Do you genuinely believe tutorials would in fact help?

[(NSW)Greybones]

2 hours ago, Aldain said:

But about 90% of Warframe's problem is the obtusely convoluted, partially hidden math and calculations that are needlessly bloated for no reason.

It’s seriously not that bad unless a player is focusing on efficiency (which is for grinding, anyways, not so much gameplay). I follow the - and + of resistances or whatever, or I say “I want more crit chance” and slap on a crit mod on a crit weapon and am good to go.

What makes it so bad?

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I do.

I have a new friend trying to learn this game and she has to stop every day and ask me what to do, how mods work, etc etc etc. The game does a piss-poor job of explaining a lot of systems and an intelligent person like her would make good use of even a basic tutorial.

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

What makes it so bad?

Mostly the problems of just how many instances of multiplication can wind up stacked on one weapon.

You can have base damage, mod multipliers, element bonus damage multipliers, critical damage multipliers, critical percentage multipliers, headshot multipliers, Viral Status damage multipliers, Warframe ability damage multipliers (e.g. Roar), Condition Overload effect damage multipliers, and that's not even counting things like Heavy Attacks and Multishot and how damage reduction formulas interact with all that mess.

Notice all the instances of the words "Damage" and "Multipliers", calculating damage in Warframe is absurd and only probably 10% of the playerbase at most will reach the absolute Apex of that mess, but even then, there's so many multipliers that just cramming in even 50% of that list is likely obnoxious overkill.

It's gone well past complex and straight into nonsensically bloated.

[DarkSkysz]

8 hours ago, Fallen77 said:

You can spend years idiot-proofing something, some will still get lost somehow no matter what you do.

 

For sure DE have better things to do, than babysitting idiots xD

I mean... we want more content to play, not ABC tutorials...

[(NSW)Greybones]

16 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Mostly the problems of just how many instances of multiplication can wind up stacked on one weapon.

You can have base damage, mod multipliers, element bonus damage multipliers, critical damage multipliers, critical percentage multipliers, headshot multipliers, Viral Status damage multipliers, Warframe ability damage multipliers (e.g. Roar), Condition Overload effect damage multipliers, and that's not even counting things like Heavy Attacks and Multishot and how damage reduction formulas interact with all that mess.

Notice all the instances of the words "Damage" and "Multipliers", calculating damage in Warframe is absurd and only probably 10% of the playerbase at most will reach the absolute Apex of that mess, but even then, there's so many multipliers that just cramming in even 50% of that list is likely obnoxious overkill.

It's gone well past complex and straight into nonsensically bloated.

Some players find that bloat necessary to maintain their playstyles of “Destroy everything”. Whether that’s for the grind or for fun, it’s the ability to hyper-focus on damage that’s kind of cool. The math may be weird and crazy, but what makes it a problem if a player just likes hitting really hard? If the calculations were adjusted, I wouldn’t necessarily say “No”, but I’m not sure it’s all that important to make the effort in the first place.

Also, I’d hesitate to say that Steel Path equals 90% of the game (and you did say probably only 10% might experience this), where such insane damage multiplication to make it easy is necessary. I’m not sure why it’s a problem when a player chooses to stack so much damage in the first place while chasing something that’s not a fair fight; hell, I’d be stacking all that damage if I wanted to hit hard, doing mathematical calculations to figure out optimal combinations and weird math exploits. At the moment I’ve no interest, and the game certainly doesn’t need it to get what I want out of it. But I’d do it if I wanted to really hyperfocus on damage, and would be pretty glad to be rewarded with an easy fight.

If this is to be applied to the rest of the game though, I’m not sure why it would be important to tone down all that hyper damage to fit into a level 15 relic crack or nightmare or whatever. So much damage is kind of meant to break the game, and people love it

[Aldain]

8 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Also, I’d hesitate to say that Steel Path equals 90% of the game (and you did say probably only 10% might experience this), where such insane damage multiplication to make it easy is necessary.

It's not that Steel Path exists as 90% of the game, but rather that 90% of the game is buried under bloat solely so Steel Path can exist.

