Dear DE: I'm Sorry ... I'm Bored Again

[CrownOfShadows]

Here's an update on what happens when I log in to WF:

(disclaimer for those still climbing, I'm LR3 and have everything, this is another end-game thread)

Archon Hunts: I still play. Tauforged remain attractive for the time being even though I am starting to stockpile them, and the difficulty is decent. I foresee that I may begin to disengage with this game mode as I run out of frames to use shards on (oh there's still plenty of frames that are empty or partial or running standard shards, I just have no reason to invest tauforged into them; all my heavy hitting frames are more or less complete, and the only use for shards now is to sink them into frames that are sub-standard or that I don't enjoy)

The Circuit & Lone Story: I now no longer play. I have all the incarnons and all the arcanes I want/care to farm. I also don't check Acrithis even though her store is better than most because I don't want to farm Pathos Clamps because it's a huge time commitment for a single resource with only one way to spend it. There are many positive things about the circuit, also some negatives, but I feel like some good end-game ideas were in play. Unfortunately we all knew it was on a timer, and this is my second week skipping most or all of it. Yes, another infusion of incarnons will bring me back (unless I can buy them for plat) but that's just prolonging the inevitable.

Sorties: do not play. Used to for a chance at a booster, don't anymore. This is partially due to competition with Archon Hunts and partially due to the general erosion of sortie rewards from other game sources as well as a massive erosion of its allure of difficulty due to more challenging content becoming available. While boosters are still attractive, they are only worth chasing if a) I don't have the plat to burn on a market version b) actively playing rather than just stopping by

NW: this NW round featured many repeat rewards and only a few unique ones, and as a result I did not engage with it as much as previous ones, only occasionally intentionally chasing a few here or there, but for the most part letting it naturally accrue slowly over time, typically leaving many if not the majority untouched each week. My NW is now complete, I mostly ignore it.

Fissures: don't play anymore unless I see a disruption or if a prime release is happening. SP Relic Disruption remains intrinsically fun enough for me to engage with it regardless of rewards. Unfortunately they are quite rare and if I don't see one - well, what else should I do? - I log off.

Arbitrations: do not play. Levels are too low, spawns too low, rewards all earned - I have enough ambient endo gain to sustain me (Teshin, etc)

Nightmares, Kuva Missions, Invasions, Clem, Ayatan Treasure Hunts & Syndicates: do not play. Levels too low, missions too grindy (invasions), rewards completely meaningless to me

Some General Thoughts:

Games are about journeys. When we're on a journey, we're having fun. Sometimes that takes the form of building, conquering, traveling, surviving or experiencing a story. What it never involves is sitting doing nothing.

Content releases are fantastic - they take us on a journey. Unfortunately, content releases have short lifespans, and thus here I am posting instead of playing - because after sitting in the navigation screen watching chat for a while I decided there was nothing there for me here. I know, I know - just go play other games yea yea - I'm on my way to do that right now, just posting first, because I want to play WF, there's just nothing in WF. I know I know, it's DE's business model, and it's worked forever, and it will keep working. That doesn't help me right now though. I know I know, just entertain myself by tinkering with builds, fashion frame, etc... there's some value in that. Not enough to keep me logged in though. Sigh.

You CAN fix this, DE. OFC, the main (and real) response is always: how do you accomplish this is in a live-service mmo-style game for players who reach the 'end'? For your consideration:

1. Replayable, Dynamic, Rewarding quests. Yes, we can replay a lot of quests in WF. No, they were not designed to be replayed, plus their rewards are atrocious. I strongly suggest developing solo quests that are specifically designed to be played at any time, ideally that are somewhat dynamic, ideally that are not part of a content release story but rather act as supporting story to the main WF universe. They should be challenging (based on the player) and they should have a shower of rewards at the end. The longer the quest, the better the reward should be. If such quests existed, I'd go on one right now.
2. Raids. Raids are co-op quests, simple as that (although typically a little lighter on story and they're time-gated). I'd add that making 2-player raids (or quests for that matter) could be a fantastic option, just you and your partner. Adding 6 or 8 players raids would be great fun too, but making those challenging would be harder (and more problematic for host migrations, but still fun).
3. PvP. It's not happening, we know. It's complicated, we know. Yet it remains the most reliable long-term form of content, and I'm still out here recommending it. I'm off to play a PvP game right now, and I don't have anything left to farm in that game either. Just saying.
4. Public Events. Especially in open world contexts, have a lot of potential. You might think of these like impromptu concerts. A sort of found-event, especially if it feels public with more than 4 players, can be very attractive simply because it's a social event and people will show up to share in the fun. Difficulty is less of a massive requirement in this sort of setting. In case you're not sure what I mean when I say public events, it's like you get a notification that an event is happening, you run down and join a crowd of Tenno, and you all fight together, win, get the rewards and then the party slowly breaks up. You don't want these to be too frequent or repetitive or grindy, because people will burn out on them, but if you're logged in and you see something fun's happening, idk I'd jump in on it. I think more than any of the other suggestions here these would be the easiest to burn out on, so making them dynamic and ever-changing would almost be a requirement.
5. Clan Events have tremendous potential, and the reason is because if you give them the power and the tools they can create the dynamic material all on their own and you (DE) don't have to do anything more. Give a kid a lego brick and he'll play for an hour, give him a lego set and he'll play for a million. What kind of tools? Event kits. The ability to create an event, notifications to the clan of the event, the ability to craft the event - the more control the better, the more options the better. You could even provide tools for working with wide MR ranges. Imagine if your clan had 1-4 events going right now that were a ton of fun, because the clan leaders poured as much passion and creativity into them as they do their dojos? Imagine if they had a beginner's event, an everyone-event and a veteran's event happening right now. The main question mark here is the rewards, avoiding abuse while still being meaningful might be balanced out by giving clans an event or reward allotment - here are the rewards you can offer and you don't get more until the next cycle. Imagine if you gave a night-wave's worth of rewards to clans and had them build their own events to earn them. Those could be going on at any time, all the time. You could even reward clans for being active in this regard, opening up access to more things. Imagine if clans could build their own raids. You could even have alliance events and clan events.
6. Old Events: you can repurpose suitable old events to re-occur regularly. Not my favorite solution, but still a solid option and better than nothing.
7. Upgrading ancient things like invasions, nightmares, clem, syndicates to have end-game versions might help a little, idk - but they're weekly options that aren't options at all, and instead of being nothing they could be something.

Lastly let me comment on rewards

Value in a game is all completely artificial. If rewards don't feel valuable, that is only a design failure. You can create new value at the snap of your fingers. Rare supply + strong demand = motivation. Create endless demand in end-game players, make the supply somewhat rare. Do that 4 or 5 times in different ways, spice that up with occasional other rewards like cosmetics and you have a winning combination that could be applied to any of the above game modes and would last forever. Forma, Catalysts, Reactors, Boosters, Rivens, Kuva - these are all endlessly good and yet they mean very little to end-game players because the demand is very low and the supply is enormous (because they can all be bought for plat which many end-game players have great stockpiles of, or in the case of kuva for SE etc, or in the case of rivens just an overabundance of slivers). Archon shards are valuable but because archon shards aren't ever destroyed they are on a downward farm curve.

 

[MaxTunnerX]

All you can do now is build yourself a dojo, that can take you several years alone, so good luck. Or start a new account.

[Slayer-.]

I'm LR3 and own everything I like the pace of my game style, I'm an old fart in gaming terms been playing online since the old days of dialup back in the 80s and 90's, I can keep up with the youngins in the pub servers but I like my style of play, I can entertain myself for hours each day in this awesome game easily.

I do like testing and playing with frames and weapons to see what they can do, I like to also find new ways of killing the enemies so I leave no witnesses.

I'm always learning new things in this game or remembering things I've forgotten over time, I do a lot of the things in your post then I go back to doing what I do.

If you're bored I'd suggest playing another game and then coming back and posting what's changed catch me up style of post. 

