Pablo‘s Q&A for Chinese build

[jxtichi012]

Background: Currently Wegame build (aka Chinese build or version) is the same build as the global build.

This is Pablo's Q&A for Chinese build, but I think there is some interesting stuff for global player.

 

Following is the transcript if you do not want to watch the video.

Hello, hello. My name is Pablo I'm a designer here at DE. And I got the pleasure today to join you for a Q&A to celebrate Bilibili's 100,000 members. I want to thank everyone from the WeGame community for supporting us, and I'm very glad to be here with you. Let's see what do you have to ask.

Question 1:

I'm so into this future space DE has created, you must have put a lot of effort into it, (We have, we have) , even designing several sets of languages for different factions. I'm eager to learn about the details. How they live on? What's the culture like? Are there any traditions or rules?

Pablo:

So it really depends, we've explored some of this, but not as much as we would like. But you know, it's something that we'll continue to do.

But for example, the Corpus, you know the Corpus they're not all the same. It's kinda like here on Earth, if you go and visit Italy, or you visit Jamaica, there's different customs, different cultures, and stuff like that. So they're similar for all the factions that we have.

So the Corpus, there is a main corpus that you fight and that you know, they're like a church of greed and the followings that they have. But then you can also, for example, go to Fortuna and then you find a very different subculture there, where there's like people that are more, bound to each other, and they're a little more loyal, they're not after the greed, they've being exploited, so they're different. And then you can look at the, for example, the Mycona Colony, which are the ones that appear during the Glast Gambit Quest, which have, the tradition of… I don't want to spoil the quest. But if you look at that, they show their traditions there they have some drawings, and they have like a history of something they do with infestation.

So we do wanna explore even more of that, like smaller, like little pieces of the world to kinda keep on building it. But it is a very vast world, so there's a whole lot of opportunity there.

Question 2:

I like the Orokin style architecture. Do you have any plans to implement this Orokin-style design for more in-game content? For example, in addition to the current Orbiter and the Drifter Camp, do you consider having the State of Orokin as the next open social area that allows players to walk in and experience this glorious Orokin Empire?

Pablo:

So actually we refer to that style as the Tenno style. Orokin style, we generally refer to it as the white and golds, from like the Void or Lua.

But for the Tenno style, right now we just curiously released Angels of the Zariman, which is a big shift, that is in that style only, it's..it's seen better days, let's just say. And you do have your dormizone, which is like your little apartment, and in there, it has all of that sort of stuff, and we have a little extra decorations and stuff that are in that style. The relays we also make them on that style. I don't think right now there's like any plans to expand for that, cause we literally just did one that is in that style. But for Orokin... they're gonna say more than that.

Question 3:

My favorite warframe is Excalibur Umbra. I'm curious about the next Umbra warframe will be, and what forms the Umbra series is going to be unveiled?

Pablo:

We don't really have plans for more Umbras at the moment. Excalibur Umbra is pretty special in the way that we did it. Like you know, there was a story behind it and obviously a request for sacrifice, it's all revolving a big kind of the origins of Excalibur Umbra.

So, never say never, but at this point we don't really have plans to go further into now making... you know, we have 49 warframes, so you know making 48 more Umbras is kind of daunting.

So yeah, at this point, we don't really have a plan for it. But never say never. I do love Excalibur Umbra, definitely I can see the desire.

Question 4:

Do you consider adding Farming Areas in the Drifter Camp or on the Plains of Eidolon where players can cultivate specific plants and raise animals? Thought this mode might be popular, not only expanding the player base, and but also improving Warframe's retention rate.

Pablo:

This is a bit of a spoiler, hopefully no one will see this. But if you go and visit your dormizone, in the Angels of the Zariman that just came out, just look around, you might see a little tease of what's to come, a little tease of what's to come.

Question 5:

Multi-player dungeons are impressive! Missed the old days when 8 Tennos worked together on Trial Missions. Have you considered bringing back this Trial Mission or launching a brand new Trial Mission?

Pablo:

We have, we actually have that something every now and then we talk about it again. 8 player missions were really... complicated for us the way everything set up in game right now, those 8 player missions were really prone to basically failure.

