Warframe Story Pack Feedback Thread!

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

On 2023-10-27 at 3:23 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Hi Tenno!

We mentioned on Devstream #174 that we are considering doing something for newer players that want to play the latest Quest in our next Update on Day 1: A Story-Skip Pack. You can see the conversation in all its rawness in the link! 

We are at a point with this idea that we wanted to bring it up on the Devstream to get a conversation started about what this pack could be / shouldn’t be, which brings us to this thread. 

Where we are right now:
- Whispers in the Walls has a prerequisite of The New War to access it for narrative  & story reasons.
- While we remove grind and barriers with every Update to make the story more streamlined (and will continue this), players interested in accessing this new content day 1 must first complete 10 years of Warframe before they can dive in. This is a barrier to many people that we’re trying to provide options around. 

Our goals:
- Allow players to use Platinum to buy a pack that unlocks & completes the replayable Quests required to access Whispers in the Walls -- either purchasing it themselves or receiving it as a gift from a friend so they can play together.
- Require Vor’s Prize to be complete so there’s a baseline of game understanding. 
- Provide value in this pack by giving gear that would be earned in the course of play so they are ‘ready’ for content at a given level range (i.e Include Endo & Mods in the pack). 
- Continue to improve the gameplay path to The New War, as seen in changes with Abyss of Dagath and in future updates (unrelated to Story Skip but important to the conversation overall). 

Why are we even exploring this?
- Warframe has a decade of content to explore - this is a strength AND a weakness. 
- We treat this as a strength because we are prioritizing story content & quests that comes ‘after’ The New War. 
-This is a weakness because it can be a time investment that turns people away. A core ‘you can use Platinum to save time’ element is preserved in this approach.

There are many opinions on this idea, and we want to be transparent with our community before we consider shipping any iteration of this system. Please use this thread for constructive feedback, so we can read and understand your concerns. 

Thank you!
 

Yeah heres some feedback.

 

Its a terrible idea driven purely by greed.

 

If its "not a greed thing" dont charge for it.

 

If "skip" should be in the game at all.

[Hexanaticious]

On 2023-10-27 at 2:23 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

- Warframe has a decade of content to explore - this is a strength AND a weakness. 
- We treat this as a strength because we are prioritizing story content & quests that comes ‘after’ The New War. 

While I agree Warframe has a decade of content to explore, a lot of it is 'grind' and time gate more than 'unique content'

I'd encourage a story skip route to be more like a more fleshed out long form tutorial. To be something like a guided but abridged star chart where crafts required for quest progress don't have a time or material gate. Where the players get exposed only to those mission types really designed as solo-able, maybe even mostly non-defensive mission set (Exterminates, survival, captures, maybe some more guided spy stuff to teach them how to perfect stealth a vault?)

I could point to a very popular MMO with a story skip where the cutscenes in one of their expansion packs would take longer to watch than Warframe would take to play when we talk just about the missions directly required by the quests without a grind. Warframe is a big game with the grind but still smaller than many MMO games in terms of timesinks and content.

I get the reason for a straight skip. After all flipping the database flags for a player is the easier option to develop since it's basically just getting the right boolean values set on the account. I still think a better new player experience (which costing more than this) isn't that unreasonable to develop. If you look at how the new war set a framework in place for a player off the main game grid but still in the game it seems like a better quest flow option could be created in a similar way. Making a platinum based starter pack that guides the players in addition to rewarding the players at the end of this abridged play-through with the gear that would take longer for free doesn't leave a terrible taste in my mouth. But it does require more development work. Ideally though this route could be rolled out into the purely Free New player experience, guideposts and hint audio/quest based mission behavior would do wonders for helping someone new learn more than they get from just the Vor quest.

I get cosmetic money and engagement numbers are what keeps a F2P game like Warframe alive, but I also look at this, the heirloom pack mistake, and several other F2P engagement sins of the last few years and understand why Warframe has driven most of my friends away. Please show that DE is in this for making a good and enjoyable game. I'd rather see more gameplay ideas borrowed than monitization ideas borrowed for DE games. I'm doubting I'll have any interest in Soulframe given what I'm seeing of DE corporate thinking in these recent years.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Hexanaticious

[skull755]

while i fully understand and even like the idea of new players getting to skip to the new content my main concern is how predatory this system could be.

i think theirs a big difference between paying to get a new warframe now rather than the possible 4 day it would take to farm and build it and paying to get to content that could take you over 100 hours to get to normally.

and while i know a player could possibly trade for the platinum not only does a new player first need to reach mastery rank 2 to be able to trade but a new player also wont have any idea how to trade for plat and isn't going to have access to the main means of farming for it.

