Abyss of Dagath - Dev Workshop: New Player Path Improvements

[Monolake]

On 2023-09-29 at 3:08 AM, (XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom said:

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.

its a noob stepping stone equipment, just like your lvl1 sword in any rpg and game with progression, or do you also call it 'bait'? its like you've never played any games with progression

[WeltallZero]

10 hours ago, Terroriced said:

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.

Yep, all of this. Warframe spectacularly failing to communicate even essential information to players is the number one Warframe problem and yet it remaing s unadressed for years and years. It's frankly exhausting at this point for veteran to keep seeing friends nope out of a game that seems to downright seethe with hatred of new players. And out of all of it, landscapes are by far the worst newbie bouncers, making it all exponentially worse with layers upon layers of tripwires and sharp edges. If anything, Warframe should direct new players *away* from landscapes, or even better, lock them behind progressing at least well beyond Mars. 

[-Penitence-]

Love the changes. As others said, would be nice if Operator got the enemy radar as well, sucks when you have it then suddenly you don't. Especially if it would help you with Last Gasp.

[Monolake]

17 hours ago, (XBOX)CanadienSaintNk said:

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

Sure they are tough for new players because Fortuna mobs hit like lvl~50 despite being lvl~10.  AND thats why noobs shouldn't be lured into it early on.

But if you have more than ~50hrs in the game you should have no issue doing the low tier ones even solo, I can easily do them on my noob account with crappy barely moded gear just casting few abilities here and there.

Spoiler

all cleared with bonus, solo, Magnus with just 2 mods. Mag with basic no-reactor build

If you play Octavia you just go invis and throw your ball to distract mobs and afk, you must be not using any abilities at all if you struggle.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Monolake

[Degaz3000]

7 hours ago, -Penitence- said:

Love the changes. As others said, would be nice if Operator got the enemy radar as well, sucks when you have it then suddenly you don't. Especially if it would help you with Last Gasp.

Just saw on Twitter that Pablo acknowledged that the enemy radar would work on operator/drifter.

[(XBOX)CanadienSaintNk]

5 hours ago, Monolake said:

Sure they are tough for new players because Fortuna mobs hit like lvl~50 despite being lvl~10.  AND thats why noobs shouldn't be lured into it early on.

But if you have more than ~50hrs in the game you should have no issue doing the low tier ones even solo, I can easily do them on my noob account with crappy barely moded gear just casting few abilities here and there.

  Reveal hidden contents

all cleared with bonus, solo, Magnus with just 2 mods. Mag with basic no-reactor build

If you play Octavia you just go invis and throw your ball to distract mobs and afk, you must be not using any abilities at all if you struggle.

thanks for your input, it's actually irrelevant; they claim in these notes that they want to establish a clear path from Earth to Fortuna, so expecting a player to have 50+ hours before they reach what is the (approximately) 15th-ish mission is absurd. Then expecting a new player to have the knowledge/skills of an individual who has played the game as long as you have is an unreasonable learning curve. The issues I pointed out are mainly balance and bug fixes that aren't resolved by playing the game 50 hours and ignoring the second area in the game entirely until that point. I'm sure anyone can understand bugs can often get in the way of the game/dev's intentions and it doesn't invalidate someone's experience just because it doesn't align with your own.

These bounties up to tier 2 should be manageable tasks for all starter frames solo, tiers 3-4 for those more established, and right now they're a mess that even effect me at MR24 despite using my frames and arsenal to its fullest. Which isn't to say it's every bounty but it is frequent issues where I'm encountering these at least once every 3 bounties and it's demoralizing to waste time on/miss out on rewards through no fault of my own. I think you are too detached from the starter experience to understand the point of view of newer players, the games progression and the experience it will combine into to understand but it could be that I experience an absurd amount of bugs being on the Xbox one and have a skewed experience entirely.

ps Enemies still hit octavia when invisible frequently, even with maxed range she cannot cover an entire range in Vallis and not to mention energy use vs widely spread out spawns is terrible, using roller-ball is just as ineffective when they are so spread out. In a perfect world your patronizing might be correct but this is game development and there's bugs on bugs where experience is needed

[TheLordOmega2]

my thought on this are pretty clear

-Flawed mods are a cool stepping stone, and it's cool to fit one into a cheap build because it's more efficient than a regular version.
Don't want new players to stick too much endo in them (even if it's a nonissue)? just make them cheaper to upgrade.