Essentially there were a lot of bugs that were really hard to test for us, and I don't know. So the answer, the truthful answer is we even don't know. Like we do miss them as well, we do miss the idea of the story missions, we do wanna bring them back at some point. It is not something we have forgotten about, we definitely go back and revisit every now and then, and maybe at some point, it will come back.

Question 6:

The distinct Warframes are the game's soul, I want to ask the design team, regarding the source of inspiration for the design of the warframe, are there any rules to follow?

Pablo:

Generally, they come from two different parts. Sometimes, basically we have some concept artists that basically make the signs, right now if I go on and look, there's like a folder with several concept arts for potential warframes, and there's like probably like 20+ scenes there, that are mainly just... you know, concept art, and a little bit of blurb for someone's idea and the name, and that's kinda it... So sometimes I'll go in to see the designer, and they'll take a look through that folder and be like: “Woo, that's really cool!”. And then I'll start to think: “OK, what could this warframe do? How could it work?”, and if I find something inspiring, then I grab it from there and then we continue.

The other path is, for example, for Nidus, it was the other way around. I had an idea for the mechanics I wanted, and then I talked to a concept artist, and I was like, “OK, this is kind of what I want.”, and from there, they developed the look and feel for him.

So it can come from either way. Generally like, in terms of rules there's not really rules. Mostly, I would say like there's some priorities and what things we care about, and you know...we want them to feel different. We don't want one Warframe to play very similar to another Warframe, we want them to feel distinct, in not only how they play but also how they feel, how they move, how they look, etc. So those are kind of the things that we value the most, you know, how unique is this warframe.

Question 7:

Will Operators have melee amplifiers or weapon systems similar to Warframes?

Pablo:

They will not, We actually recently removed melee from operators. They used to have a little...Void blast, I forgot the name for a moment, we removed that, and now when you press melee, you switch to your warframe and attack with melee.

We are adding a little bit more depth to the apps, we are revisiting a few of the choices that we made with apps in the past, and trying to add a little bit more of... a little bit more decision making for you guys, a little more customization. So we are looking at that, but we don't want... basically we don't want the operator to play the same as a warframe, because then what is the point of having both, right?

So we want you to feel one way when you're playing with your warframe and then when you switch to your operator, it should feel distinct in a way. So that's why we don't really want to have like a one-to-one match of how the gear works for your operator and for your warframe.

Question 8:

What is the purpose of The Quills and Little Duck? They know the capabilities of Tennos, Operators, and Sentiment very well, do these relate to the mysterious Void power?

Pablo:

Well, they relate...if you played The New War, and you went through the tower, the Unum, you know a little bit more of... Well, when I say a little bit more, it is a little bit more because it is pretty mysterious. You know there's a power there, and you know that the Quills and Little Duck by extension basically, follow the guidance of the Unum.And the Unum clearly is a power beyond what we know.

That's as far as I wanna go on that. We definitely will at some point get back to the Unum, it's definitely something that's very interesting. But in terms of like what they do in the world, the Quills and Little Duck can follow the guidance of the Unum is what they do.

Question 9:

Will there be more types and difficulties of boss challenges in the future? The current boss fights are not enough and not challengeable.

Pablo:  

Yeah, honestly this is one of those things that is very complicated to do. Because we really like the power fantasy warframe, but the opposite side of that is that some warframes are so powerful, that it's kind of impossible to make really tough bosses. Because the warframes are not like really tightly balanced, so it means essentially, you can find a strategy with current warframes to one or two shot most bosses. So we've always struggled with this because, while you can also do that, also if we make bosses really hard, then a lot of warframes become “unusable” for that content.

We do have some things coming kinda soon where we will be trying another swing at that, another swing making a bit more challenging combat. But we're not really looking, if you're thinking more like in the context stuff, you know, traditional MMO, where you have a raid with bosses, where it can take you months of coordinated war to finally defeat a boss, we're not really looking at that type of content at the moment.

