL became.

Also potato alerts, so incredibly rare now and 1 hour in and already done. Bah.

Aladin V is definition of soap opera character. He's been in all roles. His affiliation changed like some damn pendulum.

Best part: even DE devs responsible for the story don't even know Salads full story xD 

The limited dev streaming started before Covid, since I know someone is going to want to use that as an excuse for them.  It was always "all hands on deck" for one broken update or another for probably 6 months before the pandemic, and it's only gotten worse.  Now it's only 1 a month that's scheduled, and I wouldn't be surprised if those get cancelled from time to time for the same excuses as well.  

As for alerts, I meant actual alerts, like the system we used to have before NW.  Being fair, the potato invasions (this game has such strange jargon.) seem to be coming in at the same amount to me.  I do not care what anyone says.  I have shown numerous times with actual math that they replaced the RNG of alerts with grind and standing caps and it has greatly reduced the number of potatoes a new player will have access to.  You could taxi new players into the potato alerts.  You can't taxi a new player into the PT fight.  They just don't get that standing for that week.

As for Salad, his story isn't even in order and it's worse than it's ever been.  The current end of his arc is with Amalgams, which you encounter before you even meet him.  They straight up do not care about the lore or the story, which is evident with the amount of retconning they do so they can fit in whatever new ridiculous idea they've come up with for the next update.  "Oh yeah, there's a heart that controls everything.  We're not going to actually discuss it though.  Play family therapist to people with a bunch of mismatched accents instead."  Except you don't even play as that.  It's just exposition that you watch.  You watch these people mend their own relationships through the power of you...  murdering infested?  Right.  Good update.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

No amount of dumbing down, hand holding and streamlining is going to help someone that actually needs that much attention, though.

I agree improvements can always be made, but you're creating a narrative of this game being impossible to play when it's not. 

Why are you bringing up new players, then immediately bringing up deimos......new players shouldn't be making a B-line towards Deimos, anyway. Deimos isn't for new players. 

For every player that you claim can't handle the game, there are also people like me that swam through the game just fine. I shouldn't expect every person to be intuitive and curious, but people have to meet in the middle instead of standing there wondering what to do 24/7. 

I went back and read the inbox email we get from Lotus after completing Vors Prize....and it actually tells you a lot of information on how to get started, But the issue was I decided not to read it.

People ignore pretty blatant prompts and in-game information because they don't like reading or taking 5 min to get a grasp of mechanics or what's going on.

I like sci-fi, and I like actually thinking, experimenting and figuring things out.

I have a friend on the other hand, that did try warframe, but his entire life he's mainly played sports games like 2k. It is not warframes fault if a life long sports fan can't get into a fictional sci fi world. This game simply isn't his cup of tea and nothing warframe could have done would change that.

[Zeddypanda]

5 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

As for Salad, his story isn't even in order and it's worse than it's ever been.  The current end of his arc is with Amalgams

Wait, it is? Shouldn't his end be when you kill him in Eris?

I did kind of dismiss the story when two of the bosses I'd killed just came back to team up against me. Warframe is clearly operating on some kinda Donald Duck timeline where Donald is sometimes actually 80 years old in-universe but most of the time he isn't. I.e. nothing that happens, matters.

Second Dream was a confusing-ass quest as well. When I first saw Lua, my reaction wasn't "Oh, so that's where the moon's been." it was "Wait, the moon was gone? Okay." After the quest I talked to people on cetus and apparently it made no difference to them wether the moon's there or not, nobody says a single line about it.

Fighting Ambulas also felt like i was walking into the middle of a conversation.

[CephalonCarnage]

Here's my opinion on this.

NW: its actually a good thing. The only issue anyone really has with it is that it went on too long, too much Nora's voiceovers really. DE need to be commended for what is a really innovative idea that gave us a lot of different things to work with. But they also need to be givena slap for not completing it all at the start so they could release it in its due time slots. Next time, develop all 5 acts at once so they can be dropped in, and ended on schedule.

