Quitting New war quest (and other probably)

[(PSN)Unstar]

20 minutes ago, xMarvin732 said:

Its not misleading and its a good warning.

Is is misleading, and is not a good warning, for the reasons I mentioned that you didn't engage with.

[0bsi]

I agree that the content of the gameplay is in many places during TNW vastly different to what players encounter in normal gameplay - so the warning (while obvious) isn't enough to clearly indicate that the GAMEPLAY is different.

I've seen a LOT of people get stuck on the stealth parts, which I (as someone who enjoys stealth games) found completely trivial.  I struggled more on the archon fights, which other players found completely trivial.  Some get stuck on Veso's puzzle solving because they aren't used to having to think in those ways.

Some of it is gameplay that players aren't familiar with - and that's why it's not really an INFORMED choice people are making, when they assume it's going to just mean they are locked into one loadout and that the gameplay will be regular warframe quest stuff, which it isn't.

You can argue that Durviri is also different gameplay (and it is), but it wasn't available when TNW launched, so players only had prior game content to base their assumptions on.  (Also there's an argument over how it's not a good idea to let new players into Durviri at the start of the game, and better if they do it the proper way)

Edited January 2 by 0bsi
spelling

[CephalonOlphus]

Sometimes you gotta ask what you're playing the game for. In the case it doesn't seem to be challenging content or even stories.

[DarkSkysz]

39 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

You most definitely don't have all the information, which is why DE's pre-New War disclaimer doesn't function well as a warning.  A good warning would give players enough information to make an informed decision.  But DE's warning actually misleads players by suggesting that they should prepare.  Which would lead most players to think they need to prepare their Warframe, their Railjack, their Necramech, etc, and that if they do those things, they will be ready to lock-in.

What you want? A walkthrought in the warning pop up? You will play Veso, do that and that then you will play Kahl, so you must do it then go there... nah thats stupid.

This just feels like those who complain about the 'confirm' windows, but also cry when they sell/delete something 'by mistake'.

[xMarvin732]

11 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Is is misleading, and is not a good warning, for the reasons I mentioned that you didn't engage with.

I've read your comment and i will state it again.

"regular Warframe activities" in

"Prepare wisely. Loadout access will be limited and regular Warframe activities will not be available until this quest is completed!"

Its not misleading, its a way not to spoiler the quest.

43 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

And doesn't that suck?  That the quest is implemented in a way that discourages informed players from even trying?  That seems backwards to me.

you can also use the fandom wiki

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_New_War

[(PSN)Unstar]

6 minutes ago, DarkSkysz said:

What you want? A walkthrought in the warning pop up? You will play Veso, do that and that then you will play Kahl, so you must do it then go there... nah thats stupid.

That's kind of the point: there's no reasonable warning that would actually be able to adequately prepare players to make an informed decision.  Therefore we can't rely on warnings and pretend that players have given informed consent.

The real solution is to simply make the quest able to be abandoned.  Then nobody can get locked out of the rest of Warframe.  That's all.

Edited January 2 by (PSN)Unstar

[xMarvin732]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

The real solution is to simply make the quest able to be abandoned.  Then nobody can get locked out of the rest of Warframe.  That's all.

That would completely defeat the "War" part.

 

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

1 minute ago, DarkSkysz said:

49 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

What you want? A walkthrought in the warning pop up? You will play Veso, do that and that then you will play Kahl, so you must do it then go there... nah thats stupid.

Actually... That would've been great for players. You complete Kahl and Veso AND THEN get the warning prompt if you want to continue. It's fairly obvious a lot of people would've gave a giant nope at that point -- prolly foreseen by DE.

Considering they were willing and ready to let everyone pay to skip to get to Whispers, it's extra absurd that they haven't offered a flat-out quit for The New War.

[(PSN)Unstar]

5 minutes ago, xMarvin732 said:

52 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

And doesn't that suck?  That the quest is implemented in a way that discourages informed players from even trying?  That seems backwards to me.

you can also use the fandom wiki

I'm guessing that you're misunderstanding me, because the wiki won't give players the dexterity, coordination, and reaction time required to overcome challenges.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

12 minutes ago, xMarvin732 said:

"regular Warframe activities"

As in, no Sabotage, Defense, or Survival, missions? Or as in, you'll barely be playing as your Warframe at all?

It's ambiguous, clearly intentionally.

[CephalonCarnage]

25 minutes ago, xMarvin732 said:

I've read your comment and i will state it again.

"regular Warframe activities" in

"Prepare wisely. Loadout access will be limited and regular Warframe activities will not be available until this quest is completed!"

Its not misleading, its a way not to spoiler the quest.

you can also use the fandom wiki

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_New_War

Say it as many times as you like, it is not informative at all.

