Why Warframe is declining, and people quit for boredom.

[Hypernaut1]

Wondering if some bans went out. Not  seeing the usual sewer dwellers jumping at the chance to add negativity to this thread. 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

You can't always just take for granted that people will just blindly believe or take your words for facts. Like did you know not only is Warframe declining but all video games are, and they have been since 1950. This is the worst 7 decades of gaming ever, and not only are people quitting, but they are turning to cannibalism. However... I have the solution to all this, and its that Warframe needs to add giant sexy bunnies with cute feet. Do you believe me? My source is Trust Me Bro. 

DE and Warframe as a product/service should always be aiming to do better, by default, but you know what could also be doing better? Fan and player criticisms, identifying problems, distinguishing between their own niche personal issues and larger and broader player base issues, and proposing solutions and ideas. Nightmare missions to Steel Path would be fun? You mean to you? To others? Maybe, but a lot of players also wouldn't care. Nobody plays Circuit for fun? You talk about "dead game modes" like Syndicates but want to add more via Steel Path because you claim they are fun? 

To be clear, none of this is personal either and you are valid for having opinions and preferences, but having those isn't the same as being competent or skilled in actually identifying issues with a game, understanding or knowing (and distinguishing) what other players in general and more specifically find engaging, interesting, and fun, and thats important as far as analysing weak areas of a game, and potential solutions and ways to address them. Which should be important for all of us to generally consider, because one of the fastest ways we can undermine ourselves and our own ideas, is to make claims that seem so lacking, people will inherently struggle to take our claims seriously. Which can be a shame, if a few of your points have some merit or substance. Also there is no "we", Warframe players and fans often have different interests, preferences and priorities, phrasing criticism like we are some sort of hive mind, just sounds like a individual who is overcompensating for their own personal wishes and desires but framing it as if its something the community wants. There is only really one single issue the entire Warframe community agrees on, and thats that all Warframes should be sexy bunnies with cute feet, covered in oil, well that and maybe less bugs on launch too, but I am not talking about myself, its definitely all of us, we, the Community that is requesting this. If this happened no one would ever quit. Warframe wouldn't die, like it is now. Apparently. 

[Voltage]

9 hours ago, tabernacl said:

Realistically it's not dying, it has plateaued for a few yrs or so now. It's not really a game for longtime players anymore and not really new ones either. Vets have collected and done everything and have to wait months for more content and newer players don't invest their time by making this their core game cuz the collection content is too daunting. Most ppl get burned out with the long grinds for so-so rewards so they walk away. This is a collection game, but the problem is no matter how much you collect it doesn't really improve or mean anything. You get some extra xp to reach a day cuz of MR, but this isn't that worth it. Putting aside the core gameplay that ppl enjoy, any of the newer systems or content just isn't that amazing for a lot of ppl imo. I've had hope and excitement before for what this game could be, but DE kind of fumbled the ball a bit. Very nice and fun game studio, design wise and business wise... not so much. Management and priority seems to be a big problem in DE. 

Not to mention the sheer amount of stuff that has collection value that just isn't available at all for someone who started in 2018, not to mention 2020 or now.

[RichardKam]

Warframe has been declining since 2013, I am sure it will be fine.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

2 hours ago, Voltage said:

Not to mention the sheer amount of stuff that has collection value that just isn't available at all for someone who started in 2018, not to mention 2020 or now.

Like what? 

[Emwue]

29 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Like what? 

Arcane helmets for starters, presumably the old boss events also had some rewards, some of which might not be obtainable anymore stuff like that - any live service game over the course of it's life will accrue some crud that's unoptanium, either because it was time limited or because it was removed from reward tables at some point, i imagine that's what was meant.

[PublikDomain]

6 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

add negativity

6 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

sewer dwellers

🤔

[RoninFive]

Yeah I was away for about a year and was fairly disappointed to come back today to only one new quest and a bunch of primed and new frames and weapons. Actually came to the forums to rant, and found this post, so I'll rant here.

