Opinion; DE should stop releasing new frames, focus on fixing the old ones and find a new main way to monetise the game.

[Sojufueled]

2 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

I think that as long as the Warframes remain interesting they will be keen. Primes aren't only the updated stats, the artistic aspect is very much one of the main points, and as long as they move forward technically (and they are) and Warframes are fun to play it's still going to hit home.

I'd argue the stat changes are mostly meaningless, so yeah, it's a skin. I know I personally feel less impetus to try new frames with each one released. I already have more choice than I know what to do with, and in a lot of cases the choice isn't even all that significant. There are a few basic archetypes of good abilities and they mostly get repeated. There's another thread about how the new frames aren't getting played as much and I would argue it's not a fault of the design of the frames (except for caliban perhaps). I have never bought Prime Access, but I have dropped a good chunk of change over the years on plat and I think it was probably Deluxe skin bundles, cosmetic bundles (like the one with the excellent kuva lich palettes) and just plain forma bundles when the tenet/lich weapons and the hounds and deimos pets cleaned out my supply.

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, Sojufueled said:

That is true, but how long will it be true? Will people be as keen to get their 50th prime frame as they are to get their 30th?

What you're missing here is that while some people will be on their 30th or 50th or whatever prime access, there will be a large group of people who are just getting their first prime access.

Prime access is a very important monetization for the game because it's not just the already invested vets who are buying it, it's the people that go "Oh, it has the new shiny stuff and a bunch of plat and other stuff?  I guess I'll buy it and see how things go...."
Even at the lower levels of the prime access it can help onboard first time purchasers.

And because there has always been more new people getting into the game it's a safe bet to continue to produce it.
It's basically DE's "evergreen" thing to sell to players to help keep money flowing in as until the game is actually dying there will continue to be new players that will buy the pack, not counting the older players who buy everything just to have things as they release.

[Voltage]

8 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

I do agree DE can explore new way to make income especially the current NW, which is essentially the battle pass of Warframe is a boring grind fest for the most part and the reward is what I would describe as "pretty disappointing". It's also evident that DE is not that motivated to invest too much on NW because it costs money and doesn't make income. So a premium battle pass can help I guess?

Premium battle pass models plague the gaming industry. It's nice that Nightwave is relaxed and forgiving. The last thing Warframe needs is to add more "trendy development models" seen from other titles.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

9 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Disclaimer; this my own personal opinion/critique of how Warframes current development and monetisation is detrimental to the quality of the game, its not a fact by any means.

So as the title says, IMO DE should stop releasing new frames entirely, as the Warframe roster has become very bloated by this point. We now have over fifty Warframes to choose from. That's fifty different flavours of gameplay. In my view, this is more than enough variety/choice in playstyle for one game. However, DE are seemingly continuing on this trend of endlessly thinking up new frames to release to us and I believe that this is having a hugely detrimental quality on both the older and newer content.

In terms of old content, everyone knows DE has a bit of bad habit of not fixing old problems due to their design philosophy of constantly focusing on new content and leaving the old content to gather dust until it becomes a problem or if enough people complain about it. One of these problems are the old Warframes. Reworks are a very popular topic among the warframe community. Ever since they officially became a thing back when Excalibur got the first Warframe rework way back in 2015, people have been requesting reworks left-right-and-centre for a frame they think needs one. However, due to DE's way of designing warframe, frames rarely get a rework unless they are in either or both of the following situations;

1. They have the lowest use rating in the game.
2. They are talked about regularly by the majority of community as being boring to play.

IMO this is mainly due to the fact they keep designing and releasing new frames. They do not focus on getting the old ones up to the current state of Warframe because the new ones are taking priority and once they release a frame, on they go onto designing the next one, without pause. They do not stop and take a look back at the older frames who need actual help, such as Hydroid, Frost, Loki and a number of others, either because their abilities are functional but are just are not useful in the current state of the game, or are just plain rubbish. In fact, a few times we have seen a new Warframe release, they happen to have abilities that had been suggested by players in a rework for a different frame entirely.

