Forma will cripple warframe

[DogeManX]

4 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I disagree, I think it is actually a big part of what makes this game work as a F2P model. 

Does that mean it can't be tweaked here or there? Not saying that, but I don't think big changes are needed. 

Adding up the whole number of forma needed isn't really valid here, as you can always buy more with plat through F2P or credit card means, and the whole point of them requiring build time is to partly slow progression. You aren't just supposed to immediately blow through getting and forma'ing all the new Tenet and Kuva weapons everytime they come out. It burns out players and leaves them with nothing to do. 

And it is not like DE doesn't notice and work to mitigate this for F2P people at times. For example, this Nightwave, corresponding nicely with the release of the new Tenet/Lich weapons, they are giving three packs of three built forma throughout the rewards. For a F2Per that's almost two maxed kuva/tenet weapons right there without any build times or trading stuff for plat so they can buy, and you can get more if you are good at Lua Music puzzle. 

Unless you want to burn yourself out, it isn't a problem, and if you DO want to burn yourself out, you can always sell stuff for plat and just buy a bunch, that's how F2P games work. 

While I agree that the f2p model lends itself to cash shop spending, I'd still say there are some QOL changes that should be made to these things like as mentioned in comments above about how uncommon forma drops in relics should give extra rewards or built forma. 

I guess I should've been more clear that my problem isn't with forma itself but rather the time it takes to build it. Even if you were to farm 300 forma in a f2p fashion, it would still take you ~300 days to build all of them. 

On nightwave, while they offer 3 forma bundles, nightwave seasons are very infrequent and once you get that 9 forma, you'll have to wait for the next nightwave in half a year. Though this is admittedly more of a nightwave problem than anything else.

[hyzmarca]

300 days to build 300 forma doesn't seem so bad when you're 1000 days in.   Warframe is a game designed to be played for the long haul.  

[0_The_F00l]

I disagree with the OP ,

Forma is intended to be a minor inconvenience for you to purchase/trade for plat or keep playing regularly if you don't want to trade or spend money on it.

There is also no need to actually put that much forma in any weapon if you don't really want to, 

If you really are incapable of patience and self control , and want it all and you want it now , you may have bigger problems beyond the game.

You could also just buy the neccessary forma in bulk. Which is what I expect DE wants you to do. 

I get most of my forma by building it , but if I ever do run out I tend to buy a set (if I feel like it or just wait for the forma to build) , and also farm & build a few forma in parallel while I try out my now rank 0 gear.

I avoid xp farms as it just makes me rush to boredom even sooner. Maybe change your mindset on how you approach gearing and levelling to make things easier for yourself.

[ZeroX4]

15 hours ago, DogeManX said:

TLDR: Queenpins update released weapons needing 75 forma at once (12 Tenet and 3 Kuva). That's about 2 and a half months of just straight building forma. There are 19 Kuva weapons and 12 Tenet weapons meaning the total amount of forma needed to farm for queenpins and liches are 155 forma.

As more content is released, forma build time should be lowered. For new players, the amount of time needed to build forma just piles on way too quickly with all the content in warframe. And with the release of galvanized mods, weapons that could squeak by on 3 or 4 forma now need more. If nothing is done about this, newer players and players in the midgame will get bored waiting for their in game timers and drop the game. The entire time gated crafting system has turned many of my friends off this game and the stacking forma costs will do the same.

<---Source of my pain

 

When I first started the game, there was so much content for me to explore. At the center of the content was the gear unlocked from it and at the center of the gear was the forma to polarize the slots. Grinding from MR 0-30, there were a lot of weapons that required a single forma to build, and while there was a lot of stuff to farm, eventually I built enough forma to build it all.

 

But the newer updates really pile onto the forma cost of the game. In the older updates, you'd need maybe 10 forma at most for something like a prime vault and if there was a big update like fortuna, you'd need more, but because the content wasn't dropped all at once, you could realistically have forma building on the side as new content comes out to keep a stockpile. 

 

Before queenpins, I had saved 70 forma after building for months anticipating a new update. But as sevagoth released with 3 moddable configurations with very few innate polarities, that ate into the stockpile I had. But I still wasn't worried as I was sitting on 50 forma. But when the update came out, my stockpile evaporated and the only solution was to either wait a month to max out all the weapons or to buy the forma bundles. 

 

I really love playing warframe, but I cannot imagine how the experience is for newer players and having to wait 23 hours to decide between putting a polarity on a weapon or to use it to build something else. DE really needs to give us some way to build forma faster.

