New player hand holding needed.

[(NSW)Greybones]

7 minutes ago, Orrion_the_Kitsune said:

I actually appreciate your camaraderie.

Yeah, that's one of the things about the NPE: the best and one of the only methods of leveling your frame reliably is found on Sedna, one of the ending planets, and for a new player to switch frames they'd need to do two difficult things: find the frame, and level the frame, both of which can be a challenge and one of which is tedious.

Have you considered making a new topic for this venture? It might be kind of cool to pool efforts; personally, I’ll be coming from a perspective of “Playing Sporadically”, which is a contributor to why I’ve not yet made a new account 😅.  I’m looking to see what the new player experience might potentially be if a player jumps on every so often; I’m hoping it won’t take too long to get stuff if there’s some guidance (I won’t be able to blank my memory of what to do next, so my perspective would also mix in aspects of being guided, but not in a way that will tell all the answers up front, hopefully)

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

Just now, (NSW)Greybones said:

Have you considered making a new topic for this venture? It might be kind of cool to pool efforts; personally, I’ll be coming from a perspective of “Playing Sporadically”, which is a contributor to why I’ve not yet made a new account 😅.  I’m looking to see what the new player experience might potentially be if a player jumps on every so often; I’m hoping it won’t take too long to get stuff if there’s some guidance (I won’t be able to blank my memory of what to do next, so my perspective would also mix in aspects of being guided, but not in a way that will tell all the answers up front, hopefully)

Definitely, but I want to get to get access to every planet before I begin to post my thoughts on the subject. Only posting my thoughts once I have every node would take too long, so I'm settling for blitzing from objective-to-objective as a new player with no other sense of direction might.

[(NSW)Greybones]

Just now, Orrion_the_Kitsune said:

Definitely, but I want to get to get access to every planet before I begin to post my thoughts on the subject. Only posting my thoughts once I have every node would take too long, so I'm settling for blitzing from objective-to-objective as a new player with no other sense of direction might.

Fair enough. I'd like to try putting myself into the shoes of a new player without guidance as well; it'll be harder, because I'll have to try and swallow down innate knowledge of what to do next and sort of make up a straw new player persona, but it a.) might be fun, and b.) might help stress-test the NPE for lone players (though with a grain of salt, since I'm not a new player). Argh, this isn't the first time I'd like to selectively shelve my knowing-how-stuff-plays-out, haha. Wouldn't mind being surprised by TSD again.

[Grav_Starstrider]

So many rude/condescending/elitist comments in this thread.

BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL gameplay features should be introduced in the actual game (and ideally reviewable afterwards via codex entries or simulations like Simaris does for his scan hunts).

Why are a million weapon's unique bonus attributes completely unexplained and lacking in visibility in what does and doesn't affect that bonus, or what that bonus affects? Why isn't there a clear indication in game of what the various Syndicate radial procs do? Why are players supposed to just find out that Xoris and Tenet weapon's preserved combo counters will arbitrarily get consumed by an Atlas Landslide or Ash Bladestorm?

I feel like the more exotic interactions and min-maxing can have a place in the wiki, but things like "how to upgrade a mod" is something that DE definitely could and should make a starter quest for, along with basic things like buying blueprints for things from the market and then grinding for it's necessary resources would be appropriate for DE to use to onboard new players more comprehensively.

The Codex needs to be more comprehensively useful, to serve as an in-game, simpler substitution of the wiki.

Navigation and potential objectives could/should be more clear. A search bar where a new user types "Argon" should flash the Void area, and then show you the steps tracing backwards to your current blocker from getting Argon, and allow you to set that as your current mini-quest. Searching for a corrupted mod like Transient Fortitude should pop open the alerts tab and scroll down to Nightmare missions. Searching Warframe should show unowned Warframe ability showcase videos in order of which ones are easiest to get with your current star chart unlocks, and which ones work towards quest progressions.

There are things to add to the game that would not negatively impact new or veteran players, but would rather in fact help them. I agree with not fully taking away player agency, but there gets to be a point where player freedom goes too far, like being allowed to not know how to upgrade pressure point or serration.