Question 10:

Why don't we make a Warframe-themed Animation, like the Arcane: League of Legends, which received a big hit. Telling the story before Ordis transformed to Cephalon or the glorious past of Orokin, will be fascinating.

Pablo:

Obviously, I love the Arcane, it was super cool. One of the very interesting things, about how they did Arcane, is actually a lot of it was developed in house, so that's what kinda kept the feel and all of the...you know, the special sauce that they have the riot team to make this sort of stuff.

It's not a specialty that we have. He's probably beyond the things that we had in the past can thought about it and thought a little bit about ideation. It would be amazing, but you know, it's a bit far away from our... from the sort of things we've done before. So it would be really cool, though, it would be really cool.

Question 11:

I like the character of Lotus very much and don't want to see her turned into an ordinary NPC. Will there be follow-up Quests of Lotus?

Pablo:

I think Lotus will always be... a very central character. She's very important for many things in the story, it's not the end of her story.

But it is a like, the sequence of quests that we've done up to here, is the big arc that we had thought for her from beginning to end. Will there be other stories in the future that involve her? Absolutely, but I think you should consider like this part like first time. Obviously it's not a trilogy because there's more than 3 quests. But you know, it's her first big arc, and I'm very glad that it just kinda goes from beginning to end, and it feels like a complete story. But you know, there's always more things to tell after.

Question 12:

Will there be functional differences between the roles of the Operator and the Drifter in the main quests? And whether the Drifter and the Operator can share cosmetics in the future?

Pablo:

Basically, so for the first one, not really... this is a little tricky to answer because there is a thing that... As it currently stands, the operator and the drifter, work pretty much the same and it's mostly a change in looks. Obviously when you played with the drifter in the quest, the drifter played very different. And there might be a little bit of that coming back at some point, you know, you can look back at some older trailers to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

But for the most part, when you're playing with your operator or with a drifter, they're supposed to fulfill the same sort of role. As for the cosmetics, we are literally we've been looking into, this and trying to find how to share the skins.

Essentially the way that they're made makes it so it doesn't work. So we tried a couple, we had a couple ideas, technical ideas on how we could convert, from operator skins so that they could be used for drifter. Unfortunately, neither of those panned out. They didn't look quite right, there was essentially... when you are converting from one skeleton to the other, if something grows, imagine you have like an arm, if the arm is longer, it kinda looks more stretchy, but you cannot just scale it up because then it looks kinda like a sausage.

That's not like maybe it's a little hard to visualize. But in any case, the point is it's hard to just convert them, because proportions are different. So things end up looking, kind of... weird. We have one more idea on how to do it that is more complicated and time-consuming, but it's being explored. We were literally talking about it like earlier today. So we're still exploring ways to achieve it, we can't make any promise if it's gonna work or not. Because, you know, we've been trying stuff, unfortunately, it hasn't worked so far.

Question 13:

Will there be new gameplay in the future? such as BR or hide-and-seek mode?

Pablo:  

There'll definitely always be that different things that we explore. I mean, I think even if you look at Angels of the Zariman, you can see that it leans much more toward exploration than all the other updates did. So we're always trying different things.

I don't think we'll… I shouldn't say no, but I don't think we'll ever go into something like Battle Royale, or something like that where we're just totally departing from what is the core of Warframe.

But you can expect some pretty different things especially on the next two big updates. There's like a couple of things that do deviate quite a bit from, the norm of gameplay that we usually do. And I think that's about as far as I can go without spoiling too much.

That's it! Those are the questions that got sent to me, I hope you enjoyed your time here with me. I wanna thank you again for supporting us all this time, and I hope you have an excellent day!  Adios! 

 

Source: 

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1nB4y1R7Cg

https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv16755938

 

[Merrcenary]

I don't understand why he spent so much time answering stupid questions. only the last one was more or less relevant

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, Merrcenary said:

I don't understand why he spent so much time answering stupid questions. only the last one was more or less relevant

Actually his answer to Raids and Umbra is relevant because past Devstreams actually gave the opposite impression. DE has seemed to show they would like to add both of these things in the future but the answers here actually seal the deal. I was under the assumption Raids were in the works (not prioritized but being slowly done). The answer here makes it sounds like it's not really happening, so I appreciate Pablo having a more honest answer than how "dodgy" Steve and the team act on stream with questions like these.

