Analysis of DE/Warframe: Expectations vs deliveries. And growing problems about the game.

Joezone619 · March 31, 2021

Intro
First off, the following is all my own opinions, observations, and views on DE as developers. This is made mostly as constructive criticism, and to show what my expectations are from DE, developers of a game that has been around for 8 years. As a player who very much enjoys the game they have made, I wish nothing but the best for them. Warframe is by far my favorite game to play, and DE are great developers of this game.

I feel a lot of people, especially on the forums, may think that posts like this are meant to attack or bring down DE and/or warframe as a whole. So I am making it clear from the start, this is not my intention, this is not meant as an attack on DE or warframe. This is meant as constructive criticism for what I believe they could be doing better at.

TLDR at the bottom. Though I recommend reading through the post, TLDR's can only summarize so much.

What I expect from DE as developers:
-To test each update before releasing it to the public, and publish the results/reviews.
-Updates should have as little bugs as possible on release. Regardless of if its on PC or console, the public release is not a test server.
-They should listen to feedback from players, and develop and make changes to content based on the majority of that feedback.
-They need to showcase progress on what they are developing, so players can give feedback on it, and show DE if we like it, if they should make major changes to it, or if they should scrap it, and try something else.
-To take their time developing updates, and not release as many updates as possible ASAP, leaving them all half-made and rushed.

Observations of DE's behaviors and/or decisions:

-Moving devstreams from weekly to monthly.

To me, it seems like they did this to reduce player backlash, but based on the devstreams so far, this has only had the opposit effect, aplifying it. I beleive they should now be considering that this backlash isn't based on how often they show stuff off, or just the usual backlash, they should be considering it is based on the content they're releasing, and the quality of it.

-Only listening to devs and/or warframe partners, over the majority of players.

To me, recent actions suggest they only listen to their devs and/or warframe partners, and almost completely ignore the feedback of their players. When almost every player asked them not to link warframe energy with railjack energy and to keep them separate, they just linked it anyways. When "Quite Shallow" released a video showing how much more powerful melee was then guns, within the week it was announced they were going to be making major changes to it. When "Brozime" released a video about the best reward spots in the railjack rework, those spots were nerfed in less then 24 hours, and apparently the devs only comments were "it was cool to see players coordinating" and labeled it as a bug fix.

-Forcing content upon players like necramechs with orphix venom.

I cannot stress enough how much I dislike necramechs now because of that event and this decision to make them borderline required. By disabling all warframes, all guns, and all melee weapons, they locked 90% of everything players spent countless hours on building, modding, refining, and improving. All of which was just thrown out the window and we were told "you use necramechs now". For those reasons I will use even operator over necramechs, and actively avoid orphix missions. At the time of the event, necramechs were barley a few months old, no updates have been made to balance them, and leveling them was insanely difficult. Not to mention to complete the event effectively, you essentially needed a fully forma'ed, leveled necramech, AND archgun if you were using bonewidow. If you were using voidrig, you could practically only use his 4th ability unmodded, and pass with flying colors. This shows how unbalanced and underdeveloped both necramechs and all archwing gear is.

Locking players out of almost all of their gear in my opinion was by far the poorest decision they have made. Nobody likes being forced into doing something. This is the same reason I dislike doing eidolon hunts, you are forced to use your operator to damage its shields. But at least with eidolons, your frames and weapons can be used to help even if there are limited options, there are still options present to begin with.

-Completely disregarding the test clusters, and their feedback.

I believe the best example of this, is the "Deimos Arcana" update. The test clusters were used for that update to find bugs, and to find out how players would react to the update. Most if not all the test clusters said something like "the update is nice, but it really needs more work". DE then shipped the update the next day. This shows that DE clearly sees the test clusters as either a joke, a complete waste of time and recourses, or both and I have not heard of anything about the test clusters since that update. I believe the test clusters are DE's best tool for releasing great quality updates that satisfy players, and patching the majority of bugs before hand. I imagine many other players do as well, but clearly DE does not share that belief.

-Showing very little to nothing about updates before they release.

I believe this is a very poor decision. Surprises are nice, but with their track record from the beginning of 2020 to now, its clear they need to show a lot more about these updates so that we can offer proper feedback, so that they can make changes accordingly. As it stands, these updates are being given major backlash for how poor quality, rushed and different they are from what we are told. I believe the latest "Corpus Proxima" update shows this the best. We were told it was a complete rework for railjack, and that it was going to be more like how railjack was first shown to us during tennocon 2018-2019. We were shown little to nothing of what was actually in the update, and when we were given the update, is was completely different from both how railjack was before it, and from how it was originally suppose to be. Major changes were made that we were not told about, such as requiring all 4 players to enter the ship/station when it did not before to enter grinner galleons. Or how short the railjack portion of the new missions actually was, and so we were obviously disappointed. Major changes that we WERE told about, had feedback completely ignored, such as the plexus and having railjack energy linked with warframe energy.

-Always making new stuff, almost never going back to fix old stuff.

They really need to stop and go back to fix up a lot of old content before making more new stuff. I cannot tell you the last time i did a sortie, or an invaision outside of nightwave standing. Everything you can get from sorties that's worth it for me, you can get somewhere else, or get more easily by trading platinum. Sorties are just boring to me, and invasions aren't far behind. Sure there are some unique items like the wraith and vandall weapons, but beyond those its pointless to go after and invasions. Most of those weapons aren't even that good IMO. And those are just 2 parts of the game that need updates, syndicates, ghoul purges, nightmare missions, and mission types in general could all use major updates.

rarely do syndicate missions, I've only done ghoul purges a handful of times, nightmare missions aren't even difficult, and everyone has their own preferences on what mission types they like and dislike. For me I love survival, and I'm ok with exterminate, capture, rescue, and sabotage. The missions I hate are mobile defense, defense, defect, and the new orphix missions. They're just soo slow, and/or restrictive its not even fun playing them for me, especially the orphix missions, those de-throne defense missions as my most hated mission type now with how they lock all your gear and force you into using necramechs.

Observations about warframe itself.

-Knockdowns, knockbacks, and staggers.

Lets get the obvious out of the way first, "primed sure footed" isn't a solution. Not only does it require a mod slot which can screw with builds, it also doesn't work. In my experience, it just turns knockdowns into knockbacks, which can be even more disorienting. With every update, we're getting more and more things that can stagger or knockdown the player, there is simply way too many of them now.

To list them all off (or as many as i could find with help from the wiki), ancient healers, ancient disruptors, toxic ancients, scorpions, anti moas, amalgam satyr, amalgam swarm satyr, ambulas, shockwave moas, swarm mutalist moas, tar mutalist moas, bombards, heavy gunners, napalms, hellions, leapers, shield lancers, mine ospreys, bailiffs, blitz eximus, arson eximus, and juggernauts are all units that have some form of knocking down the player.
As for stagger, aerolysts, amalgam herqet, amalgam arca heqet, choralysts, deimos jugulus, denial bursas, kyta raknoids, leaping thrasher, rollers, and scyto raknoids are all enemies that "with staggering attacks" as the wiki puts it.

And all that is just the enemies that can knockdown/stagger the player, without including the different variants for each one, which there are a lot of for most. We are also having the same problem develop with self-staggering weapons, if not more so.

Which include, acceltra, akarius, angstrum, arquebex, astilla, basmu, battacor, bubonico, carmine penta, catabolyst, cedo, cerata, concealed explosives (mod), corinth, corinth prime, cortege, cyanex, dissic scaffold (amp), exard scaffold (amp), exodia contagion (arcane), falcor, ferrox, glaive, glaive prime, granmu prism, grattler, helstrum, javlock, kestrel, komorex, kulstar, kuva ayanga, kuva bramma, kuva chakkhurr, kuva hind, kuva orgris, kuva seer, kuva tonkor, larkspur, lenz, mausolon, morgha, mutalist cernos, mutalist quanta, orgris, opticor, opticor vandal, orvius, panthera prime, pathocyst, penta, phahd scaffold (amp), phantasma, pox, prisma angstrum, proboscis cernos, propa scaffold (amp), quanta, quanta vandal, scourge, secura penta, sepulcrum, shedu, shraksun scaffold (amp), simulor, sonicor, sporothrix, stahlta, staticor, stug, synoid simulor, thunderbolt (mod), tiberon prime, tombfinger, tonkor, torid, trumna, vitrica, wolf sledge, xoris, zakti, zakti prime, zarr, zenistar, zhuge prime, and zymos are all of the weapons, operator amp parts, and mods that all have self stagger in alphabetical order, pretty sure there is even an arcane in there. Supposedly even "quick thinking" and "gladiator finesse" stagger you when draining your energy.

Those are all incredibly long lists of things that either stagger you, knocks you down, knocks you back, or self-staggers you. And those lists do not include environmental factors like the shock spheres in the new railjack that stagger you. I believe a bare minimum of half of everything listed should have its staggering, self staggering, knockback and knockdown removed. There are just way too many forms of staggering and knockdown now. Basically half the game interrupts you in some way now.

-Conclave, lunaro, and various minigames.

I'm not a fan of these things myself, but there is the odd player that does enjoy them, so I feel it necessary to at least mention them. These game modes/mini games have seemingly been completely abandoned by DE. I cannot remember ever hearing about a serious update to any of them.
Warframe is mainly PvE and i do not usually play any of the PvP modes, so this isn't really a problem for me personally, but I think the odd player that does play them would enjoy an update or 2 for them.

-Too many variants of the same enemy

With each update now, we're getting more and more variants of the exact same enemy. you have drekar elite lancers, exo elite lancers, kosma elite lancers, kuva elite lancer, and tusk elite lancers, all of which are the exact same enemy, minus a few minor damage type changes on maybe 1 or 2 of them. And that is just mentioning elite lancers, this happens with bombards, shield lancers, butchers, heavy gunners, nullifiers, and especially for crewmen, moas, and corpus in general. You don't need to give an enemy a different name or variant, just for a color change. In all honesty, I'd prefer no other color variants of the same enemy.