For example, during talk of Vauban's rework, a lot of people were suggesting he become akin to the TF2 Engineer class who has access to a turret as well as dispenser that provided allies with health energy and ammo. Then Protea gets released, another tech/gadget themed frame who just happens to have a turret and a dispenser. For another example, Hydroid reworks often used to include the suggestion that the Kraken in Tentacle Swarm could be a summonable pet who could double as a K-Drive. Lo and behold; another water themed frame gets released with a sea-creature K-Drive ability in her kit. 

This because one of the ways DE makes money is through Platinum purchases to get the new frame bundles instantly and then their eventual Prime Access when it inevitably releases. Each new frame release means there will be platinum purchases and an eventual Prime Access for it. If they just stopped making frames and platinum purchases would lower and Prime Access sales would lower because eventually, everyone would have all the frames and Prime Access packs you can get. So they constantly release new frames to keep that revenue alive. DE are not releasing new frames because there isn't enough variety or they haven't explored all ways of killing an enemy, it's because this is one of their main ways to make money. 

However, like I said; this monetisation strategy is really starting to bloat the game up and can be blamed for the fact that actual new content i.e; new quests, new areas, gameplay modes etc etc, all takes so long. It can also be blamed for why old content is very rarely updated.

I would suggest a new monetisation path for DE; paid DLCs. I know this is immediately going to set some people off but hear me out; if DE charged for DLCs and felt like they no longer needed to constantly design 3 - 4 new Warframes every single year, they could actually focus entirely on designing new content and fixing the old stuff to bring it back up. Imagine how much better certain previous updates could have been if DE hadn't been so focused on designing new frames constantly. If DE were freed of this obligation to keep designing new frames, they could focus more on bringing the old frames all up to the current state of Warframe and then once that is done, focus entirely on making new expansions for the playerbase, a new addition that you don't simply level up to 30 in under ten minutes and then going back to the same missions we've been playing for ten years.

We could end up getting better quality DLCs because there would now be actual money riding on whether they are received well or not. One DE's shields against their historically buggy releases, is the fact that all the updates are free. That has been both a blessing and a curse in Warframes development because it means DE has had to monetise their game through the Warframe releases, which obviously take up the main focus of design.

In conclusion, I really feel like Digital Extremes should stop releasing new Warframe because it would allow them to just focus on bringing the old content up to the games current state, which only needs to be done once mind you, and then entirely on new expansions, improving upon their quality so they won't release as buggy messes or get DE-layed for years upon years.

I don't think reworking a 10 year successful model that is highly praised by players and the industry is a good idea nor a good discussion to have. For starters, vets need to be more careful about what they say about "old content". There are perhaps millions of players that are experiencing that old content as new content and have maybe years to go to get where vets are. 

Lastly, as a player who ABSOLUTELY LOVES to experience and experiment with new frames, I think DE would place themselves in a horrible position with players, content creators and the media. 

[thetdw2000]

3 hours ago, Sojufueled said:

That is true, but how long will it be true? Will people be as keen to get their 50th prime frame as they are to get their 30th? I think they definitely need to explore different revenue streams in the meanwhile. And I think they know this too. Voidshells are one new thing that might diversify the revenue stream. All of this of course is predicated on the core game not feeling dated which would kick the legs out from under the whole thing.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whaling

As PT Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute"

[CephalonOlphus]

If 50+ warframes is a problem for you, i'd hope you don't get into League of Legengs with it's 140ish champions.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

nice as it would be for them to revamp more old content, it won't be done at the cost of new content; that's just too heavy a price to pay.

the best we can hope for is that with each update, one old thing of some kind gets a rework, whether it be a Warframe, a tileset, a game mode, or whatever. if they did that, then it would be a good compromise as DE gets the revenue for the new shinies while keeping older players interested and brining the rets of the game up to par. 

[Sojufueled]

2 hours ago, Olphus said:

If 50+ warframes is a problem for you, i'd hope you don't get into League of Legengs with it's 140ish champions.