 

Please tell me your thoughts. Maybe my MRL1 mind is just too out of touch with the game to think about it.

I did read your whole wall of text so enjoy mine and maybe it will help you

BRAVO BRAVO big F***ing salut to you for that idea
Now imagine we have FOR EXAMPLE 6 hour craft time on forma (so it would be lowered almost 4x times) would you be the one sitting here on forums fighting off any1 that cry that they cant log in each 6h to craft forma and we should have auto crafting system?
Or would you pay the gap warframe makes on plat purchased formas and forma bundles from market with your own money so we all could still have F2P game?

But 1 thing that strikes me im also L1 you see and in my gameplay life i purchased only 5 forma bundles (15 forma) because friend told me there is discount for them atm but i quickly realized its waste of plat and you know what? Look at this

Even so we are both L1 i have more but please tell us how many days you have spent in warframe? Just so we can calculate how many days you wasted NOT crafting free forma
Cause i did ever since i understood if i craft them for a year i would have +/- 300 already (56+what you get from GFTL and sortie would go to your everyday use)

If player dont learn that he SHOULD craft at least 1 forma per day then whos fault it is for running low on forma?

I know all i wrote and will write below sounds mean but trust me im far from it
I would love lower craft timers but in a same way i would love auction house where i would not need to go to dojo and break my game plan of the day just to trade
While at the same time i would NOT WANT for crap that is worth 50p now would be 10 plat and we start selling 6 prime parts for for 1 plat since thats how prices would drop cause of auction house or even more

And you say your friends stopped playing warframe because they realized how much forma they would need to use on their crap? How long did they play?
20 days? 30? And you didnt teach them to craft 1 forma each day? Maybe thats the problem with them and not timers?

And you really care for ppl that quit so fast at grind based game anyway? That dont understand that you need constant progress to success in this game over getting most crap in 1 day? I sure dont

On top of that you are L1 how much plat do you have? Like something prevents you from buying forma bundles? Or what? I dont get it since so many players do it why you cant?
Because there is free alternative which consumes time? Whats the problem here?

I have almost 24k plat and 90% of it is from selling veiled rivens from sortie and syndicate weapons which i get from just playing the game while i cant craft anything more since i have all i could
Whats your excuse at MR L1?

Even better do you really need to forma every single crap you own? I have tons of weapons i only ranked to mr30 and never seen them again not to mention frames companions and other stuff

And kuva+tenet weapons do you know how much affinity that 10 extra levels give? And/or do you know that you can just rank them up to 30 and leave them for later when you have spare formas?

And you talk about low MR players realizing how much forma they need for kuva and tenet weapons and that is bad yet we waste much more formas on crap that we actually use like companions weapons frames we actually waste much more formas on them but holly molly tenet and kuva weapons my ow my?

If i crafted 1 forma from day1 or AT LEAST from 1st day i understood i will need many formas and constantly gaining them would help me by crafting 1 each day i would have over 900 CRAFTED FORMAS by now OR MORE i bet you also

So maybe instead of lower timers lets ask for some education (like a tip in foundry or mod screen) that we should craft 1 forma each day and darwin would do the rest

I feel like you found the problem that could be fixed very easily
But you found it in wrong place
And you want to fix it by incorrect means

Education is all we need

 

[immpulse531]

Honestly the only problem I have is the 24 hour build time. wished it would build instantly 

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

3 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I'll be honest even with my ocd making it hard for me to look at something that could be fully leveled and isn't, if I don't like it that much I just can't be fussed about it, because I have limited time to play with my current schedule, and it just isn't worth my time with how many other things I can/have/want to do, etc. 

Like you said with all the items available now and continuing, it will only be easier and easier to pick and choose what kuva/lich/future infested level 40 weapons? you fully max out while still being able to reach at least the first legendary rank or so. A game like Warframe thrives on always releasing new content, it is the way of things. So unless you need to "tick all the boxes" to not feel anxiety/distress/or a lack of completeness to paraphrase what you said, it is best to just focus on what you really like. 

 

Indeed!  And I think a healthy way of reframing how this community views Kuva/Tenet weapons shouldn't be "You NEED to max them to 40 to get all the Mastery!" but rather "IF you like them, they CAN go further with forma than a normal weapon, and as a BONUS, there's an extra 1000 standing in it IF you do."

Look at it as bonus, not necessary.  

I mean, hek... one day, a player will be able to reach MR30 in just a month or two easily, because there will be SO MUCH MORE Affinity AVAILABLE than what is REQUIRED.  