Imagine - you're a player wanting to do TNW, but didn't bother with a railjack. So you buy one with plat. And then the quest unlocks and off you go, only to find its next to impossible to complete with a bare-bones level 1, non-upgraded, newly purchased Railjack.

Did the warning mention that? No. Did it ionform you of the requirments? No. Did it prepare you? No.

 

DE is all about player retention, and yet here we have them deliberately kicking players away.

For a long quest, it absolutely makes sense to allow a player to roll back to just before starting it - its not like your arsenal is updated in any meaningful way. It would make much more sense to nerf the quest to the bones though, cinematic quests are not gameplay. So removing 1 archon hunt, removing the fortuna "stealth" puzzle, nerfing the railjack requirements, and other aspects would be hugely beneficial. Why did it need to be so long anyway?

 

[Packetdancer]

4 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I've actually worked in game dev, so I'm intimately familiar with this kind of stuff.  While I won't pretend this task is trivial since I don't know anything about Warframe's proprietary systems, writing the code/script that resets a quest shouldn't be difficult; you would just set all of the variables relevant to the quest to their initial values.  The bulk of these variables are already being reset whenever a player re-plays The New War, meaning that the bulk of the work to enable such a reset is already done.

Another ex-gamedev here (and one who still does it in her spare time as a hobby, where the crunch-mode grindstone cannot happen), and I'm going to largely second this.

The New War happens, so far as I can tell, pretty much entirely offline. Meaning there's probably almost nothing actually stored as part of your account server-side other than the "you've started the New War" status flag and presumably a "you are currently at this point in the New War." (Though I won't even swear to that, as I certainly never tried logging out and logging in on another computer while in the New War to check if the quest state synchronizes between computers.) As a result, it's at least highly likely that resetting account state to before you embarked on the quest is relatively straightforward.

That said, I'm going with "highly likely" because, as Unstar pointed out, we don't actually know the internal implementation details of Warframe. And while this is the sensible way to handle stuff, I have sure as heck seen tech debt or time crunches lead to things in gamedev that are not in the same timezone as "the sensible way to handle this thing." So yeah, there's certainly a non-zero chance there is something wonky that might make it difficult to do.

It's like the joke I saw a couple of years back from someone still in the industry for their day job:

• At the beginning of gamedev: A helicopter is a vehicle, obviously.
• Late in the project: I mean, when you think about it, a helicopter is just a very specialized type of door, right?!

(Side note: Despite the fact you cannot walk through them, giant spinning turbines are also a very specialized door, at least for the purposes of pregenerated light maps. Or so claims code I actually wrote.)

 

3 hours ago, (XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn said:

Considering they were willing and ready to let everyone pay to skip to get to Whispers, it's extra absurd that they haven't offered a flat-out quit for The New War.

To be fair, despite what I just said, there is a difference. Skipping forward is easy -- you keep the same account state, but just set a bunch of stuff to "done" as if the quests had been finished. It's an additive operation; nothing needs to be removed or restored to an earlier state.

Backing out of something is (potentially) more complicated; if there are changes that happen to your stuff while you're doing the thing, backing out of that thing becomes more tangled because it's not an additive operation, it's more like a database rollback. (I mean, potentially it literally is a database rollback...)

[trst]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

That's kind of the point: there's no reasonable warning that would actually be able to adequately prepare players to make an informed decision.  Therefore we can't rely on warnings and pretend that players have given informed consent.

The real solution is to simply make the quest able to be abandoned.  Then nobody can get locked out of the rest of Warframe.  That's all.

Thing is the ship has already sailed. Not only has DE already said "no" players are already getting locked out of the game if they never finish New War.

Currently those players can't access Veilbreaker, Archons or Archon Shards, the entirety of Zariman, everything in Whispers, the TennoKai system, and all this includes a plethora of Frames, Weapons, Mods, and then some. And this list is only going to continue to grow as the story continues past this point.

edit: Also players are locked out of SP without New War due to being unable to complete the nodes in Zariman.

Edited January 3 by trst

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, xMarvin732 said:

I've read your comment and i will state it again.

"regular Warframe activities" in

"Prepare wisely. Loadout access will be limited and regular Warframe activities will not be available until this quest is completed!"

While not terribly informative, I don't think it's misleading either.  Though I do wish it gave some rough estimate of number of hours.  Which I'm sure varies wildly, but DE gave us an estimate right before it released, and I still found this helpful even though I went way over it.

But I also don't think information or the lack thereof is the primary issue.  The lack of an intermission or way to back out is.

Not such a big deal in other quests, which rarely go over an hour, but still a welcome feature.    But in a quest that takes 2-6 hours?  (Or in my case, 7-8. :P ) That's crying out for it.