[Mr_Fiz]

I feel like this is a decent idea in theory but in reality ima end up bobbing and weaving through all the players who don't have a clue how to play missions correctly. I saw someone in this thread say as long as this "skip story" concept isn't shoved in people faces on logging in. If its decided to implement this then yea I agree not to be the first thing players see cuz it gives the game a bad look. I personally feel its not unreasonable to have people go through the content in order to play the newest stuff. I mean if I saw a game that's been out for a long time I wouldn't assume ima just hop in and go to end game so personally I think they should just continue to streamline the more grindy parts and not just skip as a whole that way the story feels like it has weigh and when playing the newest content you feel more of what's going on. So maybe if you can just make it where "pay to skip" is just eliminating foundry times for that person and giving them auto resources needed to complete anything that normally takes a while. Appreciate all that the devs do tho for sure! Played many games and you guys are the best I've seen so props 👏

[JustL1me]

If you're going to do this, you should consider further streamlining the star chart tour and the 'content catch-up' afterwards just so it doesn't feel like an easy way out will always be tempting new players in their peripheral when they see that first 24 hour crafting timer. And my suggestion is to make weapons below a certain mastery rank (maybe 8 or so) have expedited crafting times so the player experience way less of a waiting game.

Edited October 29, 2023 by JustL1me

[Keyhound]

2 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

I don't think it's Malice, but I definitely think it's due to greed.

I just can't really see any other way that DE that knows that the early grind makes players quit, instead of making that grind more palatable for player retention, decided that the best choice is to jangle the shiny new quest in front of them before sending them back to those early grind that makes players quit.

i hate the fact that i have no arguments to counter yours. as i do agree that the game need a complete revamp of the new player experience/star chart progression story line.

[(XBOX)Mastermitchel89]

12 hours ago, (XBOX)Mastermitchel89 said:

The only options i could suggest or advise is to Smoothen (or streamline) the trip there, or allow a Demo of the quest with a limit

Duviri has Data pads that can reveal story?

The point being Sneakpeaks or a magic ball that reveals the future, Then player gets 30 seconds worth of Demo to run around in

This could also patch up story parts players may be oblivious to, Like the queens being suddenly presented like we know they exist

If a pay to skip feature is added

[Show] a menu or list of things they are skipping so they can choose to do to skip or continue on

 Important.                          Less important

 Story quests.                         Side story quests

 Second dream.                     Natah

 War within.                           Heart of deimos

 New war.                              The sacrifice

                                             Chains of Harrow

                                             Railjack

 

This could also fit the Demo concept where the player plays a Preview of what they are skipping

New players also have like 4 months to catch up before large updates so they can just deal with it 

Edited October 29, 2023 by (XBOX)Mastermitchel89

[VisuReality]

What about those Black/White (or Yin/Yang) choices to make during these stories (shown in the down left corner in the personal profile), how to deal with this when these choices has a consequence in the future and new players don't even know what had happened

And how shall they call their Natah/Lotus/Margulis?

[PhiZero]

If I remember correctly, Guild Wars 2 had an interesting approach to "Story Skips."

They didn't necessarily sell skips in the traditional sense for cash currency, but had sold the new content as "Episodes" for players that hadn't met the pre-requisites; which, in turn bypassed all the required content...though considering how Warframe is setup with Railjack, Necramechs, Transference etc, this could become unmanageable when it comes to determining what to include for the Episodic-release-format.

[PrawiSucia]

Why don't you just make players pay for story quest instead. Make the free to play route as purely grind with no context.

Because in some other free to play games, you pay to have story quest. Here you wanna make players pay to not have story quest.

Either way I dislike both ideas.

I'll just quit and uninstall Warframe if DE implement pay to skip just like I quit every free to play game that has implemented this kind of thing. Hate it. I don't care anymore even though I've spent so much money on this game. 

I'm very disappointed just from DE proposing the idea alone.

[shut]

This about sums up my experience with getting friends to play the game (video link, which I'm sure has already been shared a bunch in this thread).

WF has a heavy time investment requirement for progressing through the main questline, which is incompatible with many would-be-players out there for infinitely many valid reasons. Implementing an option to speed through ~10 years' worth of content to get to the shiny new stuff would greatly improve accessibility if done right, and the subsequent influx of new players enjoying the best of what Warframe has to offer will be good for literally everyone involved (new players, old players, and devs alike).

HOWEVER: I don't think that skipping quests outright is the best solution for this. Warframe's cinematic quests (ESPECIALLY The New War) contain some of the most memorable and iconic moments in the entire game, and the time commitment for doing the quests themselves is quite small compared to the time investment required for simply unlocking them. As a very very VERY approximate visualization of what I mean, here's what I imagine this time investment might look like for a new player starting Warframe in 2023 and playing through the end of Whispers in the Walls:

My problem is that DE's currently proposed solution (i.e. paying to skip the red+yellow wedges to get to the green) is that the yellow (i.e. cinematic quests such as The Second Dream + The War Within + The Sacrifice + The New War, and arguably less-cinematic-but-still-important quests such as Chains of Harrow) is really, really, REALLY DAMN GOOD in terms of production quality and general appeal. Just as importantly, IMO, is that the cinematic quests provide important story context that is arguably necessary to understand and appreciate what newer cinematic quests will involve.