-Giving the normal version of early weapons to players means they will have to get and level a worse version of their starting weapon as part of normal progression.
This is just bad design.

-New players don't have anything to do in open worlds before getting the kiddo
really, they don't, i get wanting to show off the game for wow factor, but this won't work, they'll just have a bad time and useless ressources.

[Qriist]

On 2023-09-28 at 1:05 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

Removal of Flawed Mods and MK1 Weapons from Vor’s Prize

Flawed Mods 
Flawed Mods are a special variant of Mods that are only accessible via the Vor’s Prize Quest and were intended to be an early introduction for players to the Modding system. 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. 

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. 

Any equipped Flawed Mods will be uninstalled with Dagath as well, so be sure to check your builds once the update launches if this affects you!

I disagree with this change. Flawed->Based->Primed is a great way for newer players to actually feel like their time spent looting and shooting actually matters to their baseline power.

You're removing an important feeling of strength progression.

[(PSN)Adeak]

On 2023-09-28 at 1:05 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

Junctions
Speaking of Junctions, we’re making the following adjustments to the Venus and Mercury Junctions:

Venus

• 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!

On 2023-09-28 at 1:05 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

As we want to encourage new Tenno to venture to both Cetus and Fortuna

I somehow missed this the first time around. Are you trying to make this game less friendly to new players?

[(NSW)ZombieBell]

I've read through the entire development workshop and done my best to break it down to my BF, and thus far I really frigging like it! As a newbie, this game is astounding and I've been playing it non-stop since I got it on my switch, and I can't wait for cross-save so I can join my BF's clan and get all those other nifty things I'm missing out on.

Particularly, I wanna say thank you to whoever collectively decided to make it so Loid would sell the damaged parts. The biggest drain on my sanity thus far has been trying to get that engine and ONLY getting EVERTHING else or nothing at all. The nothing at all actually hurts my teeny soul the most, to be perfectly honest. 

My only thing to point out is the complete DIFFICULTY that it is to do Fortuna bounties. I try to do them on my own and tend to get all the way up to the "protect the drone/protect the coildrive" part before I get annihilated, and I'm working so hard to be able to get up to maxing with the Solaris. I'm stuck at Cove because getting any of the debt bonds is literally painful to attempt to accomplish, and I can't rely on other players because I can never find anyone willing to do group bounties/they run off to hunt while I get pounded into the snowbanks; of course, while Eudico scoffs in disbelief and says the Business might have classes in.. what was it.. wetwork 101?? I can't remember. 

Maybe I'm just a bigoli baby, but I'm running a pretty good damaging Excal Um and I can't get a foothold on my own - hunting included, because I get shot and the Mother Spiderbot decides that it's prime time to punt me across the 'Vallis.

Point is? The Cambion drift is easy for me to mess around in and get higher syndicate ranking in than Fortuna, which I think is a little bonkers considering that its suppsoed to be more difficult. I still haven't gotten a good amp because I wanna work myself up in Cetus, with The Quills, while working up in Fortuna so I can speak with Little Duck.. but to my knowledge I can't even FATHOM talking to her without being neutral with Vox Solaris.

Just... some consideration in that point would be nice. The quest tweaks are beautiful, but actually being able to do anything without either losing or having to revive at least twice trying to get out of a unwanted battle in Fortuna would be nice.. and the Grineer in Cetus aren't exactly do-able as a baby Tenno in the Plains either, though to me they are manageable... that's more of a gripe my BF has as a veteran player, though I do agree that they aren't new-player friendly unless you have a, as I call it, Big Sibling Tenno to cart you along at first.

But keep it up! I love the game and can't wait to see how it goes in the future! I'm FOAMING at the mouth for Abyss of Dagath. The spooky holidays are my favorite and I'm a sucker for Headless Horsemen characters.. I won't stop till I have her in my arsenal.

----

Off topic, but something I wanted to spit out before I forget;

One thing on my mind as a new player is when I finished the quest to obtain my Operator, the lack of hairstyles was... shocking.

I intend to save up to get the cute little bun and braids hairstyle, but I don't understand how the customization can be so lacking, even when there are so many outfits that can be worn (not a TON, granted, but I think there's plenty as of current).

The inability to customize my operator with different hairstyles and cuts was a huge sticker with my boyfriend, too, who is a veteran player and really wanted to make his character his own, and it really fell short. The customizablity is super lacking in that department.