DE having to increase enemy numbers by 200+% just to remain remotely competitive with even 50% of that multiplication (because perfectly maximized builds will be hysterical overkill even on Steel Path) has the negative cascading effect of making anything below that power curve irrelevant or hopelessly easy on arrival.

Steel Path's existence is a symptom of the stat bloat problem in Warframe, and as many people will often remind us of on the forums, it still isn't enough because people are still effortlessly power-stomping everything into the ground.

To basically sum it up and answer this question:

8 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

The math may be weird and crazy, but what makes it a problem if a player just likes hitting really hard?

It becomes a problem when hitting really hard passively invalidates everything else, not just for the sake of efficiency but as a default state of affairs in new content (most content on Deimos being tied to either timers or kill speed for example) and this keeps repeating with every new content release, we either have to wait for a timer to run out or murder everything as fast as possible or both most of the time.

When even a mediocre clown like me can brute force content with minimal optimization at best (usually "bare minimum sentience" is what I barely achieve) then there's a problem.

[Marvelous_A]

The channel is literally called a Q&A channel. Why do you have a problem with people asking questions there? It's not called "do your research before asking" channel because if everyone does that there isn't a reason for the channel to exist at all.

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, Reitrix said:

Gotta remember that for a lot of us who've been around for years, the systems we have now were introduced to us over time. We had time to learn existing systems before a new one got thrown at us.
A brand new player right now has 8 years of systems layered in to learn all at once. 
Some people may like being thrown into the deep end and figuring out how to swim on their own. Lots more dont. 
 

I think it depends alot on the content. I started in 2017, so I was thrown in with everything besides uhm Railjack and Liches. I had zero issues with the minimal explaination and I think it was also fairly reasonable not to have any real explaination about things such as Eidolons, since they are afterall bosses and figuring out how such things work is 99% of the fun with them.

K-Drives, Archwings, Mechs and RJ are also things I dont really think requires an explaination or tutorial. They share the core mechanics of the game already, so if you can control your frame you really shouldnt have issues controlling either of those. Operators get explained well enough when they are introduced, we get a bunch of passive trees that seem neat. There is no real way for them to hold our hand there, since it is a matter of reading tooltips on passives and figuring out what is best. Unbinding nodes is pretty self explaining.

A simple thing DE could do is add pop up tutorial tips to the UI elements. Things that are always there until you turn them off. Jump into the mod menu and you'd get a button that opens up a codex entry regarding mods, same deal when you access focus and so on.

[ZeroX4]

30 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

The channel is literally called a Q&A channel. Why do you have a problem with people asking questions there? It's not called "do your research before asking" channel because if everyone does that there isn't a reason for the channel to exist at all.

In fact i dont
I only have problem with ppl reading what i wrote and fail to understand it

[Hypernaut1]

13 hours ago, Aldain said:

Mostly the problems of just how many instances of multiplication can wind up stacked on one weapon.

You can have base damage, mod multipliers, element bonus damage multipliers, critical damage multipliers, critical percentage multipliers, headshot multipliers, Viral Status damage multipliers, Warframe ability damage multipliers (e.g. Roar), Condition Overload effect damage multipliers, and that's not even counting things like Heavy Attacks and Multishot and how damage reduction formulas interact with all that mess.

Notice all the instances of the words "Damage" and "Multipliers", calculating damage in Warframe is absurd and only probably 10% of the playerbase at most will reach the absolute Apex of that mess, but even then, there's so many multipliers that just cramming in even 50% of that list is likely obnoxious overkill.

It's gone well past complex and straight into nonsensically bloated.

That's what makes it awesome. I've been playing for years, but I still discover some new form of efficiency in my modding. 

I don't follow YouTubers, so I don't skip the whole experimentation/discovery stage of modding. (Most are full of BS anyway) People that just copy builds are missing out on a big part of WF IMO.

I know it can be confusing, but that convoluted mess feels like depth to me when I experiment and realize that stacking a +dmg riven with serration actually decreases my DPS. Or how sometimes IPS damage mods are better or bane mods are better in a build. Even frames come with plenty of options. 