The Story: don't knock it too much. I enjoy it. Its not exactly Tolkien class of writing, but that's OK. Its entertaining and sure it has holes and misconceptions, but its not a reason to criticise too much. they do a good job with it, its the best part fo the game IMHO. Even the Entrati wierdness is fine, its not quite to my taste, but we can't have everything tailored to everyone.

The grind: this is the problem, and its not one DE can fix any more. See, there's a heap of content that's added to make us get the new toys, and in order to make it appear like we earn it, its locked behind grindwalls and RNG. The trouble is, players fall into 2 kinds of category: the normal player who will run them and find a few parts, and the "meta" players who will farm them constantly for hours ata time until they have everything and have completed all the new content in a couple of weeks. If DE took action to address the RNG for the benefit of the former, it will piss the latter off as they will no longer be so special, need to work so hard, and will not be able to sell the stuff for all that platinum. If they keep it for the latter, the former group fade away from the game as it becomes impossible to get the stuff without either not having a life, or "paying to win".

See, DE could allow trading of parts - so when I ran the Ceres boss mission to get the parts for Miter, and ended up with 30 handles and no barrels. I started to get annoyed. It was no longer about beating the bosses and playing the game, it was about running in, killing them as quickly as possible, and running out to see if I'd got the bit I wanted. That's not good gameplay, that relies on the boss being easy to kill for anyone other than a new player. And that's not good either, if the bosses become trivial, what is the game about any more?

So DE obviously wants us to play the game constantly. They also want us to play content, the push for necramechs and Deimos in point - if you want Helminth, go grind Deimos whether you like it or not. Want a mech (not really, thanks) go grind Deimos even more. Then a mech becomes semi-mandatory for upcoming new content, serves you right for not spending weeks griding iso vaults and conservation in the open world. My current bugbear is cryotic - I need 18k of it, so I am forced to play excavation missions that I don't mind occasionally, but I don't like enough to grind away at for the solid days of gameplay required to get it. Plenty of other examples of this kind of thing.

That means that DE not only wants us to play forever, but to not actually play but "farm", meaning forget the gameplay in favour of the looting as efficiently as possible. Yesterday I met a team farming Ceres - Khora and Nekros standing on the cryopod just watching the loot come in. That's not gameplay.

 

And that is my problem with Warframe. Its not a game anymore. No wonder new players look at build requirements, and RNG drops, and think "I have better things to do".

[(PSN)Deeceem]

I can't really disagree.

The moment I thought to myself (and also wrote on the forums) I really would hate to be a new player was when they increased the arcana requirement from 10 to 21 for a set. Which basically meant new players could go f themselves when it came to getting a full set of the rarer ones through gameplay outside of two events so far that noone really knows if or when another one might appear.

Pretty much noone cared though since Scarlet Spear solved it for people like me who already had one full set of each at least. Try farming 21 Energize from Eidolons or even in the events if you are newer - you don't necessarily do 6x3 or get to the high event scores as newer player.

There's a point where some people just say "screw it" and stop playing the content (or even the game). I'm currently near that point myself with the Deimos arcana and how obnoxious it is to get Endo for the 10th f'n time in a row. I have almost a million of that, DE... I suppose it's okay for newer players. So yeah, I'll eventually stop playing the same bounty over and over AND OVER again for Endo and play trade chat instead, I guess.

Heck, even after hundreds of hours of repeating Deimos content I still sit at 200/300 grandmother tokens required for the captura scenes.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

10 hours ago, Zeddypanda said:

Wait, it is? Shouldn't his end be when you kill him in Eris?

I did kind of dismiss the story when two of the bosses I'd killed just came back to team up against me. Warframe is clearly operating on some kinda Donald Duck timeline where Donald is sometimes actually 80 years old in-universe but most of the time he isn't. I.e. nothing that happens, matters.

Second Dream was a confusing-ass quest as well. When I first saw Lua, my reaction wasn't "Oh, so that's where the moon's been." it was "Wait, the moon was gone? Okay." After the quest I talked to people on cetus and apparently it made no difference to them wether the moon's there or not, nobody says a single line about it.