[Levanthan]

2 hours ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

So many rude/condescending/elitist comments in this thread.

BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL gameplay features should be introduced in the actual game (and ideally reviewable afterwards via codex entries or simulations like Simaris does for his scan hunts).

Why are a million weapon's unique bonus attributes completely unexplained and lacking in visibility in what does and doesn't affect that bonus, or what that bonus affects? Why isn't there a clear indication in game of what the various Syndicate radial procs do? Why are players supposed to just find out that Xoris and Tenet weapon's preserved combo counters will arbitrarily get consumed by an Atlas Landslide or Ash Bladestorm?

I feel like the more exotic interactions and min-maxing can have a place in the wiki, but things like "how to upgrade a mod" is something that DE definitely could and should make a starter quest for, along with basic things like buying blueprints for things from the market and then grinding for it's necessary resources would be appropriate for DE to use to onboard new players more comprehensively.

The Codex needs to be more comprehensively useful, to serve as an in-game, simpler substitution of the wiki.

Navigation and potential objectives could/should be more clear. A search bar where a new user types "Argon" should flash the Void area, and then show you the steps tracing backwards to your current blocker from getting Argon, and allow you to set that as your current mini-quest. Searching for a corrupted mod like Transient Fortitude should pop open the alerts tab and scroll down to Nightmare missions. Searching Warframe should show unowned Warframe ability showcase videos in order of which ones are easiest to get with your current star chart unlocks, and which ones work towards quest progressions.

There are things to add to the game that would not negatively impact new or veteran players, but would rather in fact help them. I agree with not fully taking away player agency, but there gets to be a point where player freedom goes too far, like being allowed to not know how to upgrade pressure point or serration.

Add innate energy regen and an innate method of getting health regen or health orbs. Mods don't cut it for what should be natural, especially when those mods only help in the early game and have no scaling whatsoever.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

20 hours ago, MagPrime said:

I don't know you're confusing surprise with confusion. 

The way the post is worded gives the impression there is no information in the game, at all, anywhere, when there is a base foundation of things in the Codex.  The specific examples provided of not knowing how the Foundry works, there is a tutorial and explanation on it in the Codex. 

At no point did I say this is a comprehensive source or that it's flawless, just that there is information in the game pertaining to specific complaints that OP is making and that they didn't help their friends by not showing them where anything is.   

The information in the codex lacks a massive amount of detail, just like the ability descriptions.  The majority of the information in the codex is stuff that's fairly obvious, while other things, like the details of abilities or mechanics of the market pages are all actively misleading.  

[MagPrime]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)TehChubbyDugan said:

The information in the codex lacks a massive amount of detail, just like the ability descriptions.  The majority of the information in the codex is stuff that's fairly obvious, while other things, like the details of abilities or mechanics of the market pages are all actively misleading.  

You're not telling me anything I don't know and haven't already acknowledged. 

[Grav_Starstrider]

9 hours ago, Levanthan said:

Add innate energy regen and an innate method of getting health regen or health orbs. Mods don't cut it for what should be natural, especially when those mods only help in the early game and have no scaling whatsoever.

There's a lot of things only available via mods that should have some baseline universally present instead.

For example, it's obnoxious how egregiously small vacuum is if your companion dies (or is unavailable in the gameplay mode you're in).

Or how enemy radar is non-existent by default. There should be at least a 5 or 10 meter base range, and enemies that hit you should show up for a short while regardless of range, as should enemies that are being or have been affected by non-AoE-Damage abilities (to avoid Maim being a radar-replacement), or by weaponry/companions.

Baseline energy Regen that is improved by mods would immediately reduce the degree to which Parasitic eximi suck so badly, and reduce Zenurik/Arcane-Energize/Energy-pad reliance and meta, and ensure that new players can enjoy the Warframe ability-driven power fantasy more reliably.

Health Regen would be nice too, it wouldn't be fun feeling like you're trapped in a room with enemies on the other side, and that there's no way you'll survive if they chew through your weak shields, if you're a newbie without health Regen options at your disposal.

2 hours ago, MagPrime said:

You're not telling me anything I don't know and haven't already acknowledged. 