I stopped playing a little after Leona came out.

[Lilybun]

I'd take a battle pass if it meant current systems get polished rather than buried under new systems. Might be too late to turn the ship now though...

[Skoomaseller]

5 hours ago, Sojufueled said:

I stopped playing a little after Leona came out.

come back for aurelion sol rework, then leave

league is a S#&$ game

[Surbusken]

I think the riven market and frames and cosmetics is what keeps the game up. New weapons too.

Then it becomes a house of cards, you kind of don't want to touch anything, even if broken because there are too many unknown variables.

If you look at most reworks, nerfs augments, you almost get the impression they never played the game. Factor in the amount of variables plus the shall we say difficulty in understanding the players, along with the pride; doing as they like, I tend to agree.

 

Like you know you have a relatively stable in-come, just not entirely sure why. Start tampering you might be taking a risk. Risk is a young man's game. Corporations care about money.

 

Looking at something like 'railjack taxi' or 'operator integration', it would have been better to not touch it.

I guess you could argue where the disconnect is, if it's intentional, but it's definitely there.

 

If they can keep the game alive by pumping out new frames on a convoyer belt, I'd probably do the same if I were them.

Then with all the flak they have taken over the years, they would probably be even less inclined to risk anything to benefit the players.

[AtsiaZ]

19 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

IMO this is mainly due to the fact they keep designing and releasing new frames.

This is the entire mistake in your line of thought. Making new frames has absolutely no bearing on reworks, DE has been explicit in that they don't do a lot of reworks because reworks do effectively nothing to change a frame unless it's an absurd jump like Wukong.

[TARINunit9]

19 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

However, due to DE's way of designing warframe, frames rarely get a rework unless they are in either or both of the following situations;

1. They have the lowest use rating in the game.
2. They are talked about regularly by the majority of community as being boring to play.

This is false, with demonstrable evidence. Frost and Excalibur, the two first reworks ever, were high-usage frames back when they were reworked. Saryn was reworked the first time specifically BECAUSE she was too popular, and her popularity was still at decent levels when she was reworked again. A similar situation happened with Nekros where he was popular before the rework, though he had an extra factor: consoles couldn't handle multiple Nekros players in a single squad all summoning 20+ Shadows. Khora might not count (given a rework in less than a month) but if she does it's because her first kit literally did not function correctly and did not work as advertised or intended. Ember and Wukong were reworked in about as sincere a way possible: to genuinely fix them. They had one heavily abused ability (Defy and World On Fire) that took away from how DE wanted the game played, and three godawful abilities that weren't fun to use. And they did not have the lowest use rates in the game when this happened

[Lilybun]

17 hours ago, Prexades said:

Prime Access is a very important money maker for DE and in order to keep it going, new frames have to be released.

We got umbra frames as another layer of content that can be added on top of current stuff. Releasing an old frame as umbra every 3 months after we get all primes is like 15 years worth of prime access in itself.

[Skoomaseller]

37 minutes ago, Lilybun said:

We got umbra frames as another layer of content that can be added on top of current stuff. Releasing an old frame as umbra every 3 months after we get all primes is like 15 years worth of prime access in itself.

now while I wouldn't mind having more umbra frames, I'm pretty sure the reason we got excal umbra was to give non-founders a "prime" excal. don't think they'll make any more.

[TARINunit9]

14 minutes ago, Skoomaseller said:

now while I wouldn't mind having more umbra frames, I'm pretty sure the reason we got excal umbra was to give non-founders a "prime" excal. don't think they'll make any more.