I went solo with the "play as intended" afterwards (because let's face it a skilled player is enough to do any supposed 4 man content), and I did have quite some fun. That is until I kept running into things that there was never a tutorial for. Capture an orowyrm. Thanks mom how do you do that? Get dismounted repeatedly before you can even reach the wyrm even though you dodge the hell out of orbs? Get dismounted and killed at the same time because there are two orbs launched one after the other? "You will need the orvius" which doesn't function like it does when you build it for the warframe, it doesn't function like it does in New War..

Plus, because it forces you into drifter, you can't access any gear. So I can't place a loc-pin at where the exit is. So, I can't find where the exit is. Three hours of fun roguelike stuff, then poof, all progress gone because there was never a tutorial for the orowyrm.

And honestly, that's fine, I've lost similar amounts of progress before due to similarly stupid reasons. The gameplay /is/ fun. But the issue is recognized and stated by Teshin as soon as you finish the quest that unlocks duviri.

"Remember, out there, you won't be like you are now. You'll be like you were then." - You don't get to be a badass drifter with melee weapon and unique skills. They even kept the smoke bomb ability, as if taunting us that we can't do spy or rescue missions with drifter. Insane.

It's another content vampire. Sure here you go new toys. Oh, but you can't use them anywhere else. You only grind the content for this in order for you to be able to grind more of just this content. It's the same problem Railjack has. The same problem Necramech has, even, because while you can use it on some missions, it's.. not a viable alternative to warframes for 90% of the content that it's even summonable in.

K-Drives, yet another thing that was introduced that only feeds itself. Sure it's cool to ride on it for like half an hour, an hour. If you actually want to get anywhere though, archwings. Where are K-drive upgrades useful? K-drive races. Even then they're not required.

There's a lot to do in the game, like you say, OP, but all of it is just isolated as all hell. Nightmare missions add a cool layer of difficulty, but they're not taken to their best potential. How about every objective done or every 5 rounds that pass etc., a new nightmare modifier is added, maybe with a maximum, and past the maximum, it shuffles every objective / every 5 rounds etc.

"Open world" content is also insular as hell, because things don't work in open world the way they do in regular missions. Yeah guns still shoot swords still slash, but now enemies come literally from nowhere, there are bosses moving all around the map at random, enemy difficulty is higher despite all of the open worlds being available at a very low MR, enemies have tactics, they can summon an endless number of enemies in if you don't pay attention to the flares, etc. Mining and fishing are also meh because you always have the chance of a random squad of enemies spawning behind you. Not that they're literally any trouble, they just interrupt your mining and/or fishing for a few seconds. The reason? Hell if I know.

And then we got the training room simulacrum or whatever from Simaris. You can test builds without having to go into missions, great. But you can't practice against the actual game mechanics. Can't see how well you can defend an objective of a certain type with a certain amount of hp and shields, can't see how you'd do against an orb mother or an eidolon, etc. So, it's just for optimizing your speed at killing in survival and extermination, or how much you can pump out of a supernova ability that deals damage to everything around (and/or explosive guns because.. yeah, meta.)

I'm MR30, I'm only missing a few guns, a few primed frames, the 3 newest frames. That's not enough content to keep me going. And it's getting me down. The quest chain in Duviri was actually very fun. I got to put armor and a syandana on my operator, and then use a (fairly underwhelming because it can't be modded and moves at snail speed) melee weapon with it. All great stuff. Riding a horse is also nice. The fact that it can fly is even better. But then you have the intrinsics that improve your character.... and they're not needed. That 3 hours of wandering duviri doing side objectives? I was completely fine until the orowyrm. The roguelike abilities you get to stack are great, and make intrinsics maybe useful for.. I don't know, starting out faster? I have no incentive to get them. Railjack I have at full 9's in intrinsics, and that's because railjack is, again, pretty fun to play. But I'm not getting anything out of it except the momentary fun. No progress except making the railjack ever stronger. The problem, though, is that it's already piss easy by the time you get to such high intrinsics, because of the equipment you get which makes it just about unkillable.

I don't know how warframe is doing on a larger scale - if new players are joining, they'll have content for quite a while. Always things to work toward to improve their frames, their guns, their operators, everything. But I do feel like I finished the game and now I'm just getting occasional updates on what happened after everything was over. Like if you just finished Fallout 3 and every once in a while you get a text about how Moira Brown released a new chapter of Wasteland Survival guide, or how Fawkes learned how to crochet. Sure, fun stuff for a few moments, but.... what do I do with that?