A huge quantity of people don't check the Codex by default for things, because of how lacking it is, causing the things it does contain to end up being ignored anyways. It's a self-reinforcing spiral of an inadequately fleshed out and integrated system. Being pedantic about the exact items that are or aren't in the Codex, and to what degree they're elaborated on, is a bit pedantic. The wiki should not be the easiest or most accurate way of getting basic game information, with the Codex making it difficult to even find what you're looking for.

I think a huge sum of people in this thread (and others, and reddit, and YouTube, and region chat, and in Discords) agree that the Codex, while not literally useless in it's current form, needs to be more fully fleshed out, and more aggressively integrated into the game, alongside actually actively-engaging tutorials so that players can read the Codex OR learn by being shown what to do. The Codex could/should have information able to be referenced at most/any of the "stations" or menus in Warframe, so that basic information, and some more specific information, can be reviewed in greater depth. Any starter tutorials should also be able to be reinitialized from the Codex within these menus.

Those are my thoughts and opinions, anyways.

[(NSW)Greybones]

58 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Baseline energy Regen that is improved by mods would immediately reduce the degree to which Parasitic eximi suck so badly, and reduce Zenurik/Arcane-Energize/Energy-pad reliance and meta, and ensure that new players can enjoy the Warframe ability-driven power fantasy more reliably.

The “Warframe ability-driven power fantasy” isn’t a given, and I don’t know if it will (or should) be

[Grav_Starstrider]

4 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

The “Warframe ability-driven power fantasy” isn’t a given, and I don’t know if it will (or should) be

Not sure I get what you mean here (genuinely, not passive-aggressively). Do you mean you think that the Weapons should consistently be the primary source of the power fantasy in the game, being the consistently superior option compared to most Warframe abilities? Because as long as you're using a "meta" Warframe, you're definitely getting the power fantasy (Saryn casts 1, casts 3, kills 1 enemy, then casts 4, everything dies and keeps dying ridiculously effectively)(Slow-va and Vauban trivialize enemies into slowness or suspension or ragdoll-Vortex)(Ember's 4, Ash's 4, Equinox's 4's burst, etc, all murder). If DE fixes the insane damage bloat in the game (as is being discussed in a thread I started) then whether you think Warframes should be more consistently above, around, or below weapon damage, that'd be more easily balanceable than it currently is.

[(NSW)Greybones]

50 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Not sure I get what you mean here (genuinely, not passive-aggressively). Do you mean you think that the Weapons should consistently be the primary source of the power fantasy in the game, being the consistently superior option compared to most Warframe abilities? Because as long as you're using a "meta" Warframe, you're definitely getting the power fantasy (Saryn casts 1, casts 3, kills 1 enemy, then casts 4, everything dies and keeps dying ridiculously effectively)(Slow-va and Vauban trivialize enemies into slowness or suspension or ragdoll-Vortex)(Ember's 4, Ash's 4, Equinox's 4's burst, etc, all murder). If DE fixes the insane damage bloat in the game (as is being discussed in a thread I started) then whether you think Warframes should be more consistently above, around, or below weapon damage, that'd be more easily balanceable than it currently is.

Not that weapons should be consistently a source of power fantasy over abilities, but that the option to make abilities a source of power fantasy should be one that’s earned, not handed to a new player. Juggling energy consumption is a part of the game’s mechanics, can be quite an important one too, and while the game gives us the choice to build around energy and do an amazing job of doing so, that seems kind of the point; we have to build around the chance to use abilities all the time.

The quoted bit that I referred to earlier sounded like you wanted new players to have baseline energy regen and that it’s a given that abilities are to be used constantly? For a non-energy focused build a player (particularly a new one) may go through a mission and use all of their abilities a limited amount of times, and they have to make their decisions accordingly. Granting innate energy regen will most likely screw that up; it’s no longer a system of “Keeping a powerful ability in the back pocket until judgement call says to bring it out, which may be never”, and more a system of “Better hide until my energy is fully recharged”. …🤔 Potentially slowing fights right down as players feel compelled to recharge constantly for their big flashy moves. hrm, I wonder if I can test this with Energy Siphon….