1 hour ago, xMarvin732 said:

Its not misleading, its a way not to spoiler the quest.

Fair point.  But...

1 hour ago, xMarvin732 said:

you can also use the fandom wiki

...which people who are spoiler-averse are going to avoid.

[Packetdancer]

11 minutes ago, trst said:

Currently those players can't access Veilbreaker, Archons or Archon Shards, the entirety of Zariman, everything in Whispers, the TennoKai system, and all this includes a plethora of Frames, Weapons, Mods, and then some. And this list is only going to continue to grow as the story continues past this point.

The bigger problem is not that they can't access the content locked after the New War, it's that once you start it you can't even access the content you previously had access to. Forget Veilbreaker and the Zariman, you can't even go run a survival mission on Saturn or get to your clan dojo!

I've said before in other threads that I originally thought the New War lockout was no big deal and folks could get through it with a little effort, but after some discussion and rethinking, I fairly quickly pivoted on that. The thing is, Warframe up to that quest (and again after it) supports a fairly diverse and customizable play style. Some folks are bouncy dodging ninjas who rely on evasion to stay alive; others play tanky frames so they can just charge through stuff like a rhino. (Or a Rhino.) Some folks are precision snipers who go for headshots, others prefer the "to whom it may concern" of a shotgun.

There are several issues with the New War, starting with the fact that if your railjack isn't up to the task of taking on that space fight you can't exactly go back out and improve it. But by far the one where most people seem to get stuck, is with the Drifter, and that's because the Drifter portion of the quest supports exactly one play-style. I get why that is, from a narrative standpoint; it makes it so much more of a contrast when suddenly you have a Warframe again. But by making people play as a squishy character whose survivability skill is largely "just don't get seen" and whose damage-dealing ability is in large part dependent on head-shots and such, people who have had no trouble in the game prior to that quest may suddenly find themselves unexpectedly stuck because they're being asked to do more precise work with a bow rather than the general mayhem of their preferred shotgun.

I confess I didn't even notice it on my first playthrough, because "lunatic bow sniper" is my default playstyle already; admittedly less so here than in Destiny 2 and such, but I think it's telling that for a loooong time my most-used primary weapons on my profile as a baby Tenno were the Rubico and the Paris. So it didn't really feel like a significant shift to me. But looking back, yeah, I can absolutely see why it was jarring to many folks.

Having the New War gate people on later content is an entirely separate matter -- and maybe one worth discussing, now that there's starting to be an increasing mass of content that is gated on it -- but I still feel very strongly that the more immediate problem is that if you have trouble with it, you cannot back out of the quest. Which is, on reflection, a decision that frankly baffles me on a practical level when implemented in a live service game.

[Tiltskillet]

9 minutes ago, Packetdancer said:

but I still feel very strongly that the more immediate problem is that if you have trouble with it, you cannot back out of the quest. Which is, on reflection, a decision that frankly baffles me on a practical level when implemented in a live service game.

➕💯

 

[(PSN)Unstar]

1 hour ago, Packetdancer said:

It's like the joke I saw a couple of years back from someone still in the industry for their day job:

• At the beginning of gamedev: A helicopter is a vehicle, obviously.
• Late in the project: I mean, when you think about it, a helicopter is just a very specialized type of door, right?!

This is perfect and it has killed me, thank you for this XD

[Beowulf22]

The discourse happening here is regarding the concept of what is and is not misleading. Players are NOT misled in: The fact that they cannot quit out. That it is a several hour long quest.

Where they ARE misled (especially those that began the quest PRIOR to duviri's existence) is that there is NO warning regarding the challenge increase in drifter play vs warframe play. For those that are straight up not *skilled* but enjoy warframe *casually* (because yes that exists) this very well could be an insurmountable task for them. All people are asking for is a way to back out if they challenge is too high so they can continue to play the game they love. Literally arguing against that honestly feels mean to me. If someone has a literal skill issue and cannot complete The New War, they shouldn't be locked out of playing a game they love. Any argument made to circumvent that is going to be VERY situational and sometimes not possible.

 

 

Edited January 3 by Beowulf22
Fixed an error

[NorthernDarkIceSoul]

Why would they give you a way to quit the new war? It's not beneficial for the greedy corporation

[Beowulf22]

1 minute ago, NorthernDarkIceSoul said:

Why would they give you a way to quit the new war? It's not beneficial for the greedy corporation

Losing casual players that may spend money here or there for cool cosmetics in droves because of a not informed skill check that cannot be reversed definitely can hurt the company. Not drastically enough for them to fix it though because a lot of people that do play warframe are gamers that can pass the skill check.

