Warframe system ideas (title formerly "please rebuild the entire game")

[Skoomaseller]

tbh I'd prefer if they rework the whole game from the engine to ingame systems. the evolution engine is old, and is showing its age. maybe Warframe 2 is what this game needs.

But I know realistically they won't do that – rebuilding a game from scratch takes a very long time and a lot of resources, both of which DE likely does not have.

I agree with your suggestions. 

[rhoenix]

2 hours ago, Skoomaseller said:

tbh I'd prefer if they rework the whole game from the engine to ingame systems. the evolution engine is old, and is showing its age. maybe Warframe 2 is what this game needs.

But I know realistically they won't do that – rebuilding a game from scratch takes a very long time and a lot of resources, both of which DE likely does not have.

I agree with your suggestions. 

Yeah, that's another reason I focused into specific things in feedback.  Hopefully some of them can be considered, and brought to life.

[Packetdancer]

7 hours ago, rhoenix said:

I remember watching Josh Strife Hayes' video on Warframe, and the part where he described multiple players outright quitting and uninstalling the game when they got to the Arsenal modding screen for the first time... yeesh.  It hurt my soul, since I've spoken to multiple friends with the exact same view, or related ones.

As I mentioned in another thread, I have a friend who found the Arsenal and modding system so stressful that she finally just quit playing; she would die in content, know she needed to make a better build, flail around with the modding system, die more, become self-conscious about dying, poke at mods more, get stressed, etc. It's not really any surprise she bounced.

She decided to give it another go just this past week, but has basically outsourced her Arsenal to me. So now she goes "Rachel!! Help! Make me a build for <x>!" and I refer to my list of "what mods does my friend have, and at what ranks" and slap together something on Overframe for her, throw her the link, and she makes the build. This has done wonders to reduce her stress and anxiety in this game, and let her get past the Arsenal so she could just play. Which is, y'know, the fun part for most people.

[rhoenix]

23 minutes ago, Packetdancer said:

As I mentioned in another thread, I have a friend who found the Arsenal and modding system so stressful that she finally just quit playing; she would die in content, know she needed to make a better build, flail around with the modding system, die more, become self-conscious about dying, poke at mods more, get stressed, etc. It's not really any surprise she bounced.

She decided to give it another go just this past week, but has basically outsourced her Arsenal to me. So now she goes "Rachel!! Help! Make me a build for <x>!" and I refer to my list of "what mods does my friend have, and at what ranks" and slap together something on Overframe for her, throw her the link, and she makes the build. This has done wonders to reduce her stress and anxiety in this game, and let her get past the Arsenal so she could just play. Which is, y'know, the fun part for most people.

I think I just figured out how to make the Arsenal less overwhelming, while still being good.  I give you a point for inspiration for it:

EDIT: To actually answer, I've helped a few friends with modding... more than once.  All of my friends liked the idea of modding, but not so much the reality.

[MechNexus]

This feels like a gross misunderstanding of A) The situation Warframe is currently in, B) The situation FF14 was in, and C) What it would actually take to pull what they did.

Here's the thing - Warframe is a jumbled mess with rough patches, abandoned experiments, and multiple missteps. It's rough, but here's the important part - it's still fun. It's still an enjoyable game, it's core gameplay loop still works, and there's a lot of high-difficulty challenges for players to go after (The only reason it feels like there isn't is because people squeezed everything out of them as soon as they could, or cheesed it until the difficulty was gone).

Now, FF14, when it first dropped? It was none of these things. It wasn't just rough. It wasn't simply inaccessible, clunky, or awkward. It was legitimately a terrible game, from top to bottom. The combat was slow and awful, it was grindy as all hell because they just copied what they did in FF11 without taking on anything others in the genre learned since, it ran horribly because of miscommunication and poor planning (a single, random flowerpot in one of the towns had a higher polycount than a player character.), and it was rushed out the door to beat the upcoming WoW expansion's release date. People like to freak out and call a game bad over the tiniest things these days, which makes it easy to forget that FF14 was legitimately an awful game. When someone asked for legacy servers, the devteam's reaction was essentially recoil-ing in horror. Nobody wants those days back, and the morbidly curious use a private server. Seriously, the issues in New World are small time compared to what 1.0 had.

