Abyss of Dagath - Dev Workshop: New Player Path Improvements

[Monolake]

4 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Over the years, we have come to understand that these Mods have the unintended effect of players investing Endo that would be better used in the non-flawed variants.

Thats a total misconception based on random complaints from people who didn't even experience it and don't know. As a new player you have more than enough endo to upgrade your flawed mods (and low ranks into other mods you find) - I can assure you from playing fresh new accounts.  (The game is even rigged to give you some ayatans when you are doing maps for the 1st time).
But IF you wanted to solve the endo issue - then you could make these mods simply cheaper to upgrade. No need to remove them. (And maybe teach players to dust their unneeded mods into endo/credits and give some better endo rewards at low level planets too, this would help more than removing mods.)

Quote

As a result, we are removing Flawed Mods from Vor’s Prize and replacing them with the normal variants. Additionally, players who already own Flawed Mods will have them replaced with the normal variant with the launch of the Abyss of Dagath update -- excluding the April Fool’s Flawed Ammo Drum from 2016, of course. The conversion will maintain the Mod rank, so a Rank 3 Flawed Vitality will become a Rank 3 Vitality once the update launches. 

Thats a negative change. First, if you give player normal mods right away then you rob the player of a progress from weaker to stronger mods.  This renders plenty of mod rewards meaningless. Now you have to change those droptables too to make up for it. Will you?
Second - you hamper an option make cheap builds with low capacity mods -  which is important for new players especially, because they don't have base modding capacity and gain XP slowly and of course dont have forma/potato on their gear.

All in all a misguided change with negative effects.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Monolake

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

Flawed mods like flow actually have use... They're more efficient per mod drain to the actual stat bonus. Sounds like you should just not make them cost stuff to rank up if that's your concern rather than remove them. Tells me you have a different reason for removing them. 

[Monolake]

4 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Our goal is to direct our Tenno to Cetus and then to Fortuna in their early-game journey, as these two nodes are pivotal for later content, including Junctions and Quests.

Not a good idea, to the contrary, everyone suggests new players to leave the open worlds for later, because they have a big jump in difficulty (Fortuna especially!) and complexity - they are very confusing and overwhelming, they are not for fresh new players (you can even see this in blind play-throughs of WF on youtube). Some even call them 'noob traps'.
They don't offer worthy new player rewards for the risk/effort either because they are self-contained 'content islands'  (and good luck doing anything without wiki as a new player there, even I had to look things up when replaying open worlds on a new account, so no, a new player will have no clue how to get all the materials and caft a kitgun)

Though the quests and operator stuff are essential - they are more for later stage of the game. You shouldn't railroad very new players there.

 

Quote

Universal Enemy Radar set to 30m

Thats a huge buff, most people run only Animal Instinct  - which is just 18m radar.  30m innate radar renders enemy radar mods obsolete and makes Ivara passive useless too.  You should change those to make up for it.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Monolake

[Dalewyn]

4 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Kill 5 enemies while mid-air/during a trick chain

I was loving the Waverider changes until this, which single-handedly restores the tedium back to 11.

The problem with Waverider has always been its tedium, please do not add tedium because it's neither challenging nor fun.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Dalewyn

[1manApocalypse]

Honestly the removal of flawed mods is completely unnecessary. It's not like they take a lot of endo to upgrade. At most there's what, a rank 5 rare? That's only 930 endo, and most of them are both lower rarity and lower rank, being much cheaper like only a couple 100 or so. Mods don't really start to cost a lot to rank for a new player until like rank 7 or 8 or so. Also some of the "flawed" mods are actually more effective at lower ranks, allowing you to fit  something in a build when you otherwise wouldn't be able to because you didn't have enough mod capacity. 

Edited September 28, 2023 by 1manApocalypse

[DrLego]

Quote

They should also consider dropping the Mastery Rank 7 requirement of The Silver Grove, The Second Dream completion is really enough of a requirement for that quest since it's pretty much a direct follow up. This lets MR5 and MR6 players in on the action of hunting for Growing Power and other exclusive mods.

It would also let those players complete the nightwave challenge for standing and creds. It's not exactly early game, but some newer players are going to get a little ahead of themselves, so DE should feed a little into that.

Reddit thread had this comment that should probably be included here.

Junction changes are absolutely solid. Same goes for the adjustments to Necramech anquisition and cetus wisps. Though I'd also recommend increasing cetus wisp size to roughly the same as scintillant, and maybe give it extra glow or effects to signify it's location. While the changes you're planning are good for newer players, they were still designed to be kind of hard to notice.