I don't think there are many games with a better or deeper modding system. It's definitely not cookie cutter, and I don't buy into the whole "mandatory mods" nonsense. The deeper you get into the system, the more options you realize that you have. At the same time, you can just slap serration and some elemental mods and be fine too. As a vet, I'm still discovering new mod load out ideas for my favorite frame. 

[Jarriaga]

As someone who nearly quitted the game because of lack of initial story-progression guidance: Yes. Tutorials and a certain level of guidance would absolutely help.

DE is now, after my 4 years here, adding a persistent quest marker which will hopefully let new players now there's more to the game than "complete missions". 

[ShortCat]

19 hours ago, vanaukas said:

Dude, Steam achievements means nothing. My achievements in game and steam are completely different, not to mention that steam isn't the only way to play this game...

This is not how statistics work.
Steam stats do not cover the entire WF player base, however the sample size with several thousand participants is big enough to make estimations about the entire player base. If Steam stats show that over half of registered players don't make it past 2 hours, then you will most likely observe the same behaviour across all platforms. Your statement "Steam isn't the only way to play the game" shows that you don't even know what information you received there.

 

If such large number of players don't make it this far into the game, then it is a safe bet that the problem must be deeply rootes in WF's initial presentation. Tutorials, or lack thereof could be one of the reasons. It could be a variety of game factors or personal factors, which lead to bad player reception, this does not mean developers should abandon new player experience, but instead continue working on improvements in the early game.

Warftame is notorious for not explaining its own elements, yet at the same time it throws numerous superficial mechanics at the player. DE very much rely on existing players to teach new players how to play their game. As long as YTers continue to create build guides and the wiki will receive frequent updates, DE themselves won't experience much pressure on their side. I mean the Q&A channel is literally "ask the player base, because we couldn't bother more" response.

[FatalPapercut]

I feel like there should be a tutorial pointing people to the tutorials on the codex. 

[vanaukas]

1 hour ago, ShortCat said:

This is not how statistics work.
Steam stats do not cover the entire WF player base, however the sample size with several thousand participants is big enough to make estimations about the entire player base. If Steam stats show that over half of registered players don't make it past 2 hours, then you will most likely observe the same behaviour across all platforms. Your statement "Steam isn't the only way to play the game" shows that you don't even know what information you received there.

 

If such large number of players don't make it this far into the game, then it is a safe bet that the problem must be deeply rootes in WF's initial presentation. Tutorials, or lack thereof could be one of the reasons. It could be a variety of game factors or personal factors, which lead to bad player reception, this does not mean developers should abandon new player experience, but instead continue working on improvements in the early game.

Warftame is notorious for not explaining its own elements, yet at the same time it throws numerous superficial mechanics at the player. DE very much rely on existing players to teach new players how to play their game. As long as YTers continue to create build guides and the wiki will receive frequent updates, DE themselves won't experience much pressure on their side. I mean the Q&A channel is literally "ask the player base, because we couldn't bother more" response.

And I'm also saying that the achievemnts on steam are broken as hell, because it doesn'tn even show that I have a railjack, but In game my progression is very different... WHy I would do statistics on broken data? For the "steam it's not the way to play the game" it's because ytou can start the game on steam and then using another platform to keep playing, which is literally my case.

In any case, more tutorials won't help, there are countless examples on that and, for me, the most notorious one on F2P realm is EVE online, which have tutorials for everything and still can't engage new players due the overwhelming size and deep of the game. I'm not saying warframe doesn't need more stuff explained, I'm saying that won't help to player retention and devs knows it. Player retention come from other experiences, since most people is already used to look up for info on the internet or with other players, becase AFAIK this happens on every single game, not only in warframe.

Name one big game that doesn't have external wikis/youtubers explaining stuff or that have all the info regarding mechanics and interactions (between players and players against AI) in game without external sources... I'll be waiting. This not just "devs fault" or devs not caring or anything ike that, it's how things works, people it's used to do wikis/youtube videos for things that doesn't even need it on first place. 