Anyways, squash our overall power numbers as much as you want, it matters little to me as I’m in the middle at “Sufficient power”, but I think it’d be a mistake to give new players innate energy regen, and would cheapen the choice of older players to build for energy

edit: To be fair, I dislike meta builds for their “Gotta grind fast” aspect as much as the next person, but I don’t feel this would be a way to stick it to them

[Grav_Starstrider]

3 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Not that weapons should be consistently a source of power fantasy over abilities, but that the option to make abilities a source of power fantasy should be one that’s earned, not handed to a new player. Juggling energy consumption is a part of the game’s mechanics, can be quite an important one too, and while the game gives us the choice to build around energy and do an amazing job of doing so, that seems kind of the point; we have to build around the chance to use abilities all the time.

The quoted bit that I referred to earlier sounded like you wanted new players to have baseline energy regen and that it’s a given that abilities are to be used constantly? For a non-energy focused build a player (particularly a new one) may go through a mission and use all of their abilities a limited amount of times, and they have to make their decisions accordingly. Granting innate energy regen will most likely screw that up; it’s no longer a system of “Keeping a powerful ability in the back pocket until judgement call says to bring it out, which may be never”, and more a system of “Better hide until my energy is fully recharged”. …🤔

Snip

edit: To be fair, I dislike meta builds for their “Gotta grind fast” aspect as much as the next person, but I don’t feel this would be a way to stick it to them

Granting a miniscule amount of energy Regen sounds like it'd be a good way to encourage less frantic OP genocidal slaughterfests, actually, imo, your right that that'd be a way of encouraging more paced usage of abilities without people feeling like they necessarily need energy restorative strats. It really wouldn't compare to actual outright 4stacks of energy siphon, or Zenurik. Archwing already does it, I don't see why it'd be such an upset. I agree that the energy economy in the game is weird though. Right now it feels like if you choose a spam-benefiting frame and use a ton of energy restorative options, that you can just pump out damage like crazy, without even needing to rely on a support frame to get that energy. As I said before, in other threads I'm suggesting that damage be more normalized, and if so, we could always look at Warframe abilities being super potent, but dialing back the energy economy, so that Warframe abilities are more rarely used but to greater effect. Idk. I think we'd miss being able to spam abilities, but I think it'd make for a better balanced game. Kinda of two minds about it. Merits both ways imo, just a matter of how DE (or the majority of the player base) wants it.

[(NSW)Greybones]

20 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

Granting a miniscule amount of energy Regen sounds like it'd be a good way to encourage less frantic OP genocidal slaughterfests, actually, imo, your right that that'd be a way of encouraging more paced usage of abilities without people feeling like they necessarily need energy restorative strats. It really wouldn't compare to actual outright 4stacks of energy siphon, or Zenurik. Archwing already does it, I don't see why it'd be such an upset. I agree that the energy economy in the game is weird though. Right now it feels like if you choose a spam-benefiting frame and use a ton of energy restorative options, that you can just pump out damage like crazy, without even needing to rely on a support frame to get that energy. As I said before, in other threads I'm suggesting that damage be more normalized, and if so, we could always look at Warframe abilities being super potent, but dialing back the energy economy, so that Warframe abilities are more rarely used but to greater effect. Idk. I think we'd miss being able to spam abilities, but I think it'd make for a better balanced game. Kinda of two minds about it. Merits both ways imo, just a matter of how DE (or the majority of the player base) wants it.

Hrm 🤔. I mentioned earlier that I was wondering about testing with Energy Siphon; most of my thinking about player motivation with a small amount of energy regen came from conjecture, but perhaps testing with Energy Siphon may prove me wrong, and I'd much rather go off of evidence (it's sometimes/oftentimes hard to test the impact of a not-implemented change as a player, sometimes for obvious reason 😋).

Again I feel like I wouldn't mind throttling our potential damage, as in hindsight it's also been raised in other topics that it's a tremendous incentive to hit that limit and stay there, obliterating any semblance of game mechanics. More-potent, less-castable abilities is an interesting bit of thinking; it'd be nice to see individual abilities being valued more for their own merit than when compared to others.