IMO, a better solution would be to let the player skip the red wedge (i.e. the core gameplay loop of grinding -> crafting/modding/etc to get stronger -> grinding more, until all quest/Junction prerequisites are satisfied), but not the entirety of the yellow. Skip the tens of hours of grind that would otherwise pad out the logical prerequisites for the new content, but not the logical prerequisites themselves (since that would rob players of essential background knowledge). For example, a brand-new player who takes this option would experience the game as something like:

1. TUTORIAL (Awakening + Vor's Prize)
2. The following, to be completed in no particular order:
   • THE MAIN QUESTLINE (Natah* -> Second Dream^† -> War Within -> Chains of Harrow* -> Apostasy Prologue -> The Sacrifice -> Prelude to War)
   • "VEHICLE" TUTORIALS (The Archwing**, Rising Tide**, Heart of Deimos^††)
3. THE NEW WAR
4. ANGELS OF THE ZARIMAN*
5. WHISPERS IN THE WALLS

* Could be relegated to a short expository text window or something, instead of having to complete the quests in their entirety
** Could be relegated to a single 1 mission long tutorial on how to use a borrowed Railjack and Archwing
^† Unlocks access to Cetus, Fortuna, and the Necralisk along with their accompanying quests; none of which are essential to progress the main storyline
^†† Only really here to introduce important characters prior to Whispers in the Walls, and so the player isn't seeing a necramech for the first time during The New War

The key is to maximize engagement while minimizing time investment, so this could probably be condensed even further. It would help a lot to sprinkle in some goodies in between these prerequisite quests-- e.g. instantly unlocking the other two "tutorial warframes" (e.g. Mag and Volt if they picked Excalibur) + some weapons with less "conventional" mechanics (e.g. Miter? Arca Plasmor? Zymos? Glaive?) + some pre-leveled mods-- to make sure that the player feels adequately rewarded and engaged as they progress.

 

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

~~ TL;DR ~~

• Maybe don't give the option to skip literally every single quest prior to Whispers in the Walls. Important story and gameplay knowledge would be missed, causing the player to feel overwhelmed by WitW.
• Instead, give the option to simply unlock only the most essential tutorials+quests, in sequence. This prevents <insert newest quest here> from being nonsensical and jarring for players, while also eliminating ~>90% of the time spent on the "grind" (i.e. the core gameplay loop) that would've been required to unlock it.
  • The result is a simple, streamlined experience that teaches new players everything they need to know while letting them experience the best story content WF has to offer. And, of course, saving them tens to hundreds of hours.
• During this "streamlined experience", periodically reward the player with a variety of fully-crafted equipment (e.g. the other two tutorial warframes? some weapons with interesting, unconventional mechanics? pre-leveled essential mods?) to maximize engagement while minimizing time requirements and mental load.

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

 

 

Buuuuut, don't take my word for it! Other games already have solutions to the issue of story content being locked behind tens/hundreds of hours' worth of the "core gameplay loop". The one that I'm the most familiar with (and, IMO, the most relevant to Warframe's situation) is:

Spoiler

~~ MONSTER HUNTER FRANCHISE ~~

For those unfamiliar, Monster Hunter is a PVE loot grinder that locks content behind a series of story quests (which themselves merely punctuate extended periods of the "core gameplay loop", very similarly to Warframe). Whenever a major DLC drops that unlocks new storylines+maps+monsters (e.g. the Iceborne and Sunbreak expansions for the previous two games), nearly all aspects of that DLC are locked behind completion of the main story of the base game.It's worth noting that Monster Hunter tends to be far less story-focused than Warframe. 

In order to give the option to speed through the base game and get to the DLC faster, Capcom gives players easy access to the Defender Armour Set and Defender Weapons-- which, basically, are reasonably powerful equipment with virtually zero crafting cost that removes the necessity for pre-DLC grinding. This lets the player progress through the main story very quickly, without actually skipping the main story and missing out on valuable context for the DLC.

• However, players are still expected to actually complete prerequisite story quests before accessing the new stuff. Otherwise, the story "continuing" based on things that the player has never experienced, as well as the difficulty spike, would be so jarring that it would sour the experience.
• It's worth noting that the Defender Set is free for all players regardless of whether players purchased the DLC or not. But the core games are not free-to-play to begin with, so the monetization scheme isn't super relevant to how DE will handle it in Warframe.

 

 

[(PSN)thefallenloser]

Kinda on the fence about this. For a game like FFXIV, it makes a lot more sense, as the story is directly tied to the level/gear/experience of the player. Players who don't know how to play the game are not gonna have a particularly easy time w/ it there, and you straight up cannot play any new content unless you are at the appropriate strength/level. Warframe has no such issue (which I don't like-- a quest like New War shouldn't have level 10 enemies, as veterans won't feel any sense of threat), so really they're just being given a bunch of planet and quest-related unlocks (mostly frames and weapons) it seems. It skips a lot, but doesn't seem nearly as valuable to me.