Fighting Ambulas also felt like i was walking into the middle of a conversation.

He's still alive and kicking, regardless of the number of times he's been murdered.  The presence of Sentient Lotus for the Ropalolyst fight means that the amalgams happen AFTER pretty much every single quest.  Yet he's there for the introduction of the Zanuka project which happens before Amalgams, but on the same planet at the same time as Amalgams. He was also part of several time-limited events which is where the boss fight on Eris comes from.  Based on the Lotus' involvement, Amalgams HAVE to take place after the events with Alad on Eris.

I also felt the exact same way about the Vor/Kril fight, but I guess that one can kind of be hand waived off by "grineer are all clones" though.

And Ambulas felt like you were walking in on the middle of a conversation because you are.  They were also part of a time-limited event where they only kept the boss fight.

[nslay]

The last few Catalyst/Reactor invasions lasted for 1-2 days. Plenty of time for everyone to grab these rewards. The problem is that so few people actually check the Invasions tab. I'm usually getting "Thanks!" in Clan/Alliance chat for noting these Invasions.

But seriously, you have more than 1-2 hours these days. They are still relatively Invasion rewards though!

On top of that... we just got 3 Catalyst BP alerts this Christmas season! I mean, c'mon... since 2018 when I started, I've never seen DE have 6 GoTL and reward 3 Catalysts and 3 Formas all at the same time (and you had 2 weeks to do these alerts!)! And a month before thata, we had another free Catalyst alert where I tested whether spending 30 minutes in the GoTL Survival mission would count for elite Nightwave (it did!).

The only thing that seems rarer these days is Razorback and Fomorian events. Other than that, it's raining potatoes man! More than ever!

[fr4gb4ll]

i somewhat disagree with there being an increase in the 'grind'™ of the game and also with your statement of new players having a hard time. the question about NW is another thing though - either one likes it or not.... me, i find it ok in most parts and not worse than the alerts back in the days.

that the grinding increases is a purely subjective feeling and it does not mirrors my game experience over the years - on the contrary: i now have to spend far less time to get newly released contend farmed, played and maxed out than i ever did when starting the game. sure, mostly that is due to the abundance of resources at hand but even for new the resources DE presures us with to play the game longer, there is not the amount of time i need to play than in the early days.... that, i would put the experience with the games mechanics e.g. how to best farm, when and where as well as ho to level stuff fast (which is far easier nowadays than it ever was).

about new players, i can tell you about 4 family members that joined me in warframe early last year and are now about MR27 - sure, i not teached them the way of the game and also did help them with mods, relics as well as a fully operational dojo with all research done but i let them 'grind' most things possible themself since i deem this a necessary part of the game one have to deal with (i did, in the past, spoil new clan members to much and they lost interest in the game rather fast because of that - so i didn't repeat this error again).

potatos and formas are also way easier to come by now than way back and since most of the NW challenges are done with normal gameplay, i don't see this as a disadvantage compared to the old alerts - those meant that you had to be in the game, waiting for them to appear and they where usually only active for one or hours at time. i guess with them being repeated later the day for players of different timezones, but that might only be a coincidence too and also meant that one could get the potatos twice. if present in the game or watching their smart-phones / alert-website... which i usually didn't had the time for responding to.

the only thing i think DE should change is putting auras into the rotation of NW - not completely out of the rewards but having them all present, all the time - for that is more annoying for new players than any potatos to earn via NW.

[Lutesque]

On 2021-01-16 at 7:48 PM, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

There is of course the contested "Nightwave vs Alerts" and the awful handling of NW and its maintenance. 

Wait... Is DE really considering this ? 😱

On 2021-01-16 at 7:48 PM, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

(I cannot tell you how many times I've seen new players ask "what am I supposed to DO?")

Oh wow that takes me Back.... Sitting in my orbiter looking at Navigation with No Clue what was going on.....