If there was suddenly a new toy to play with, the drift as it is in duviri, and i could take it to every mission - hell yes. I could challenge myself to do the whole starmap with just the drifter. I already did it with operator, it was fun. Drifter has a different and unique skillset, just like operator has a different and unique skillset. It's something new you can do.

To put it in a way that makes it more understandable for most people:

Imagine if every warframe you create could only be played in its acquisition mission, on repeat. You can only play Mesa in the Patient Zero maps, you can only play Octavia on the Lua missions that have music rooms, etc. That'd get boring pretty fast huh?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

22 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

A good place to start would be dedicating some time to look into already existing systems in the game...

couldn't agree more, but this has never been DE's mantra for this game: it's always been onwards and upwards to whatever's next. this is why I'm genuinely surprised when they actually announce reworks now, like the one for the companion system: honestly I'm at the point where I'm more excited to see reworks than new content, because we already have more than enough, and older modes like invasions need looking at, but I certainly won't hold my breath on any of it happening.

22 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

How about bringing Nightmare missions to Steel Path?

I run nightmare missions a lot, and the modifiers make you have to consider your loadout more carefully, plus you learn to git gud at hacking as you can't use Ciphers. SP Nightmare would be pretty neat, and I think some of the modifiers should be extended to Sorties and Archon Hunts. people say there's no challenge, well Steel path Energy Drain mode would beg to differ if you're someone who relies on powers 99% of the time. of course, there should be decent rewards for doing these missions, and new Nightmare mods would certainly be welcome.

22 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

Kuva Siphons in SP

would also be nice, but considering that you can buy Kuva in bulk from multiple places (Nightwave, Teshin's SP shop, Arbi Shop etc.), is there really much point/ AFAIK most people don't really like Siphon missions anyway.

23 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

Syndicate missions are useless now.

not quite: max syndicate rep = 6 free relic packs when a new prime comes out, and nowadays you can get it passively without having to mess around with Sigils anymore (thank god). plus there's no limit to how many medallions you can hold so you can even stock up on syndicate rep in advance. I usually run any exterminates/captures that pop up since they're quick.

it would be nice for DE to expand more on "the big six" though, especially Arbiters.. we still basically know nothing about them, other than that they're Tenno fanboys.

23 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

Events are boring in modern Warframe standards. Nobody does these for fun neither. They are simply something you have to do, if you want some specific loot from them.

if you're referring to the usual razorback/Formorian rotations, then yeah, though it's important to remember that newer players will still be running these events for the first time. personally I'd like it if there was a unique railjack encounter for both of these, so if you have a decent ship and crew, you can use that to take on the enemy instead:

for the Formorian mission, you eliminate all the fighters and crewships guarding the Formorian, then destroy it's shields, and finally use the forward artillery to perform an ultra-precise shot that blows up the Formorian instantly!

for the Razorback, same deal but you board a corpus ship that has the razorback on it, but to spice thigns up, you also have to sabotage a factory that makes Razorbacks to halt their production. 

23 hours ago, Turboameeba said:

Where has all the fun gone?

strangely enough I'd say the fun comes and goes based on how much you play: since I hit rank 30 on nightwave, I've only Archons and Incarnon Geneses to go after, and I'm actually beginning to enjoy Steel Path Circuit again. especially if I get lucky with a decent/fun loadout. I'd say 99% of the people that don't like playign warframe are most likely burnt out, and need to take a break from it, and if that still doesn't fix the issue, then maybe you're just not interested anymore, but that's ok too.

the game isn't "dying" though, as with any online game it's player count goes up and down, typically close to new updates and primes: you watch how activity spikes again once Wisp Prime comes out, I won't be surprised at all if it becoems the best selling Prime yet. that said, DE could certianyl do a lot more to enhance existing content instead of makign somethign and then abandoning it... chances are after Echoes of Duviri, that'll likley be it for that part of the game, aside from remembering to add further weapons/frames to the rotations.