At this point, trying to understand what enemy your actually fighting is getting confusing. I should be able to just look at an enemy, and instantly know exactly what I'm fighting. But now, and especially with corpus, I can't do that anymore, certainly not to the same degree as before. If its mostly legs, its a moa... what kind of moa? Who knows! Don't believe me? Turn off your HUD so you can't see enemy names or health bars, then hop into the orb vallis or a corpus ship tileset, or corpus railjack and try to figure out which enemies are what.

Outro
Just as I bring this to a close, I'd like to remind everyone that this is meant as constructive criticism for areas I believe they could be doing better at. This is not meant as an attack on DE or warframe. I very much like and enjoy both the game and its developers. Warframe is easily my favorite game bar none, and I wish nothing but the best.

I know this post is a lot of text, but to try and summarize it.

TLDR:
Warframe has some growing problems developing with having too much knockback/stagger sources, and too many enemy variants to keep track of. Other lingering problems include abandoned and/or boring content such as syndicates, invasions, and even sorties and arbitrations to some extent.

DE's recent decisions and behaviors seem well intended, but also seem to be giving off the wrong impressions, and backfiring on themselves. They seem very busy on upcoming content, which is great, but that is inadvertently giving off the impression that they aren't really listening to their community. They certainly don't tell us as much as they should about these updates, and when they come out, players are becoming upset by how different they are from how DE explains them, or from how little DE tells us in the first place.

Venus-Venera · March 31, 2021

vor 2 Minuten schrieb Joezone619:

What I expect from DE as developers:

-To test each update before releasing it to the public, and publish the results/reviews.

-Updates should have as little bugs as possible on release. Regardless of if its on PC or console, the public release is not a test server.

-They should listen to feedback from players, and develop and make changes to content based on the majority of that feedback.

-They need to showcase progress on what they are developing, so players can give feedback on it, and show DE if we like it, if they should make major changes to it, or if they should scrap it, and try something else.

-To take their time developing updates, and not release as many updates as possible ASAP, leaving them all half-made and rushed.

Have fun with updates every 1-2 years and players online number under the earth's surface. after a few years the company can fire almost all employees.
code is very well tested and for better results you either need a lot more resources or a lot of time! and only gamers are mostly creative and discover bugs where almost every tester will never discover anything.
devs do listen to feedback. only a blind person can miss it in patch notes. In addition, there is so much rubbish in almost every post that I can only shake my head. whoever has no idea of "matter" has nothing to contribute. DE has not been broke for years and online players are constantly increasing. not without reason!
and the sense? should it be canceled when XX number of crybugs complain? or should ALL warframe players write a post about it? Have fun reading and EVALUATING, I can only say.
how about listening to interviews from 2013-2014? "updates is LIFE"! They understood that even then. DE devs may have asked other devs and everyone said the same thing. or ... see 1. ??!?

I find the rest to be pointless to read. if you don't understand the basics, then it's just pointless discussion and no feedback at all.
is not meant to be evil either. but this is about important things and reality looks different.

Joezone619 · March 31, 2021

4 minutes ago, Battle.Mage said:

Have fun with updates every 1-2 years and players online number under the earth's surface. after a few years the company can fire almost all employees.

code is very well tested and for better results you either need a lot more resources or a lot of time! and only gamers are mostly creative and discover bugs where almost every tester will never discover anything.

devs do listen to feedback. only a blind person can miss it in patch notes. In addition, there is so much rubbish in almost every post that I can only shake my head. whoever has no idea of "matter" has nothing to contribute. DE has not been broke for years and online players are constantly increasing. not without reason!

and the sense? should it be canceled when XX number of crybugs complain? or should ALL warframe players write a post about it? Have fun reading and EVALUATING, I can only say.

how about listening to interviews from 2013-2014? "updates is LIFE"! They understood that even then. DE devs may have asked other devs and everyone said the same thing. or ... see 1. ??!?

I find the rest to be pointless to read. if you don't understand the basics, then it's just pointless discussion and no feedback at all.
is not meant to be evil either. but this is about important things and reality looks different.

Fair is fair. To each their own, we all have our own opinions, this post is just my opinions and views on how they've been doing things recently.

VoidArkhangel · March 31, 2021

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

What I expect from DE as developers:
-To test each update before releasing it to the public, and publish the results/reviews.
-Updates should have as little bugs as possible on release. Regardless of if its on PC or console, the public release is not a test server.
-They should listen to feedback from players, and develop and make changes to content based on the majority of that feedback.
-They need to showcase progress on what they are developing, so players can give feedback on it, and show DE if we like it, if they should make major changes to it, or if they should scrap it, and try something else.
-To take their time developing updates, and not release as many updates as possible ASAP, leaving them all half-made and rushed.

Agreed but expecting having 0 bugs is just nonsense, almost no game has been released without. Now, if the bug is massive like the endless loading screen, then we have a problem since DE tested in the optimal enviroment but we know there isn't such a thing.

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Moving devstreams from weekly to monthly.

To me, it seems like they did this to reduce player backlash, but based on the devstreams so far, this has only had the opposit effect, aplifying it. I beleive they should now be considering that this backlash isn't based on how often they show stuff off, or just the usual backlash, they should be considering it is based on the content they're releasing, and the quality of it.

Agreed, the intention was to show rich content update since would be less quantity for more quality... I don't mind the FAQ section but where is that content update?

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Only listening to devs and/or warframe partners, over the majority of players.

To me, recent actions suggest they only listen to their devs and/or warframe partners, and almost completely ignore the feedback of their players. When almost every player asked them not to link warframe energy with railjack energy and to keep them separate, they just linked it anyways. When "Quite Shallow" released a video showing how much more powerful melee was then guns, within the week it was announced they were going to be making major changes to it. When "Brozime" released a video about the best reward spots in the railjack rework, those spots were nerfed in less then 24 hours, and apparently the devs only comments were "it was cool to see players coordinating" and labeled it as a bug fix.

Indeed, it seems like they only listen to themselves and not even their partners. Just look at Rahetalius or Jinzo instead they listen to this random player who thinks the universal medallion should not be universal.

Spoiler

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Forcing content upon players like necramechs with orphix venom.

I cannot stress enough how much I dislike necramechs now because of that event and this decision to make them borderline required. By disabling all warframes, all guns, and all melee weapons, they locked 90% of everything players spent countless hours on building, modding, refining, and improving. All of which was just thrown out the window and we were told "you use necramechs now". For those reasons I will use even operator over necramechs, and actively avoid orphix missions. At the time of the event, necramechs were barley a few months old, no updates have been made to balance them, and leveling them was insanely difficult. Not to mention to complete the event effectively, you essentially needed a fully forma'ed, leveled necramech, AND archgun if you were using bonewidow. If you were using voidrig, you could practically only use his 4th ability unmodded, and pass with flying colors. This shows how unbalanced and underdeveloped both necramechs and all archwing gear is.

Locking players out of almost all of their gear in my opinion was by far the poorest decision they have made. Nobody likes being forced into doing something. This is the same reason I dislike doing eidolon hunts, you are forced to use your operator to damage its shields. But at least with eidolons, your frames and weapons can be used to help even if there are limited options, there are still options present to begin with.

I disagree, the event was long enough to give you the time to craft a necra and most important:

We don't like to be forced to do something but if we are not forced we will never get out of our comfort zone.

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Completely disregarding the test clusters, and their feedback.

I believe the best example of this, is the "Deimos Arcana" update. The test clusters were used for that update to find bugs, and to find out how players would react to the update. Most if not all the test clusters said something like "the update is nice, but it really needs more work". DE then shipped the update the next day. This shows that DE clearly sees the test clusters as either a joke, a complete waste of time and recourses, or both and I have not heard of anything about the test clusters since that update. I believe the test clusters are DE's best tool for releasing great quality updates that satisfy players, and patching the majority of bugs before hand. I imagine many other players do as well, but clearly DE does not share that belief.

Completely agree, they could launch the update but they needed to adress all of those god damn bugs that were reported.

Spoiler

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Showing very little to nothing about updates before they release.

I believe this is a very poor decision. Surprises are nice, but with their track record from the beginning of 2020 to now, its clear they need to show a lot more about these updates so that we can offer proper feedback, so that they can make changes accordingly. As it stands, these updates are being given major backlash for how poor quality, rushed and different they are from what we are told. I believe the latest "Corpus Proxima" update shows this the best. We were told it was a complete rework for railjack, and that it was going to be more like how railjack was first shown to us during tennocon 2018-2019. We were shown little to nothing of what was actually in the update, and when we were given the update, is was completely different from both how railjack was before it, and from how it was originally suppose to be. Major changes were made that we were not told about, such as requiring all 4 players to enter the ship/station when it did not before to enter grinner galleons. Or how short the railjack portion of the new missions actually was, and so we were obviously disappointed. Major changes that we WERE told about, had feedback completely ignored, such as the plexus and having railjack energy linked with warframe energy.

Yes and no, if the updates are core gameplay changes then yes, pretty much like the railjack energy, anything else should be as secret as possible (u won't like to see the entire quest or all the secrets in trailers do u?)

Spoiler

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Always making new stuff, almost never going back to fix old stuff.

They really need to stop and go back to fix up a lot of old content before making more new stuff. I cannot tell you the last time i did a sortie, or an invaision outside of nightwave standing. Everything you can get from sorties that's worth it for me, you can get somewhere else, or get more easily by trading platinum. Sorties are just boring to me, and invasions aren't far behind. Sure there are some unique items like the wraith and vandall weapons, but beyond those its pointless to go after and invasions. Most of those weapons aren't even that good IMO. And those are just 2 parts of the game that need updates, syndicates, ghoul purges, nightmare missions, and mission types in general could all use major updates.

rarely do syndicate missions, I've only done ghoul purges a handful of times, nightmare missions aren't even difficult, and everyone has their own preferences on what mission types they like and dislike. For me I love survival, and I'm ok with exterminate, capture, rescue, and sabotage. The missions I hate are mobile defense, defense, defect, and the new orphix missions. They're just soo slow, and/or restrictive its not even fun playing them for me, especially the orphix missions, those de-throne defense missions as my most hated mission type now with how they lock all your gear and force you into using necramechs.