Even when people got up in arms with DE over LMR1 not having "amazing rewards", I think that was the POINT though.  LMR1 should be a thing you want to do for the sake of achievement, not because it's a gatekeeper to necessary things.

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

5 hours ago, brago90 said:

The only unknown are the infested weapons as they have never had alternative versions but it is to be expected that eventually we will have infested equivalents of the liches and the sisters so investing resources in infested weapons is also something to avoid currently.

Mutualist.   They don't have Kuva/Tenet equivalents yet, no, but they do have versions similar to Prisma/Vandal, etc.

[Corvid]

39 minutes ago, (PSN)JustJoshinEnt said:

Mutualist.   They don't have Kuva/Tenet equivalents yet, no, but they do have versions similar to Prisma/Vandal, etc.

Not really. Mutalist weapons are corrupted versions of other factions' weapons (the Quanta and Cernos, at the moment, as well as the Ogris by technicality), which behave very differently compared to their pure counterparts. They're talking about upgraded variants of purely Infested weapons (Synapse, Embolist, etc).

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

37 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Not really. Mutalist weapons are corrupted versions of other factions' weapons (the Quanta and Cernos, at the moment, as well as the Ogris by technicality), which behave very differently compared to their pure counterparts. They're talking about upgraded variants of purely Infested weapons (Synapse, Embolist, etc).

Ah, gotcha. My misunderstanding, then.  Thank you for clarifying.

I think we don't really see that with Infested because the Infested don't really have a "leadership", per se.  They are just hivemind and kinda just "are".  So, as a faction, they don't really supply us with any advanced "stuff" to work with, I suppose.

Heck, I'd argue our Helminth might be the more advanced version, but then Deimos might change that..  

I think once we're on the other side of our war with the Sentients, the Infested will be the next "big baddie" to step up to the plate, and we'll see more mutations and such that could spawn such enhanced weapons.

[Danielw8]

Open relics, get stuff keep opening, get formas bp, craft it, post the stuff you got in market, keep opening, trade moment, buy 3 formas.

[Genitive]

I don't think forma crafting times are a problem, but I wouldn't mind if we were able to build them in bulk. With the amount of formas some items consume that would be quite welcome.

[Psianide73]

35 minutes ago, Genitive said:

I don't think forma crafting times are a problem, but I wouldn't mind if we were able to build them in bulk. With the amount of formas some items consume that would be quite welcome.

Not sure why we can't build more than one of anything at once.

Put a max of five of the same item or something if necessary. But we should be able to build more than one of something at the same time.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

I think many people have a problem with patience and just want to rush everything so they can blame someone else for their problems.

This is why there was a thread asking "what are we getting between now and the new war"....some of you people can't handle not spamming everything. 

No game company would survive if you guys made the rules. 

Edit: that, and people are also cheap and can't/won't trade or buy forma. I'm not even a vet and could buy so many forma right now.

[o0Despair0o]

Or you could just not build every damn thing and only spend your forma on things you actually want, rather than wasting them for the sake of trying to prove something to yourself.

But that'd be too easy and we don't do easy around here.

[SneakyErvin]

10 hours ago, DogeManX said:

TLDR: Queenpins update released weapons needing 75 forma at once (12 Tenet and 3 Kuva). That's about 2 and a half months of just straight building forma. There are 19 Kuva weapons and 12 Tenet weapons meaning the total amount of forma needed to farm for queenpins and liches are 155 forma.

As more content is released, forma build time should be lowered. For new players, the amount of time needed to build forma just piles on way too quickly with all the content in warframe. And with the release of galvanized mods, weapons that could squeak by on 3 or 4 forma now need more. If nothing is done about this, newer players and players in the midgame will get bored waiting for their in game timers and drop the game. The entire time gated crafting system has turned many of my friends off this game and the stacking forma costs will do the same.

You arent forced to forma them 5 times over, and even if you are a compeltionist you arent forced to forma them 5 times directly back to back anyways.

I also disagree that the amount of time needed for new players piles up quickly. A new player shouldnt spend forma on anything early on, so they should have plenty of forma to spend by the time they actually need it, which means they'll have more forma than they can spend while more is being crafted. If a new player decides to skip the grind for galv mods in arbis, then they are already willing to spend cash on something they dont need to spend on, so forma shouldnt be an issue either in that case. If they play the game then they'll have enough forma when they get to the galv mods and the proper weapons to spend forma on.

DE shouldnt cater to some newbie skip-and-taxi mentality.

