Zexal Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 Hi ! This might be too recurring in the forums, but I wanted to share my experience on Warframe and how I’m slowly moving away from this game. To keep this organized, I will divide this thread in multiple spoiler sections for each update that was released since I started. I will also, at the end of this thread, address some of my concerns regarding the game, and how I think that certain things can be worked on. Please note that this thread isn't meant to hate on the game or the devs. Update 22 – 22.20.9.2 (PoE / Shrine of the Eidolon / Beasts of the Sanctuary) Spoiler That’s when I started. A friend of mine told me to join him and to play with him. He told me what to do because there was only a few guidance in the beginning. Sure, you learn how to move. But no one tells your where to find the important things. Mods, endo, credits… You either have to check the codex, which can be overwhelming with the mass of information that you can find in it, check the wiki or ask players. Some of them are really tired to repeat themselves so they can be a bit toxic sometimes. That’s why I left. I came back for the 22.12 update, I kept grinding for the mastery rank, kept discovering the star chart now that I was on my own and then I found a clan. From this point, I started to enjoy the game (and the grind) but I still didn’t know what I was doing. My builds were *really* trash, I had to trade for the first time to buy some slots… Anyway, that was a cool beginning, but I almost deleted my account. Then, Beasts of the Sanctuary was released. I enjoyed this update; this new survival game-mode was super appealing to me. That was a way to farm a bit of focus, I didn’t have the stuff to do the Eidolons properly. Overall, the Update 22 was really confusing : You get in the game, you have 854312 notifications at the same time, too much to do and also… no guidance. Update 23 – 23.10 (The Sacrifice / Mask of the Revenant / Chimera Prologue) Spoiler Let’s start with The Sacrifice. I’m not a lore kind of player, so I didn’t really care about this update. However, it was well-made, from the cinematics to the sounds, everything was great. Yes, there was some bugs in the beginning, but I didn’t mind that. The story was also well written. I was a bit disappointed to see the normal Ordis coming back, I would’ve loved for him to have some disrupted *star-child* phases. I also started to watch the Dev Streams here. The Mask of the Revenant update was a “meh” for me. I just didn’t find it interesting enough, but it was a cool side-quest. Chimera Prologue… I don’t know what to say about it since it’s mainly cinematics… But yeah, well written again. Update 24 – 24.8 (Fortuna / The Profit-Taker / Buried Debts / PoE Remaster) Spoiler That’s when I started to play correctly. Not like a low-level casual lost player, but like a regular player. I really enjoyed this update, even though it was a grind-fest, Fortuna and its improvements over the hotfixes were really enjoyable. Also, the kitguns and the tokens were a great addition to the game. Not sure about the K-Drive, but whatever, it was kinda fun. I’m not going to lie, but Fortuna felt empty before the addition of the Profit-Taker. This might be one of the best additions to the game in the last two years. The same goes for the Exploiter, but in my opinion, the cinematics should be skippable after you did one fight. Plains of Eidolon Remaster was also a good update. I just wish that the token system would apply there too. It makes no sense to have everything from the other open worlds but the token system for the main syndicate standing. Update 25 – 25.8 (The Jovian Concord / Wukong Prime / Saint of Altra) Spoiler The Jovian Concord, to me, was the perfect mainline update. Hostile Mergers was a real competitive event, and the Disruption game mode is just… incredible. I went to another clan prior this update, and for the first time in Warframe, beside the grind that started to get old, I felt like this was the real game. Endurance. Taking part of a competitive event with real players and not just basic grinders (there’s nothing wrong with that, you do you). Wukong’s rework was also a good rework. Nothing much to add here. I’ll skip the 25.4 to 25.6. Saint of Altra was only good because of the Disruption expansion. The Leverian is also cool for lore addicts, and I find it fun to search for prex cards. Also, where are Vauban’s and Ember’s Leverian? You showed their cards in January 2020! Update 26 – 26.1 (The Old Blood / Rising Tide) Spoiler Well, that’s when the downfall started for me. After seeing what was shown in the Tennocon and what was shipped, it was a huge disappointment. Not only that, but also the fact that after 11 hotfixes for The Old Blood, the grind for the Kuva Lich was going from bearable to HORRIBLE. One of the hotfix made it fast enough so it wasn’t so grindy, but you decided to nerf it, just to increase the grind, which isn’t good at all. This whole new joker parazon mod isn’t going to solve the issue. It’ll still be a grind island that even you didn’t wish for in the first place. I can’t hate on Rising Tide, it was supposed to be a pre-update and… It served its purpose. Cephalon Cy is a great entity in the game. We should see him more. Update 27 – 27.5 (Empyrean / Warframe Revised / Scarlet Spear / RJ Revisited) Spoiler Empyrean… Another grind island that you didn’t wish for in the first place because it should’ve been tied to the core game… I just hope that it’ll be tied with the core game after the Corpus update, and also, that we will be able to exit an open world with our Railjack as shown at the Tennocon. Warframe Revised was a great start for a huge rework. It did break the meta, only to create a new one. What I hated about is the change of the scaling. There’s no difficulty anymore. But I’ll get to that later. Scarlet Spear, another update that I disliked. The OpLink was surely a PoC for SquadLink, but it shouldn’t have been implemented in an event like that. Also, it was unbalanced. If we had the same result from ground and