 

[PublikDomain]

28 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

And I'm also saying that the achievemnts on steam are broken as hell, because it doesn'tn even show that I have a railjack, but In game my progression is very different... WHy I would do statistics on broken data? For the "steam it's not the way to play the game" it's because ytou can start the game on steam and then using another platform to keep playing, which is literally my case.

Then look at the achievements from consoles which show the exact same pattern.

[vanaukas]

3 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Then look at the achievements from consoles which show the exact same pattern.

then use the data, draw conclussions and... Well, nothing else.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

There's multiple issues at play here:

People get excited and skip tutorials. We all do it and it's ok. You like the game so you rush through til you hit a wall, then you read something in game or realize after some fumbling what you did and keep going etc.

Then you have UI issues:

I've been a PC and console gamer, I know PC has little screens. I'm currently on a 65in TV so it's easier for me to see details.

In every menu on warframe there's a little "i" with a circle around it that gives info...they could possibly update these and make them easier for people to see. And add more information blurbs in the ability descriptions etc. Warframes UI is awesome and it should stay the same but just add more sentences and numbers if needed.

Then the more deeper issue some people don't understand:

This goes with music, movies, games, any entertainment medium: some things are going to be more for the masses, and some things are gonna be for a smaller more focused group. 

If you can't handle the game or don't like it then take a break.

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, ShortCat said:

This is not how statistics work.
Steam stats do not cover the entire WF player base, however the sample size with several thousand participants is big enough to make estimations about the entire player base. If Steam stats show that over half of registered players don't make it past 2 hours, then you will most likely observe the same behaviour across all platforms. Your statement "Steam isn't the only way to play the game" shows that you don't even know what information you received there.

 

If such large number of players don't make it this far into the game, then it is a safe bet that the problem must be deeply rootes in WF's initial presentation. Tutorials, or lack thereof could be one of the reasons. It could be a variety of game factors or personal factors, which lead to bad player reception, this does not mean developers should abandon new player experience, but instead continue working on improvements in the early game.

Warftame is notorious for not explaining its own elements, yet at the same time it throws numerous superficial mechanics at the player. DE very much rely on existing players to teach new players how to play their game. As long as YTers continue to create build guides and the wiki will receive frequent updates, DE themselves won't experience much pressure on their side. I mean the Q&A channel is literally "ask the player base, because we couldn't bother more" response.

Not really true since with WF Steam is very flawed. All it takes to add a number to the Steam statistics is linking your WF and Steam account on the official WF site. You never have to touch Steam after that except for adding money to your wallet if you wanna buy tennogen. Steam will still consider it as another user, so even if you never log in through Steam you will still be one of those 18+ millions of players aswell as one of those players not reaching the 2h mark or completing a single cipher. You must play the game through Steam for those to register, so even if you play through the SA, Epic or Discord for hundreds of hours you still wont change the data on Steam to reflect that.

Plus, looking at achievments in order to see how a game fares is kinda pointless when concurrent numbers tell a far more reliable story. And in WF's case they do perfectly fine at retaining players. 64k player peak today and currently 54k online through Steam only as I write this. Adding in Epic and SA launcher to that it probably has around 100k concurrent players on PC alone. Pretty decent for an 8 year old game if you ask me.

[Hypernaut1]

4 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

 

This goes with music, movies, games, any entertainment medium: some things are going to be more for the masses, and some things are gonna be for a smaller more focused group. 

If you can't handle the game or don't like it then take a break.

I agree. Warframe is just that game that you need a wiki for. It's not the first game to be like be like that. 

[0_The_F00l]

I support more tutorials , I personally think a minimal tutorial would work best in a closed garden quest to explain the different systems. Making it too elaborate will just make things more confusing.

It is unfortunate that too much is thrust upon the player at a very early stage, one must crawl first and so should be given kneepads, then walk so give them shoes and then let them fly and grow their own wings.

Players need to understand the basics first and then slowly be introduced to all the various mechanics which make the system OUTSIDE OF MISSIONS.

The missions themselves are relatively self explanatory , it's the stuff between missions that requires some literal studying. 

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

22 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

I don't know... some people refuse to read. Sure, more well placed "cues and clues" would help inch players towards meaningful character progress... but lots of people need to learn to investigate in-game (I'm not talking about wiki or google).