Spoiler

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Knockdowns, knockbacks, and staggers.

Lets get the obvious out of the way first, "primed sure footed" isn't a solution. Not only does it require a mod slot which can screw with builds, it also doesn't work. In my experience, it just turns knockdowns into knockbacks, which can be even more disorienting. With every update, we're getting more and more things that can stagger or knockdown the player, there is simply way too many of them now.

To list them all off (or as many as i could find with help from the wiki), ancient healers, ancient disruptors, toxic ancients, scorpions, anti moas, amalgam satyr, amalgam swarm satyr, ambulas, shockwave moas, swarm mutalist moas, tar mutalist moas, bombards, heavy gunners, napalms, hellions, leapers, shield lancers, mine ospreys, bailiffs, blitz eximus, arson eximus, and juggernauts are all units that have some form of knocking down the player.
As for stagger, aerolysts, amalgam herqet, amalgam arca heqet, choralysts, deimos jugulus, denial bursas, kyta raknoids, leaping thrasher, rollers, and scyto raknoids are all enemies that "with staggering attacks" as the wiki puts it.

And all that is just the enemies that can knockdown/stagger the player, without including the different variants for each one, which there are a lot of for most. We are also having the same problem develop with self-staggering weapons, if not more so.

Which include, acceltra, akarius, angstrum, arquebex, astilla, basmu, battacor, bubonico, carmine penta, catabolyst, cedo, cerata, concealed explosives (mod), corinth, corinth prime, cortege, cyanex, dissic scaffold (amp), exard scaffold (amp), exodia contagion (arcane), falcor, ferrox, glaive, glaive prime, granmu prism, grattler, helstrum, javlock, kestrel, komorex, kulstar, kuva ayanga, kuva bramma, kuva chakkhurr, kuva hind, kuva orgris, kuva seer, kuva tonkor, larkspur, lenz, mausolon, morgha, mutalist cernos, mutalist quanta, orgris, opticor, opticor vandal, orvius, panthera prime, pathocyst, penta, phahd scaffold (amp), phantasma, pox, prisma angstrum, proboscis cernos, propa scaffold (amp), quanta, quanta vandal, scourge, secura penta, sepulcrum, shedu, shraksun scaffold (amp), simulor, sonicor, sporothrix, stahlta, staticor, stug, synoid simulor, thunderbolt (mod), tiberon prime, tombfinger, tonkor, torid, trumna, vitrica, wolf sledge, xoris, zakti, zakti prime, zarr, zenistar, zhuge prime, and zymos are all of the weapons, operator amp parts, and mods that all have self stagger in alphabetical order, pretty sure there is even an arcane in there. Supposedly even "quick thinking" and "gladiator finesse" stagger you when draining your energy.

Those are all incredibly long lists of things that either stagger you, knocks you down, knocks you back, or self-staggers you. And those lists do not include environmental factors like the shock spheres in the new railjack that stagger you. I believe a bare minimum of half of everything listed should have its staggering, self staggering, knockback and knockdown removed. There are just way too many forms of staggering and knockdown now. Basically half the game interrupts you in some way now.

There should be a way to reduce the time staggered and a limit of times you can be knocked before a period of "invencibility" where you cannot be knocked again.

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Conclave, lunaro, and various minigames.

I'm not a fan of these things myself, but there is the odd player that does enjoy them, so I feel it necessary to at least mention them. These game modes/mini games have seemingly been completely abandoned by DE. I cannot remember ever hearing about a serious update to any of them.
Warframe is mainly PvE and i do not usually play any of the PvP modes, so this isn't really a problem for me personally, but I think the odd player that does play them would enjoy an update or 2 for them.

I would like to remove the tenno from conclave since, well, the lag doesn't allow to have such a great experience with a movement speed like the warframes. Instead of the warframes I would like to see PvP with the factions, I mean pretty much like Battlefront II but playing as Grineer, Corpus and maybe infested.

Spoiler

hace 1 hora, Joezone619 dijo:

-Too many variants of the same enemy

With each update now, we're getting more and more variants of the exact same enemy. you have drekar elite lancers, exo elite lancers, kosma elite lancers, kuva elite lancer, and tusk elite lancers, all of which are the exact same enemy, minus a few minor damage type changes on maybe 1 or 2 of them. And that is just mentioning elite lancers, this happens with bombards, shield lancers, butchers, heavy gunners, nullifiers, and especially for crewmen, moas, and corpus in general. You don't need to give an enemy a different name or variant, just for a color change. In all honesty, I'd prefer no other color variants of the same enemy.

At this point, trying to understand what enemy your actually fighting is getting confusing. I should be able to just look at an enemy, and instantly know exactly what I'm fighting. But now, and especially with corpus, I can't do that anymore, certainly not to the same degree as before. If its mostly legs, its a moa... what kind of moa? Who knows! Don't believe me? Turn off your HUD so you can't see enemy names or health bars, then hop into the orb vallis or a corpus ship tileset, or corpus railjack and try to figure out which enemies are what.

I don't mind having 10 variants of the same enemy, I do mind the absolute nonsense the codex is but anyways I would like more special units than just recolors, just look at these new units on Corpus proxima they are awesome!

Also why the Corpus got their hand on new weapons and we didn't??? Again

Emolition · March 31, 2021

1 hour ago, Joezone619 said:

When "Brozime" released a video about the best reward spots in the railjack rework, those spots were nerfed in less then 24 hours, and apparently the devs only comments were "it was cool to see players coordinating" and labeled it as a bug fix.

Don't have to label it a bug when its 100% obvious a bug and everyone always tell them to fix bugs so they did. As some bugs are easier to fix like a script that runs more then 1 time.

I never ran the mission bug even if i had ran it I wouldn't cry over a fix for something that so obvious broken just for it benefit players it shouldn't be left alone.

(PSN)ggh667124 · April 1, 2021

11 hours ago, Joezone619 said:

Only listening to devs and/or warframe partners, over the majority of players.

To me, recent actions suggest they only listen to their devs and/or warframe partners, and almost completely ignore the feedback of their players. When almost every player asked them not to link warframe energy with railjack energy and to keep them separate, they just linked it anyways. When "Quite Shallow" released a video showing how much more powerful melee was then guns, within the week it was announced they were going to be making major changes to it. When "Brozime" released a video about the best reward spots in the railjack rework, those spots were nerfed in less then 24 hours, and apparently the devs only comments were "it was cool to see players coordinating" and labeled it as a bug fix.

Not really , or at the least you chose bad examples . Everyone agrees melee trivialize the game , just because they referenced quite shallow doesn’t mean they were inspired by her only , if anything they saw their stat sheets and knew then . Also the brozime video didn’t matter since it was obviously intentional. Either way they don’t seem to listen to any feedback in general .

11 hours ago, Joezone619 said:

Forcing content upon players like necramechs with orphix venom.

I cannot stress enough how much I dislike necramechs now because of that event and this decision to make them borderline required. By disabling all warframes, all guns, and all melee weapons, they locked 90% of everything players spent countless hours on building, modding, refining, and improving. All of which was just thrown out the window and we were told "you use necramechs now". For those reasons I will use even operator over necramechs, and actively avoid orphix missions. At the time of the event, necramechs were barley a few months old, no updates have been made to balance them, and leveling them was insanely difficult. Not to mention to complete the event effectively, you essentially needed a fully forma'ed, leveled necramech, AND archgun if you were using bonewidow. If you were using voidrig, you could practically only use his 4th ability unmodded, and pass with flying colors. This shows how unbalanced and underdeveloped both necramechs and all archwing gear is.

Locking players out of almost all of their gear in my opinion was by far the poorest decision they have made. Nobody likes being forced into doing something. This is the same reason I dislike doing eidolon hunts, you are forced to use your operator to damage its shields. But at least with eidolons, your frames and weapons can be used to help even if there are limited options, there are still options present to begin with.

This portion makes no sense to me at all, you make it sound as if players have no option to progress into these “locked” systems .

Your argument falls apart because it’s just game progression design , I’ve seen similar arguments where people say “if you bring back raids , don’t lock it behind groups” it’s paradoxical . One of the main things about what would make raids appealing is the aspect of group cohesiveness . While In the orphix situation it would make it so mechs have no actual purpose which everyone was asking for before the event , like why would I choose a less agile character that can’t easily regenerate all its energy or health and dps is not even that great . When I can just use a volt shock trooper roar + sniper and 1 shot orphix . You might say fun, but that’s not how practicality works . The player base will choose efficiency, because greed , and even to save time for life in general .

11 hours ago, Joezone619 said:

Knockdowns, knockbacks, and staggers.

Lets get the obvious out of the way first, "primed sure footed" isn't a solution. Not only does it require a mod slot which can screw with builds, it also doesn't work. In my experience, it just turns knockdowns into knockbacks, which can be even more disorienting. With every update, we're getting more and more things that can stagger or knockdown the player, there is simply way too many of them now.

I have an issue with this but not for your reasons , I feel like they babied the system of self damage weapons , it’s pathetic . I wasn’t a fan of getting 1 shot by my own explosion but I didn’t expect it to be completely rid of . I was thinking they would just have the damage set to specific values rather than % of modded damage . So instead of cautious shot still killing you from taking 1% damage of a million , the damage would just be 100-200 self damage and never reaching those huge values .

DrivaMain · April 1, 2021

23 minutes ago, (PSN)ggh667124 said:

Your argument falls apart because it’s just game progression design , I’ve seen similar arguments where people say “if you bring back raids , don’t lock it behind groups” it’s paradoxical . One of the main things about what would make raids appealing is the aspect of group cohesiveness .