Luckily I had Friends 😁

On 2021-01-16 at 7:48 PM, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

where the GOTL alerts that used to help out new players a lot are only going to be once a month instead of twice a month like they used to be. 

Wait... Really.... ? WHY ? 🤔

3 hours ago, nslay said:

The last few Catalyst/Reactor invasions lasted for 1-2 days. Plenty of time for everyone to grab these rewards.

Uhm.... I have to disagree... Not for myself specifically but for my Beloved Weekend Warriors whom I only see on Saturdays Evenings.

 

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

22 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Wait... Is DE really considering this ?

No?  It's an ongoing debate among players on which system actually works better.  I've made the argument for alerts based on their mishandling of NW.

 

22 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Wait... Really.... ? WHY ?

We only get GOTL when they do a dev stream.  They used to do dev streams every two weeks like clockwork.  For the last several months it's been one a month if we're lucky.  I can't remember the last GOTL alert.  They've now cemented that the one dev stream a month thing they've been doing is the new norm.  So as long as they don't decide "Oh we can't stream this week, see you guys next month!" then we'll get one GOTL per month maximum. 

I have this feeling that they're pulling back from the community.  I believe the issue is that DE has too many ridiculous hills they want to die on (like univac) that make the community unhappy.  They refuse to relent on these things and the community does too, especially because we're never actually given any kind of a reason for their refusal to give us the things we want, outside of "we just don't want it for the game."  There's a widening gap between the community and the developers and instead of trying to bridge that gap, communicate, and give the community the things they want in the game, they're just going to pull back and see less of us and say less to us.  They have options for what to do at this junction and the road they appear to be taking is to ignore the community that got them where they are.

[Soy77]

why hello there. i happen to be a new player.

i started playing warframe later last year, now i'm mr16, built myself a railjack, a necramech, finished main story up to new war. imma say i have decent knowledge for rookie level.

while i do recognize some fundamental issues in warframe that rarely happen on other games that i played, such as warframe's poor ability to explain how anything works in this game -having to resort to wiki and google for majority of time. or just bad design altogether -like the lua puzzles. but life is good for me. i'm enjoying warframe probably more than you think we are. i just got a couple of good arcanes from orphix venom, just learned trading & selling platinums, got myself a couple of vaulted primes, i'm looking forward to solo an eidolon as my next project inside this game. life in warframe is still exciting!

 

now i'm going to be brutally honest, please bare with me... i don't appreciate being made as someones shield.
speak for yourself, man. don't victimize new players when it's you who have problem with how stuff works.

i might going to sound very offensive right now -take it however everyone want, but i think you guys might have old people syndrome.
you know how people who grew up in 90s always think that millenials are lame?
well people who grew up in the 80s always think that generation x are lame.
i'm willing to bet that people who grew up in 70s think that 80s kids are lame.
60s despise how 70s do things.

you were infested in warframe on different time than us.
now your interests have changed. the way you see things have changed. just like 60s guys who're probably grandparents now. grandparents see the world in different way than children.
new players like me are infested in warframes right now. we're interested in stuff that are in the game today.
just like toddlers right now who have gadgets and watch youtube all day. i can never get them, smartphones wasn't even a thing when i was their age, i was playing with homemade kites!! i pity kids these days...

just kidding i don't pity them. i fully understand that they're infested on stuff that came at different time than me. of course kids like me who make their own toys and play outside are tougher and just so much better humans than these weak kids nowadays. jk again, they'll be better at stuff that i'm not good at.

[Pax_in_Tenebris]

On 2021-01-18 at 5:11 AM, nslay said:

The last few Catalyst/Reactor invasions lasted for 1-2 days. Plenty of time for everyone to grab these rewards. The problem is that so few people actually check the Invasions tab. I'm usually getting "Thanks!" in Clan/Alliance chat for noting these Invasions.

But seriously, you have more than 1-2 hours these days. They are still relatively Invasion rewards though!