[NorthernDarkIceSoul]

5 hours ago, Beowulf22 said:

Losing casual players that may spend money here or there for cool cosmetics in droves because of a not informed skill check that cannot be reversed definitely can hurt the company. Not drastically enough for them to fix it though because a lot of people that do play warframe are gamers that can pass the skill check.

Their code is a mess, you might not know this but Warframe is written in Lua. It literally costs them more than 100$ to change the color of a button, and I'm not even joking. It takes 10 minutes to actually change the color, and the rest is to go through code review, wait for CI to pass and other 10 layers of corporate BS.

[Packetdancer]

39 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

This is perfect and it has killed me, thank you for this XD

You're welcome; I can't claim credit for it, but I definitely felt anyone else who'd done time in the gamedev trenches (and probably some who hadn't) would appreciate the sentiment behind it. :)

 

4 minutes ago, NorthernDarkIceSoul said:

Their code is a mess, you might not know this but Warframe is written in Lua. It literally costs them more than 100$ to change the color of a button, and I'm not even joking. It takes 10 minutes to actually change the color, and the rest is to go through code review, wait for CI to pass and other 10 layers of corporate BS.

This is actually not uncommon.

Lua is used in a heck of a lot of games, because it's an easily-extended scripting language that's at least moderately efficient and has a very compact VM which can be embedded into basically anything. If I don't misremember, chunks of FFXIV's logic (or UX) are written in Lua, because they have the Lua license in the "Additional Credits" option on the pause menu. Using scripts allows much faster iteration; in some cases you can just dump the Lua VM (or whatever scripting system you're using) and reload everything without even needing to restart the game, much less rebuild the entire thing.

Moreover, at least last time I had need to care about this, interpreted scripts often didn't count as "code" but rather as "game assets" for purposes of console certification. Meaning you could fix issues in Lua scripts in game assets without having to go through cert like you would for an entire new client build, because the actual game binary was not changing. I don't know if that part is still the case, but it would not surprise me in the least.

Waiting for things to pass CI is also pretty common -- though I note (with some exasperation), maybe not as common as it should be -- and the layers of "corporate BS" is actually something I've called out before. People are like "why can this little indie team / hobbyist modder / whatever implement <feature X> in three weeks when devs at <large company> couldn't?" and the answer is basically this.

Indie devs often have a lot less formal process. Modders frequently have none. Folks in companies? There's schedules and you need sign-off on whether this feature fits into the dev timeline and so on.

So, no, none of what you say there surprises me.

(Including that "their code is a mess." Almost any project is a disaster internally after ten years, game or otherwise, unless a lot of care is taken to ensure otherwise. Any software developer who's had the misfortune to inherit a large and elderly project can attest to the tangled mess of "this is a temporary fix" and "well, I'll come up with a better way to do this later" code that starts to accumulate like dryer lint.)

[Marvelous_A]

So the warning was a joke to you heh

[haolee510]

I just recently finished it in around 6-8 hours. About half a day with breaks. Didn't touch it for years because I hadn't got a Necramech and wasn't playing regularly anyway.

I agree that they should let you quit. The warning isn't wrong, but as people said it didn't properly communicate that some players might be actually, genuinely stuck/get locked out of the rest of the game by being unable to complete the quest.

It was an awful quest, regardless. Story-wise it was pretty cool. But the quest was all the worst parts of Warframe all meshed together and I did not enjoy playing one bit of it. Awful level and encounter designs, awful limitations on combat imposed on the player, horrendous pacing...

But if I got through it, as a not-good player who still needs to get carried through Sorties, don't have any Arcanes, and haven't even unlocked the Steel Path yet, most players should be able to. Just play more carefully.

[SDGDen]

sigh....

add one to the counter boys.

 

listen, there were two threads during the release, one with 70 pages and one with 40, discussing this. they were called "wish can quit new war". 

within that thread, people complained that they should be able to quit because "the quest is too hard and i can't complete it".

most of the players in that thread that were willing to talk specifics ended up succeeding in the end with tips from the community.

players (including myself) have beaten the new war with only the gear you can't avoid getting on your way to the new war (in my case, i ran excalibur umbra, paracesis, lato and mk1 paris with no mods at all). 

players with significant handicaps (visual impairments as well as missing limbs) have also beaten the quest just fine. 

 

the only way to not be able to beat the quest is if you are A: suffering from severe skill issue and B: unwilling to talk about where you're stuck at and how you may be able to overcome this. 

 

genuinely though, all you really need to be able to do for the archons is learn how to dodge and aim. maybe if you didn't pay any attention to what hunhow said about them you dont understand how their special abilities work and how to counter them, in which case feel free to ask and im sure people can tell you.