His answer on Operator Melee is funny because Operator Affinity distribution actually divides between Amps and an unused Melee slot. Pretty funny/sad.

[TARINunit9]

So the Umbras are cancelled, good to at least have closure on it

[(PSN)isbergen]

2 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

So the Umbras are cancelled, good to at least have closure on it

They only been stringing us along for 4 years, so guess it's good it won't be another 4. :/

[(XBOX)Shodian]

15 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

So the Umbras are cancelled, good to at least have closure on it

Honestly I feel Excalibur Umbra was really just a way of giving non-founders an "Excalibur Prime" without it being a prime if that makes sense.

I wasn't expecting any others.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

21 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

So the Umbras are cancelled, good to at least have closure on it

But.....never say never lol 

I'm hoping they don't do anymore. Umbra Forma is more then enough

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

Ah so my assumption was correct, they aren't thinking about more umbra frames despite saying that would be a line we would see. They should have come out way sooner, because this strung along quite a few players for a little too long.

[Josh486]

No raids. Guess I’ll die 

[--F--NerevarCM]

1 hour ago, Merrcenary said:

I don't understand why he spent so much time answering stupid questions. only the last one was more or less relevant

Probably because there is some people that like the other aspects of the game like lore, sound design, visuals etc. And don't care that much about the next meta or the next system.

[NightmareT12]

40 minutes ago, Voltage said:

I was under the assumption Raids were in the works (not prioritized but being slowly done). The answer here makes it sounds like it's not really happening, so I appreciate Pablo having a more honest answer than how "dodgy" Steve and the team act on stream with questions like these.

Given by the context Pablo gives, it seems they take a spin to it in early concept phase (ie: remember early Railjack being kinda like a relay that navigated), doesn't work out, divert time into other stuff that requires it, go back at it again perhaps a year later, rinse repeat. Indeed the answer is much more clear and firm here. I say this because I remember they tried to update Dark Sector conflicts a couple of times, with one becoming Sanctuary Onslaught, so yeah.

Interesting how he's settip up Duviri and whatever comes up next too, I guess this year's TennoCon will be more packed.

[Danny99s]

I cant believe someone asked for farming, gardening, raising animals or hide-and-seek. I think you should distance from individual targeted feedback to communities. You have your creator program, each creator has their community, they make a top list of recommendation/feedback.

[DreisterDino]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Voltage:

DE has seemed to show they would like to add both of these things in the future but the answers here actually seal the deal. I was under the assumption Raids were in the works (not prioritized but being slowly done). The answer here makes it sounds like it's not really happening, so I appreciate Pablo having a more honest answer than how "dodgy" Steve and the team act on stream with questions like these.

Yup, same here.

 

I dont understand why they put 3 questions about Raids into the 2022 Survey, 2 of them being about pretty specific things like the starting level. And on top of that, they directly adressed Raids/Trials in the topic in which they presented the results. This really doesnt make any sense. But ok, with good faith you could say that the non-DE creators of the survey are responsible for that, but that still leaves the question why DE let it slip through and mentions it afterwards.

 

Zitat

So What Happens Next?
Now that we have this information a few key things stick out to us.

• The Mod System could do with some TLC
• Players would like to see Trials come back, in addition to some more challenging end game content
• There are a variety of areas that we can explore for some QoL changes

We will consider these takeaways and more as we continue to build Warframe! It’s exciting to see that a majority of the results align with our current aspirations for Warframe. There’s always room to improve and this survey gave us great consolidated feedback to move forward with. 

Thats pretty much contrary to:

Zitat

We have, we actually have that something every now and then we talk about it again. 8 player missions were really... complicated for us the way everything set up in game right now, those 8 player missions were really prone to basically failure.

Essentially there were a lot of bugs that were really hard to test for us, and I don't know. So the answer, the truthful answer is we even don't know. Like we do miss them as well, we do miss the idea of the story missions, we do wanna bring them back at some point. It is not something we have forgotten about, we definitely go back and revisit every now and then, and maybe at some point, it will come back.

