Warframe Story Pack Feedback Thread!

[Lakais]

I support this choice by DE. It is very difficult for veteran players to put themselves into new player shoes and see just how stupid of a commitment it is just to grind your way to current game content. But that being said, I do understand the push-back. I see a few potential issues here with regards to comprehention, progression, incentive and price. 
But in the bottom I gather my ideas into a suggestion in regard to integrating this functionally into the Drifter new player experience rather then tacking it on into the shop. 

One issue with buying your way is introducing these mechanics (let alone story) to a player in an understandable way. You need good tutorials to make the systems make sense. How are these tutorials presented? 
Then we get into arguments about incentive and progression. If a player has bought the unlocked items and gotten the cliffnotes of the main quests; what incentive do they have to experience them further? While I think I'll be enjoying Drussus' presentation as to the state of the Origin system (calling it now) how detailed is it going to be? 

And price. This is a big issue. When we tally up all the things that you can buy now to bypass certain things: Railjack 400, Necramech 375, Archwing 275. That's 850 platinum. A 45 Euro pack has 1000 in it. For a game that is known as one of the best monetized in the market, that might be a hard pill to swallow. Especially considering the latest public outcry with regard to the Heirloom packs. While that is the current industry standard for a live service game (usually some expansion and a season pass), DE is still walking on thin ice.
Now granted, Some might want to pay to skip only certain quests so there might need to be various versions of these packs or some checklist process of what you want to skip. So the price could be lower. But still. The next plat bundle down is 370 plat for 18 Euro. Not even enough for the Railjack pack alone. 

I think what would be a potential solution is a sort of "rental". Not time gated, but feature gated. Multiple packs that contain a selection of items and quest progression, some for players who have already played through some parts or plan to play them. The items you get through these discout packs are "as is". Meaning you get a railjack, mech, AW, Amp and the rundown as to what has happened to the origin system, story wise. But you can't customize these unlocks in any way. To fully unlock them to upgrade and customize, you need to either pay for the full pack or preferably, (re)play the quests for them. So quests could not only be marked as "Complete" but also as "past events". 

In this scenario, the story beat is that, the new player is a brand spankin' new Tenno who was found and woken up just before Wispers in the Wall. And all the gear the pack provides is essentially hand-me-down mk-1 provided by the Lotus organization and it's allies because, there are standards to uphold, mate. Can't have you slumming around the system in just your underpants, now can we. And you replaying the quests to fully unlock them is essentially eternalism alternate time-travel shenanigans. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey Void stuff.

And if someone does go out and pay the full price for all of it, it's THEIR money. No one is forcing anyone to buy them other then their own impatience or peer pressure. Can't do anything about the former, but if it's the later then you need better peers. 

Finally I'd posit that there is a point to be made with regard to just flat out restructuring how we interract with all this. Right now, a new player who joins has two options. The Vor's Prize and Drifter. I suggest that the Drifter beginning should be added to so that when interracting with a quest that has a pre-requisite for these mechanics they are basically side-stepped where you are provided a basic, uncustomizable set of the needed thing (RJ, AW and NM) on loan FOR THAT QUEST MISSION ONLY with maybe a radio message from Ordis, Lotus or someone else if it makes sense that they called in a favour. You get a TASTE of a thing and then you go "That mech was COOL, I want one!" and then you maybe get a mail from someone mysterious that explains how to fully unlock that thing. 
This makes sense in-universe and mechanically. The Drifter basically popped into existence in the middle of "The New War" They don't know what all these things are. But it makes sense that they are provided these by association to their Operator counterpart. So DE can lean into this narrative that things when we play the quests, we are reliving the adventures of our Operator and getting back stuff that maybe got destroyed and lost during TNW or the Operator of THIS reality (eternalism, yay) never got around to. 

So yeah, this is my final suggestion. The options to buy bypasses are already in the game and the players can pick and choose what to buy. The issue here is that currently they are all scattered and not properly connected. By emphasizing for new players who start the game that if they want to be up to date easier and quicker, they must choose the Drifter opening, but if they want the long-game approach they choose the Old War. 
I will admit, having played the two intro's, the Drifter one is superior. 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Lakais

[Silligoose]

13 hours ago, [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!
 