What Naoki Yoshida did to turn the game around was essentially a hail mary, and the result was nothing short of miraculous - Square Enix was in dire financial straits at the time, and they were losing money on FF14 no matter what - sure, Yoshida could have picked up the reins and did damage control, but he was given chance to completely remake the game into what we see today, and it paid off massively for them.

Could DE do the same for Warframe? Sure, in theory. Should they? No. The reality is that it wouldnt be worth the risk. They could spend a lot of development time shaking up the game's structure, but this has the serious risk of upsetting existing fans and not being worth the development time (and remember, time is money) - Whereas in the same amount of time, they could be making new content that brings more people into the game, brings existing people back, and gets people buying platinum on new content. Everyone loves to say "they should take time out of making new stuff to fix the game" but every time i've seen it actually done (R6 Siege's operation health springs to mind) the community has immediately thrown it back in their face. A lot of people clowned on Steve for constantly adding new shinies but i've seen how people act when the drip feed of content slows.

tl;dr Warframe's current state does not warrant a FF14 level overhaul and as a result would be too much risk for questionable benefit.

[rhoenix]

1 hour ago, MechNexus said:

Could DE do the same for Warframe? Sure, in theory. Should they? No. The reality is that it wouldnt be worth the risk. They could spend a lot of development time shaking up the game's structure, but this has the serious risk of upsetting existing fans and not being worth the development time (and remember, time is money) - Whereas in the same amount of time, they could be making new content that brings more people into the game, brings existing people back, and gets people buying platinum on new content. Everyone loves to say "they should take time out of making new stuff to fix the game" but every time i've seen it actually done (R6 Siege's operation health springs to mind) the community has immediately thrown it back in their face. A lot of people clowned on Steve for constantly adding new shinies but i've seen how people act when the drip feed of content slows.

As most people appear unwilling to read the entire thread, I think I need to edit the original post at this point to be more clear.

Your thoughts above are more or less the conclusion I came to, as a full-on rework isn't realistic.  Pointed and targeted system updates for major parts of the experience?  Yes.  But not a full-on rework.

So, this thread then spawned idea threads for specific things in the Feedback forum for how to improve certain aspects of the game.  You're welcome to add your feedback on those.

EDIT:  Links to those threads are now in the original post for this thread.

[Felsagger]

This thread has a lot of good valuable information and insights. 

 

Many of these ideas deserves a good Excel sheet and a presentation. There are lots of good ideas here that may serve as a point of departure for Warframe. A renewal or a rebuild of certain systems are always a welcome. 

Everything that foster the quality of life in the game, improves the daily experience of new players and old ones, makes the game more streamed for all types of players is always a good positive critique or suggestion. 

[rhoenix]

3 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

This thread has a lot of good valuable information and insights. 

 

Many of these ideas deserves a good Excel sheet and a presentation. There are lots of good ideas here that may serve as a point of departure for Warframe. A renewal or a rebuild of certain systems are always a welcome. 

Everything that foster the quality of life in the game, improves the daily experience of new players and old ones, makes the game more streamed for all types of players is always a good positive critique or suggestion. 

Quite a few people had some very good insights, and I was very glad to see those people chime in with them. 

[Hypernaut1]

1 hour ago, rhoenix said:

As most people appear unwilling to read the entire thread, I think I need to edit the original post at this point to be more clear.

Your thoughts above are more or less the conclusion I came to, as a full-on rework isn't realistic.  Pointed and targeted system updates for major parts of the experience?  Yes.  But not a full-on rework.

So, this thread then spawned idea threads for specific things in the Feedback forum for how to improve certain aspects of the game.  You're welcome to add your feedback on those.

EDIT:  Links to those threads are now in the original post for this thread.

I do miss when they reworked entire systems with x.0 versions. It was a different time though, WF was still trying to establish itself. 

What I would want to see is more expansions to existing content 

[Felsagger]

Railjack is always a good choice for content expansion and generalization. Updates for Fortuna, Deimos, Railjack Starmap alre always welcome. 

[rhoenix]

8 hours ago, Felsagger said:

Railjack is always a good choice for content expansion and generalization. Updates for Fortuna, Deimos, Railjack Starmap alre always welcome. 

This is partially what inspired what went into the Factions idea - I wanted to see each of the enemy and friendly factions have some more agency, progressing toward short and long-term goals with in-game effects.  It would basically upgrade and enhance the existing Invasion system to show planetary alerts based on faction activity - not just enemy, but friendly as well.