I'll include the images of scintillant and cetus wisp below to show the severity of the contrast between them when it comes to visibility.
 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

[DrLego]

Oh I did remember, you may want to address debt-bond acquisition for the Solaris United syndicate in Fortuna. It's definitely a choke point for progression for some newer players.

[MitsuMez]

7 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Vox Solaris Quest
As we want to encourage new Tenno to venture to both Cetus and Fortuna, we’re reducing the overall difficulty of Vox Solaris with them in mind:

MISSION 1:

• Reduced enemy level from 6-8 to 5, matching subsequent missions in this Quest.
• Increased Drone Health and Shields from 3k to 8k, respectively.
• Reduced the number of required kills from 30 to 20.

MISSION 2:

• Reduced enemy level from 6-8 to 5, matching subsequent missions in this Quest.

MISSION 3:

• Increased Excavator shields from 500 to 3k to match Health values.

MISSION 5:

• Reduced enemy starting level to 7 from 9.
• Increased Coolant Tower Health and Shields from 3k to 10k, respectively. 

I Don't pop up here often. 

A potential solution for getting people to mess with Vox Solaris is look at the barrier to entry: Solaris United.

Tl:dr: I suggest:

- Increasing the debt-bond count from Bounties, (eg 2-4 or 6+ based on bond type and Bounty difficulty)

or

- Increasing the amount of buyable debt-bonds from ticker per Timer period (while adding a option for Buying a Desired Debt-bond at a higher price)

It's a looming problem with RNG being a mega-factor in the farm or time towards getting to Vox-Solaris.   

 

 

Non-Tl:dr:

Medical Debt-bonds, Advancement Debt-bonds , and Familial Debt-Bonds are the biggest thorn to a good chunk of players backs during the Progression of ranking up SU Standing. 

If anything I'd want to see a increase in those debt bond counts, or a dramatically higher count of debt bonds as a buying option for players from Ticker( If that's excessive, then how about a "deep additional options" Slightly higher priced than usual for desired debt-bonds but requires The debt bond shop to be cleared out, or at least have 3 debt bonds bought from that reset period to buy it).

wanted to throw my two-cents in, as RNG was not the kindest during the SU standing and Rep farming. and from what I've seen and heard, other players back then has had struggles with those mentioned Debt-Bonds. Some threads around reddit and the comments section for the "Debt-Bonds" Section of the wikia harbors some frustrations with the Farming/ grind of those bonds. 

heard that profit-taker orb Party-share was a thing but saw some chatter about it being limited to Rank 5 SU players, so anyone under that is a RIP. 

you want more people doing Vox Solaris? check how people are doing with Solaris United. Once that's resolved, I'm positive there would be more players doing Vox Solaris bounties, Orb bounties, etc.

 

 

(edit reason: Said "the only real solution" There's many ways to tackle this problem, And my suggestion won't fix everything. I'm all eyes and ears to some other people's ideas.)  

(2nd Edit @DrLego. I'm thankful that you mentioned the Debt-Bond matter. cheers. ) 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by MitsuMez

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

2 hours ago, Monolake said:

As a new player you have more than enough endo to upgrade your flawed mods (and low ranks into other mods you find) - I can assure you from playing fresh new accounts.  (The game is even rigged to give you some ayatans when you are doing maps for the 1st time).

Flawed mods are bait 9/10 times. The majority aren't worth running over the normal version at lower ranks, and when they are, it's at the point where the stat difference are small enough that it's basically pointless. The only notable exceptions that come to mind are the elementals mods, where's there's a more substantial difference.

[(PSN)pookie4180]

very good changes however remove vacuum and fetch so new players will have a extra slot to use

[Falling_Tide]

4 hours ago, Monolake said:

Thats a huge buff, most people run only Animal Instinct  - which is just 18m radar.  30m innate radar renders enemy radar mods obsolete and makes Ivara passive useless too.  You should change those to make up for it.

I would Disagree here, It doesnt make them useless, but I would say Ivara's passive would need a buff for sure.
 

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)pookie4180 said:

very good changes however remove vacuum and fetch so new players will have a extra slot to use

I am conflicted here, It would be nice to have companions passively give this as a feature and have a free mod slot for my Beast fighters companions. As someone that played with carrier when it had the only Vacuum mod and its range was something like 30m. I feel like it would be poorly received.

On that note, It was actually removed once and all Sentinels were given 6m of Passive Vacuum. 2 Patches later Vacuum the mod was added back in its current state for all Sentinels.

