Josh Strife Hayes and Warframe

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

24 minutes ago, Reitrix said:

You can't expect all new players to start diving into the depths if you don't show them that there's something to be found down there. 

 

As an example, the game provides no breadcrumbs leading players to Orokin Vaults for the great mods. It's just there.

 

[MDRLOz]

10 minutes ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

As an example, the game provides no breadcrumbs leading players to Orokin Vaults for the great mods. It's just there.

 

See in the past, games were allowed to have "Secrets". These were exciting things to discover as one might am ancient tomb when digging for ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Now a days at some point we decided that if the game doesn't unload every last wiki page into our heads its flawed game design. There is a happy medium in there somewhere.  

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

3 minutes ago, MDRLOz said:

See in the past, games were allowed to have "Secrets". These were exciting things to discover as one might am ancient tomb when digging for ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Now a days at some point we decided that if the game doesn't unload every last wiki page into our heads its flawed game design. There is a happy medium in there somewhere.  

No, it's just bad design. The keys are available but no explanation is provided so players find out elsewhere or are taxi'd there by clanmates or friends. Put the stuff in the game. The game needs more breadcrumbs that lead players to things.

[(NSW)Greybones]

13 minutes ago, MDRLOz said:

See in the past, games were allowed to have "Secrets". These were exciting things to discover as one might am ancient tomb when digging for ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Now a days at some point we decided that if the game doesn't unload every last wiki page into our heads its flawed game design. There is a happy medium in there somewhere.  

Agreed. It seems such a tricky one to do though. I’ve played through Pavlov tons of times (not rushing), and because I only recently wondered why there was a rift in a specific place that I’d never used before, did I discover a new room full of all unlocked lockers and crates, clearly positioned as a sort of “Here’s a reward of some sort”. I don’t know whether I’ll get something special from busting open those crates since there’s a chance a drop was locked behind RNG and I got an unsuccessful roll of the dice, but from now on I’ll be cracking those secret containers wondering if I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

edit: Could vaults be explained? I dunno… they were ones I used the wiki for, and so I was one who didn’t discover it on my own, but I’ve lamented not seeing what it’d be like to try and figure it out, since that would have given me the best sense

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

5 hours ago, MDRLOz said:

Check again,

(I have time stamped to the right bit): 

 

However he does not explain at all what are these systems in warframe. At MR0 and not even maxing his first frame I cannot believe he has any experience to truly say what is parasitic in warframe. 

THIS is my biggest issue with his videos and, indeed, this thread... 

I quite enjoyed his take in his first video, but since then it seems he's gone from "Here's my experience based solely on things I observed from MY play time..."  to "Here's a bunch of blanket statements I'm going to make for clicks to hop on the "Crap on DE" train on YT, based on nothing but what some angry vets tell me, and not actually based in my full experience of the systems herein." 

And a whole movement on the forums because of those videos isn't helping, either.

I don't mind people pointing out flaws in things... but it's like... do it because YOU experienced it at least.. don't just be a newbie and take everyone's word for it.  At that point it's just preconceived notions and confirmation bias.

And like ya said, he didn't even give examples of what he was accusing DE of...  he just points his finger and goes "Bad things seem to be EVERYWHERE!"

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

4 hours ago, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

And like ya said, he didn't even give examples of what he was accusing DE of...  he just points his finger and goes "Bad things seem to be EVERYWHERE!"

So he just went life of rio, and it seems odd for a reveiwer to not give examples to his review of a video game where explaining why things are bad is kinda important for the review to get the points across. Kinda can't be vague about things otherwise makes look dishonest or possibly malicious 

[MDRLOz]

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)The Neko Otaku said:

 Kinda can't be vague about things otherwise makes look dishonest or possibly malicious 

Completely agree. I think this is his intent. Parasitic Design is not a thing outside of his video, the MTG community and apparently architecture. Look at the video again. At the start he ingratiates the concept by saying "You've probably heard the phrase before...". NO! I never have. No one ever has. Google shows no mention of anyone else hearing this either.  

I have gone through his video several times now and he defines it 8 different times. Those 8 don't even all line up to the same concepts. 

[SneakyErvin]

On 2021-08-16 at 11:42 PM, Teridax68 said:

Did you somehow miss the part where the figures for how many players spend 2 hours or more in Warframe were shown?

You keep using that number as some reference for a bad tutorial when there are many many reasons why people leave games early. Personal issues with a tutorial, or lack of one is only one of those several reasons. Combat, story, camera handling, difficulty, enemies, optimization and so on are some of the other reasons why people leave games early. And most of those are likely more impactful than a tutorial, since no matter how well a game explains things and holds your hand, it wont keep you if you dont enjoy the actual game.

[Kaotyke]

1 minute ago, SneakyErvin said:

You keep using that number as some reference for a bad tutorial when there are many many reasons why people leave games early. Personal issues with a tutorial, or lack of one is only one of those several reasons. Combat, story, camera handling, difficulty, enemies, optimization and so on are some of the other reasons why people leave games early. And most of those are likely more impactful than a tutorial, since no matter how well a game explains things and holds your hand, it wont keep you if you dont enjoy the actual game.

My first MMO was Tera. I stopped playing it after 3 hours.

Charging powers, slow but non-tactical gameplay, having to micromanage items and spells...

The tutorial was clearly at fault.

[SneakyErvin]

Just now, Kaotyke said:

My first MMO was Tera. I stopped playing it after 3 hours.

Charging powers, slow but non-tactical gameplay, having to micromanage items and spells...