On top of that... we just got 3 Catalyst BP alerts this Christmas season! I mean, c'mon... since 2018 when I started, I've never seen DE have 6 GoTL and reward 3 Catalysts and 3 Formas all at the same time (and you had 2 weeks to do these alerts!)! And a month before thata, we had another free Catalyst alert where I tested whether spending 30 minutes in the GoTL Survival mission would count for elite Nightwave (it did!).

The only thing that seems rarer these days is Razorback and Fomorian events. Other than that, it's raining potatoes man! More than ever!

waaaaaaah????? wheeeeeeeen???? i always check invasions DAILY and the only time i don't is when i'm at work. any invasion with catalyst/reactor has been completed in HOURS (under 8 hours) and i ABSOLUTELY hate it. 

i'm in korea so when the invasion starts, i'm always at work.. and gets finished by the time i get out of work. I HATE IT.  ...really DE.. something like a catalyst.. PLEEEEASE with it a good 12hrs before the mission is closed. a GREAT improvement on quality of life! 

[_Anise_]

just my thoughts ...

I think a main problem is seeing "waiting" as content, it is not! if I have to wait 3 days for something to complete, I just forget about the game and stop playing for 3 days that goes with most of the wait frame, it doesn't retain me as a player to have to wait months for the time gate stars to align it just frustrates me.

also events that have super grindy content force me to play that content but also burn me out on it pretty quick!

 

but as a new player ? there is lots of fun story to play through!

[(XBOX)Shodian]

2 hours ago, _Anise_ said:

I think a main problem is seeing "waiting" as content, it is not! if I have to wait 3 days for something to complete, I just forget about the game and stop playing for 3 days that goes with most of the wait frame, it doesn't retain me as a player to have to wait months for the time gate stars to align it just frustrates me.

Please remember, Warframe is a free to play game and as such needs things like craft times and grind walls to encourage the buying of platinum. This is how it always has been.

[Loveframe]

"limited-time-never-coming-back-go-read-about-it-on-the-wiki-lol"

Literally had a friend played until MR14 and would ask me what and who the Tubemen were because during the Regor boss fight, he's constantly talking about them, but that dialogue has no relevance to the current game world or story new players go through.

As far as Quest progression goes, there seems to still be a significant gap in the main story line indicating to players that they need to do "Chains of Harrow" in order to continue to progress through the main story. As this was something my friend was very confused on when he kept saying he had done all the main story quests but wasn't understanding how to get an Excalibur Umbra that he saw other players with, until I directed him to the website's walkthru/lists of main quests.

My opinion for some time is that because Warframe has been out since 2013, it really needs a new player "head start" type of option like WoW, FFXIV and many other games do that have lots of story driven content where players would have to spend 20-40 hours prior to having any meaningful engagement with friends who have played since launch. This could easily be remedied by offering a catch up service as a paid token, just like the other games do and it'd auto complete the quests for them up to and including Chains of Harrow with their prerequisites. Potentially it should provide the minimum MR rank needed as well, which would entail providing all MK-1 weapons as mastered and star chart main/primary nodes completed and one of each basic mods for all weapons (no rare or rivens). This would allow a new player with this token option to jump into the game farming materials for their Railjack and going through the main quest to get their umbra and the option of replaying any previous quests if they really want to experience the lore.

 

[_Anise_]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

and as such needs things like craft times and grind walls to encourage the buying of platinum

It took me weeks to craft the new infested shotgun because my clan had no researching, for some reason none of that is rushable ? if I waited near 2 weeks researching all the weapons, I can wait 24 more hours for the last part to build in my foundry!

anyway I was mostly thinking about prime warframes that have rotated out. say I need mag that is all? I have to stop playing for sometimes over a year!! for her to rotate back in or all the unique weapons and junk baro brings, its just waiting,

anyway tldr f2p games can be all about cosmetics and not charging your players with time, just look at how much money fortnite had made as f2p cosmetic game.