It's a lot more complicated than this

1. While Excal Prime is locked forever for contractual reasons, it's notable Chinaframe got not only Excal Umbra, but also got Excal Umbra Prime with a unique primed helmet. I take that to mean Umbra Regular was alot more than some shallow attempt to make whiners shut up about Excal Prime
2. The original leaked version of War Within contained an epilogue about Umbra frames, so Umbras had considerations in the lore beyond simply
3. The OFFICIAL Devstream 58 summary contains the line "Umbras are coming, starting off with Excalibur." Making it very clear Umbras as a concept were more than just "legally distinct Excalibur Prime"

[Skoomaseller]

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

It's a lot more complicated than this

1. While Excal Prime is locked forever for contractual reasons, it's notable Chinaframe got not only Excal Umbra, but also got Excal Umbra Prime with a unique primed helmet. I take that to mean Umbra Regular was alot more than some shallow attempt to make whiners shut up about Excal Prime
2. The original leaked version of War Within contained an epilogue about Umbra frames, so Umbras had considerations in the lore beyond simply
3. The OFFICIAL Devstream 58 summary contains the line "Umbras are coming, starting off with Excalibur." Making it very clear Umbras as a concept were more than just "legally distinct Excalibur Prime"

Cool. Though wonder if it'll be unlockable like how we got excal umbra or idk, same way we get primes now

if we DO get more umbra, hoping we get skana and lato umbra 👀

[Sojufueled]

2 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

 

1. The OFFICIAL Devstream 58 summary contains the line "Umbras are coming, starting off with Excalibur." Making it very clear Umbras as a concept were more than just "legally distinct Excalibur Prime"

I speculate the relative unpopularity of the umbra sentience passive and zillion other things to worry about, coupled with them deciding to just go ahead and prime frames anyway regardless of the background, chilled their desire to make more umbra frames. The brief flirtation with the umbra sentience consumable was probably the end of it all. I am not sure Umbra was always going to be one of a kind, but I kind of imagine they eventually landed on that rationale after the fact.

[gioMisterio]

23 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

It'll also help DE when they stop investing tons of resources into insane experiments like Duviri Paradox whose scope very much extends beyond their reach.

Its still insane how mind-boggling and different Railjack is from the rest of the game. And how DE abandoned it at once. Its plain to see that Duviri Paradox will literally be just DE playing around with souls-like gameplay design within Warframe to get a clearer picture for Soulframe, until they get bored and think of another unrealictic project to implement into the game.

[CosoMalvadoNG]

lol

 

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

17 hours ago, Voltage said:

Premium battle pass models plague the gaming industry. It's nice that Nightwave is relaxed and forgiving. The last thing Warframe needs is to add more "trendy development models" seen from other titles.

Yeah battle passes being shoved everywhere is getting annoying, i remember everyone had a collective groan when those leaks of the suicide squad game came out and it has battle pass

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

Warframe: Ninjas play free.
Free, is part of the game's slogan. Free, is part of Warframe's identity, and free, is one of the many reasons why Warframe is so widely appreciated.
It would be contradictory to add content that is paid, given this.

Now, Warframe has always, excluding the beginning, released a new frame every 3-4 months. Quoting Pablo from latest DevStream, from Keith Thompson they have 20+ Warframe concepts ranging from as back as 2019, Citrine the upcoming frame being precisely from 2019. So, I don't think they spend much time designing the frames that are to come.
This steady rhythm wasn't seen as an issue by almost anyone back then, probably becase not many thought the game would grow to what is has, which can be a pleasant surprise or a terrible fate depending on who do you ask.

Stopping the production of frames would also make a sudden stop on the Prime Accesses 4 years from now, which doesn't seem like an issue in the present, but would be by then, because Prime Accesses as you mentioned (you did, right?) are one of the ways DE gets their lunch. The thing is, they've always prioritized things the player can earn by themselves, over things the player has to buy, while giving us the option to buy them, if we deemed the process to obtain such thus daunting. And this has worked well for many years.

Only cosmetics are locked behind "true money", and only platinum & Regal Aya cost it. On Pc, Tennogen skins are paid with real money, here over on console, we spend plat to do so.
I personally feared that if crossplay & crossave ever came, this would mean the end of buying Tennogen for me, mostly for as I've commented a few times, I play only 2 hours a day, and I normally try to play, not just, sell stuff. Had I more time or a way to outsource my marketing, I'd have a lot more platinum but this is not the case nor the place to talk about this type of commerce. However, it is to talk about platinum, as it is one of the ways DE makes money.