My initial reaction was: Even though I don't really mind if players can skip story in principle, I'm concerned that, just as grind times are artificially inflated and designed to be a little frustrating, a little boring, all to incentivize player spending, we may see the quality of skippable content drop. It could even lead to new content being skippable. Sadly I'd not be surprised to see new content have more design elements set to be a little frustrating, a little boring, all to incentivize a little more spending, should this be implemented. Maybe some bugs that come with content releases aren't really that important to fix quickly anymore...

This game seemed to be at its peak in terms of enjoyment, playerbase and financial success when money wasn't chased as hard a few years ago. I don't like where the game has been heading for the last few years. There is a plethora of developers out there for whom passion and pride still plays a vital role in development, who hasn't let profit completely trump those motivations in content creation, but I don't see DE among them anymore. In contrast, passion seems gone and content drop after content drop it looks like DE is willing to sacrifice more and more of the game, of the player experience, to try and squeeze more money out of people.

If this was for the players or if it the impact of the pre-requisite was really all that important to you DE, you'd simply not have the pre-requisite of TNW, the quest that has resulted in players permanently being locked out of Warframe, in place, or you'd offer this package for free.

[yazaab]

I think another way to approach this could be a "Pay to Preview".
my thinking includes:

1. This is to be a one-time use since the intent is for you to experience the new content only and hence will not auto-complete prerequisite quests
2. Instead of giving the player all the prerequisite gear, we employ a similar technique to Duiviri where the player is allowed "loaner gear".
3. Since it is a "preview" the quest rewards will not be given.
    

 

[(XBOX)Hellsteeth30]

Restore the revive paywall!

People spend an inordinate amount of time building to NOT die, so let's incentivise it again.

[Gambaina]

Players shouldn't be taxed because the new player experience is pushing players away, getting to a point where you can play these quests should be faster, the starchart is a huge time tax of repeating the same/similar missions with most nodes not actually providing anything outside of a time gate. Additionally, Warframe has historically never really given new players a clear direction for where to go next for progression and it's had people I've introduced to the game feeling lost.

More key mods for progression should be provided by junctions or should just be more common/clear for where to get them, endo & resource bundles should be given by early quests and good gear early on should be more available, or in fact buff the early gear so that it can be more viable. (karak meta please?)
Having a far clearer 'path' for player progression should also be done to help this, e.g poe and fortuna should be more clearly as not being 'primary' content for progressing the story.

If a paid option is provided it shouldn't be at the expense of leaving the non-paid option intentionally complicated and confusing, and even if its not intentional, once you offer a paid skip option its most certainly going to look like that. It shouldn't skip the quests but it should skip the grind for the quests prerequisites. e.g unlock the nodes, get a unranked railjack, necramech ect (which can already be purchased) and then give a mod bundle. 

The main thing that should be avoided is invalidating the content before the skip, if a new player can spend $60 to skip it, all of the content that is skipped will just be perceived as a time waster to get you to spend that money, as a barrier of entrance to 'the real game'. Any quest or objective (like the aforementioned starchart slog) that takes too long would just become another barrier to try and push you to this story skip. As long as blockers like those exist I don't think a 'story-skip' can be sold in good faith.

This same mindset would likely end up reflected in all later content too as something like this would be a massive blow to the communities trust in creative decisions being made. Any grind that players take issue with would just end up looking like a way to force people to buy the next story skip or whatever future skip options are provided which is just going to villainise the Devs in the view of the community which is something (I hope) you want to avoid. 

TLDR:
Currently a story skip wouldn't be pay for time/convenience, it'd be 'pay get to get to the fun' or possibly even worse, 'pay to not play the game'. The issues in the new player experience that stop that fun would become a barrier to force new players into spending to not have their time wasted.

[German]

Best way of doing it I think is to make the skip free and give players borrowed gear like they do in duviri. If they like the gear they can buy it. But the general skip shouldnt cost anything.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

don't forget these winning business strategies:

Pay for Support Tickets: encounter a bug? lose something valuable? for the reasonable price of 150p per ticket, our support team will try to fix your problem, if they can be bothered. (no guarantees.)

Pay to Unban: justice? what's that? not a moneymaker, that's for sure!! for $79.99, anyone, regardless of their past sins, can immediately re-unlock their account and go right back to playing; sure, it opens the floodgates to hackers and bad trades, but we don't care; we've already got your money! if you're still having trouble, perhaps you'd be interested in our greatest exploitation tactic yet..