 

[Hypernaut1]

The other day I had an affinity booster, with nothing to level. Then I realized I had a kuva weapon or two that could use some forma to max. Bam. Something to do for a vet.

THATS why they're like that. It's endgame busy work. It's the thing you work on when there is nothing else to level. It's excessive by design. Its a fraction of our arsenal that takes extra busy work to squeeze mastery out of. New players shouldn't be concerned with it like that. 

[MqToasty]

To be honest, given your post, I would say Forma fulfilled its design purpose and there is little to no reason for change unless the devs are feeling really generous for some reason.  The purpose of Forma, Orokin Catalysts and Orokin Reactors is to be nearly-required power-up items that are somewhat difficult to obtain, thus compelling players to either play a lot or (better yet) spend money so the devs can put food on the table.  The devs have primarily built their money tree on player impatience, so if you cannot patiently wait for Forma to build and become frustrated, that was intentional.

[Grim_Blades]

I would like to build in bulk like at this very moment I can build around 10 forma and if I could do it in bulk I would since I dont mind waiting most of the time. When it comes to affinity boosters I would want all my forma at once since the Queenpins as well as the Kingpins does require a lot of forma indeed. One of my friends told me that dojo weapons alone is about 70 forma to build it and dojo rooms also requires forma which most people that get started or just dont have an insane amount of forma will keep to themself because of the build timer. If bulk craft can't be added I would recommend to atleast drop forma crafting time to 8hours.

[Hypernaut1]

1 hour ago, MqToasty said:

 The purpose of Forma, Orokin Catalysts and Orokin Reactors is to be nearly-required power-up items that are somewhat difficult to obtain, thus compelling players 

I think it's very well designed system. It's a common drop from a relic, so it's not too hard to get.. But then you have to sometimes sacrifice ducats, which isn't hard to get either. It's a win/win in a way. 

Then you need to craft them, which requires engagement with the game. You get "rewarded" by logging in to craft another one. So to get the benefit from forma, you have to be playing consistently. 

It's cheap enough on the market place that you can trade to get plat for it easily, so while it does prey on impatience, the cost isn't really that high. 

It's by far one of the best f2p power items you can buy in gaming. It's easy to wait for, but not expensive if you can't. It's not a rare reward.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

12 hours ago, DogeManX said:

As more content is released, forma build time should be lowered.

so many people have died on this hill, that the hill of corpses is now bigger than the hill they were fighting on. 

nice as a Formatopia where it builds instantly for free would be, it's nothing more than a fantasy. DE makes too much money from Forma to ever have any incentive to improve the system. I was surprised when they lowered the time by an hour, small as that change is: and DE likely just did it in the hopes it would shut people up. Forma will never "cripple warframe" as you put it. in fact, the opposite is true: it's one of the main things keeping this game alive outside of Prime Access money.

[ShortCat]

Forma build time could be easely reduced to 1 hour and it wouldn't hurt the game in the slightest. 1 day build time was appropriate back in the day, when Forma was created. Today it's design is actively hurting the game.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

7 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Forma build time could be easely reduced to 1 hour and it wouldn't hurt the game in the slightest. 1 day build time was appropriate back in the day, when Forma was created. Today it's design is actively hurting the game.

Or actively hurting the ability of people to rush to MR 30 so they can not pass the MR 30 test and complain lol.

[_junguler]

every weapon needing 5 forma, every forma needing 23 hours to build and not having the option to bulk build or queue them, ranking stuff requiring certain game mods to be efficient and so on and so on, there is a lot of hoops we have to get thru to get that extra mastery. it's too much and that's why i only maxed the best weapons (zar and nukor) and didn't bother with the rest.

also having to forma a weapon 5 times means having 10s of extra mod points being wasted or at times having to remove polarities with forma to be able to have build diversity.

[Fl_3]

I do wonder how much money Tencent has made from people buying Forma thanks to the release of sisters of Parvos?

I'm guessing the next Plague Star will drop after the rush on tenet weapons has passed, but I'm still not expecting the event to include Forma in the event shop.

That would be a waste of so much potential profit.

[(XBOX)Deputy Facepain]

Most weapons can’t even get away with 5 or less forma for a min/maxed build. I have dozens of weapons with 5+ forma. Some even have 10+ from build changes over the years. Many non Kuva/Tenet weapons can run out of build space even with every slot polarized. I’d be happy if there was a way to make any weapon you want able to hit lvl 40. Maybe I’m a little crazy. 🤷🏻‍♂️