[InfectiousCheese]

Sigh, still no improvements to Thermia Fractures event.

[Sunscreeen]

I feel like Ivara's passive just stacking on top of the new 30m radar would be highly redundant, is there any chance Ivara could get a new passive out of this instead?

[Cryssoberyl]

Quote

Warframe is more fun when you know where your foes are,

Yeah, Warframe is also more fun when you know where your loot is - in your inventory instead of on the ground. Why are you adding innate radar but not adding innate VACUUM?

[dolosGG]

So, uh, will our mod replacements come with the endo we invested in their flawed versions? Because if not, you're not only ruining multiple gun builds I have a flawed shock mod to save a forma, you're also taking away time put into the game via getting that endo. Cheers and best regards, look forward to a reply.

[otakuotaku]

For further new player improvements please change slots to either be free or for credits, scaling up to a max credit amount with each purchase. I would rather say slots be free to prevent hassle of newbies needing to find credits faster than before but if you did it for credits it would align with other looting games at least. However a new player can't even access trade until MR 2 and you're basically giving off a feeling that you can't get slots without paying to the inexperienced. Not to mention it's a looting game with such a pitiful amount of starting slots. It has deterred friends from playing and long time players shouldn't have to keep telling newbies to buy slots because the situation still hasn't been innately changed years later. Don't have to do any slot refunds and what not. Long time players don't care, just don't want newcomers to go through the same thing.

Edited September 29, 2023 by otakuotaku

[Stafelund]

15 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Firstly, we’re adding 90k Bonus Affinity to the completion of the Vor’s Prize Quest, split up across the 6 missions. Each mission will earn new players an additional 15k Affinity upon first completion only.

I want to confirm, is the affinity going to apply for new players only or this will apply retroactively to any other players who had finished the quest before as well?

[(XBOX)CanadienSaintNk]

Vox Solaris bounties are too hard tbh

I don't mean hard as in might not gold, I mean straight fail a tier 1 bounty as a MR24 with decent 2 teammates

-The excavators don't scale well

-the hack/defend the coildrive doesn't scale well and the enemies frequently are beamed down inside of it,

-the don't trigger an alarm shows up too late causing new players to trigger it nearly every time
-wandering coildrives attacking the hacked drone and destroy it immediately and they never despawn even when you leave their area these coildrives are being spammed during the drone hack, they shouldn't be aggressive with the amount of damage and range they have its ridiculous, this can compound into other stages like assassinating targets or doing bounties repeatedly

-when rescuing the solaris individuals, if you don't have a weapon that can destroy airships, you are toast unless you hide inside the outpost but even then it just causes enemies to

 beam inside the bunker with you

-Corpus accuracy is insane, even at tier 1 with MR24 with maxed frame Im down if I stop moving, tenno-forbid I aim with a gun sometimes

-The bounties themselves are whack; you do the same things just in different orders and it gives no sense you are challenging yourself by elevating the severity of task

-You have an achievement for doing 6 bounties in an hour but what it means is doing 6 bounties without going back into Fortuna, and the game cant handle it; I always crash when I try to start the 5th bounty

 

I bring this up because you are aware your introduction to Fortuna is too difficult but you seem unaware how far it reaches into orb vallis

I play octavia, certainly not a tanky frame by any standard but it shouldnt have a problem with groups as it is

[(PSN)Shaun-T-Wilson]

15 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Ivara now has a passive Enermy Radar of 50m with this change!

did you fix the vertical range of enemy radar as it never the stated range (same with loot radar)

Edited September 29, 2023 by (PSN)Shaun-T-Wilson

[ldegroodt115]

Universal Enemy Radar: I don't wanna be that guy, and the range is really generous, but Loot Radar is just as important IMO especially for newer players. And, uh, Vacuum as well.

Added Damaged Necramech Components to Loid’s Store: very good change. As lucrative as selling these were almost everyone I've heard has had atrociously bad luck with these

13 hours ago, DrLego said:

Oh I did remember, you may want to address debt-bond acquisition for the Solaris United syndicate in Fortuna. It's definitely a choke point for progression for some newer players.

This is recent enough for me to remember that this was a slog for me. They give so little standing for how difficult they're to get too, especially medical? ones.

Telling new players to avoid open worlds is a real thing. The rep grind is offputting, the mission structure is open-ended and totally different from before, and especially Orb Vallis enemies will absolutely clap you with knockdown CC & (electric proc) damage, even when you're somewhat kitted out.