 

[SovietSilviu]

14 hours ago, Voltage said:

The game is not declining overall

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

[Voltage]

9 minutes ago, SovietSilviu said:

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

"MuH StEaM ChArTs". You understand DE is about to break into the mobile market too right? A pool of players more profitable than any of their existing platforms. 

The game has never been about having good player retention, just players returning/checking in. If you look at Steam Charts in isolation, you'll think TennoCon are large content updates, when in fact they usually add at most a single Prime Access.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Voltage

[kamisama85]

16 minutes ago, SovietSilviu said:

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

All that player decline but you're still here each decline. Guess its a nothing burger.

[L3512]

34 minutes ago, SovietSilviu said:

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

Simple player engagement is not the same thing as players spending money, unless you can provide evidence of DE's profits taking a hit then I would say the game seems fine.

[-Krism-]

58 minutes ago, SovietSilviu said:

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

You can't even reading the chart you linked yourself

In case you didn't see it, there are peaks & drops, just like every other game in the #*!%ing world; as I said in my very first post here, nobody plays the same game for an entire year straight with no breaks

 

& one last thing, Steam is one out of six (soon seven) ways to play the game, _{(1. Steam, 2. Epic Games, 3. DL it from the official website, 4. Xbox, 5. PS4/5, 6. Switch, & soon, 7. mobile)}, your chart means absolutely nothing

[Voltage]

7 hours ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

Like what? 

Founders gear, Arcane Helmets, Ancient Fusion Cores, Operation cosmetics, event cosmetics, competitive achievement cosmetics, conclave event cosmetics, contest cosmetics, Wiki cosmetics, Guides of the Lotus cosmetics, Translator cosmetics, previous anniversary cosmetics (glyphs and badges don't return), time-limited Twitch campaigns (Plains of Eidolon Teralyst Prominence Sigil for example), Steam Pinnacle Pack Rank 5 Equilibrium, Phased skins, Rubedo skins, Jade skins, Obsidian skins, Esteem skins, exclusive promotional skins (PCGamer Dark Split Sword skin for example), TennoCon items, retired partner glyphs, terminated partner glyphs, TennoCon Legendary Ticket glyphs (LocoCrazy and Quasars so far were available as far as I know), transmuted mods and other bugged items DE let players keep such as Cannonade, Plains of Eidolon fishing bait blueprints, unique Riven Mods with unobtainable stats (-Puncture Cernos, -Impact Lanka/Dread, etc.), just to name a few.

Warframe is a collector game with a long list of unobtainium. 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Voltage

[SneakyErvin]

3 hours ago, SovietSilviu said:

Steam charts seems to disagree with you 20.10% of people stoped playng in june (a litle over 11k players it seems), and the trend continue downwards here take a look, there was the decline the hype about duvri, the realization its same crap again and now the decline back. 

https://steamcharts.com/app/230410

You should likely learn how the charts work and f2p gaas games aswell.

"20.10%" of people stoped playing in june" isnt true. There was a 20.10% drop in comparison to the prior month, a month that had a 13.61% increase of the month prior to that, which in turn had an 18.79% increase compared to the month prior to that. Which means that June would still have higher concurrent number than that month which is March.

Which in the end comes out as perfectly normal behavior for a gaas game when you get into periods in between bigger releases. I mean you can even see it is the left collumn quite clearly, yet you for some reason fail. 

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

[KIREEK]

DE just anounced a plat bundle option for the next incarnons, so it can't be because things aren't ging the way they wanted.

If you don't know what this means, it's simple, content in warframe is made in several ways:

1. Meant to be played (refers to content that cant be skipped in anyway, no matter how much cash and plat you have, this retains players)
2. Meant to be traded (the sheer rarity of the items or the volume makes it pratical for you to use the trade system, to trade duplicates in order to get the content you lack)
3. Meant to exaust platinum reserves from the community (anything with a plat cost)
4. meant to be purchased for actual cash to get revenue for the Team behind the game (tennogen, regal aya, Prime cosmetics)

When you have incarnons, the idea is to use the content nº1, this retains the players in the game and gives no way for DE to make money and exausts very litle plat ammount from the community (this can be to aquire weapons, get exp boosters, get resource boosters for the resources required,....)