in space, we would’ve had more fun. Railjack Revisited… I hated it. Making it more accessible to new players when it should be for advanced players, doubling ressources that we don’t even use… Yeah, that was just a bad update. Update 28 – 28.3 (The Deadlock Protocol / The Steel Path) Spoiler The Deadlock Protocol is what I consider the most as a real side-quest. I really enjoyed it, and again, the work that was put into it really shows here. I loved it. Unfortunately, the Granum Void is another content that we won’t use anymore. It was teased as an endurance and hard survival mode, but it isn’t at all. I was kinda disappointed but it was still a good update. The steel essence farm was really enjoyable. Reb said it, The Steel Path was not supposed to be an end-game thing, but just a difficult mode for players who had finished the star chart. My main issue about it, is the nerf. Sure, Acolytes have a new purpose, but the game mode is just empty now. You insulted players when you told that you did the Steel Path rework because of “AFK-Macro Players” which didn’t exist because Ophelia was nerfed months earlier. You killed the Steel Path, and we told you in the test cluster that it was going to end like that. I’ll skip 28.2 – 28.3. Update 29 – 29.6 (The Heart of Deimos / Deimos Arcana / Orphix Venom) Spoiler The Heart of Deimos… What a surprising update. Unbalanced and completely rushed. The same mistake that were done with Empyrean were also made here. I do agree, 2020 was rough for everyone, the Dev team is no exception. But we saw last year, smaller studios and even solo devs putting out amazing games, listening to their community, taking their time to work on things. After many, many, many hotfixes and forum posts (as well as reddit posts), Deimos finally felt bearable as an update. As far as it goes for content… Is that it? A copy/paste from the two other open worlds? And forcing mining, fishing and conservation on players? It didn't feel right. However, one great addition to this update was the Helminth system. Let’s talk about Arcana. It wasn’t enjoyable at all. I took part in the test cluster, and I gave the more feedback that I could in the dedicated forum section. Many of us told you how bugged it was, how unbalanced it was and how unfunny it is. Nevertheless, almost none of the reported bugs were fixed when it was released. Grinding for useless arcanes doesn’t appeal to me. The same goes for low-droprate mods dedicated to a mecha that I won't even use. Orphix Venom is just a ground capped Scarlet Spear that gives purpose to the Necramechs. These might be the worst thing that was added to the game. Sure, there’s a story behind it, but forcing players to use something no one has ever asked for, just to increase some stats isn’t right. Nightwaves Spoiler When they came out, I was so hyped about the story in multiple epsiodes and the battle-pass idea. I just don’t know why it takes so much time to add more rewards. Also, the challenges aren’t fun. “Complete 8 Railjack Missions”; “Kill or convert a Kuva Lich”; “Find caches in a sabotage mission. All of them. Three times.”. These aren’t challenges but GRIND. A challenge should involve difficulty, these are just regular things to do. It takes so long for you to give players new rewards when you could add old cosmetics, more conclave mods, skins, forma bundles and nightwave credits with uncapped levels. I think players would mind a bit less the extended duration of the Nightwaves. Especially the last one that wasn’t supposed to run this long. And the pandemic can’t be an excuse for everything. The same goes for the previous unvault, don’t tell me that releasing a hotfix with three new relics and three photoshopped captura merged in one takes 6 months to make when the latest hotfix (29.6.7.1) is only one line. So yeah, more cosmetics, unreleased or past ones, relic packs, real challenges... But I've heard that you're going to rework the Nightwaves, I can't wait to see how it'll work! Conclusion As a conclusion, I'd say that my Warframe experience is good. It's an amazing game if you have people to play with or if you like to understand mechanics on your own with no guidance. But when you like rewards, endurance, and cooperation, that's not the right game. I won't define myself as an end-game player, but I did what could be done end-game wise. Level-cap, tridolons, some speedrun (and trust me, speedrunning with a controller isn't fun nor easy). I don't know what to do now. I have everything that I wanted, but when the game doesn't give you what you're looking for, you just have to move on. Warframe is almost a decade old. The playerbase isn't the same one that it was three years ago when I started. You (DE) shouldn't forget that. You have veterans to worry about, without them, nothing's left to teach the newcomers. People just want to jump right in the game, be told what to do and how to do things and then play. They don't want to bother with endless dialogues and no difficulty. They don't want to bother grinding three open worlds if they can only do one to get everything they need to be considered as a veteran. The new player experience shouldn't only be the new Vor's Quest, but it should guide you on how to play during a few missions. Ordis' dialogues are old, and only showing a new player the foundry or the mods segment without explaining them how it's working isn't going to make them stay. It should guide them through the old content all the way to the newer one. So yeah, I'm slowly drifting away from Warframe, and it's sad because with some tweaks, not even rework, the game could be interesting for everyone. General suggestions Raids : I wasn't here when they were, and I don't care about how bugged they were, but that can be a way to add new mechanics. Take exemple on Destiny. Puzzles, cooperation... Use the Profit-Taker as a base for the mechanic, and work around that. The Deck-12 enigma was also fun to do, maybe it could be an idea to re-use. Use some old tilesets or unreleased ones. Maybe the necramechs would be useful for one puzzle, which would be cool in a