I assume MK-1 weapons are kept in the market because adjusting mastery is hassling. I'm too far removed from endo and credit struggles to comment on their reduced upgrade price but I will say removing them is good for clearing up confusion. I regretted investing in them when I realized that they're a handful of worse versions of identical mods.

[Yptridr]

14 hours ago, MitsuMez said:

I Don't pop up here often. 

A potential solution for getting people to mess with Vox Solaris is look at the barrier to entry: Solaris United.

Tl:dr: I suggest:

- Increasing the debt-bond count from Bounties, (eg 2-4 or 6+ based on bond type and Bounty difficulty)

or

- Increasing the amount of buyable debt-bonds from ticker per Timer period (while adding a option for Buying a Desired Debt-bond at a higher price)

It's a looming problem with RNG being a mega-factor in the farm or time towards getting to Vox-Solaris.   

Increasing standing for Solaris United was a genuinely painful ordeal for me, as in it took weeks of me trying to get the right debt bonds to drop only to finally get the ones i needed from Ticker. and i mean great, it's great that she's an option, but the rng is genuinely painful and the amounts required are just excruciating. i often see accounts where people do not have Solaris United standing at all. they'll have the other syndicates but not that one. and it makes sense because it just isn't pleasant.  

[wirecard]

21 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

players who already own Flawed Mods will have them replaced with the normal variant

why no let us keep the copies? dont understand

[Terroriced]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb [DE]Taylor:

NEW TASK: “Complete Quest: Saya’s Vigil”

• Similar to the Inbox changes, our goal is to direct new players to Cetus early in their journey!

 

With this change you will lock a pretty big percentage of new players out of progressing past earth.

I watched most new player videos that were posted on Youtube for a couple of years (I'm weird, I know) and a lot of those players can't find the glass shards, venture out of the area marked on the minimap, ignore or react slowly to the 'abandoning objective' warning, thereby bricking the mission (can't be completed anymore but doesn't end or communicate this fail state). Those players will then search for a glass shard on the entire plains for sometimes hours, get frustrated and exit the mission via Esc --> abort mission.

This needs to be fixed urgently. No more 'abandoning objective'  fail state please and also please add markers to those glass shards that appear after enough time has lapsed.

 

You would be surprised to learn that outside of the quest way more new players exit the Plains of Eidolon by aborting the mission instead of returning to Cetus via the gate, because they don't remember where the gate was, never learned that they are supposed to go back and they don't understand that they LOSE ALL ITEMS they collected if they don't. So many multiple hours first time Plains of Eidolon videos end with the players aborting the mission with twitch chat screaming in pain.

 

Big part of the problem is the way the game describes what consequences aborting the mission has to the player.

'You will keep progress but forfeit the completion rewards and bonuses.'

This is massively misleading. Every single new player who encountered and read this text assumed it was safe to abort the mission. Every single one of them.

'Oh I will keep my stuff and just not get the bonus. Ok, let's do this.'

 

Instead this should read: 'You will FAIL THE MISSION and LOSE ALL ITEMS and only retain base affinity'

You need to understand how to properly communicate information to players. I'm baffled that this wasn't figured out yet.

 

Here are some theoretical examples how not to communicate:

If you gave new players a warframe mod upon completing the Awakening quest that reads

'convert 60% affinity into extra damage but forfeit the affinity rewards and bonuses' but don't explain them those affinity don't go to character / account progression anymore, they would put it on and slow their progression by 60%.

 

If you gave new players an inbox with an option that reads

'temporarily unlock all warframes, companions and weapons for 7 days but forfeit the mission rewards and bonuses.' but don't explain to them they will be left with zero items, affinity and resources after that time period, most of them will be very surprised and they will not like it.

[1OfTheUndying]

You WANT to force new players to go to Cetus? I hope yall gate the Eidolons and Vomvalysts or you will just be sending them to their game over screens...I mean, "let's show new players this location that they can't even damage the enemies til much farther down the line" makes no sense and when I started playing, died numerous times trying to figure out how to kill them.

[MarauderIIC]

Whoa whoa whoa, I think it is a TERRIBLE idea to send new players to open world areas. I recently helped 6 people get started and I tell them to skip BOTH Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis because they are way too difficult for their spaces on the star chart and are overwhelming for new players that are still trying to figure out basic systems and movement. Not to mention that the lack of an archwing makes moving in them a slog.

 

I'm not sure that I've even posted to the forum before but I felt this was very important.