WARFRAME PREMIUM!

featuring bug-free missions, 100% migration free, seamless matchmaking with dedicated servers, weekly content updates* and a generous stipend of 1p for every day you log in, as well as unlocking the exclusive "sellout" cosmetic bundle!

_{*weekly updates are limited to 1 cosmetic item per week, further updates added sold separately.}

Spoiler

truly, the line between satire and reality is oh so very thin ;)

 

[Slick]

Fully support a story skip. I also fully support reworking the Star Chart to cut down on the hundreds of missions new players are forced to do. I cannot get friends to try the game because it's simply too much content. They are hooked on the idea of playing with me. They are not hooked on the idea of having to clear hundreds of nodes and however many quests to be able to play with me.

Too many people on all the social medias are pointing to factors that simply do not matter in the grand scheme of things. The problem is the content taking 100 hours to complete. A 100 hours before my friends can play with me. Most of the solutions people are proposing do not get rid of that 100 hour time gate.

[SDGDen]

8 hours ago, Darkrya said:

There is a wait time for helminth digestion, but I see what you're saying

that's also skipable!

you can buy the helminthg segment for 300 plat at MR8, which you can get simply by leveling every frame. so if you want to "instantly" unlock all helminth subsumes here's what ya do:

>buy every warframe (this will cost you 15300 platinum in total)
>level them (this will net you 324K mastery rank, bringing you to MR11)
>buy the helminth segment bundle (this will cost you 300 platinum)
>subsume every warframe, rushing the subsume for 50 plat (so a total of 2700 plat to rush)

tada, you have every single warframe subsume unlocked and the only actual time bottleneck is having to wait 8 days from starting your account for your MR tests.

 

[WidescreenJohn]

3 minutes ago, Slick said:

Fully support a story skip. I also fully support reworking the Star Chart to cut down on the hundreds of missions new players are forced to do. I cannot get friends to try the game because it's simply too much content. They are hooked on the idea of playing with me. They are not hooked on the idea of having to clear hundreds of nodes and however many quests to be able to play with me.

Too many people on all the social medias are pointing to factors that simply do not matter in the grand scheme of things. The problem is the content taking 100 hours to complete. A 100 hours before my friends can play with me. Most of the solutions people are proposing do not get rid of that 100 hour time gate.

Cannot agree more. Too many people are falling back on the lore, story, etc. as an excuse to force the grind. Those have little meaning to those, including veteran players, who just want to jump into a mission and kill things.

I love the lore and story behind Warframe as much as anyone else. I've spent hours completing the Cephalon Symaris stories, hunting the Solaris data fragments in Orb Vallis, looking for kuria, and such. But forcing new players to go through the story just because we love it is projection. It's no different than "I absolutely love this book, so I expect you to love this book as well!" It's very disappointing to see how many people are using the story/lore as an excuse to force people into a 100+ hour grind.

Newer players do not need to know the lore behind Vox Solaris (for example) to understand the mechanics of an efficient Eidolon hunt or how to optimize an Arca Plasmor and Smeeta kavat to hold off level 60+ infested during a defense mission. It bothers be how much people are attempting to mix the two.

[(PSN)MaistBitPollen]

Pay to skip to steal path is funny to me, veterans are going one by one when anything better comes up because there’s nothing for them to do and instead of prioritising them you want to fast track everybody to their position 

[Alguien]

14 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

- 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. 

But you made that barrier in the first place by locking Quest behind Junctions, and Junctions behind the Starchart.
Making Quest unchained from Junctions means the requisites are the quest chain itself, MR5, Necramech, and Railjack
The first two don't take that much time (Second Dream, War Within, and the New War itself would be the biggest time sinks quest-wise) and the latter two can be already bought from Platinum.
 

[SDGDen]

8 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

don't forget these winning business strategies:

Pay for Support Tickets: encounter a bug? lose something valuable? for the reasonable price of 150p per ticket, our support team will try to fix your problem, if they can be bothered. (no guarantees.)

Pay to Unban: justice? what's that? not a moneymaker, that's for sure!! for $79.99, anyone, regardless of their past sins, can immediately re-unlock their account and go right back to playing; sure, it opens the floodgates to hackers and bad trades, but we don't care; we've already got your money! if you're still having trouble, perhaps you'd be interested in our greatest exploitation tactic yet..