[(PSN)M00n_Slippers]

I started playing this game about two and a half years ago and even then I had trouble following the story. Another problem with locking story behind events that don't return, aside from just confusing new players when the event isn't around to provide context for what they are doing, is that it's actually a huge waste of DE's time and resources. Instead of using their effort to make something that will always be there to play and provide content, it's used for something fleeting that will disappear and not provide anything for future players to play to keep them in the game. They are really hurting themselves that way. I think it's important to have events but there is a reason most other games keep it cosmetic, usually for holidays and such or as a hunt-and-gather time quest to preface a new update. They shouldn't include major story points that are going to confuse people once they are gone, and waste the Dev team's effort on something that won't be in the game for long.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

22 hours ago, Soy77 said:

i'm enjoying warframe probably more than you think we are

Emphasis mine.

22 hours ago, Soy77 said:

speak for yourself, man

Take your own advice.  You went from referring to yourself to literally speaking on behalf of all new players in a single sentence.  I've dealt with countless new players with all the issues I described.  Plenty of experienced players too.

 

12 hours ago, (NSW)IronElemental said:

content has become a "be as efficient as possible" grind on repeat to simply get the rewards as quickly as possible. As soon as a "best" way to do something gets presented, and followed like holy scripture, anything will feel like a grind.

This is far more an issue of drop tables than it is of meta builds.  I run non-meta stuff all the time.  I have like 8 forma on the Veldt.  I just got done with a Burston Prime build.  The issue is that I can only "stop and smell the roses" for so long before the 0.01% drop rates start to piss me off and I start running it as fast as I absolutely can.  There are genuinely things in this game with those drop rates.  There are a lot of things with drop rates closer to 0% than 1% and some of them are on enemies you can only kill a handful of in an hour.  I'm not going to run some theme'd build that I screw around in fissures with for kicks.  I'm going to run whatever I think will complete my objectives the fastest.  The drop rate generates that grind feeling, and that feeling is what causes people to chase speed.

 

8 hours ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

Please remember, Warframe is a free to play game and as such needs things like craft times and grind walls to encourage the buying of platinum.

That's not true in the slightest.  Several F2P games use only cosmetics or things like stash space to generate revenue.  Path of Exile, the last time I played it only had RMT for cosmetics and stash space.  No Prime Access that costs as much as a full AAA game every quarter.  No constant time gating.  Just because DE does it doesn't make it right.

[LillyRaccune]

14 minutes ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

Just because DE does it doesn't make it right.

Agreed. Some time gating to prevent abuse, I understand. But from the beginning DE has used a business model to exploit certain features of "we can do X because this is F2P".

• Spend plat to revive warframes in mission (discontinued).
• Spend plat to run the Kubrow slot machine (discontinued).

Just two examples of abusive business models DE employs. To their credit, DE has revealed their Drop Table information to the public. But has anyone ever questioned why they do that? There are several gaming laws worldwide that make mandatory to need to reveal the drop chances of items, but this is limited to games using a "gatcha machine". Is there a legal president for viewing DE's "RNG drop table" as a type of gatcha system? Anyway, forget this tangent, it is only speculation.

Regarding the actual thread topic, I am forced to agree with the OP Dugan. So many parts of Warframe are made to feel like a trap. For example: "need MR to get to get quest" leads to some of the most common problems for new players.

• How do I get more slots?
• How do I earn plat?

The information distribution in the game is sorely lacking. If warframe.fandom.com (formerly warframe.wikia.com) never existed, I wonder how different the situation would be? Many players have also created their own information portals, would they have done this if the wiki website wasn't built in the first place? For example: overframe.gg, warframe.market, semlar.com and many more.

We, the player community, are assisting the new players. We are doing DE's work for them. However DE doesn't listen to community requests. At times the best we get is arbitrary "knee jerk" situations like Universal Medallions (sigh) and Father tokens requiring scintillant at launch (what were they thinking?). My heart hurts because I really like warframe, but DE does things that are not right.

• I would hate to be a new player and not have help from the community.

[Faemaster]

On 2021-01-16 at 6:48 PM, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

all the replayability is focused on hardcore grind and tiny drop chances rather than something being replayable because it's fun.