If it weren't because of this extremely player-developer healthy economic system that Warframe has, I'm pretty sure that money, would be one of DE's priorities/problems, but it has never been, because it isn't an issue for the game.

While making paid DLCs could make them some money, could being the keyword here, there's no assurance many players would buy these.
What's more, if these DLC's contained actual content, the backlash DE would face from the community would be pretty insane, with arguments possibly like "you haven't released actual content in years and now the one you do is paid?", to put an hypothetical example, and that'd be a gut-sucker-punch to many.

Again, DE is in no financial crisis, so there's no need for them to outlook new sources of income, as much as they needed to find new ways to express their vision and creativity, hence why Soulframe is now on the works. If a studio needed money, they wouldn't dare spend it on making a new game instead of releasing content for the already existing one that is known, wouldn't you reckon?

_______________________________

Moving on from this point to "fix old frames", it takes a bit of time.
A frame isn't just "fixed" because people think it needs to but because DE thinks so. Grendel was the perfect example of what condition had to be, critical as his was, for a frame to get a rework. But, then you got Volt, Mag and Excalibur who also got a few tweaks here and there despite being widely used frames in different scenarios and mastery ranks. Inaros is the next in line now, and I'm pretty interested on seeing how he develops.

Now, question is, do that many "old frames", gen 1-2 type frames I presume you're talking about, need to be "fixed"?
I'm pretty sure the list goes a bit like this: Valkyr, Chroma, Hydroid, Frost, and Loki. Didn't include Atlas because despite feeling like he needs some changes too, many people have argued he is "just fine". I'd make that same argument about the ones I mentioned, but that's besides my point here.

Point is, time to time.
If you like any of these "old frames that need to be fixed", I'm sure you must have invested plenty of time on them, know a lot about how to use them, and even tried some combinations for them on your own, like a Condemn Hydroid paired with the Focus school that grants defence removal, or a Lycath's hunt/Nourish Valkyr.
There's plenty of ways at the moment to make these "in need of help" frames good, and more will come in the future.
But no, I'm not trying to say they don't need a rework even if this is the case.

For a good rework that pretty much +95% of people likes, since there's always those outliners, you need time to understand how the game flows, moreso if the flow of the game these frames was designed for is non-existent anymore, and think of how to make the frame flow with it too. But lets imagine if DE "Fixed" all the frames you think need to be fixed. What then? Just, hop on the next compl-train and say how DE didn't address/fix this other thing?

Developing a game, is quite the effort, and takes time, patience, and a lot of other factors one wouldn't directly think of, but happen to be related. So sit down, relax, and take a step back on your mindset. 2020 in advance DE is not as fast as 2020 in prior DE. I personally liked the more constant Devstreams so we knew more often what went behind the scenes, even if there wasn't much to show or it was just an update on the situation, but those things are always appreciated.

 

So, to summarise, I disagree with your opinion because I find it pretty much counterproductive for the standards of Warframe, and Digital Extremes as a whole.
^{_{Insert vine boom effect here.}}

[iAsuna_v]

I fully agree with you, but it is still something, even if it were paid it would also be nice as after all games have. So a new battle pass would be top. DE we are counting on you!

[TARINunit9]

7 hours ago, Sojufueled said:

 coupled with them deciding to just go ahead and prime frames anyway regardless of the background, 

Um, I'm curious what you're talking about here

[PR1D3]

For along time I've thought the same. There should be, at worst, a soft cap on frames. Finish the ones in development but then stop for a good while. Then do, effectively, re-releases of frames. Maybe do them in batches or one after the other. A rework/update/overhaul, something for a frame and for money they could do a deluxe skin and/or other cosmetics to go along with it. They know we love the crap out of cosmetics. New skins for frames that are way more enjoyable now to motivate to get the new skin and/or older skins that frame may already have.

If they really have to do warframes they should be sparse. It should be in the development oven for a good time to properly balance it. A Warframe release should be special.