With the anoucement they made with incarnon bundles, this means they want to sacrifice the player retention content and shift it towards content nº3.
A company like DE would not make a move that make players quit faster and end content faster if they knew the community was at risk of disapearing as the change would only accelerate it.

DE has such a confidence on how warframe is being handled by the playerbase that they don't mind players having an option to skip content, for now atleast

[TeaHands]

The gut reaction from the some of the older heads here whenever steamcharts is brought up is always 😙👌

Edited July 14, 2023 by TeaHands

[Rixuel]

Game needs more QoL imo

[SovietSilviu]

55 minutes ago, TeaHands said:

The gut reaction from the some of the older heads here whenever steamcharts is brought up is always 😙👌

always a pleasure to stirr them up

[ShogunGunshow]

Just ain't enough to make me play. Duviri is a chore, and its incarnons (the guns anyway) are so busted they completely trivialize anything in the game that wasn't already trivialized by power creep. There just ain't anything interesting here right now, and the code-rot that DE has left unaddressed since cross-play leads to me running up against bugs every time I do play.

Maybe companions 2.0 will be a nice shakeup. IDK. Everything described, plus DE's continued negligence to the game's foundational issues, plus their announced intention to start selling incarnons for plat, just paints a picture of Warframe as something that the devs no longer have passion for, and are just trying to milk us for every $$$ they can while putting minimal reinvestment back into the game.

[PublikDomain]

6 hours ago, -Krism- said:

& one last thing, Steam is one out of six (soon seven) ways to play the game, _{(1. Steam, 2. Epic Games, 3. DL it from the official website, 4. Xbox, 5. PS4/5, 6. Switch, & soon, 7. mobile)}, your chart means absolutely nothing

When those other five (soon six) ways to play the game all get the same content and updates at the same time, why would Steam players trend any differently? Are console players unable to get bored or something? Steam charts show Steam trends, nothing more and nothing less, but there's no reason for those trends to be meaningfully different from other platforms just because someone clicks on a different icon to launch the game.

[quxier]

33 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

When those other five (soon six) ways to play the game all get the same content and updates at the same time, why would Steam players trend any differently? Are console players unable to get bored or something? Steam charts show Steam trends, nothing more and nothing less, but there's no reason for those trends to be meaningfully different from other platforms just because someone clicks on a different icon to launch the game.

Different "ways of play" may need different things to be "enjoyable". I'm pc player(user) but I've used console few times in my life. Some games are more enjoyable on specific machine. For example anything that requires aiming would be bad (for me!) on non mouse configs (or something precise). When I was younger I've tried some Nintendo game where you hold "things" and swing with them. You were using swords (or stuffs) to swing. I don't remember if it was "vs pc" or some "destroy stuff" game. Still, it was enjoyable using that specific device. With mouse or normal pads it would be not so good.

I wonder if we have some data from xbox, ps or nintendo.

[PublikDomain]

38 minutes ago, quxier said:

Different "ways of play" may need different things to be "enjoyable". I'm pc player(user) but I've used console few times in my life. Some games are more enjoyable on specific machine. For example anything that requires aiming would be bad (for me!) on non mouse configs (or something precise). When I was younger I've tried some Nintendo game where you hold "things" and swing with them. You were using swords (or stuffs) to swing. I don't remember if it was "vs pc" or some "destroy stuff" game. Still, it was enjoyable using that specific device. With mouse or normal pads it would be not so good.

We do see some differences between platforms in the published weapon usage stats, like how non-PC players prefer Naratuk over the K. Zarr, but we see the same overall distributions just shuffled around. I don't see a reason for those kinds of preferences to impact overall CCU trends though. There are certainly going to be platform differences like a different base CCU, and different sales, promos, and competitors, but ingame it's all the same content. It's not like PC/EGS and PC/standalone players are getting more Duviri to play than PC/Steam players.

38 minutes ago, quxier said:

I wonder if we have some data from xbox, ps or nintendo.

The only data we have from other platforms are achievements polled from visible profiles by aggregate sites, but they show the same kinds of trends as on Steam. Similar numbers of players drop off or give up before reaching the various milestone achievements, etc. People aren't all that different.

Edited July 14, 2023 by PublikDomain