This is not Destiny where Bungie are willing to satisfy the minority and Destiny’s player base is indifferent regarding Raids existence . DE is the opposite of bungie. DE wants to satisfy the majority. Since "Forced CO-OP" raids are not what the majority of the player base wanted, they will have to make the lone wolves to take a slice of the content. If not, well they can always vote with their wallets or leave the mode to rot, making DE to question if the venture is profitable or not.

(PSN)ggh667124 · April 1, 2021

4 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

This is not Destiny where Bungie are willing to satisfy the minority and the player base liked raids. DE is the opposite of bungie. DE wants to satisfy the majority. Since "Forced CO-OP" raids are not what the majority of the player base wanted, they will have to make the lone wolves to take a slice of the content. If not, well they can always vote with their wallets or leave the mode to rot, making DE to question if the venture is profitable or not.

It just seems like it could be such a creative limitation, just to Cather to people who I assume are shy . I can only imagine the amount of raid content that railjack can produce . “Orb spider space fight” being one I really hope happens . Even a revamped Jordan’s verdict with only the kill phase and maybe some small objectives .

Andele3025 · April 1, 2021

13 hours ago, Battle.Mage said:

Code is very well tested and for better results you either need a lot more resources or a lot of time! and only gamers are mostly creative and discover bugs where almost every tester will never discover anything.

Its more time, but hell from test cluster to live in deimos arcana there were already 70+ notable and easy for any actual player of a frame to notice bugs that got fixed.
I mean the trashxecute nerf to nekros 1 shadows used to not even get the hp and damage multiplication while keeping other shadows hp loss value (numerical/not its own%) and if you did it when a enemy was in a cced state (which oh god idk how it could ever be when its on a skill which when used in melee or low elevation, presumably because you wish tho move through a group, causes a knockdown and its other more common primary use is to yeet a aura unit away from others) could even derp your shadow que priority... and it still doesnt add the killed shadow to the shadow pool if used for the heal (aka when no shadow is created thus there is no logic why you should lose a extra shadow on the pool) the only kinda sorta maybe efficient bit of that nerfslap. I mean similarly it took 2+ years for ivara to get her navigator projectile pause state back despite the bug being posted by multiple people (and was a top post on the subreddit for a short bit) the moment the patch that broke it hit.

TLDR: Some things do take more time than DE had with test cluster, but the bigger issue seems to be issues that just get ignored as "not yet relevant bugs".

Steel_Rook · April 1, 2021

On 2021-03-31 at 9:07 PM, Joezone619 said:

What I expect from DE as developers:
-To test each update before releasing it to the public, and publish the results/reviews.
-Updates should have as little bugs as possible on release. Regardless of if its on PC or console, the public release is not a test server.
-They should listen to feedback from players, and develop and make changes to content based on the majority of that feedback.
-They need to showcase progress on what they are developing, so players can give feedback on it, and show DE if we like it, if they should make major changes to it, or if they should scrap it, and try something else.
-To take their time developing updates, and not release as many updates as possible ASAP, leaving them all half-made and rushed.

What exactly are you basing, like... Any of these expectations on? DE pretty much straight-up said that the PC branch was going to serve as an Open Beta test of the Railjack changes before they're submitted to console certification. They've always done this, near as I can tell. We may laugh at their "Open Beta" designation for this commercial product of 8 years, but they are absolutely treating it as one. You speak like you've been with the game since the start (which I can't confirm or deny), so you should already be familiar with this enough to not set unreasonable expectation. I mean sure, it would be NICE to get finished updates but this is what you're getting. Expecting more is setting yourself up for disappointment. Approach Warframe like you would any Early Access title, because that's how DE treat it.

As to listening to "majority" "player feedback" - err, that's a terrible idea. It's not that listening to players is wrong - obviously not. It's that players are on average pretty good at identifying problems but pretty bad at identifying solutions. The last thing you want is a game designed by player poll, because players by and large don't know what's good for them. Other than argumentative A******s like myself, who do you think is going to vote for "Nerf Xoris combo counter" or "Nerf Tether?" Who's going to vote against "Just main everyone 10 Umbral Forma."

I have some experience being involved in "private servers" for otherwise commercial MMOs, and I can tell you from experience - players will almost always vote to strip as much of the game away as possible. They will vote against their own self-interest. This is why we're posting in a "Feedback" forum, not a "Requisitions" forum. Your opinion and mine matter, to the extent that we can make a good, convincing argument and change DE's mind. On rare occasions, overwhelming player pressure will get things changed, usually to a chorus of "kowtowing to <insert demographic>" from detractors. On most occasions, it won't change a damn thing. If it did, we'd have Universal Vacuum by now.

What you described above is pretty much Call of Duty. You get one game per year, it's polishes as much as necessary and it's more or less what the players want - which exactly the same thing as last year, but it looks different now. I'm personally fine with a certain amount of jank as long as the game keeps moving forward.

Xzorn · April 1, 2021

There's a lot here but a lot of it can be summed up in that DE no longer has a defined audience.

DE can't listen to feedback well because it's turned into white noise and that's mostly their own fault. When Warframe came out it had a fairly clear direction and group of players who had interest in the game. It was pretty easy to get points across back them. We have endless missions because DE listened to the community. DE also had "Community Leaders" ie streamers / Youtubers with a defined or dedicated interest in the game which DE could also take notes from.

Since around Plains of Eidolon none of that is the case anymore. DE tries to appease everyone except their veterans in attempts to recreate the boon they saw with that content. There's never really been defined end-game though the community made their own with Void endurance runs. The development direction went 20 different directions at once which left players wondering what type of game this is and thus started the white noise of feedback. Since pretty much none of their content appealed to most veteran players they also lost their community leaders to take pointers from on what players are enjoying right now. So they're now spread all over the place with half finished products probably looking solely at statistical values instead of people playing and don't have a clue what to do anymore.

Biggest mistake they made was ignoring their Veterans. Everyone is or will soon be veterans and come to similar conclusions.
Something along the lines of "Okay I'm done with that sandbox grind, now what?".

Vaml77 · April 1, 2021

In life I learned that creating excess expectations is bad because it creates anxiety in people and that is not at all healthy. Don't expect too much from other people. Before this update of railjack 3.0, many people suggested that DE not remove the energy flow from railjack. Our feedback here on the DE forum doesn't get to their ears quickly because they are already working on it and with little information. What DE has to do is change the work philosophy .... collect information and opinions, mature ideas, research the changes. What DE did with the energy flow was something that the vast majority did not like. At first some liked it but some time passed and everyone realized that linking warframe energy to railjack was not a good idea. And the railjack upgrade system was literally very easy. Just take any zetki part, or lavan or vidar and the railjack is already extremely powerful. There is no more effort to improve our ship ... it became something like a k-drive or archwing. Railjack deserved much more attention from DE and what we saw was not at all satisfactory.

quxier · April 2, 2021

On 2021-03-31 at 8:25 PM, Battle.Mage said:

Have fun with updates every 1-2 years and players online number under the earth's surface. after a few years the company can fire almost all employees.

code is very well tested and for better results you either need a lot more resources or a lot of time! and only gamers are mostly creative and discover bugs where almost every tester will never discover anything.

Really?

It's not well tested. Sure, the game hasn't crashed at all (and I don't have good PC!) but it's not all good. From my experience with now old content:

- 2nd-ary Vermisplicer doesn't work - either it won't "catch" enemies or catch enemies that are somewhere else

- Certain abilities turn off sprinting. I started noticing it with Lavos' Vial rush (I or another person posted about it) and now we have this "feature" with Zephyr's Hover.

Those are basics. It's hard to not to see it. And even you somehow couldn't see then we have bug & feedback section.

DrivaMain · April 2, 2021

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

There's a lot here but a lot of it can be summed up in that DE no longer has a defined audience.

They do, which is the casuals and new to midgame players.

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Biggest mistake they made was ignoring their Veterans.

I don't think they don't listen to veterans in general. They don't listen to the hardcore challenge seekers of the warframe community. Remember not all veterans are endurance runners, masochists, raiders, etc.

Steel_Rook · April 2, 2021

3 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Biggest mistake they made was ignoring their Veterans. Everyone is or will soon be veterans and come to similar conclusions.

Unfortunately, this is false on its face, both in this case and nearly every case where it's brought up. One of the worst things you can do as a game developer is "listen to the veterans," especially in an MMO or a Live Service. Veterans are usually well into burnout, which makes then an unpleasable fanbase. Veterans have a counter-intuitively narrow view of what constitutes "the game," due to considering large sections of it pointless. Veterans often hold long-term irrational grudges against individual developers, changes or game design principles. Veterans are inflexible and resistant of the sort of deep systemic change a Live Service needs in order to survive long-term. And crucially - veterans are harder to monetise because they already have everything.

Sure, individual veteran players have the skillset necessary to examine game design and implementation objectively, as well as offer professional solutions. In my experience, that's a very small fraction of the total veteran population, however. Indeed, such players are often more helpful due to their professional qualifications than necessarily their seniority - this is why I advocate listening to "newbies" with well-thought-out, well-argued points to make even if they lack experience. Outside of exceptional issue where the whole community can be seen to agree (and metrics will usually show this better than written feedback), trying to listen to players - especially veteran players - leads game design down a path of tunnel vision and disenfranchisement.

Live Services survive on churn. They survive on attracting new players and expanding the experience for existing players. Unless you're a major title put there by exceptional zeitgeist (like Quake or Counter-Strike or Call of Duty), you're not going to survive on a stagnant player base. Any player playing any Live Service needs to be prepared for the day when they are no longer the target audience and either adapt or move on. Take this from someone whose "fandom" has outlived several long-running Live Services it was directed towards. Don't look for a "forever game," don't try to be a "veteran." The expectation that playing a game for a long time entitles you to a say in the future of its development is asking for disappointment.