Sorry if I came across aggressively at the start; you've given me food for thought 👍

[Grav_Starstrider]

On 2021-08-10 at 11:09 PM, (NSW)Greybones said:

Hrm 🤔. I mentioned earlier that I was wondering about testing with Energy Siphon; most of my thinking about player motivation with a small amount of energy regen came from conjecture, but perhaps testing with Energy Siphon may prove me wrong, and I'd much rather go off of evidence (it's sometimes/oftentimes hard to test the impact of a not-implemented change as a player, sometimes for obvious reason 😋).

Again I feel like I wouldn't mind throttling our potential damage, as in hindsight it's also been raised in other topics that it's a tremendous incentive to hit that limit and stay there, obliterating any semblance of game mechanics. More-potent, less-castable abilities is an interesting bit of thinking; it'd be nice to see individual abilities being valued more for their own merit than when compared to others.

Sorry if I came across aggressively at the start; you've given me food for thought 👍

You're proving yourself to be more mature than 90% of people on the internet 😉

As a general thing.... Energy Regen of such a minuscule amount (like Energy Siphon's .6/second) really just means you can just reliably-ish cast your cheapest abilities (25 energy) about once per 42 seconds without your net energy held going up or down, or mid-tier abilities (50 energy) every minute and 24 seconds (84 seconds). 1 free SPORE may feel OP to have at your fingertips every 42 seconds, but it's not much for Slash Dash or Landslide or Shock, etc. I'd personally not mind if they shuffled energy economy around a bit, or nerfed some sources a smidge, in exchange for an Energy-Siphon comparable baseline regen. All too-reliable energy sources could be nerfed, honestly, so that there wasn't such clear night-and-day differences between utilizing them, and not utilizing them. Wouldn't wanna go too far with nerfs to energy economy, don't wanna make them dumb choices, just want to make not-choosing them valid choices as well. Maybe remove/reduce synergy so that there's less incentive to choose several at once.... Make lump-sum energy pickups/restores pause gain-per-second sources, proportional to how much is restored (1 or 2 second pause for 25 energy such as from energy orbs, 100 energy from Pads pauses for 4-8?), and have gain-per-second sources decrease in effectiveness as they're stacked, so that only the best rate is at full strength, the next at 50% strength, and the third is halved again to be 25% strength, etc?

Just thoughts, I'm not THAT eager to shake up the energy meta. I do still think it's currently a bit ludicrously stackable/synergistic though, like the exponentially-increased-by-modding weapon damage. With both damage via modding, and Warframe abilities, I think that the gap between the metas and non-meta options should be reduced, to make the gap between new players and advanced players just a bit less exponentially severe, and to improve the baseline, new player gameplay experience by a good amount. The game has to be fun before you get your advanced tools, to see your players stick around long enough to get them.

Note: If overall TTK is lowered via changing energy economy, or by making all mods scale off of base damage instead of exponentially increasing damage by multiplying each other as well (as talked about in my thread here), I would of course want to see DE adjust the reward structure as well, to make the net outcome of grinding for things approximately equal to the current system's pace. Though I very much have my concerns about the Looting meta as well, addressed here. Completely separately, I want them to figure out some non-genocide-oriented mission bonuses, to allow players to play the game as actually stealthy ninjas if preferred, not just on spy/rescue missions, and be rewarded appropriately (thread from me on AI and Stealth rework coming soon).

There's a lot of simplification and consistency that could be tweaked across lots of parts of the game, that would just make the new player experience that much less intimidating and needlessly excessively tedious just from lack of Wiki knowledge or veteran-coaching. Buffing some baseline loot rates (and introducing a pity system, my specific take on it discussed here in another thread, and/or another user's suggestion of making more one-time-needed things token-purchaseable from relevant vendors, and other suggestions in that same thread and others) while making the mechanics-abusing metas less effective would be healthier for the game and new player's experience as well.

Granted, all of these suggestions are less about finding ways to hold the player's hands more, and more about how to make player handholding less needed.