That being said, I'm still for it. Options don't hurt, but I think it's necessary to consider exactly what content this means new players will be given immediate access to. Also, the difference in experiences of each quest for players of different hour counts should be looked at again as well. 

[DarkCurs3]

11 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

Is it really retaining if they leave after they do the quest, because if they think players will leave due to early grind of the gamez then the early grind of the game is still there. You just... Do it after Whispers In the Wall, as oppose to before.

This is and excellent point and I've I bring up in my feedback. Much further in I point out what is included in this supposed bundle. My first thoughts are that it would include something that would allow someone who bought says pack a optimized loadout as far awful sucks appts won't sinus concerned. With a more late game kit IF someone wanted to go back and replay the early game stuff they would theoretically have an slightly easier timer of it (I don't think Warframe is a hard game outside of maybe it's traversal but that is very much my not so humble opinion as someone that has 800+ hours into this game and it's legendary rank 31). If as player was to pay to skip the grind to the latest update I think it should include things that would give them a string start in that content. Which would include several mods, weapons, and the stuff to help beef them up. The point of a skip like this is normally to skip that initial getting entirely while focusing on a single niche. If we look at other MMOs for example they normally include a skip to max level with some decent if not the most optimized end game gear. This is in my opinion the MINIMUM that such a feature would need to address in a skip feature. We can see that in the past de had done something similar to this actually with buying a rj which marks the associated quest as complete allowing players to skip straight to the past content after that such as farming sisters of parvos. I actually was friends with someone who bought with platinum as fully built rj just so they could farm sisters with me and a mutual friend upon the introduction of said sisters, which shows that their is a market for this type of paid content. Apologies if this was extremely wordy I hope however that I made my point clear with examples.

[(XBOX)Tigerfantom]

The story skip pack should allow players to be able to have no prerequisite towards The Second Dream, The War Within, The Sacrifice, and The New War.  You have the option to just jump right into the main cinematic story missions in order without ranking up or grinding.  After that player completes The New War, they'll understand some of the games content and be able to apply it to the non story content as well as Whispers in the Walls.

The pack should probably include  2x orokin reactor, 2x orokin catalyst, 2x decent Primary weapons, 2x secondary weapons, 2x melee, wyrm, a maxed ranked warframe(maybe rhino) and rare/decent mods for the warframe and weapons.  

As far as getting players to The New War, I think removing the necramech and the railjack as requirements would be a big start.  I know you guys already fixed this issue with the necramech but it was the most frustrating part of my journey as a returning player.   I had to endure weeks of farming just for a five minute segment in the New War. I would also get rid of scanning those Oculyst to activate the Natah quest.  I also think for future new players, there should be a guided hand with where to go next, it probably should end after The Second Dream.  There should be a forced tutorials for the modding section.  Definitely need guidance on different modes and features in the game as well.

Side note, I enjoy this game and I appreciate you all for always trying to improve the experience.  Keep up the good work. Thank you DE!!

[TheOlright]

My short feedback: if such option is really required, it should be. I don't really mind if some ppl I don't know and probably will never know will skip huge part of the story

 

My long feedback: The New War actually changes nothing globally, it only has cosmetic changes:

1) It changes landscape of both Cetus and Orb Wallis, which has 0 impact on gameplay or anything else

2) It adds another "type" of mission which is actually a reskin of regular mission of these places

It's been two years and what we have actually post-new war content? Kill Archon, which is reskin of sortie and break narmer, which is 3 missions, which repeat infinitely and have slightly different goals each week. And that's it.

You created an artificial bottleneck, and now you almost (on scale of post-new war updates), you immediately regret that, offering people the opportunity to skip all that.

You put so much effort into building new players experience, to make game feel more flowed for new players, put tons of time into developing quite unique story (even, though, I personally don't think warframe really needs a plot). And now - bam, pay some plat to skip 95% of the game.

Honestly, I can't imagine how you will be able to bring everything pre-whispers to new players quick and understandable enought in short enough time. Will you make them watch an two hour long lore-tied movie? Make them read a giant wall of text? Make "Warframe: the game", which contains all plot-neccessary missions? Or just make 2-minute long "previously, on warframe..." video?

None of these variants looks good enough for players, who started warframe for the first time in their life

In my opinion, amount of content is not a problem, actually. The main problem is amount of content you have to repeat over and over again for hundreds of hours. Starchart and junction systems are both so outdated, and they are the main reason new players have to spend so much time before they will be able to explore something really interesting.

Why every planet have every type of mission and why are they linear? There are no reason for this at all. There are no story behind it or anything really. It dosen't matter if I will finish spy mission or survival first. Look at Zariman - it only have 6 types of missions, and there are no huge complaints about it. They are all logical and seems right for this place. And at the same time - why we have spy mission on junkyard planet? What userfull intel could possibly you recieve on a junkyard?