[Legatus_Rhino]

2 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Here's an update on what happens when I log in to WF:

(disclaimer for those still climbing, I'm LR3 and have everything, this is another end-game thread)

Archon Hunts: I still play. Tauforged remain attractive for the time being even though I am starting to stockpile them, and the difficulty is decent. I foresee that I may begin to disengage with this game mode as I run out of frames to use shards on (oh there's still plenty of frames that are empty or partial or running standard shards, I just have no reason to invest tauforged into them; all my heavy hitting frames are more or less complete, and the only use for shards now is to sink them into frames that are sub-standard or that I don't enjoy)

The Circuit & Lone Story: I now no longer play. I have all the incarnons and all the arcanes I want/care to farm. I also don't check Acrithis even though her store is better than most because I don't want to farm Pathos Clamps because it's a huge time commitment for a single resource with only one way to spend it. There are many positive things about the circuit, also some negatives, but I feel like some good end-game ideas were in play. Unfortunately we all knew it was on a timer, and this is my second week skipping most or all of it. Yes, another infusion of incarnons will bring me back (unless I can buy them for plat) but that's just prolonging the inevitable.

Sorties: do not play. Used to for a chance at a booster, don't anymore. This is partially due to competition with Archon Hunts and partially due to the general erosion of sortie rewards from other game sources as well as a massive erosion of its allure of difficulty due to more challenging content becoming available. While boosters are still attractive, they are only worth chasing if a) I don't have the plat to burn on a market version b) actively playing rather than just stopping by

NW: this NW round featured many repeat rewards and only a few unique ones, and as a result I did not engage with it as much as previous ones, only occasionally intentionally chasing a few here or there, but for the most part letting it naturally accrue slowly over time, typically leaving many if not the majority untouched each week. My NW is now complete, I mostly ignore it.

Fissures: don't play anymore unless I see a disruption or if a prime release is happening. SP Relic Disruption remains intrinsically fun enough for me to engage with it regardless of rewards. Unfortunately they are quite rare and if I don't see one - well, what else should I do? - I log off.

Arbitrations: do not play. Levels are too low, spawns too low, rewards all earned - I have enough ambient endo gain to sustain me (Teshin, etc)

Nightmares, Kuva Missions, Invasions, Clem, Ayatan Treasure Hunts & Syndicates: do not play. Levels too low, missions too grindy (invasions), rewards completely meaningless to me

Some General Thoughts:

Games are about journeys. When we're on a journey, we're having fun. Sometimes that takes the form of building, conquering, traveling, surviving or experiencing a story. What it never involves is sitting doing nothing.

Content releases are fantastic - they take us on a journey. Unfortunately, content releases have short lifespans, and thus here I am posting instead of playing - because after sitting in the navigation screen watching chat for a while I decided there was nothing there for me here. I know, I know - just go play other games yea yea - I'm on my way to do that right now, just posting first, because I want to play WF, there's just nothing in WF. I know I know, it's DE's business model, and it's worked forever, and it will keep working. That doesn't help me right now though. I know I know, just entertain myself by tinkering with builds, fashion frame, etc... there's some value in that. Not enough to keep me logged in though. Sigh.

You CAN fix this, DE. OFC, the main (and real) response is always: how do you accomplish this is in a live-service mmo-style game for players who reach the 'end'? For your consideration:

1. Replayable, Dynamic, Rewarding quests. Yes, we can replay a lot of quests in WF. No, they were not designed to be replayed, plus their rewards are atrocious. I strongly suggest developing solo quests that are specifically designed to be played at any time, ideally that are somewhat dynamic, ideally that are not part of a content release story but rather act as supporting story to the main WF universe. They should be challenging (based on the player) and they should have a shower of rewards at the end. The longer the quest, the better the reward should be. If such quests existed, I'd go on one right now.
2. Raids. Raids are co-op quests, simple as that (although typically a little lighter on story and they're time-gated). I'd add that making 2-player raids (or quests for that matter) could be a fantastic option, just you and your partner. Adding 6 or 8 players raids would be great fun too, but making those challenging would be harder (and more problematic for host migrations, but still fun).
3. PvP. It's not happening, we know. It's complicated, we know. Yet it remains the most reliable long-term form of content, and I'm still out here recommending it. I'm off to play a PvP game right now, and I don't have anything left to farm in that game either. Just saying.
4. Public Events. Especially in open world contexts, have a lot of potential. You might think of these like impromptu concerts. A sort of found-event, especially if it feels public with more than 4 players, can be very attractive simply because it's a social event and people will show up to share in the fun. Difficulty is less of a massive requirement in this sort of setting. In case you're not sure what I mean when I say public events, it's like you get a notification that an event is happening, you run down and join a crowd of Tenno, and you all fight together, win, get the rewards and then the party slowly breaks up. You don't want these to be too frequent or repetitive or grindy, because people will burn out on them, but if you're logged in and you see something fun's happening, idk I'd jump in on it. I think more than any of the other suggestions here these would be the easiest to burn out on, so making them dynamic and ever-changing would almost be a requirement.
5. Clan Events have tremendous potential, and the reason is because if you give them the power and the tools they can create the dynamic material all on their own and you (DE) don't have to do anything more. Give a kid a lego brick and he'll play for an hour, give him a lego set and he'll play for a million. What kind of tools? Event kits. The ability to create an event, notifications to the clan of the event, the ability to craft the event - the more control the better, the more options the better. You could even provide tools for working with wide MR ranges. Imagine if your clan had 1-4 events going right now that were a ton of fun, because the clan leaders poured as much passion and creativity into them as they do their dojos? Imagine if they had a beginner's event, an everyone-event and a veteran's event happening right now. The main question mark here is the rewards, avoiding abuse while still being meaningful might be balanced out by giving clans an event or reward allotment - here are the rewards you can offer and you don't get more until the next cycle. Imagine if you gave a night-wave's worth of rewards to clans and had them build their own events to earn them. Those could be going on at any time, all the time. You could even reward clans for being active in this regard, opening up access to more things. Imagine if clans could build their own raids. You could even have alliance events and clan events.
6. Old Events: you can repurpose suitable old events to re-occur regularly. Not my favorite solution, but still a solid option and better than nothing.
7. Upgrading ancient things like invasions, nightmares, clem, syndicates to have end-game versions might help a little, idk - but they're weekly options that aren't options at all, and instead of being nothing they could be something.

Lastly let me comment on rewards

Value in a game is all completely artificial. If rewards don't feel valuable, that is only a design failure. You can create new value at the snap of your fingers. Rare supply + strong demand = motivation. Create endless demand in end-game players, make the supply somewhat rare. Do that 4 or 5 times in different ways, spice that up with occasional other rewards like cosmetics and you have a winning combination that could be applied to any of the above game modes and would last forever. Forma, Catalysts, Reactors, Boosters, Rivens, Kuva - these are all endlessly good and yet they mean very little to end-game players because the demand is very low and the supply is enormous (because they can all be bought for plat which many end-game players have great stockpiles of, or in the case of kuva for SE etc, or in the case of rivens just an overabundance of slivers). Archon shards are valuable but because archon shards aren't ever destroyed they are on a downward farm curve.

 

You are not alone, and I am with you!

[--K--Sharkfin]

Tbh a F2P game that made a gamer stay for more than 3 years is pretty amazing and quite worth it. Many move on to other games within a year if not half a year these days.

Personally spent almost 6k hours in WF since 2013 and the past year I am just doing weeklies occasionally to earn cosmetics (especially NW), despite techniqually now we won't miss out anything permanently.

Would love to see myself take a break from time to time and only enjoy the game when I see fit (after large story updates), I trust DE for keeping WF alive for another 10 years.

[MaxTunnerX]

Its only natural that once you do everything there is to do in a game you get bored. Nothing bad about that. Theres no need to obsess about 1 game and play only that game forever. Go play something else, and when you return, you will not be bored. Also like I said starting a new game always helps when coming back to a game you want to enjoy more.

In fact. Im in the state of WF boredom myself (MR30) so Im already playing something else. Im actually so bored with WF that literally every mission and every thing is boring/annoying me and this forum is the only fun part about it :D But yeah ima come back later this year and be back on track.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

I mean you don't have to apologize for something that is bound to happen, a game can throw everything at you but you'll still to a point where you don't really have much to do.

Taking breaks from some games really helps.

[Surbusken]

Have you collected all the broken mods, arcane helmets and upcoming deleted mk-1 weapons?