Xzorn · April 2, 2021

@DrivaMain

It's not even casual or midgame. It's more of a rotating door philosophy IMO. Come in, buy stuff, don't stay.

You're generalizing veteran into a certain type of player which there are/were many types. Endurance runs and similar were created by the community because we simply had nothing else to do. Regardless of the veteran's play style this is still going to result in being true long as DE insist on slowly making entirely non-connected content instead of letting systems in the game do some of the work. The most important part being connecting content in more than just items to walk away with.

@Steel_Rook

I don't find the first statement true. I'm an example of it even. Still, here but don't play anymore. I have no burn out. I simply have no interest in anything DE has made and I don't feel a need. There's stuff for me to do but it's mostly the same and I know I'll just sleep through it but there's also far more to it.

Yea, veterans generally have the ability to objectively examine the game but under current conditions that skillset it near pointless so they leave. Even if they're not veterans the same is true. Once a player sees the glaring flaws of the game and that nothing is going to change. They leave. Esp with how obvious the grind wheel is now.

This is part of the white noise condition DE has created by having no design direction.

Path of Exile would actually be either an anomaly or example that your 3rd claim is not correct. It gets new players but has continued to grow with it's veterans and target audience. It's community leaders of 8 years are still streaming and often beat Warframe on twitch in views just playing the game. For Youtube it's not even close. Never has been. Yes Path essentially hits a reset button every 3 months but it works for the design structure and they also manage to push content every 3 months with changes, size and quality that dwarf Warframe who has three times the staff. Comparatively this makes DE look either lazy or inept. Not a good look.

There is a certain structure that has to be followed in order to make a long lived RPG and it's one DE has pretty much never followed.

Build diversity, re-play ability and Difficulty being three main pinnacles of such a design. To be fair most games with an RPG structure don't follow this anymore though and that's why they die out. Bringing it back to my first portion "there's also far more to it.". One major removal was a player's need to lose and/or repair items as part of an enduring economy system. This is one of many concepts where you hook both new and old players at the same time. There are other ways to monetize veterans as well. Exclusive skins and effects. Ya know. Ephemeras that DE made all these claims about but everyone and their grandma has.

Exclusives are an easy way to keep all people playing, esp veterans. However with DE's current system. I don't have to play because there aren't any. I will never miss out on anything and in fact get things quicker than those who play content when it's new. This is backwards.

I mostly mention Path because I started both games early 2013. Path still gets money out of me being the same age so there are many design structures that can be utilized and this conversation could turn into a book but safe to say DE doesn't use these methods. As a developer of mods I listen to my community because players know exactly what my mods are intended to do so they can offer advise tailored to that design. When players don't know what your game is, how do they offer advice? Thus the white noise, no feedback, devs disconnected, further lack of direction in a circle that just gets worse.

Steel_Rook · April 2, 2021

5 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I don't find the first statement true. I'm an example of it even. Still, here but don't play anymore. I have no burn out. I simply have no interest in anything DE has made and I don't feel a need. There's stuff for me to do but it's mostly the same and I know I'll just sleep through it but there's also far more to it.

There are exceptions to every rule, so there are going to be a lot of exceptions to as broad a generalisation as I made. Fair enough. Hell, I myself am an exception to this rule since I've been around for 3500 hours and own just about everything, but I still play the game semi-actively just because the core concepts are fun. Railjack 3.0 has become one of my favourite modes simply because it's an experience I don't get in pretty much any other game. At the same time, however, I can't in good conscience argue that DE should listen to me for any of the above reasons. Sure, I'll make suggestions and leave feedback, but I rely on the strength of the arguments I present to hopefully get it heard, not just on seniority or experience or - heaven forbid - name recognition.

Put it this way - our opinions carry only as much weight as the work we put into forming and presenting them. As veterans, we're better equipped to do that... But this only counts if we actually bother to do it. If a veteran is willing to put in the work to test things, experiment with them, work through the numbers, work through the practical design and implementation challenges and come up with at least theoretically working solution, then by all means DE should listen. They'd be foolish not to. By the same token, though - if a newbie does the same, they should listen to said newbie as well. It's the contents of one's feedback that count, not the credentials of the one leaving said feedback.

The reason I slag veterans is because, by and large, people who self-identify as such don't bother doing that. When I was still a new player a few years ago, I saw all the same conversations about how balance is bad and the game is broken, but few people actually bothered to explain WHY. I didn't know and - from limited experience - couldn't tell. It wasn't until I dug into the numbers myself and started asking the right questions that I got any sort of a meaningful idea of the issues. Veterans seemed content to complain in an idle fashion without offering much in the way of substance.

And sure - you'll see me describe things as "sucking ass" with no context here and there... Usually as a joke. But when it comes to stuff like Energy, buff scaling, enemy scaling, armour, etc. - I will argue details, specifics and implementation until people are sick of hearing it because that's the stuff that actually matters. The devil is in the details. If veterans want to be heard, get involved in the details and put in your legwork. I'm not going to claim that "this or that change happened because of me," but a lot of the stuff I've proposed over the years has ended up in the game in some fashion or another eventually. I doubt it's because I said anything about it, but I like to think that the conversation we had on the subject helped at least put ideas in DE's heads. Maybe none of it helped and DE just came to the conclusion independently, but I choose to make the effort regardless.

Point being - the people whom DE should be listening to aren't the "veterans." They're people with something to say. Veterans are better equipped to do so, but they still need to do it if they want to be heard.

5 hours ago, Xzorn said:

One major removal was a player's need to lose and/or repair items as part of an enduring economy system. This is one of many concepts where you hook both new and old players at the same time. There are other ways to monetize veterans as well. Exclusive skins and effects. Ya know. Ephemeras that DE made all these claims about but everyone and their grandma has. Exclusives are an easy way to keep all people playing, esp veterans. However with DE's current system. I don't have to play because there aren't any. I will never miss out on anything and in fact get things quicker than those who play content when it's new. This is backwards.

I'll try to choose my words carefully here because I don't want to come across like I'm criticising you personally, but "all of this is horrible." Yes, those are ways to retain players, but they're all horrifyingly bad, exploitative, manipulative anti-consumer practices. Sure, Warframe already has those in spades between unrepentant grind, time gates and P2W, but... I'd rather not have more. Exclusives are something I'm never, EVER going to support. They're manufactured scarcity by means of FOMO. They exploit basic human psychology to make us act against our own self-interest. No, thank you. There's a reason Nightwave received as aggressively negative a response as it did on initial implementation, and still rightfully gets the occasional round of criticism. DE tried to implement ostensibly a free Battle Pass, leaning into FOMO to ensure that we either play on THEIR schedule, or we miss out. And we wouldn't want to miss out, would we?

Upkeep is an even worse aspect of gaming. No joke - that was the make-or-break decision for me back when I was first starting out. Howl of the Kubrow got me a pet. I read up on that pet and discovered that it would require Genetic Stabilisers and interaction to keep its stats. I discovered that both Genetic Stability and Loyalty would decay over time, especially if I don't play for a while. Right then and there, I nearly dropped the game because that's just bullS#&$. Luckily, I made a thread on the Steam forums about how much of this game I can ignore, and players informed me that I could easily ignore Kubrows entirely without missing out on much of the game. If I'd had to pay upkeep for the sodding pet, I'd have left the game and never looked back. Upkeep is THAT much of a turn-off for me.

The more time a game asks me to spend earning the right to play it, the less inclined I am to bother. Wasting my time with upkeep is one of the most anti-consumer things I can think of. And sure - Warframe still does this by costing me resources any time I want to craft Energy Restores. The only reason I put up with is it's at least a small enough amount of resources relative to how often I use the things that it doesn't really matter, but the concept still bothers me on an ideological level. Any video game which retains its players this way is a game I can't respect. Sorry - I know this comes across like a personal anecdote of stomping my feet, but this is something I can't look past on an ideological level.

Yes, Path of Exile is an outlier. I personally couldn't stand it back when it came out and haven't seen a single reason to try it again... But to each his own. Won't fault you for enjoying it. Warframe itself is an outlier, though. Not a lot of games out there that have survived for 8 years, still look as good as this one and constantly reinvent themselves. And I mean ACTUALLY reinvent themselves, not "we started a new season and reset your progress." I'm still here precisely BECAUSE Warframe doesn't have a fixed playerbase in mind that it's only catering to, but rather keeps introducing new things outside its core audience's preference. I didn't know I wanted a space ship in my space ninja wizard pirate game. Now that I have it, I can't imagine ever not having it and wish for the entire game to involve it in some capacity. I've not kept up with Path of Exiles so I can't say if they've done something of this nature, but I have my doubts.

Expecting Digital Extremes to conduct themselves like Grinding Gear Games is I think a recipe for disappointment. Personally, I feel Warframe works best when played with long breaks and short bursts when new content comes out but before the monotony of the grind kicks in. Trying to get overly-involved in its development doesn't strike me as a good use of one's time and energy.

Xzorn · April 2, 2021

@Steel_Rook

Upkeep is just moving the grind to a different area with the side effect of keeping older content relevant. Obviously it isn't going to work in Warframe as the economy has already crashed years ago. Last I played the only thing worth anything were RNG Rivens and talk about bad practice. Kubrow upkeep was bad because it was timed. The same applies to their login reward system which is still in the game but this isn't what I'm talking about referencing upkeep.

You speak about exclusives like they were never a part of the game but that's actually one of many reasons I quit. DE even went as low to use exclusives on a 0.01% drop chance in otherwise awful events to bait players into playing unlike normally where the cosmetic is simply offered at a low bar of participation. I seriously pity anyone who tried to sit in one of the two events offering Rift Sigil only to have DE give it away later. DE loves to kick its fans in the face like that.

DE actually went worse with Primed Chamber. Offering it as a super special reward on streams. This is an item. Something that should never be exclusive.

I have some cosmetics to show for playing Path since 2013. I have nothing to show for Warframe except watching everyone get what I worked for free.