I think you should remake the whole thing. Every planet should have an entry point. Like a couple of plot-related missions, to test, if player is ready for it equipement-wise. Like: "Oh, tenno, this is a junkyard planet. You must destroy the energetic core to sabotage the recycle process". And then: "Ok, the core is no more, now survive for 5 minutes before your evac ship arrives". And so long. And then you receive an inbox message from planet-related character, who found out about tenno pressense in their sector: "Hello, tenno! We need your help. here are the story quest for you, enjoy". And after quest is completed - give player a huge bunch of resources as an addition to regular quest rewards, so they can choose and build something new and more powerful, so they can immediately go to next planet and experience something new, instead of grinding resources for hours and hours, so they can build something new co complete another pointless line of planet missions. And, also, reduce the build time of low-rank equipment, so people don't have to wait for eight hours to build something, they will throw away in couple of hours.

I understand, that as ftp game you want either players time or money. But if you will implement this whole-story skip option, I think there will be a lot situations like this:

"Ok, I launch warframe for the first time. Let's check the shop. Oh, there is an option to skip all the story of this game. Why would I do THAT?"

After 50 hours of grinding the same missions for resources, while the only thing that chages is tile set:

"Oh, that's why. It looks like it will continue like this for a while. I better leave now, before I invest too much time into it, so I will regret to leave."

I have 3 friends, who left the game after 20-50 hours, because of super tiring early-game repeatable grind.

One of them played for 50 hours, 45 of which he grinded for recources, and then he asked me"

- Is there a way to speed this up?

- Well, you can build necros and buy resource booster.

- How can I get necros?

- First, you have to get to Deimos and then grind the boss of it.

- Oh, crap. Can I just buy necros?

- Sure

- Is there a reason to play this game if I will just buy everything?

- Well, there are some really good stuff you can't buy, but you will just grind, like, 200 hours for it, and it will not be interesting in any way

- I heard ya.

And he quit forever.

And another one who left after 3k hours of play, because he grew tired we had to grind every new little thing for tens of hours. And he was quite surprised when we told him you are able to farm new warframe Dagath and her weapon in less than two hours, and he even return to a game for a week or so. So, with this, you are going in the right direction.

Currently, if anyone asks me, if warframe worth playing, I just reply: "Nah, you will grind 500 hours for basic stuff and then another 500 hours for cool stuff. But nothing will really change. I keep playing less and less every week, but still keep going, because I'm already on a hook". And so they decide to pass.

So, in conclusion, there are a problem that needs to be solved, but currently you are looking in a wrong direction.

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by TheOlright

[(XBOX)The Reject7946]

8 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

That is literally the main reason they are considering the skip.

They know that the early grind make players quit, so they want to distract them by having them give them ~Money~ to do a shiny quest and then back to the grind that they know makes players quit.

All this talk about "Well we buy Grendel with Plat" or "Railjack from the store" still ignores that the players that buy them are going to buy them knowing that they are going to grind with them.

The New Players that just bought the Story Pack don't know that they're going to go into grind hell because the Story Quest typically don't have those, unless Whispers In the Wall is going to do some wild S#&amp;&#036; and have it so that mid quest you have to collect 1k cryotic to progress through it. And when they run into that grind that DE knows makes players quit, they will quit except this time ~Money~ was still spent.

All the excuses about us buying all the plat and Warframes and Weapons and what have you are literally deflecting from the fact that New Players that pay to skip are the New Players players that DE knows will quit due to grind, are going to grind when the story quest and eventually they will Have to Grind.

Go play a game that you buy everything for. You don't like grind? Do that. They don't like the grind? Do that. How about COD Cold War or Vanguard? 

[(XBOX)The Reject7946]

8 hours ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

That is literally the main reason they are considering the skip.

They know that the early grind make players quit, so they want to distract them by having them give them ~Money~ to do a shiny quest and then back to the grind that they know makes players quit.

All this talk about "Well we buy Grendel with Plat" or "Railjack from the store" still ignores that the players that buy them are going to buy them knowing that they are going to grind with them.

The New Players that just bought the Story Pack don't know that they're going to go into grind hell because the Story Quest typically don't have those, unless Whispers In the Wall is going to do some wild S#&amp;&#036; and have it so that mid quest you have to collect 1k cryotic to progress through it. And when they run into that grind that DE knows makes players quit, they will quit except this time ~Money~ was still spent.

All the excuses about us buying all the plat and Warframes and Weapons and what have you are literally deflecting from the fact that New Players that pay to skip are the New Players players that DE knows will quit due to grind, are going to grind when the story quest and eventually they will Have to Grind.

No grind=no free to play, might as well monetize everything. Earning things, sinking the time--that's what makes it work. It appeals or doesn't, but it'll never be free of grind. Time savers are time savers. Pay to skip to get back to it later is what was pitched.

[RLanzinger]

On 2023-10-27 at 10:23 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Hi Tenno!

We mentioned on Devstream #174 that we are considering doing something for newer players that want to play the latest Quest in our next Update on Day 1: A Story-Skip Pack. You can see the conversation in all its rawness in the link! 

... This is a barrier to many people that we’re trying to provide options around.

... Warframe has a decade of content to explore - this is a strength AND a weakness.