raid. But not during a whole operation. Also, we've seen that the UI is already prepared for 8 players-squad. And we're ready too. Deimos : Please, please DE, delete the current Deimos. It's just a stupid rock floating on top of another rock. After doing some out-of-bound sessions (please don't nerf that), I've see this base map here. Why isn't it the current Deimos? It could've been great to use these colors, and this pre-build map. Honestly, it's so much better than the orange rock that we have now. It looks like a Nintendo Switch dojo. And the caves wouldn't even be that hard to implement in the landscape color-wise. (Right here if you'd like to see it) No more grind island : Take the time that you need to work on things, tie them to the core game and gameplay, but the grind isn't fun when it just adds artificial playtime. Why do you think that there was AFK-Macro Players in Ophelia? Because there was no challenges. No more nerfs : please. If something is meant for advanced players, don't make it more accessible to beginners (Railjack, Helminth...). Let them discover the older content instead of making them rush to the latest one. Steel Path rework (again) : Restore the Steel Essences on the Eximus units, keep the acolytes but, as a twist, apply the old scaling in Steel Path. Now, it doesn't matter if we're in Steel Path or not, we're just sliding through enemies. Disruption in the Void : A way to bring endurance back in the Void to farm the unvaults! More rewards : They should scale with your Mastery Rank and your daily login. You can't have the same rewards as a MR0. The Disruption was a good start for the rewards. Bounty rework : Doing a full bounty in 2021 after you cleared an entire open world is just boring. Being MR35 or just rank 5 in an open world syndicat should allow you to target farm what you want. Let players pick a two-objective bounty with a three-items reward pool. Enough of mobile defense : Stop it. You teased it for the Corpus Railjack, but we have enough of them. Replace them by 6 vaults spy, or 3 targets-capture missions. Mobile defenses are everywhere, the bounties are mainly mobile defenses with a bit of extermination and some excavation. They just add a forced and fake playtime. They are boring. We have enough mobile defense on the star chart. Conclave : Let players use their universal syndicate medallions. It was supposed to work, but you stopped from doing that because of a crybaby on Twitter. On the other hand, killing the Steel Path didn't bother you, and it had more players than Conclave. New player experience : mentioned it earlier, but there should be a path to follow. Take example on a regular guide, and rework the codex accordingly. The UI isn't friendly enough to a new player, and they won't even check the codex. Give some love to the veterans : If they leave, as I said earlier, only the wiki pages will be here to help the new players. Give them rewards, challenges... Things to do in general. Take. Your. Time. : You have the test cluster to help you with the development, use it more often to balance things and get feedback. Even if it's on small parts of future updates or proof of concept. Kick the players that didn't give any feedback last time and make it a real test cluster. And please, read the said feedback. And another thing : stop working on 36 projects at the time. The third orb is still waiting (maybe there's something to do with SquadLink!), Deimos still has no boss and there's some major bugs to fix before released a new open world or expansion. So please DE, take your time. I think that's it, I didn't think that it was going to be so long. 😐 Last thing, and I really want this to be clear : it's not a dev-bashing/game hating thread. Just a feedback on my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voltage Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 Well said. I started shortly after Volt Prime Access before Update 17: Echoes of the Sentient. The game and its community were very different then. My only wish that isn't something you already stated well is for Warframe to restore some of the roots of where it came from. The game just doesn't improve the core gameplay experience and instead develops isolated game-modes to try and change up gameplay. That is perfectly fine if the core gameplay is improved upon. But it isn't. Tactical Potato recently put out a YouTube video giving his feedback on the game's state, and one his points is directly that. To summarize, TP felt that gunplay is pushed to the side, and melee is just the only real tool if you care about your mission efficiency. He is pretty much spot on, and this shouldn't be the case. Warframe Revised was an incredible foundation, but it is now overgrown and unused. You changed scaling to be easier to work with without creating insane enemy armor values, but now all we have is tissue-paper enemies. The things that have lasting impressions on the game are updates like Fusion Cores becoming Endo, Void Towers becoming Void Fissures, or Warframe Revised. There are long term affects when core mechanics are changed, and in my 3 examples, the latter 2 seriously devalue equipment and a huge chunk of the core game. Healthy reworks are appreciated. I am fine with a Viral and Slash nerf if Impact, Puncture, Blast, Gas, and Magnetic get some love to be worthwhile. I see no problems with nerfs if they are justified, but they are usually short-sighted and overlook the deeper problem. Hopefully this year, with the reduced devstreams, we see more planned and organized focus to make the base game more meaningful and to have better progression. Helminth being changed for Mastery Rank 8 player accessibility just makes players with many hours feel like they didn't have much of a reason to get there. Content that requires cooperation like the original TennoCon 2018 Railjack showcase and the reintroduction to Trials would be a good start for more experienced level content. Steel Path and Helminth are honestly mid-game with how the game's power ceiling and arsenal has climbed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.