Reinvent themselves is pretty generous. DE makes side modules of the original game that generally have nothing to do with the original game or each other. If I drop down on Sedna I'm going to get exactly the same experience I had 7 years back. DE found their own reset button by creating these module systems. Warframe. The game you might have played in 2015 has pretty much not changed at all.

Steel_Rook · April 2, 2021

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Upkeep is just moving the grind to a different area with the side effect of keeping older content relevant. Obviously it isn't going to work in Warframe as the economy has already crashed years ago. Last I played the only thing worth anything were RNG Rivens and talk about bad practice. Kubrow upkeep was bad because it was timed. The same applies to their login reward system which is still in the game but this isn't what I'm talking about referencing upkeep.

I don't agree. Let me take a bit of a detour and I can explain why. 15 years ago, City of Heroes (yes, that again - hear me out) had a unique system for death penalty. When you die, you don't "lose" XP, but rather earn "XP debt." Any XP you earn is split 50/50 between giving you actual XP for level progression and working off your debt. On the surface, this difference seems academic. Whether you're taxing players on what they make or what they've already made doesn't matter... Does it? But there's one subtle difference in there - with XP debt, you can never go BACK. No matter how slow your progress becomes, you're always earning SOME XP - you're always making progress.

Contrast this with Diablo 2, which would just remove XP down to the previous level. In that game, I became trapped in a no-win situation. I died so often that I would literally lose more XP than I was making, keeping me locked at a low level. Because that game doesn't give me a chance to return to lower difficulty settings, I ended up on the Hell difficulty drastically over-levelled and dying so often I could never actually level up. That's about the point where I dropped the game and gave up on it entirely.

"Upkeep" vs. "Rewards" is the same way. While the median expected effort may be the same on paper, the same subtle difference applies. I can never lose rewards I've earned. My Tenora will never go away, my Inaros will never get locked again. Anything I've earned, I get to keep. If I decide to not play the game for 3 months (like I did recently), none of my items go away. If I decide to entirely ignore most of the game's other modes (like I did with Railjack 3.0), my gear doesn't degrade or break or time out - the game doesn't force me to go play game modes I don't like or miss out.

...most of the time. As you'll note in my posts here - you're absolutely right that Warframe also does some of these things. Nightwave is a Battle Pass. I either play a bunch of missions I don't feel like or I don't get an Aura Forma (or two). If I use too many Energy Restores, I run out of resources forcing me to play on specific planets. It's what I use my Extractors these days. I never even bother using those instant full health restores because they cost plants to make, and #*!% THAT! I agree that Warframe is guilty of upkeep in some instances, and I absolutely resent it for that. The older I get, the more strongly I dislike the idea of upkeep.

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

You speak about exclusives like they were never a part of the game but that's actually one of many reasons I quit. DE even went as low to use exclusives on a 0.01% drop chance in otherwise awful events to bait players into playing unlike normally where the cosmetic is simply offered at a low bar of participation. I seriously pity anyone who tried to sit in one of the two events offering Rift Sigil only to have DE give it away later. DE loves to kick its fans in the face like that.

I don't disagree here. Warframe is guilty of exclusives, absolutely - Nightwave, as I mentioned. I'm not even talking about stuff like Excalibur Prime - fine, whatever, keep your legacy Founder exclusive. But even simpler stuff like event-locked rewards. They're rarely all that powerful or all that special, but so much of this game is locked behind stuff that we can't play on our own schedule. Razorback, Fomorian, Plage Star - even Baro Ki'Teer.

Please don't take my post for a defence of Warframe - I have more gripes with this game than I have positive things to say about it. My experience with Warframe is an exercise in figuring out how much of it I can ignore, sideline and deliberately avoid while still technically playing it, because it's SO stacked with Live Service monetisation bullS#&$. Lootboxes, a Battle Pass, appointment mechanics out the wazoo, FOMO, timers and more. The one major bit of information I had on Warframe prior to playing it seriously was Jim Sterling fawning over how Digital Extremes removed a loot box from the game that one time, and also decided to sell their anti-consumer "vaulted" packs separately for cosmetics and Warframes. I used to trust Jim for that sort of thing, so imagine my surprise when I actually got to grips with the underlying game.

I swear... This game often feels like a good product fundamentally undermined by its monetisation and progression system. Becoming a whale was about the only way I could find to enjoy this game without burning myself out on it permanently. That and not a lot else is what allows me to disregard so much of the timesink nonsense.

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Reinvent themselves is pretty generous. DE makes side modules of the original game that generally have nothing to do with the original game or each other. If I drop down on Sedna I'm going to get exactly the same experience I had 7 years back. DE found their own reset button by creating these module systems. Warframe. The game you might have played in 2015 has pretty much not changed at all.

I can address this a couple of ways. Firstly, I'm not sure I agree entirely. While I dislike Free Roam maps, the systems which came with them are an objective improvement over the rest of the game prior. A large non-linear map, multi-stage missions with semi-procedurally-generated objectives, an open space to use our Archwings in, a less stringent mission objective structure allowing us to either loop missions back-to-back or alternately leave early. That's a big deal. Bigger for me, because I absolutely hated Cetus when I first saw it (doesn't help that it looks like World of Warcraft) so I left it at the very END of my experience with the game at the time. That's not nothing. If DE had actually taken this opportunity to retrofit these mechanics into legacy missions, we would have been playing a different game.

Railjack 3.0 is the same thing, except in an even more significant fashion. The Railjack mission structure has the capacity to replace quite literally the entire rest of the game, because not a single mission exists in Warframe which can't be done in Railjack. Free Roam might be a technical issue due to system requirements, but every other "ground" and Archwing mission can be done in Railjack and done better. Don't have a Railjack? Use an Archwing. Don't have an Archwing? Use a Landing Craft. Everyone has one of those. Give the Orbiter its own exterior, let us fly that and jump out in our Landing Craft. This CAN be done. It won't be done because people hate fundamental change, but it could.

DE have implemented MASSIVE changes to the way Warframe works and exists. It's just that they never retrofit them in old content. This gives the impression that the game isn't changing because we can just keep going back to content that's barely changed since Launch. They made babysteps in this direction with the tileset remasters, but I wish they'd do more.

Secondly... There's the concept of "enough." Let me explain - I'm not being facetious. Every Live Service eventually reaches a critical point in its development where it has "enough" content. That is to say, there's so much content that the average player can cycle through it without burning out or repeating much of it. That's where Payday 2 sits for me right now - it has enough heists that I can play a new one every time. By the time I run through all of them, it feels like I haven't run the first few heists, so they in turn feel new again. Warframe has drastically more content than Payday 2 - more than enough. The chief problem here is the same as above - DE don't seem to realise this.

Every time new content comes out, the grind forces us to play it and NOT it. When Fortuna came out, all the new content and new loot was added to it. For 6 sodding months, I had no reason to play anything else. That gets really old really fast, which is stupid given how much other content there is. DE do that stupid thing developers do sometimes where they judge new content in isolation and want as much traffic through it as possible. I judge new content by how much it enhances legacy content. When the Jovian Concord came out, it instantly enhanced damn near all the old legacy missions in the game, plus Sorties and Nightmares and so on. That's because the Jupiter Remastered wasn't a "content island." It was an enhancement to the breadth of the game.

Warframe is designed ass-backwards. It's heavily reward-driven, but each reward can only be earned from a small subsection of content, and a smaller subsection of that is actually efficient. We have hundreds of missions, but we only ever play, like... I don't know, five? That's not because "there's no reward" for doing anything else - they're fun! Rather it's the opposite - DE want me to play for rewards, but only a small subset of content has the rewards I want at a time. They do a TERRIBLE job actually utilising their own content, to the point I had to "cheat" the game's level scaling system by using Liches. At least that gives me a fixed enemy level across the Star Chart so I can play Earth, Mars, Ceres and such missions without it feeling like a god damn waste of my time.

Again - I have plenty of gripes with Warframe. I still thing the game has potential, however. And honestly, I'll take potential over retention most of the time.

(XBOX)TigerTank 5th · April 2, 2021

51 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't agree. Let me take a bit of a detour and I can explain why. 15 years ago, City of Heroes (yes, that again - hear me out) had a unique system for death penalty. When you die, you don't "lose" XP, but rather earn "XP debt." Any XP you earn is split 50/50 between giving you actual XP for level progression and working off your debt. On the surface, this difference seems academic. Whether you're taxing players on what they make or what they've already made doesn't matter... Does it? But there's one subtle difference in there - with XP debt, you can never go BACK. No matter how slow your progress becomes, you're always earning SOME XP - you're always making progress.

Contrast this with Diablo 2, which would just remove XP down to the previous level. In that game, I became trapped in a no-win situation. I died so often that I would literally lose more XP than I was making, keeping me locked at a low level. Because that game doesn't give me a chance to return to lower difficulty settings, I ended up on the Hell difficulty drastically over-levelled and dying so often I could never actually level up. That's about the point where I dropped the game and gave up on it entirely.

"Upkeep" vs. "Rewards" is the same way. While the median expected effort may be the same on paper, the same subtle difference applies. I can never lose rewards I've earned. My Tenora will never go away, my Inaros will never get locked again. Anything I've earned, I get to keep. If I decide to not play the game for 3 months (like I did recently), none of my items go away. If I decide to entirely ignore most of the game's other modes (like I did with Railjack 3.0), my gear doesn't degrade or break or time out - the game doesn't force me to go play game modes I don't like or miss out.

...most of the time. As you'll note in my posts here - you're absolutely right that Warframe also does some of these things. Nightwave is a Battle Pass. I either play a bunch of missions I don't feel like or I don't get an Aura Forma (or two). If I use too many Energy Restores, I run out of resources forcing me to play on specific planets. It's what I use my Extractors these days. I never even bother using those instant full health restores because they cost plants to make, and #*!% THAT! I agree that Warframe is guilty of upkeep in some instances, and I absolutely resent it for that. The older I get, the more strongly I dislike the idea of upkeep.