There are many opinions on this idea, and we want to be transparent with our community before we consider shipping any iteration of this system. Please use this thread for constructive feedback, so we can read and understand your concerns. 

Thank you!
 

Hi Dear Rebecca,

After some thinking, I am fully PRO in the [DE]'s Team choice for the future of New Players. I must also add one thing : Another Big barrier that must be treated IS the Codex's Quest UI :

• My point : Actually, all quest are listed in Alphabetical order without any way to sort anything.
• Example : If I want to replay a part of this history (Like Railjack's one) I have to :
  • Exit Warframe n' go to Wikia
  • Look for Quest, go to Quest progression to find it is "Vox Solaris → The Deadlock Protocol → Call of the Tempestarii"
  • Then get back to the game to do Vox Solaris
  • Do the Quest,
  • Exit the game to Relook at the Quest progression
  • Then get back to the game to do The Deadlock Protocol
  • Do the Quest
  • Exit the game to Relook at the Quest progression
  • Then get back to the game to do Call of the Tempestarii
  • Do the Quest
  • Then get back to the game to do The Deadlock Protocol
• Why it is important : For players who get to skip thoses mandatory quests, it will be a pain to sort out which quest to do to replay the Lore. I've had to d  it in lot of mmorpg and even without a Wikia as agood as WF's ones that was a MASSIVE headache. I do not want anyone to struggle for this.
• Solution I wish for : I don't ask for a Sort quest by Release date. Your are DE, not W.... of the Cash or Tempest DISentertainment. What I wish is :
  • Something akind to "Detroit : Become Human" Storyboard (Best of all to me) but with YOUR touch.
  • 
  • I wish for a Solution to see all quests wherever you start like me in 2013 or with Duviri's ones.
  • I don't mind it just be purely linear but with WF1999, I know you may introduce a bit of "beware Tenno, Choice MATTER"

 

Thank you for All these years and the next ones, ❤️❤️❤️

[Xkorpitron]

Instead of skipping the storyline, why not incentivize new players to do those quests, complete them and get rewards, like orokin reactors , materials, and other stuff they can get a headstart, it's not hard to code is it?

 

Making it as another MTX it's just pure greed at this point, skipping content, while some of it, it's just game basics.

[BowserNC]

16 minutes ago, Xkorpitron said:

Instead of skipping the storyline, why not incentivize new players to do those quests, complete them and get rewards, like orokin reactors , materials, and other stuff they can get a headstart, it's not hard to code is it?

 

Making it as another MTX it's just pure greed at this point, skipping content, while some of it, it's just game basics.

Straight to the point there. Give players motivation to actually do the story, and make them understand it, then reward them for doing the missions. Don't simply just say "oh it's been 10 years of content but hey what do you care about our effort to create the quests and story? just skip it hehe", it's such a bad move. It simply throws the player at the latest point in the story and even with a recap they don't understand many things about it because they haven't experienced it for themselves.

They added the Duviri path as a new starting point and then you come with the idea to completely skip the main story? That's 1 step forward, 3 steps back. My idea is to utilize the drifter's path and after they complete Duviri quest, they should be able to start the New War quest, from the drifter's first mission there, thus it doesnt necessarily cause any confusion because you are familiar with your drifter and furthermore when they get to the point of playing the Operator in Zariman, they will see Wally there as their doppelgänger, then eventually at the end of the quests too. During the table scene, when the operator talks with the drifter, the "paradox" idea of Drifter's path is further amplified with this. So it could possibly motivate the player to learn who the operator is, and why they look identical to the drifter. 

The quests should be able to be played without any gating, yes keep some of the pre-requisites, but remove the ones that require extreme grind. Completing Heart of Deimos gives all the blueprints required for Voidrig, you also get Mausolon which is pretty strong. Then you do the Rising Tide quest which you get a railjack but without any good mods to begin with. Now you clearly see that I am talking about the New War pre-requisites here, because players complained a lot about it. These pre-requisites should be removed and players should be given a "demo" version of them. Like a pre-modded necramech and railjack with pre-modded weapons, so you dont explode the next second you start the mission and to be able to kill the enemies. 

Now, talking about the warframe's path, doing the Awakening and Vor's Prize etc. , another pre-requisites that bothers me is the MR gating and junctions. All the main story quests could be easily done in less than a day, if there is not time-gating and MR locked missions/junctions. My idea is to remove all the MR locked junctions and quests requirements because it's not necessary at all, rework the junction/quest pre-reqs so players have the liberty of doing the quests without grinding 100 hours. The Codex UI of the quests are not new player friendly at all, they are just images with a title under them and could possibly lead the new player into confusion as how a quest ties up with the timeline of events.

[AshRangerX]

If you are having any thoughts of adding pay to skip please don't this will ruin the whole warframe free to play concept if you are having any seconds thought of that then watch this video also pay to skip will kill the actual game because those people who don't play through whole quests they are not gonna play this game anymore anyway why would they play it because they dont feel anything for this game they just came to play a single quest and then simply gonna quit the game So,you are not gonna attract new players this way instead you are gonna make game feel boring for new players and also for Veteran who are playing this game for years being loyal to this game also slapping them hard on their faces with pay to Skip.