 

I just dont get it 😄

DE should be very well aware that putting Trials as one of just 3 points after "What happens next?" produces big hopes and expectations, especially if you combine that with "it aligns with our current aspirations". I talked about good faith at first, so if you want to take the bad faith approach here this looks like they are just playing with our hopes and try to keep players engaged and hopeful although they know for sure they cant deliver... At the very least this is a big marketing/communication fail and they should address that soon.

[Tiltskillet]

Wow, that's mostly a big letdown of an interview.  Thanks for being straight about things though, Pablo.

Quote

Because the warframes are not like really tightly balanced

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

I wasn't expecting any others.

I wouldn't have either if they didn't say there would be more in a devstream once upon a time

This is why Valve is so averse to making any promises whatsoever (though Valve took it far, far, FAR in the other direction)

[ShogunGunshow]

Not balanced because how could they be, really? Without some giant nerfs to some, nothing is really going to compete with what some damage amps and survivability powers can do. Best you can hope for is, uh, maybe some particularly bad Warframes get a second slot opened for Helminth or something, idk.

Frustrated by the answer about Operator weapons, though. Okay fine, but then why... the #*!%... would you make the Duviri trailer where the Drifter uses the Tigris? Why would you have an entire section of TNW where you PLAY as the Drifter using the Nataruk? Just to c***tease people? 

[vanaukas]

RIP zeratul-like amp as melee for operators

[SneakyErvin]

38 minutes ago, DreisterDino said:

DE should be very well aware that putting Trials as one of just 3 points after "What happens next?" produces big hopes and expectations, especially if you combine that with "it aligns with our current aspirations". I talked about good faith at first, so if you want to take the bad faith approach here this looks like they are just playing with our hopes and try to keep players engaged and hopeful although they know for sure they cant deliver... At the very least this is a big marketing/communication fail and they should address that soon.

I just see what they say as confirmation on what results the survey showed them. Just because they mentioned that players want trials back along with more challenging content, it doesnt really imply that all of it alligns with their current aspirations or that trials are part of those aspirations. They just say that they will consider the results and that the majority of them allign. The survey held more questions related to other stuff than what they highlighted.

And what Pablo says really just elaborates on it. I mean, what he says isnt really something odd, it is quite common sense and the issues can be seen a mile away regarding trials in a game with a setup like WF. From being difficult to designed out of a challenge perspective aswell as being very hard to design around the current grouping system, with multiple groups added to the bad mix that is WF co-op stability.

[PublikDomain]

Quote

Because the warframes are not like really tightly balanced, so it means essentially, you can find a strategy with current warframes to one or two shot most bosses. So we've always struggled with this because, while you can also do that, also if we make bosses really hard, then a lot of warframes become “unusable” for that content.

No S#&$.

Y'know, they probably wouldn't have to keep struggling like this if they leveled the playing field a little. Balanced the game. Made sure there wasn't such a gaping disparity between the power floor and ceiling. The stuff I've been saying over and over again. DE is their own worst enemy.

Like if you as a company are saying you want to add challenging content and you publish survey results of your players saying they want you to add challenging content and you have indeed added content that you say is supposed to be challenging... Maybe it's not a good idea to then give all players 100% Armor and Shield strip and extra damage and stagger immunity in an already-burdened AoE and anti-Armor meta you've also said is making things harder to design around? Maybe if you're saying that some of the player strategies you as a developer have added and allowed to remain in the game are one-shotting bosses and making it "kind of impossible" to make them difficult then... maybe you should stop letting players one-shot bosses? Maybe you as a developer should step in and balance your game instead of expecting the player to do it?

[DreisterDino]

vor 44 Minuten schrieb SneakyErvin:

I just see what they say as confirmation on what results the survey showed them. Just because they mentioned that players want trials back along with more challenging content, it doesnt really imply that all of it alligns with their current aspirations or that trials are part of those aspirations. They just say that they will consider the results and that the majority of them allign.