Think there are also some relics people collect don't remember exactly what it was.

 

[CrownOfShadows]

5 hours ago, Slayer-. said:

If you're bored I'd suggest playing another game

1 hour ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Go play something else, and when you return, you will not be bored. Also like I said starting a new game always helps when coming back to a game you want to enjoy more.

1 hour ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

Taking breaks from some games really helps.

.................................................................. . . . . . ... . . . . . .. .. ........ . . .. ... ... . . ..... got you guys covered.... ... .. .

7 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I know, I know - just go play other games yea yea - I'm on my way to do that right now, just posting first, because I want to play WF, there's just nothing in WF

[(NSW)Greybones]

Glad I’ve got an idea of what I’ll be doing when I hit L3

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

14 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

.................................................................. . . . . . ... . . . . . .. .. ........ . . .. ... ... . . ..... got you guys covered.... ... .. .

 

1 hour ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

I mean you don't have to apologize for something that is bound to happen, a game can throw everything at you but you'll still get to a point where you don't really have much to do.

 

[MaxTunnerX]

45 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

 

Your attitude towards the game seems very unhealthy. And the only solution that would work would be proper PVP, because PVP games are played constantly even when theres no new content, but thats probably never going to happen in WF. So yeah, go see a doctor and play something else, you may be addicted.

[Legatus_Rhino]

This post already started a PVP match. 

[TeaHands]

Obviously you've completely missed the most important endgame activity, building Ayatan Mechs.

[MaxTunnerX]

26 minutes ago, TeaHands said:

Obviously you've completely missed the most important endgame activity, building Ayatan Mechs.

And grinding kitguns just so you can name them words and collect the whole shakespeare collection.

[(XBOX)Hellsteeth30]

Warframe is not the only vidyagaem in existence, go play some of the others and come back later when there's another grind put in.

 

[baked]

Could DE take steps to make content more engaging and meaningful? Sure, old or easily obsoloted content could be reworked or updated.

Can DE somehow add infinitely repeatable interesting content? No. At least, not as fast as players can clear it. You can either get (very) repeatable content, or interesting content. You can't really have both. Even disruptions get boring after a while.

If you want infinitely repeatable content, become a riven trader. Rivens are infinite content because no RNG protection on rolls. Therefore must be fun! 😁

[CrownOfShadows]

7 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Your attitude towards the game seems very unhealthy. And the only solution that would work would be proper PVP, because PVP games are played constantly even when theres no new content, but thats probably never going to happen in WF. So yeah, go see a doctor and play something else, you may be addicted.

..... I'm so far ahead of you I might be lapping you... I get the feeling very little actual reading happened. I'm already gone Max....

16 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I'm off to play a PvP game right now, and I don't have anything left to farm in that game either. Just saying.

But who's more addicted, the people staying even when there's nothing to do or the people who leave until the next release

----------------------------------------------------------

5 hours ago, baked said:

Could DE take steps to make content more engaging and meaningful? Sure, old or easily obsoloted content could be reworked or updated.

Can DE somehow add infinitely repeatable interesting content? No. At least, not as fast as players can clear it. You can either get (very) repeatable content, or interesting content. You can't really have both. Even disruptions get boring after a while.

If you want infinitely repeatable content, become a riven trader. Rivens are infinite content because no RNG protection on rolls. Therefore must be fun! 😁

Well, there's some truth to what you're saying, not even PvP is infinite without some infusions, but investing even a partial dev cycle could really make a world of difference. Imagine for example if instead of the Kahl missions they invested in one of these suggested options. Or imagine if they just made 1 new dynamic solo quest / dungeon / raid every dev cycle - by now we'd have dozens, we'd have a whole library. Like I'm not necessarily asking that they completely drop their content-island approach, I'm just asking for a little dev time on genuinely repeatable content, not this scorched earth stuff. It seems to be so far off their priority list that they'd rather invest in things like Kahl, and I don't understand why. As long as you're burning dev time like that, why not focus it on something that will keep players around?

Logging into WF when a content release isn't active is like walking into a restaurant that isn't serving any food, like as long as you're open at least serve some pie and ice-cream.