So - fewer nodes on each planet, but each one present during that time would be significant in some way.

[rhoenix]

9 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

I do miss when they reworked entire systems with x.0 versions. It was a different time though, WF was still trying to establish itself. 

What I would want to see is more expansions to existing content 

New content is great, and I'm always glad to see it - but I think some things in the foundation need to be shored up properly (including existing content) before the building gets too much higher, basically.

DE can do both - ideally, update one older existing system at the same time as adding some kind of new content.  Like, "Here's expanded content for Duviri!  Oh, and a complete overhaul of invasions, planetary nodes, and faction influence btw."  I can hope. :)

[rhoenix]

After all the highs and lows of this thread, I wanted to thank a few people, as weird and pretentious as it may sound.

First, oddly enough is @Felsagger.  You started out rather cynical, as is your wont, and you progressively began to contribute interesting ideas, and interesting perspectives on them.  Several times, I was caught off guard by a good idea you had. So, for doing so, I give you props.

Secondly (in order, but not importance) is @Packetdancer.  I am by no means one to have any credibility when the subject of being wordy comes up, first off.  Your perspective as a game dev and love for the game created several interesting directions for ideas to follow.  You have my thanks as well.

Several others also contributed variations of "no, a full rebuild isn't realistic," and I kind of knew that going in.  However, given the dissatisfaction others have expressed regarding various things, I was hoping it would at least spark some interesting ideas of what the issues at hand are, and how they might be solved - and many people did just that.  We are effectively playtesters for this game after all, and it is our responsibility as such to not only report bugs, but also report ways in which certain things might be done better. 

Not to criticize the game as bad because these things are true, but to show our common love for the game in wanting to offer constructive criticism of how things might be improved.

So in closing - everyone, you have my humble thanks for each of your contributions.

 

[Felsagger]

Thank you, rhoenix. 

You had a genuine intention of creating something new. You came with building blocks, beams, columns and slabs to assemble a building. I can't turn my back to people who construct and contribute. 

This world needs to be a better place. We do that building dreams, building ideas and constructing plans. I have deep respect for artists, writers, sculptors, 3D modelers, programers, architects, engineers and many other artists. 

It doesn't matter if it is Warframe, Soulframe or any other product out there. You are sharpening your mind on creating something new that worth something for you. It's like a garden where we place hopes, our ideas and our work. 

Keep constructing. You got great conversations here about a game you like. You exchanged ideas with other people who sees this in a different perspective. I would love to see more threads like this where people spend hours and hours building something meaningful worth of sharing. 

Keep writing those ideas. They will get you somewhere. You are going places with that creative mind. 

 

[rhoenix]

4 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

This world needs to be a better place. We do that building dreams, building ideas and constructing plans. I have deep respect for artists, writers, sculptors, 3D modelers, programers, architects, engineers and many other artists. 

My martial arts teacher once said that all any of us can do, in the end, is describe who we are by what we do, and how we do those things. 

It can be easy to get caught up in despair, especially lately.  Though we all still have to live in the present, what we do in the present builds the future.  All I can do is try to act according to the future I'd like to see. 

The possible only becomes probable after it has been recognized as possible.

[Felsagger]

1 minute ago, rhoenix said:

The possible only becomes probable after it has been recognized as possible.

Those words have a long history. Architects recognize this as MATERIALIZATION of an idea. 

Architecture doesn't happen when the building is constructed. Architecture happens when other people USES these buildings and find commodities on them improving their work and production. This is when true architecture happens. It's all about occupancy. Architects serves architecture to the public and the clients. 

Anyway, I can be here hours talking about architecture but let us materialize this conversation into the language of Warframe. DE already have all the ingredients for a great game. They assembled a good one. Somehow a reboot can make things better or partial rebuilds may solve the problem. Our minds sees different things and ideas that seems easy to materialize, however they are a technical feat when developers tries to materialize them. 

Simple ideas of school switching on mods redefines the whole game. That one came from you. Great ideas are very simple, doesn't take much skill to implement them and they do not change the game as is. Many of these ideas happened here in this thread. 

Another one that I found fascinating was the idea of relating the school to the mods doing a short history about how mods took place and how they appeared in the game. These ideas may help DE continue with the game in a constructive way. 

Not everything stick to the plate. We can't expect that such ideas will stick. But the more we produce, the better chance for DE get a good sample of them. On that I am optimistic.