This. This is my main issue as well. I used to have fun playing Warframe when I started a 1000 days ago. Running missions, shooting stuff... you know, playing a videogame. It is true there has always been grind. But with all the newer content (Kuva Leeches, Scarlet Spear, Deimos, Orphix Venom) I really feel as if it's been grind exclusively. I completely missed the ending of Orphix Venom so got stuck with 28K worth of currency. My reaction? "Oh no, all that work for nothing". And that's the pickle right? A game shouldn't feel like work, and that's exactly how a lot of new content-release has felt to me. Scarlet Spear was bad in that regard. Deimos was worse. I'm a completionist by nature, and I still gave up on Deimos. I also gave up on Orphix Venom two weeks into the event. Couldn't bring myself to repeating the same mission over, and over, and over, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

The absolute worst part of it all? It's grind for the sake of grind. You actually don't need all that stuff. It doesn't gear you up for the Endgame. Every mission in the game can be completed with equipment that is easy to obtain.

The "loss" of that 28,000 Phasic Cells was a real eye opener to me - and may turn out to be a good thing actually. In one fell swoop it completely broke my Warframe addiction. I'm done with DE forcing me to grind for more items I actually don't really need.

The only times I still really enjoy Warframe is when I play with a friend who started the game recently, using low level gear to play at his level. When he hits that same grind barrier I did and quits the game, I'm ready to uninstall as well. It's been a good run, and it's been a great game, but I don't really see the glory days returning. Not if all the stuff DE has been releasing is any indication 😟

 

[Vaml77]

The game was stagnant due to the pandemic. I think the alert system should come back, but with profound reformulations. The nw is just consuming more time from the team instead of focusing on new things or fixing what has not been fixed until today and that several problems persist for years. What is contributing for the community to move away from the game is the nw system ... which is static and very comfortable for the players, but it turned out to be bad for the game itself ... it was too monotonous. The game with the alerts was more stimulating for the community. I loved to see an alert appear on the screen. But if the DE ever wants to bring the alert again, it is necessary to rethink the rewards and at the same time create a real season with really rare weapons but with a better quality.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

12 hours ago, Faemaster said:

This. This is my main issue as well. I used to have fun playing Warframe when I started a 1000 days ago. Running missions, shooting stuff... you know, playing a videogame. It is true there has always been grind. But with all the newer content (Kuva Leeches, Scarlet Spear, Deimos, Orphix Venom) I really feel as if it's been grind exclusively. I completely missed the ending of Orphix Venom so got stuck with 28K worth of currency. My reaction? "Oh no, all that work for nothing". And that's the pickle right? A game shouldn't feel like work, and that's exactly how a lot of new content-release has felt to me. Scarlet Spear was bad in that regard. Deimos was worse. I'm a completionist by nature, and I still gave up on Deimos. I also gave up on Orphix Venom two weeks into the event. Couldn't bring myself to repeating the same mission over, and over, and over, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

The absolute worst part of it all? It's grind for the sake of grind. You actually don't need all that stuff. It doesn't gear you up for the Endgame. Every mission in the game can be completed with equipment that is easy to obtain.

The "loss" of that 28,000 Phasic Cells was a real eye opener to me - and may turn out to be a good thing actually. In one fell swoop it completely broke my Warframe addiction. I'm done with DE forcing me to grind for more items I actually don't really need.

The only times I still really enjoy Warframe is when I play with a friend who started the game recently, using low level gear to play at his level. When he hits that same grind barrier I did and quits the game, I'm ready to uninstall as well. It's been a good run, and it's been a great game, but I don't really see the glory days returning. Not if all the stuff DE has been releasing is any indication 😟

 

That was completely your problem. 

If you did Scarlet spear, you should have some arcanes, cool.

What did you need to spam orphix for? Don't Lavos parts drop in the event, as well as also being in the store to buy with points? 

You didn't get an arcane you needed from Scarlet spear....ok....so why couldn't you get whatever left that you needed in the entire month you had and move on? No one makes you a completionist except yourself.