The tutorial was clearly at fault.

Yeah, same bad tutorial experience in Path of Exile several times over. The game just refused to tell me that the game was supposed to feel clunky and hitchy in combat. Plus it never told me how to zoom out the camera that doesnt have a zoom setting.

Dem damn bad tetoriels!

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

You keep using that number as some reference for a bad tutorial when there are many many reasons why people leave games early. Personal issues with a tutorial, or lack of one is only one of those several reasons. Combat, story, camera handling, difficulty, enemies, optimization and so on are some of the other reasons why people leave games early. And most of those are likely more impactful than a tutorial, since no matter how well a game explains things and holds your hand, it wont keep you if you dont enjoy the actual game.

Oh, I agree, that number will never reach 100% and aiming for that is never going to be a realistic objective, because as you said the game simply isn't everyone's cup of tea, and there are some other issues at hand too. However, the fact remains that the proportion of drop-outs is huge, and a large part of that can almost certainly be attributed to the new player experience. This is not a new or niche fact, by the way, Warframe's rough early learning curve is infamous and has been for years, and DE's overhaul to the starter quest only addresses one portion of this (but did so quite well).

[SneakyErvin]

30 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Oh, I agree, that number will never reach 100% and aiming for that is never going to be a realistic objective, because as you said the game simply isn't everyone's cup of tea, and there are some other issues at hand too. However, the fact remains that the proportion of drop-outs is huge, and a large part of that can almost certainly be attributed to the new player experience. This is not a new or niche fact, by the way, Warframe's rough early learning curve is infamous and has been for years, and DE's overhaul to the starter quest only addresses one portion of this (but did so quite well).

No, it really cant be attributed to the NPE. It can be 100% attributed to that the game is a F2P game though. If you actually look at the Steam numbers you will see that several million players have decided to stay with the game out of those that have tested it. There around 20+ million players that have played it through Steam and 60% of those didnt make it past 2 hours. That still means that you have atleast 8 million players that have stayed and managed with the tutorial we have.

We also dont actually know if DE's overhaul did anything, because as said in this thread by an official representative of DE, the numbers arent in yet to be shared. And prior to that we have heard on streams that other smaller changes to the NPE has resulted in no noticable retention increase.

And I will say this again. WF is a unique game since it only takes you through the beginning once. So a rework of that early game, if it doesnt bring a quite noticable retention increase, is very unprofitable since it is content that is only used once. If WF was set up like PoE, Grim Dawn, D3 (early on) or Marvel Heroes (likely the most similar due to the hero roster it had) it would be different, since then each player would go through that reworked content with each new frame they unlock. But as it is, WF makes better use of reworking or adding new things to parts of the game that is accessible to everyone all the time, to the parts where people level and progress.

[mrEkli]

16 hours ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

No, it's just bad design. The keys are available but no explanation is provided so players find out elsewhere or are taxi'd there by clanmates or friends. Put the stuff in the game. The game needs more breadcrumbs that lead players to things.

I have to disagree with this. The Orokin Vaults are good because they encourage engaging with the game, you don't need breadcrumbs for it, the keys are made from BPs from Dojos, you should be involved with "research" at that point, in game and your own knowledge of the game. 

This logic of having things pointed out is why Orokin Towers in Corpus Railjack has no moment of discovery anymore. The whole thing had a glowing light but no, that wasn't good enough people needed literal waypoints for it. It just became another checkbox on the long list of things to do not something to stumble upon because you're exploring and engaging the game.

[Teridax68]

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

No, it really cant be attributed to the NPE. It can be 100% attributed to that the game is a F2P game though. If you actually look at the Steam numbers you will see that several million players have decided to stay with the game out of those that have tested it. There around 20+ million players that have played it through Steam and 60% of those didnt make it past 2 hours. That still means that you have atleast 8 million players that have stayed and managed with the tutorial we have.

The absolute number of players is not particularly relevant in a discussion of which proportion of players have stayed long enough to become regular, and potentially paying players. Put another way, 12 million people have given Warframe a try and gave up within the first two hours. That's horrendous. What piece of statistical evidence makes you so sure that the game being F2P is the sole reason behind those dropout rates?

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

We also dont actually know if DE's overhaul did anything, because as said in this thread by an official representative of DE, the numbers arent in yet to be shared. And prior to that we have heard on streams that other smaller changes to the NPE has resulted in no noticable retention increase.

An official representative of DE? Where? Also, how is the impact of minor changes representative of that of larger changes? For that matter, how is the impact of the change to one single mission representative of the potential impact of the much larger new player experience?

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

And I will say this again. WF is a unique game since it only takes you through the beginning once.

(The starter quest is replayable.)

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

So a rework of that early game, if it doesnt bring a quite noticable retention increase, is very unprofitable since it is content that is only used once. 

What good is reusable content if prospective players don't get to play it at all? This kind of reasoning makes no sense, given that the first few hours or even minutes of a game are universally recognized as the most crucial, because that's the time window where the person decides whether or not to commit. That alone is reason enough to put effort into reworking the whole early game so that it maximizes the chance for newcomers to become long-term players.

[Digressive]

Hi all, I'm going to have to lock this thread pending a review.

Seems to have gotten off topic and turned into arguing back and forth.

Thanks

[Letter13]

After reviewing (and removing) a large quantity of recent posts (really entire pages), a decision has been made to leave the thread locked. It's become clear that users who have become heavily invested in this thread are not able to continue holding civil discourse.