I don't disagree here. Warframe is guilty of exclusives, absolutely - Nightwave, as I mentioned. I'm not even talking about stuff like Excalibur Prime - fine, whatever, keep your legacy Founder exclusive. But even simpler stuff like event-locked rewards. They're rarely all that powerful or all that special, but so much of this game is locked behind stuff that we can't play on our own schedule. Razorback, Fomorian, Plage Star - even Baro Ki'Teer.

Please don't take my post for a defence of Warframe - I have more gripes with this game than I have positive things to say about it. My experience with Warframe is an exercise in figuring out how much of it I can ignore, sideline and deliberately avoid while still technically playing it, because it's SO stacked with Live Service monetisation bullS#&$. Lootboxes, a Battle Pass, appointment mechanics out the wazoo, FOMO, timers and more. The one major bit of information I had on Warframe prior to playing it seriously was Jim Sterling fawning over how Digital Extremes removed a loot box from the game that one time, and also decided to sell their anti-consumer "vaulted" packs separately for cosmetics and Warframes. I used to trust Jim for that sort of thing, so imagine my surprise when I actually got to grips with the underlying game.

I swear... This game often feels like a good product fundamentally undermined by its monetisation and progression system. Becoming a whale was about the only way I could find to enjoy this game without burning myself out on it permanently. That and not a lot else is what allows me to disregard so much of the timesink nonsense.

I can address this a couple of ways. Firstly, I'm not sure I agree entirely. While I dislike Free Roam maps, the systems which came with them are an objective improvement over the rest of the game prior. A large non-linear map, multi-stage missions with semi-procedurally-generated objectives, an open space to use our Archwings in, a less stringent mission objective structure allowing us to either loop missions back-to-back or alternately leave early. That's a big deal. Bigger for me, because I absolutely hated Cetus when I first saw it (doesn't help that it looks like World of Warcraft) so I left it at the very END of my experience with the game at the time. That's not nothing. If DE had actually taken this opportunity to retrofit these mechanics into legacy missions, we would have been playing a different game.

Railjack 3.0 is the same thing, except in an even more significant fashion. The Railjack mission structure has the capacity to replace quite literally the entire rest of the game, because not a single mission exists in Warframe which can't be done in Railjack. Free Roam might be a technical issue due to system requirements, but every other "ground" and Archwing mission can be done in Railjack and done better. Don't have a Railjack? Use an Archwing. Don't have an Archwing? Use a Landing Craft. Everyone has one of those. Give the Orbiter its own exterior, let us fly that and jump out in our Landing Craft. This CAN be done. It won't be done because people hate fundamental change, but it could.

DE have implemented MASSIVE changes to the way Warframe works and exists. It's just that they never retrofit them in old content. This gives the impression that the game isn't changing because we can just keep going back to content that's barely changed since Launch. They made babysteps in this direction with the tileset remasters, but I wish they'd do more.

Secondly... There's the concept of "enough." Let me explain - I'm not being facetious. Every Live Service eventually reaches a critical point in its development where it has "enough" content. That is to say, there's so much content that the average player can cycle through it without burning out or repeating much of it. That's where Payday 2 sits for me right now - it has enough heists that I can play a new one every time. By the time I run through all of them, it feels like I haven't run the first few heists, so they in turn feel new again. Warframe has drastically more content than Payday 2 - more than enough. The chief problem here is the same as above - DE don't seem to realise this.

Every time new content comes out, the grind forces us to play it and NOT it. When Fortuna came out, all the new content and new loot was added to it. For 6 sodding months, I had no reason to play anything else. That gets really old really fast, which is stupid given how much other content there is. DE do that stupid thing developers do sometimes where they judge new content in isolation and want as much traffic through it as possible. I judge new content by how much it enhances legacy content. When the Jovian Concord came out, it instantly enhanced damn near all the old legacy missions in the game, plus Sorties and Nightmares and so on. That's because the Jupiter Remastered wasn't a "content island." It was an enhancement to the breadth of the game.

Warframe is designed ass-backwards. It's heavily reward-driven, but each reward can only be earned from a small subsection of content, and a smaller subsection of that is actually efficient. We have hundreds of missions, but we only ever play, like... I don't know, five? That's not because "there's no reward" for doing anything else - they're fun! Rather it's the opposite - DE want me to play for rewards, but only a small subset of content has the rewards I want at a time. They do a TERRIBLE job actually utilising their own content, to the point I had to "cheat" the game's level scaling system by using Liches. At least that gives me a fixed enemy level across the Star Chart so I can play Earth, Mars, Ceres and such missions without it feeling like a god damn waste of my time.

Again - I have plenty of gripes with Warframe. I still thing the game has potential, however. And honestly, I'll take potential over retention most of the time.

If warframe gave you the option to change what ever you wanted, what would you change an what would be different? I'm curious, I've been playing warframe for a little over 6 plus years and I would like to see more change and after reading what you said.

EtherPigeon · April 2, 2021

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Every time new content comes out, the grind forces us to play it and NOT it. When Fortuna came out, all the new content and new loot was added to it. For 6 sodding months, I had no reason to play anything else. That gets really old really fast, which is stupid given how much other content there is. DE do that stupid thing developers do sometimes where they judge new content in isolation and want as much traffic through it as possible. I judge new content by how much it enhances legacy content. When the Jovian Concord came out, it instantly enhanced damn near all the old legacy missions in the game, plus Sorties and Nightmares and so on. That's because the Jupiter Remastered wasn't a "content island." It was an enhancement to the breadth of the game.

Agreed - I like that DE pushes the boundaries of what their game can do - but we just had a very, very long push that hasn't really paid off yet: Railjack. And honestly, I think Railjack, at its core, is really remarkable. It's a fusion of spaceship-fighter-ground combat only a few games managed to pull off and none of them are PvE looter shooters.

Technically, it really moved Warframe to a new level, too: you can see the progression from Sanctuary Onslaught to Railjack: switching between levels has become more and more seamless to the point that it's near instantaneous and that feels really, really fluid.

DE needs to, for the time being, embrace that level of technology and really build on that. For the next year or two, all content should be Jovian Concord/Deadlock Protocol-styled: revise and expand on an existing piece of content and garnish new story quest for the hype/repeat player factor.

For example, how to do the next stage of the New War? For example, revise the Plains of Eidolon and add the procedural-style caves from Deimos (but bigger) there with some vague explanation about the Unum and Eidolons reconfiguring old underground ruins. That gives DE the chance to really revise their first open world, improve their bounties and by placing a New War chapter about a sentient invasion underground, they could progress the story. That way, new players see the Plains in their best light, people who avoid the Plains because they're bit janky might have more fun again, you could have existing content take place in the procedural caves (such as the existing invasion systen or void fissures) and draw people back in for the story.

Maybe the Plains aren't your favourite (they aren't mine) but the same approach works with almost every other tileset/open world/activity and would allow DE to, piece by piece, integrate more and more system, resources and existing activities into each other. Maybe the next New War chapter is in the ice mines of Europa - conveniently, that's another remaster benefiting everyone!

There's a real path to the fluid game where you play what was teased: seamless adventures from Ceres asteroid bases to the caverns of the Plains to the spacebattles of Veil Proxima - all without expanding on stuff, just revising and telling more story.

Steel_Rook · April 2, 2021

1 hour ago, (XBOX)TigerTank 5th said:

If warframe gave you the option to change what ever you wanted, what would you change an what would be different? I'm curious, I've been playing warframe for a little over 6 plus years and I would like to see more change and after reading what you said.

That's a very broad topic, and my answer is probably going to be really boring :) I'm a systems-minded player with a background in mathematics and programming. I would personally start addressing the herd of elephants in the room by taking a sledgehammer to some of the game's primary sources of power creep. Things like multiplicatively stacking buffs would probably be first on the chopping block, possibly followed by random procs like crits and status. Next would probably be a look at enemy design - scaling, too, but design more so. I'd want enemies to have more meaningful mechanics and communicate those better to players. That would be a start.

If you want something even more ambitions, I'd look into transitioning EVERYTHING to the Railjack model. That is to say, every ground mission would be implemented within a Railjack instance. That doesn't necessarily mean there'd always be a Railjack involved, but the structure would be the same. Players would have the choice of whether to approach in their Railjack (thus ensuring a fight before boarding the enemy craft or landing at the location) or in their Landing Craft, which would allow them to silently sneak past enemy ships to board/land covertly. Those who don't have a Railjack obviously won't have the option of bringing it. The same goes for Free Roam instances. I'd let players zone in via their Railjack straight away, then I'd let players use the Nav console to directly call Konzu/Eduico/Mother and get additional missions. No need to look for tents or bases or flowers - go on the ship, call her up. Of course, people who don't want or don't have a Railjack will still have the option of using the door.

I'd also look into procedurally-generated Free Roam planet surface maps. Railjack already lets us have ostensibly that in space. I'm sure a system can be created to do the same but on land. Think XCOM 2 random map generation from various prefab pieces sewn together with rivers and roads and such covering up the seams. I'd also let the Railjack operate in high orbit over a planet, letting us get down to the surface via Archwing. I'd let the Railjack operate in the atmosphere of Jupiter and under the waters of Uranus. I'd look into making missions more modular, with more simultaneous objectives and the ability for players to freely navigate them at their own pace. Generally, I'd look into giving Warframe more "physicality." All of the systems I've brought up already exist in Warframe. Bringing them together is a non-trivial issue, of course, but it's also within the realm of possibility.

See, if you get me talking about all the things Warframe could be, I could talk for hours. My friends have given me a moratorium on doing this over voice chat because they're sick of hearing me go on and on about it :) I don't know if any of this will actually happen (we do know that more ground missions will turn up in Railjack), but it could. I have a lot of problems with Warframe, but the majority of them come down to "I wish DE would do more and dare make larger changes, instead of letting portions of the game fester for years."