Watch this video for how a new player feels for this game-

 

[SilentMobius]

On 2023-10-27 at 9:23 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Our goals:
- Allow players to use Platinum to buy a pack that unlocks & completes the replayable Quests required to access Whispers in the Walls -- either purchasing it themselves or receiving it as a gift from a friend so they can play together.
- Require Vor’s Prize to be complete so there’s a baseline of game understanding. 
- Provide value in this pack by giving gear that would be earned in the course of play so they are ‘ready’ for content at a given level range (i.e Include Endo & Mods in the pack). 
- Continue to improve the gameplay path to The New War, as seen in changes with Abyss of Dagath and in future updates (unrelated to Story Skip but important to the conversation overall). 

I have no problem with this. I think that having a narrated "Story Skip" that tells you the Story-so-far, and costs plat to give you the gear you must have, seems like a good idea, mechanically, to not reject new players.

I can understand those people who feel this is P2W because it literally is, but it's P2W old content, not current content which is a different thing.

However. I do think that after a player has paid to skip to the current content it should be make easier, and strongly encouraged, for them to go to the old content and complete it manually, a proper guide through the content in a linear manner (not just a quest list in the codex) because "what to do next" has always been a problem in Warframe and it will be much worse when we have new players suddenly in the latest game content available.

Oh, Oh, Oh! how about this:

Rather than make it "pay to skip" make it like an eternalism "Time break" where Teshin narrates something like:

Quote

"Your story is twisted and broken, like an old river meandering and overflowing when the rains come. Here we can see causality is not law but merely... a suggestion"

And you get a summary and the stuff but you get a specific guide-list of things you need to "fulfil your timeline" and when you complete those and "earn" the things that were previously given to you "out of order" you get given things (like rivens, forma, catalysts, slots) as alternate, one time, rewards. Meaning that the Plat expenditure isn't made irrelevant by going back to earn the thing in question.

How does that sound?

Edited October 29, 2023 by SilentMobius

[SneakyErvin]

18 hours ago, (XBOX)The Reject7946 said:

Elaborate on what qualifies any of this as false advertising as though you were taken to court for defamation:

Because the game isnt linear as opposed to most other games of this type. Someone not fully informed about WF prior to testing it and paying to skip to the end quest might very well assume that it works like other games, that when the skip has been payed for their gameplay focus will be centered around the latest update that they skipped to while everything else never needs to get touched. Those paying to skip and not being used to the setup of WF will likely expect that by paying to skip they'll be at the relevant stage of the game, thinking the item grind and progression will take place there.

However in WF, if they pay to skip to the latest they still need to do everything old besides the specific quests they payed to skip. That would lead to what could be considered false advertising in the skip function as people might not be aware that WF is designed as a sandbox where practically all content is needed. So the reality for those that do buy the skip is that they will face a massive grind in old content as they seek to build items tied to it, since Rhino from Fossa doesnt suddenly become obsolete because you reached level X or planet Y. And none of that content plays out like a cinematic quest which they payed to get access to, their assumption is likely that the whole game will be like that.

Since even though they need to get through Vor's Price, that is still in the end just a tutorial and not positively an indication of the game itself. Just as how WoW or Diablo arent exactly reflecting the tutorials in gameplay beyond that. The tutorials in those games are quite dull to say the least. So chances are a player base their view of the game more on the showcase they've seen from the flashiest new content and not the tutorial they just went through, since it is in the end afterall just a tutorial. Also consider that this isnt like other games where you might start the game with 1 system and another gets added somewhere down the line, this is a game where after the skip purchase you go from 1 system to get familiar with to atleast 5 (potentially 6 if a companion is part of the story quest progress). Not to mention potential game modes that get either instantly unlocked or scream to get unlocked. And iirc you are practically shooting yourself in the foot by skipping past Stalker and going directly for Shadow Stalker as the Darth Budget version, while havning no knowledge about sentient resistance resets etc.

I completely see @(PSN)rexis12 reasoning regarding this and I agree. That said I'm not agaist paying to skip in general, but this specific case is a slippery slope due to how it can be seen and the results it can have for both players and DE if things dont pan out. This is also not something they can really just remove after it goes live either incase it crashes and burns.

edit: And with the backlash from hierlooms and previous to that resurgence and some other odd choices prior to that, DE should likely reconsider this whole pay-to-skip story thing. It isnt like they've made great choices recently in the eyes of the public majority.

Edited October 29, 2023 by SneakyErvin

[BluntRollerBobby]

Dear DE!