I am totally with you there on how you handle that information (in another thread i just had a little personal rant regarding how i am done talking about potential in Warframe and that i just want to judge on what is actually in the game^^). I have stopped giving too much value on statements like this a long time ago aswell. I mean, i still have all the statements regarding the 3rd Orb floating in my head - and that went a lot further already than what they are saying about Raids. We both now the state of the 3rd Orb - with that i mean we know nothing and it went from "in a playable state" to "we have a page document written" to "we have some ideas" 😄

 

Zitat

The survey held more questions related to other stuff than what they highlighted.

Indeed, there have been a lot more questions. Still, they decided to highlight Trials under the headline of "Whats next?". Thats what makes it so weird. You have all this stuff in the survey - and you chose to highlight the single topic you really have zero progress with? And while the last sentence of course doesnt imply "that all of it aligns with their current aspirations" it really isnt far fetched to think that at least the highlighted parts align with their aspirations.

 

Zitat

I mean, what he says isnt really something odd, it is quite common sense and the issues can be seen a mile away regarding trials

Well, maybe for you thats common sense. But these results alone produced questions ala "wait, raids are coming?", "Nice, Raids when?" or statements like "cant wait for raids to return" and i am sure you have seen how it ignited new discussions about Raids in this forum.

 

Maybe for some people that are as invested as you and me its clear that it means nothing. But for many players, the whole wording can be really missleading.

[TheLordOmega2]

Il y a 4 heures, jxtichi012 a dit :

They used to have a little...Void blast, I forgot the name for a moment, we removed that, and now when you press melee, you switch to your warframe and attack with melee.

Void blast was great, felt unique (especially with each of the school's augmentations) and most importantly FUN, dynamic and useful. Removing it was one of the biggest mistakes in this update.

Switching to the warframe when you press E doesn't feel right in any way.

[ShogunGunshow]

1 hour ago, PublikDomain said:

No S#&$.

Y'know, they probably wouldn't have to keep struggling like this if they leveled the playing field a little. Balanced the game. Made sure there wasn't such a gaping disparity between the power floor and ceiling. The stuff I've been saying over and over again. DE is their own worst enemy.

One of those moments where you wonder... if DE had treated the Conclave seriously and balanced the game with it in mind, Destiny-style, would that have put some design shackles on them that would have prevented too much number bloat on the buffs? Maybe. 

[PublikDomain]

42 minutes ago, TheLordOmega2 said:

Switching to the warframe when you press E doesn't feel right in any way.

It's also entirely redundant since you can already switch back instantly with the regular keybinding. Why remove an ability - a part of the gameplay - for a redundant keybinding?

12 minutes ago, ShogunGunshow said:

One of those moments where you wonder... if DE had treated the Conclave seriously and balanced the game with it in mind, Destiny-style, would that have put some design shackles on them that would have prevented too much number bloat on the buffs? Maybe. 

It could've made the balance harder for them to ignore, maybe, but committing to a balanced PvP requires about the same commitment as committing to a balanced PvE. You just... pay attention to what you're adding. And be proactive. Pay attention. React to problems when they crop up instead of after two or three years when they've metastasized.

[trst]

He really just says a whole lot of nothing here regarding what's to come.

The things about Trials is all pretty obvious to anyone who plays the game and knows why old Trials were canned. All he says is that 8-player is gone and they won't be making any "traditional MMO" style content. Players already struggle to maintain connections in 4-player and the game both doesn't support "traditional MMO" mechanics and one-off mechanics are one of the reasons Trials failed.

And he says nothing about the state of Umbras other than "we don't have plans for more at the moment". Which is just saying they don't have anything relating to that being worked on currently. But that doesn't mean they never will.

Hek he even said he wouldn't say "never" to a Battle Royale mode. Which is again just a nothing statement saying "yeah maybe but maybe not".

[bad4youLT]

6 hours ago, jxtichi012 said:

I don't think we'll ever go into something like Battle Royale, or something like that where we're just totally departing from what is the core of Warframe.

 

Good , it better stay as is , last thing I want to see is DE chasing short lasting trends .