46 minutes ago, EtherPigeon said:

DE needs to, for the time being, embrace that level of technology and really build on that. For the next year or two, all content should be Jovian Concord/Deadlock Protocol-styled: revise and expand on an existing piece of content and garnish new story quest for the hype/repeat player factor.

Exactly. My biggest fear for Railjack has always been that it would be just another Archwing, which is to say "6 nodes and then nothing for 6 years." So far, DE have actually been consistently good about doing Railjack revisions and updates, even if it took them what? 18 months to get this far? As long as they stay the course and keep adding missions to Railjack, I believe that the community will become more accepting of it, to the point where it could turn into THE core experience of Warframe.

When Railjack first came out, a friend of mine told me straight up that "I play Warframe for the Warframes." He was supremely uninterested in the "space ship combat" part. Railjack 3.0 has turned him around. We've done a substantial amount of Railjack content together, he's done a lot on his own and it's one of the things we can always jump in and do together. If DE can stick the landing and keep adding missions and locations and content to the game mode, they can have a massive hit on their hands. Railjack right where it stands right now already has more content and replayability than Cetus, Fortuna and Deimos combined, purely by reusing legacy content in a new setting, and they're promising more.

I think Railjack is a major enough leap forward for the time being that DE ought to curb their ambition and work on retrofitting it into legacy content - or retrofitting legacy content into it. Warframes are always going to be the focus, but Warframes within the context of a broader war simply work better. To me, getting and using my Railjack for the first time feels like what I imagine early adopters felt when the Orbiter first appeared, and their Warframe wasn't just sitting in a black void. A world popped into existence which I'd previously read about here and there, but existed only in stories, concept art and loading screens. Sure, it's not AS much of world, but we're finally able to see the outside of the interior spaces we occupy. That's pretty massive.

In general, I wish DE spent more time integrating their existing crazy ideas into the legacy game before moving onto the next big crazy idea.

EtherPigeon · April 2, 2021

38 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

To me, getting and using my Railjack for the first time feels like what I imagine early adopters felt when the Orbiter first appeared, and their Warframe wasn't just sitting in a black void. A world popped into existence which I'd previously read about here and there, but existed only in stories, concept art and loading screens. Sure, it's not AS much of world, but we're finally able to see the outside of the interior spaces we occupy. That's pretty massive.

In the original Railjack reveal during TennoCon 2018, the Railjack had all the Orbiter stations built in (Arsenal, Foundry etc), when Railjack released, all of that was gone - and at the same time, RJ was relegated to late game content (post-Second Dream).

Really think that was a mistake, they need to go back to their original ambition of having RJ as the "new orbiter" eventually, because that's what a fully integrated "Warframe 2.0" is. They can't switch it all over immediately, but I really think they should've made RJ something you can acquire after Mars or so but keeping it on, well, "rails", i.e. tie the Proximas you can access to junctions. Then, after The Second Dream or after unlocking the last junction, pop in the quest for The Finger and give it the ability to go to Veil Proxima.

Then, it'd really feel like an integral part of the game for new players, too, and could eventually replace the majority of the Starchart while DE rebuilds the tilesets and systems to all work together. And while that happens, these rebuilds could come with nice new quests, providing content for veterans and extending the questline for new players. That'd be "Warframe 2.0": the whole vision that made Warframe a thing to begin with (the original Dark Sector concept) and really deliver an unique experience no other game has.

Xzorn · April 2, 2021

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

DE have implemented MASSIVE changes to the way Warframe works and exists. It's just that they never retrofit them in old content.

This might be the underline difference in perspective. When I started in 2013 I thought of Warframe as a 3rd person dark sci-fi Diablo. It shared many similarities and if you still play what you refer to as "old content" it's still similar. Thing is, I would call that Warframe. Not old content. I feel it's still the "Core" of the game no matter how many modules are added. Majority reasons because those modules aren't interlinked, this is where everyone starts and this was "Warframe" until Plains.

When I compare to Path I see a large change in the core game and how it's played with Conquers and again recently with Mavin. While they have module content like Delve the core of the game never becomes "old content" though there is old content in the game of course. It's easy to see the end-game loop is a core design objective for Path. It's constantly expanded, changed, more difficult and improved. DE by comparison look like they're making a buncha mini games.

In the end DE removed the last thing I truly enjoyed about the game which was making and testing builds to their limits.
I'm just kinda sitting around for something good because as I mentioned I can just not play long as I want and not miss out.
Everything gets easier to attain with time in Warframe while the bar to succeed never really changes.

Steel_Rook · April 3, 2021

13 hours ago, Xzorn said:

This might be the underline difference in perspective. When I started in 2013 I thought of Warframe as a 3rd person dark sci-fi Diablo. It shared many similarities and if you still play what you refer to as "old content" it's still similar. Thing is, I would call that Warframe. Not old content. I feel it's still the "Core" of the game no matter how many modules are added. Majority reasons because those modules aren't interlinked, this is where everyone starts and this was "Warframe" until Plains.

Yeah, I'd absolutely call that "old content." You have to remember that the Warframe DE launched with wasn't the game they actually wanted to make. It was whatever game they could cobble together to keep the studio from filing for bankruptsy. As far back as the original concept for Warframe - hell, as far back as Dark Sektor - what they wanted to make was an MMO. Like, a traditional, open-world MMO in the vein of World of Warcraft. However, those kinds of large, expansive games take a lot of time and money to make - time and money a failing Digital Extremes didn't have at the time. They released what they could and have been slowly migrating towards something more closely resembling their original... I want to say "vision" but let's go with "design." Yes, that's obviously going to leave some players behind, but I personally feel it's healthy for the game long-term.

To lay my biases on the table - I personally find Diablo as a whole to be an archaic, shallow, simplistic experience. Don't get me wrong - it was absolutely revolutionary in 1997. It was even more so in 2000. In 2012, though? By that point I'd played much better versions of it. By 2021? I don't see the point. To each their own, obviously, but I'm old enough to have played most modern "retro" games when they first came out. Been there, done that, did my time. Modern games have the onus of doing new things, or at least doing old things better, and that "click-n-kill" genre itself just feels outdated to me as a whole. The entire "dungeon crawler" genre itself feels old by this point. Sure, there's always room for another "retro" experience, but not a lot.

I haven't played Warframe since 2013. I looked at promotional material of it from that point and just thought NOPE! This looks absolutely awful. I tried it again in something like 2015-2016. Played one mission from the Tutorial, aborted mid-way through the second one, didn't give it a second thought. It wasn't until friends talked me into trying it in 2018 that I was finally able to get into it seriously, and it's really not until Railjack that I've felt that the game finally has its own identity. Sure, a messy incomprehensible art style and awful soul-crushing grind count as an identity, I guess. It really was just another dungeon crawler trying to be like every other one, though. Plains of Eidolon, too, just felt like a poor man's World of Warcraft, what with the medieval villagers and hinting for ugly fish. It wasn't really until Orb Vallis that I think Free Roam got into its own.

The way Warframe plays right now is honestly closer to how City of Heroes was back in the day - at least in Free Roam and Railjack. It makes me feel like more than just a nameless "adventurer" crawling through a dungeon. It makes me feel like the master of my own estate, able to call on vehicles, tools and assistants of all sorts to match whatever need may occur. Closer to an Iron Man pastiche. That may not be what Warframe was originally, but I happen to think that Warframe could be a LOT more than what it started as.

13 hours ago, EtherPigeon said:

Then, it'd really feel like an integral part of the game for new players, too, and could eventually replace the majority of the Starchart while DE rebuilds the tilesets and systems to all work together. And while that happens, these rebuilds could come with nice new quests, providing content for veterans and extending the questline for new players. That'd be "Warframe 2.0": the whole vision that made Warframe a thing to begin with (the original Dark Sector concept) and really deliver an unique experience no other game has.

That would be my dream, as well. In fact, I've proposed something similar to this at least a few times. I don't think the Railjack needs to necessarily REPLACE the Orbiter, but Id do think it can and absolutely should duplicate all of its existing functionality. My proposal was to put leave players in the "void tunnel" between missions, where we could peruse the Forge, Arsenal, Mod Station, etc., before selecting our next destination. The Orbiter would still be our home and base of operations, but the Railjack would be our insertion vehicle. I still think there's room to keep the original Orbiter. In fact, I feel there's merit to making our Landing Craft flyable, as an unarmed pure stealth vessel. Here's another take on what I said in a previous post:

Give us an Orbiter Exterior model, allow us to jump out of our Orbiter and fly around it, fly up to the Railjack, board it that way - as an option. Give us an option to fly the Orbiter into a mission, the same as the Railjack. It would pop up a long distance away from the action, cloaked and with no ability to manually control it. From there, we could jump out in an Archwing if we wanted, or board a manually-controlled Landing Craft. Each mission would have scanners or drones or SOMETHING we would need to avoid if we want to arrive without an alarm blaring. Then just let us board Points of Interest directly and go straight to the ground layer. Once done, we jump back out in our Archwing or our Landing craft, return to the Orbiter and jump back out of the sector.

Basically, the Orbiter would be the "silent infiltration" vessel with no guns or combat capability but less of a chance to start a massive space fight - for those who just want the ground aspect. The Railjack would be the much more heavily-armed alternative, better able to defend itself but much more likely to lead to a firefight. Because it's a heavily-armed craft, it would also open additional opportunities for taking on some higher-paying assignments with more of a space combat component.

But yes - it does genuinely feel as though DE themselves are unsure if they want the Railjack to be an Orbiter replacement or addition. Personally, I vote for "addition" because there's still room in this game for ground-mostly missions that don't require a gunboat like that - just as there's room for space-only missions which would absolutely require it. Railjack is still in its infancy, even after all this time. I'm more excited for Warframe now than ever because I can FINALLY see a truly unique selling point to this game that I quite literally can't find anywhere else.

Analysis of DE/Warframe: Expectations vs deliveries. And growing problems about the game.

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