Oh, and my Mother's mask (which I was so pumped for when I found out it existed) I got from Cetus reverses my characters face the the first chosen preset, instead of the blend, in addition to it's... strange... color dilutions. I dunno how to describe that. There is no way I can make that thing look good unless I wanna compromise other outfit color choices.

Bottom line, as a new player I was so stoked when realized What I Really Am, only to be kinda bummed when all the options were kinda limited. I was like, okay, maybe later I can look on the market and wish?

Welp. That dream was crushed.

I still love the story, though. So I ignore it and do my best to cope... I just hope more customization options in terms of hair and physical appearance other than accessories and clothes can come rolling in as the future crawls closer.

[CephalonCarnage]

On 2023-09-28 at 6:05 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

Natah Quest
This Quest is such an important stepping stone on your Tenno’s journey, so we are not planning on making sweeping changes. However, we have a few QOL tweaks to address Quest initiation:

• Reduced the MR requirement from 3 to 2, meaning Oculysts will now spawn in Uranus once you are MR 2!
• Updated the Uranus Junction challenge description to better indicate how to start this Quest. 
  • “Unlock this Quest via a special event in Grineer missions on Uranus. These events only trigger if you are Mastery Rank 2 or above.” 

 can't see that MR reduction is worthwhile, how many peopel are still MR2 by the time they get to Uranus!?

The only issue I had with the quest is the wording - it said "scan 2 drones", I passed by several Oculysts in various missions looking for a Grineer drone (like the ones on the plains or in Vallis bounties) before I realised (via the wiki) that the Oculysts were the drones I was supposed to scan.

[-Penitence-]

On 2023-09-30 at 5:55 AM, Degaz3000 said:

Just saw on Twitter that Pablo acknowledged that the enemy radar would work on operator/drifter.

Epic

[Probably_Asleep]

On 2023-09-28 at 9:05 AM, [DE]Taylor said:

Mods have the unintended effect of players investing Endo that would be better used in the non-flawed variants

I actually liked the flawed Mods. 🙃 It gave me a sense of progression when I finally got my hands on the better versions, and I still keep them around in case I have a little extra capacity I want to fill in a build.

If the goal is about Endo investment, then why not just give more Endo? If Vor's Prize rewarded, say, 1000 endo, and was a repeatable quest, then that would be a nice early-game Endo farm. It's been almost 2 years for me, but I do remember Endo being very difficult to stockpile during the first few planets in the game. If you built in a way to farm Endo for new players, then you'd be killing two birds* with one stone.

* ^{- Track-and-tranq! TRANQ! Do you understand!?}

[Probably_Asleep]

Oh I forgot to include the point that giving new players more Endo would probably help get them accustomed to the importance of investment. The Mod system is arguably the most important system in the game. So it would be helpful to new players to give them the resources needed to get familiar with it.

[[DE]Taylor]

On 2023-10-01 at 6:23 AM, CephalonCarnage said:

 can't see that MR reduction is worthwhile, how many peopel are still MR2 by the time they get to Uranus!?

The only issue I had with the quest is the wording - it said "scan 2 drones", I passed by several Oculysts in various missions looking for a Grineer drone (like the ones on the plains or in Vallis bounties) before I realised (via the wiki) that the Oculysts were the drones I was supposed to scan.

Reb mentioned this on the Devstream, but the goal is to remove the scan functionality altogether. The new mechanic will be to simply encounter them on Uranus. That was not detailed in this Dev Workshop since it unfortunately was not ready in time for Dagath.

[(PSN)Adeak]

12 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Reb mentioned this on the Devstream, but the goal is to remove the scan functionality altogether. The new mechanic will be to simply encounter them on Uranus. That was not detailed in this Dev Workshop since it unfortunately was not ready in time for Dagath.

Any response to the rest of the issues people are bringing up?

The desire to keep Flawed Mods and Mk1 weapons as they are?
The desire for Universal Loot Radar and Vacuum?
What a colossally-bad idea it is to direct new players to the open-world areas?

Edited October 3, 2023 by (PSN)Adeak

[CephalonCarnage]

35 minutes ago, (PSN)Adeak said:

Any response to the rest of the issues people are bringing up?

The desire to keep Flawed Mods and Mk1 weapons as tey are?
The desire for Universal Loot Radar and Vacuum?
What a colossally-bad idea it is to direct new players to the open-world areas?

Few people want to keep Mk1/flawed stuff and TBH they just confuse new players.