This Bubonico picture is an excellent example. Link and read, very simple. No google, no wiki, no Q&A, just reading.

I have a childhood experience that has stuck with me. My neighbour was 17-18 y/o, plays pokemon on the gameboy and has grinded level 100 pokemon, they ask me to teach them "why do some of my attacks say 'Not Very Effective'?" So there I am 12-13 y/o teaching a "grown up" about Type Advantage. They skipped all the dialogue, all of it!

You can lead a horse to tutorials, but you can't make it drink! Grrrr! So frustrating!

I just wish I could make a list of common questions and have a bot answer them in the Clan chat. I always dread a new update because I'll end up having to explain everything on the f****** Patch Notes ANYONE CAN READ and get major attitude if I ask people to just read instead of constantly asking me. Why do people only listen if someone says it to them? You're still reading! Why can't you just read the other thing?!

"So how do you get their Relics?" "What parts drop from it?" "Where's the best area to farm them?" "How do you get the new weapon?" "Is it good?" "Is the Warframe good?" 



Please just give us a single area where all of the Tutorials are so I can point to that and people can stop playing 20 Questions. Put it in the Codex or something. I will take all of the Tutorials, the more the better, especially if they're so braindead easy to find.

[Reitrix]

4 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I think it depends alot on the content. I started in 2017, so I was thrown in with everything besides uhm Railjack and Liches. I had zero issues with the minimal explaination and I think it was also fairly reasonable not to have any real explaination about things such as Eidolons, since they are afterall bosses and figuring out how such things work is 99% of the fun with them.

K-Drives, Archwings, Mechs and RJ are also things I dont really think requires an explaination or tutorial. They share the core mechanics of the game already, so if you can control your frame you really shouldnt have issues controlling either of those. Operators get explained well enough when they are introduced, we get a bunch of passive trees that seem neat. There is no real way for them to hold our hand there, since it is a matter of reading tooltips on passives and figuring out what is best. Unbinding nodes is pretty self explaining.

A simple thing DE could do is add pop up tutorial tips to the UI elements. Things that are always there until you turn them off. Jump into the mod menu and you'd get a button that opens up a codex entry regarding mods, same deal when you access focus and so on.

 Half the problem with the Codex is how badly written it is lol. It doesn't tell you even half of what it should. Prime example is in fact, Mods. Followed by Warframe Abilities >_<
The Codex happily tells you that mods go into weapons and frames, it even helpfully points out where to see the upgrade level of said mods. 

But fails completely to tell the player that you upgrade mods manually via the FUSION button. That made a bit of sense back when we literally did smash the mods together to upgrade them, But not now. 
Many other "looter" games utilize better drops instead of building permanent weapons and upgrading what you get like Warframe does. It wouldn't be a stretch to consider that some people expect better mods to drop as they play, But that never happens. 

The reason I'm big on suggesting gameplay tutorials over text popups is because this current generation abhors having to read things. For some, its laziness. For others (like my brother) its actually a learning difficulty whereby they can read a comprehensive guide on how to do something but not understand it.
For my brother, Visual guides work best. And I'm not just referring to games, he is very much that way in learning real life things as well, like cooking. Give him a recipe andd he has no idea what to do with it, but show him how to cook it just once and he'll be able to cook it himself immediately. 

I'm sure my brother isn't alone in that either. Its not a disability, nor is he an idiot. Its just that people learn things in their own way. Some learn best by reading instructions or guides. Others prefer to dive headfirst in and figure it out themselves. Still others learn best with visual guides. 

The game only stands to benefit from making the core systems as easily understood as possible. 
The easiest way to accomplish that is with skippable quests instead of text popups. People hate text info dumps. Integrating the teaching into the gameplay is the surest way of making sure that someone who goes through it gains an understanding of the process. 

You may not have noticed, But that mission where you first pilot Snake? Yeah, that was a tutorial disguised as a quest. 
Railjack was the same. As were operators and Archwings. The act of completing the quest taught you enough about the system that you were ablke to figure the rest out yourself. 