WARFRAME PREMIUM!

featuring bug-free missions, 100% migration free, seamless matchmaking with dedicated servers, weekly content updates* and a generous stipend of 1p for every day you log in, as well as unlocking the exclusive "sellout" cosmetic bundle!

_{*weekly updates are limited to 1 cosmetic item per week, further updates added sold separately.}

  Reveal hidden contents

truly, the line between satire and reality is oh so very thin ;)

 

when it comes to losing items, if support doesn't want to help you you can generally help yourself for the price of some sweet sweet platinum, i had this when my account had a glitched out version of the glast gambit quest for 5 years (it skipped the first mission without marking it complete so i couldn't do the other missions), support said "we fixed it" and then didn't, and someone i knew bought me a nidus. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 minute ago, (PSN)MaistBitPollen said:

Pay to skip to steal path is funny to me,

I know that was a typo, but that just gave me another BRILLIANT idea: The STEAL path: where you pay 50p to attempt any mission, with max level enemies, and no weapons or abilities allowed!you guys always wanted more difficulty in the game, right?  

[Tottamon]

The biggest problem with that is, you trying to get new players instead of keeping the players that are already there.  And I see you lose more old players with that, than getting new players from it.

[(PSN)rexis12]

11 minutes ago, WidescreenJohn said:

But forcing new players to go through the story just because we love it is projection

 

18 minutes ago, Slick said:

The problem is the content taking 100 hours to complete. A 100 hours before my friends can play with me. Most of the solutions people are proposing do not get rid of that 100 hour time gate.

But the reason it takes 100 hours has nothing to do with the quests

The reason it takes 100 hours is because to get a weapon it takes 12 hours so that you can get a weapon, and that it takes 3 days just to make another Warframe for Mastery Points that unlocks other missions.

If that's what they want them to skip, it only skips that for like just one new 5 minute quest line. Like what's their experience going to be, going into Whispers of the Wall to get the new shiny book blueprint and then finding out that it'll take them TWELVE HOURS to build it? Or when the new update has Necramechs and that it takes THREE DAYS to build? If they think that the new players are THAT impatient that they'd be willing to pay money to skip, whats going to keep them when EVERYTHING ELSE is seemingly a 'Pay to Skip' scenario?

[DarlingDearest]

Honestly after sleeping on it, I can see some sense in pay-to-skip story. I think my initial kneejerk reaction was “it looks so bad when a F2P game immediately asks for money to skip ahead”. A lot of people I know are still hesitant to spend money on things due to the ongoing cost of living crisis. I suppose after the Heirloom incident I’m also very wary about how much a story skip would cost.

That said, as a solution it still feels like slapping a bandaid on a bullet wound.

Very pro-story-biased take ahead

Some people have been saying the Second Dream etc has no impact or meaning to newer players, and I disagree with that. I started playing on one of the updates after Fortuna – can’t remember which one, but it’s when ‘Coldwave’ was the login music. I’d ready been spoilered on the Operators and knew the basic story beats. Even knowing what was coming, those were still some very hard-hitting and emotional chapters. More than anything, it’s what attached me emotionally to the game and kept bringing me back even when I felt frustrated.

What did feel like a slog was grinding through all the prerequisites to get to that story. God, that was… not fun.

In my little ghost clan, it’s just me and one other IRL friend who vanished into the ether after getting put off by that same early-game experience. She’ll occasionally log on so we can mow through some missions while having a chat, but has no patience for the rest of it. She was really interested in the story, before she realised the immensity of the grind to even get there.

Obviously, the two of us are story-focused folk. Maybe I’m overestimating how many people in general actually care about lore and story. But a skip wouldn’t have helped her in the slightest. Even though she’ll join me on missions, she has zero emotional attachment and never logs on when it’s not the two of us.

Instead?

Like others have suggested, decoupling the main story from the star chart would be a huge improvement. Remove the non-story-related prerequisites, and give people a gear loan just for those episodes. Let them play through the chapters without roadblocks, so the story can get its hooks into them.    

Edited October 28, 2023 by DarlingDearest

[WidescreenJohn]

11 minutes ago, (PSN)rexis12 said:

But the reason it takes 100 hours has nothing to do with the quests

The reason it takes 100 hours is because to get a weapon it takes 12 hours so that you can get a weapon, and that it takes 3 days just to make another Warframe for Mastery Points that unlocks other missions.