Universal vacuum would be sensible, I don't know why its not been implemented a decade ago. Someone in DE loves the micrio-micro-management. I'm surprised they don;t make you pick up each item individually with a "hold X" mechanic.

 

The open worlds... true. These are n00b traps, the enemies are deceptively powerful for newer players, and the whole system of bounties and matchmaking is so different from normal missions these areas should be restricted in some way. Pass a test with the gatekeepers before going out, new interactions so players cannot just wander into the open world without forming a squad first or going out solo. So many players wander out and then find themselves added to an existing squad that is doing .. well, whatever. Could be a level 40 bounty, and there you are MR2 with a braton. IIRC Josh Hayes did this and was thoroughly confused.

Personally I think nobody should join a team if entering the open worlds. Form a team first, then go out even if that means creating an area to do so just inside the gates. Its really bad that the open worlds are treated the same as normal missions.

4 hours ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Reb mentioned this on the Devstream, but the goal is to remove the scan functionality altogether

Probably the best. I would suggest the oculysts stay around longer for the player to notice them, they can zip off quickly and if you're a new player looking out for grineer these things can spot you, and disappear before you even notice what they are. That would be bad. It might be better if they stay put, observing until you interact with one - shoot, scan, or walk close to them and then they go and report to daddy.

[(XBOX)immortalvex1749]

i cant wait for this update

[(PSN)LadyAmbush]

8 hours ago, (PSN)Adeak said:

desire to keep Flawed Mods and Mk1 weapons as tey are

 

7 hours ago, CephalonCarnage said:

Few people want to keep Mk1/flawed stuff and TBH they just confuse new players

If you have seen and read notes mk-1 weapons are permanent they were only removed from the quest. Can still be purchased in market for credits afterwards.

Its only removed to quest so that new players can get regular versions of weapons they can invest their endo into. So many people in the past made mistakes in investing  flawed mods and mk weapons early on just to find out something was better.

This helps with spending your resources into stronger and better variants. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by (PSN)LadyAmbush

[(PSN)Adeak]

52 minutes ago, (PSN)LadyAmbush said:

 

If you have seen and read notes mk-1 weapons are permanent they were only removed from the quest. Can still be purchased in market for credits afterwards.

Its only removed to quest so that new players can get regular versions of weapons they can invest their endo into. So many people in the past made mistakes in investing  flawed mods and mk weapons early on just to find out something was better.

This helps with spending your resources into stronger and better variants. 

Flawed Mods meanwhile, are explicitely being taken away from us.

[motorfirebox]

On 2023-09-29 at 9:43 PM, Monolake said:

its a noob stepping stone equipment, just like your lvl1 sword in any rpg and game with progression, or do you also call it 'bait'? its like you've never played any games with progression

Most games don't offer you the 'opportunity' to expend rare, permanent upgrade items on that level one sword.

[Monolake]

48 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

Most games don't offer you the 'opportunity' to expend rare, permanent upgrade items on that level one sword.

Endo is not rare and flawed mods cost almost nothing to max (~100 endo). And again, if thats the concern - give some more endo rewards for the low level/new player missions, that would help way more. Removing flawed mods only reduces progress and hurts build flexibility for new player

[GrimMyfanwy]

On 2023-09-28 at 4:10 PM, [DE]Taylor said:

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

since this kind of range will already go beyond the minimap, maybe consider changing her passive to something else in tune with her kit, like an increase to projectile velocity

[dukiwave77]

Why would you send new players to Cetus and Fortuna?

Both of them are quite hard and not that rewarding to new players, plus in the case of Cetus don't have the tools to fight Eidolons and Vomvalysts, and them matchmaking with people who do risks significant spoilers. 

This is a huge, obviously negative change to the new player experience that I'd love to see some more explanations from DE. Whatever happened to "our main goal with new players is to get them to The Second Dream as fast as possible"?

[Glacialis]

On 2023-09-28 at 4:25 PM, Verflair said:

Can there also be a change made to the end of The War Within to more explicitly encourage new players to go see Onkko to retrieve the Mote Amp and get introduced to the amp system? As it is, the game does not currently point you towards him once you've unlocked the ability to use Operator Amps, and I've had plenty of friends get to The Sacrifice without the Mote Amp because the game doesn't adequately direct them to go obtain it from Onkko.

Alternatively, just give the Mote Amp as a reward from completing The War Within.

I feel this in my soul. I got caught by that myself.