All i want is for DE to apply that same logic to Mods and Star chart progression. Early game direction is important.

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

19 hours ago, Aldain said:

I believe they couldn't hurt at least.

Hell, how to use Omni on Railjacks is relegated to a single blurb from Cy and the player fumbling around with no idea if the gunk they're spraying even remotely works.

But about 90% of Warframe's problem is the obtusely convoluted, partially hidden math and calculations that are needlessly bloated for no reason.

There's plenty of other examples like this are pretty much just left to the player to figure out, most of the stuff on Deimos is a good example. Necramech parts? Pillars? Races giving you K-Drive parts? The entire Deimos rep system? The list goes on and on.

There's plenty of stuff you wouldn't even know exists until you stumble upon it, which I feel is an even bigger problem. 

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

28 minutes ago, (XBOX)Graysmog said:

I just wish I could make a list of common questions and have a bot answer them in the Clan chat. I always dread a new update because I'll end up having to explain everything on the f****** Patch Notes ANYONE CAN READ and get major attitude if I ask people to just read instead of constantly asking me. Why do people only listen if someone says it to them? You're still reading! Why can't you just read the other thing?!

"So how do you get their Relics?" "What parts drop from it?" "Where's the best area to farm them?" "How do you get the new weapon?" "Is it good?" "Is the Warframe good?" 



Please just give us a single area where all of the Tutorials are so I can point to that and people can stop playing 20 Questions. Put it in the Codex or something. I will take all of the Tutorials, the more the better, especially if they're so braindead easy to find.

Sorry to say, but DE considers it your job to teach your clan mates how to play. DE doesn't bother because they went the "players teach players how to play the game" approach.

EDIT: I agree. More tutorials the better, better presentation of information (re: patch notes) would also be better for the game.
 

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

17 minutes ago, Reitrix said:

 Half the problem with the Codex is how badly written it is lol. It doesn't tell you even half of what it should. Prime example is in fact, Mods. Followed by Warframe Abilities >_<
The Codex happily tells you that mods go into weapons and frames, it even helpfully points out where to see the upgrade level of said mods. 

But fails completely to tell the player that you upgrade mods manually via the FUSION button. That made a bit of sense back when we literally did smash the mods together to upgrade them, But not now. 
Many other "looter" games utilize better drops instead of building permanent weapons and upgrading what you get like Warframe does. It wouldn't be a stretch to consider that some people expect better mods to drop as they play, But that never happens. 

The reason I'm big on suggesting gameplay tutorials over text popups is because this current generation abhors having to read things. For some, its laziness. For others (like my brother) its actually a learning difficulty whereby they can read a comprehensive guide on how to do something but not understand it.
For my brother, Visual guides work best. And I'm not just referring to games, he is very much that way in learning real life things as well, like cooking. Give him a recipe andd he has no idea what to do with it, but show him how to cook it just once and he'll be able to cook it himself immediately. 

I'm sure my brother isn't alone in that either. Its not a disability, nor is he an idiot. Its just that people learn things in their own way. Some learn best by reading instructions or guides. Others prefer to dive headfirst in and figure it out themselves. Still others learn best with visual guides. 

The game only stands to benefit from making the core systems as easily understood as possible. 
The easiest way to accomplish that is with skippable quests instead of text popups. People hate text info dumps. Integrating the teaching into the gameplay is the surest way of making sure that someone who goes through it gains an understanding of the process. 

You may not have noticed, But that mission where you first pilot Snake? Yeah, that was a tutorial disguised as a quest. 
Railjack was the same. As were operators and Archwings. The act of completing the quest taught you enough about the system that you were ablke to figure the rest out yourself. 

All i want is for DE to apply that same logic to Mods and Star chart progression. Early game direction is important.

Well an easy solution is a video pop-up with text. Making a whole quest just to explain a single gameplay mechanic isn't something I would suggest when some mechanics are ridiculously simple, while some others are entire new gamemodes with their own mechanics. Making a video with text, similar to Ability Pop-ups, I think would be the best way to go about most Tutorials.

Just don't let people immediately ignore the Tutorial, and let them bring it back up at any time, and you'll have a good system.