While I understand what you guys are trying to do, I very hard disagree with the option to just allow story skip. What it does is just puts new Tenno into the middle of the very long and good story, without any idea what's going on. Doing so would completely rob new players of their experience. The best way to describe this feeling would be - imagine that you join your friends in the middle of the action kung-fu movie. You have no idea what is really going on, but you can kinda understand who's good and who's bad, the action scenes look amazing, all characters look very cool, but you have no attachment to any of them and don't know anything about them. So the next day you just forget this, like fireworks on a special holiday, and move on. That is the feeling they're going to get, if they just get put into a middle of the story, without any idea what happened before. But the issue is, there are many action kung-fu movies, but only one Warframe game, you get only one chance at showing people something special that we all love.

 

But I think there is a way to achieve your goal, and I will try my best to share thoughts on that.

Now, my suggestion to this situation needs some prefix. Structurally, as I see it, Warframe has 2 parts - the story parts done with the quests, and the regular gameplay part. The truth is, both of these things can exist completely separately. You can just take out the story quests, and make it a stand-alone game, and it would be just as great. The same goes for the regular gameplay content part, all of us, having multiple thousands of hours are done not by re-playing the same story quests every day, we play different fun to play game.

For a very long time, you guys kept the gameplay part and quest part separately, so it must indicate that you see this too. For example, you learn about Sevagoth or Protea or Harrow, etc. in their quests, but you do their farm separately from the quest. So technically, if you remove the main BP from quest reward, the quests are now just expansion on these frames and Warframe story. The proofs of that are Citrine or Voruna - they did not get their own quests, but we successfully farmed them, learning some bits of lore in the process.

The reason I explain all of this is simple - if your intention is to allow players to access to the fun part to play with their friends or just access content of their choice in general - no issues there. Just provide them with the means to play with their friends, streamline and refine the purchase options. Show them the absolute necessary things, so they will know what to do and let them have fun, absolutely.

I see no issues with someone just joining and playing Zariman missions, without doing any of the quests or knowing anything about the characters, it is not required or crucial for the success of the mission, for us players, it is just new missions, but they are the same as missions on Mars for example, just different content gameplaywise. We are there for gameplay and rewards first. You load in - do objective - get out - get reward - repeat. Just before allowing them to do this content, make sure they are adequately equipped for the mission.

Lately, the majority of the quests are solo player only anyway, so just don't let them play the quests, before they have done previous necessary quests that were before that, but allow them to join all fun gameplay focused content we do.

It will be even cooler to learn later on, why Zariman looks the way it does, after you spent a very long time farming your arcanes on it, or why little kids suddenly jump out of Excalibur and are just as powerful as he is in some situations, and how it came to be, why they have superpowers. Do not spoil them the details, but let them play with the thing. When you customize your Guardian in Baldur's Gate 3, you have no idea who it is or what it's going to do, but you know it's there and will be relevant at some point in the game, and it works just fine.

 

My point is - keep the integrity of the story, and let players see things unfold in the way you originally created it and planned, for the effect you were looking when creating it in the first place. Do not disrespect your own work, you worked very hard to make it possible. In the solution I proposed, I see this possible, while achieving the goal you established. Just remove the restrictions to the parts that are irrelevant to the story, allow having skip for that, without ruining the experience. This is very crucial, considering how your main focus is on the story.

 

Hopefully I managed to deliver my point and it will prove useful in the discussion. Thank you for sharing this and allowing us to provide the feedback on the matter.

[(XBOX)Oni EliteZ]

As someone who has been playing for a while and had many people start and stop during my play time, but also as someone who used a character level skip I got in a WoW expansion pre-order so that I could jump straight in with a friend I am for this idea as a whole. I love the Warframe world and story and would encourage anyone to give it a good go, but there is so much to get caught up with as each additional update comes out. It isn't mine or anyone else places to dictate to someone how they should experience or approach the game. For every person who wants to skip for laziness there is someone who wants to catch up to a friend to play again with the 5 hours a week they have available etc.

The biggest concern comes down to implementation. The obvious protections to make sure there is no gifting to someone in an unwanted capacity, the warnings about exactly what is being purchased and where it places you and then there is the price.

The cost of the pack should likely be the already existing cost of the Railjack purchase, the nercamech purchase and some additional cost to make sure a player has suitable modding available for the gear they are getting in the skip part of the pack (railjack, necramech, quest related rewards) as well as whatever else is added to ensure a playable experience. I would argue that the overall price shouldn't be higher or lower than the combined cost of all of the currently purchasable market items in the pack. People may feel that because it saves time that should affect the price, but again another persons time isn't the concern and market fairness should be.

On top of that, making sure that a pack for someone straight after Vors Prize doesn't cost the same as for someone who already has a Railjack for example needs to be a consideration as well. Could be tricky to implement if bundles don't already do this currently. If it doesn't work this way for bundles in general, it certainly needs to in this specific case (as this isn't a bundle for cost saving in the traditional sense).

As long as it works out to match the current situation in game, which is to say that nothing can be purchased for platinum that gives a gameplay advantage unobtainable to someone who doesn't pay platinum then I can only see this allowing more people to access more of the game. Anyone who doesn't see a massive influx of new players into the community, supporting the devs and getting to enjoy the game we all currently enjoy as a positive thing confuses me.