If that's what they want them to skip, it only skips that for like just one new 5 minute quest line. Like what's their experience going to be, going into Whispers of the Wall to get the new shiny book blueprint and then finding out that it'll take them TWELVE HOURS to build it? Or when the new update has Necramechs and that it takes THREE DAYS to build? If they think that the new players are THAT impatient that they'd be willing to pay money to skip, whats going to keep them when EVERYTHING ELSE is seemingly a 'Pay to Skip' scenario?

There are 35 quests in the game. Some don't take long at all, sure, but some take quite a while. If we consider an average of 1.5 hours among all of those quests, you're looking at 50+ hours just to complete all of the quests. So to say that the quests have nothing to do with 100 hours is not correct. I understand that the various missions, junctions, and open world grinds are more impactful, but quests absolutely are part of the pain.

We can already play plat to buy warframes and weapons off the market and skip the grind for those. (I'm looking at you, necramechs!) I see this idea as simply an extension of that.

How DE decides to implement it is the key factor; but no one should have any objections to something like "Ugh, I'm not in the mood to do that quest, but I can't move on without it. Fine, here's 10 plat to skip. I can go back later if I want."

[0bsi]

Reposting what I said in the other thread:

My friends and I have this problem.   I have completed all quests, they have mostly only done up to The War Within.  They all did Duviri - even though they don't understand the story that lead up to there....  But it means that when new content drops that's locked behind progress they haven't done, we can't play together, and that discourages them more than incentivises them to progress further.

The reason they don't do the quests is 100% because they are solo quests.
(ok, maybe 90% the solo quests and the rest grind :D )

They don't want to play Warframe solo - they want to play with their friends.  All the quests/missions we can play together in a squad they will do happily.  It's the solo ones they won't.  And it's not even because they feel underpowered and want a carry -- it's because they want to spend their gaming time playing with friends.


My thoughts:

• I think the biggest barrier for players progressing through the story quests is because they are solo only.   I know Pablo said it's more work to make them doable in a squad, but that's how you make it more appealing for people to do it!  -- How much of the whinging about TNW quest would have been solved if struggling players could get help with a squad to get through.  (and a quit option) 
• The inability to quit War Within and The New War is a huge hurdle for some people - they know it's solo, and that they can't get out once they click that button.  Remove that hurdle by enabling them to quit!!!!!
• Allowing players to squad up for story quests, rather than skipping it means they get fed the lore, get to experience the gameplay -- but aren't being forced to do it alone, and can get help if they need it.  Which I feel is infinitely better than a skip.
• I don't object to a pay to skip - especially given you can already buy weapons and frames to skip MR anyway (I don't understand why people object to pay to skip but think buying MR is fine?).  But I think players do themselves a big disservice by not doing the story quests (I don't think letting new players into Duviri was a good idea, because they lose what the story means and won't appreciate it the same way a player who hasn't skipped the quests can appreciate it.)
• I feel that if a skip option is added - then a discouragement of some form is essential - whether that be a plat cost or something else (like not getting the quest rewards unless you actually complete the quest). To make it so that people are less inclined to skip. 
• If you're also giving the players weapons and things needed to have a good arsenal, then the skip price is going to have to be inflated to account for all of that, to make it fair - so not sure I like that idea  (though a high plat price to skip would be a decent deterrent)
• If skipping is free (doesn't cost plat), then loaner gear should be given where needed (like the Circuit) and quest rewards shouldn't be given.  It wouldn't be fair to players who did the story grind, if someone can freely skip it and get the resulting rewards.  If free skipping is enabled, then the quest should have to be played (via codex) in order to gain those rewards.  That would allow players to skip to get access to the higher content, but not gain the other benefits of having completed the quest.

 

Rather than skipping (or in addition to it) I would rather the focus be on:

• Make all story quests co-op!   None should be solo
• Make ALL quests quittable, so players can nope out and try again later (real life happens, don't lock people in!)
• TNW quest is very long to do in one sitting, allowing progress to be saved at certain points would allow players to complete it in sections and access the rest of the game while they take a break from it.  (Yes I know it doesn't fit the lore to do that, but it's a game and people have lives - that quest is a roadblock, so making it less of a roadblock will get more people through)
• Lower/remove the grind -- I understand the desire to encourage players to have a railjack/necramech - But let them decide on their own to build those when/if they need to for other content.  Let them do Call of the Tempestarii and TNW in a loaner railjack & Necramech.  (You apparently already get a loner Paracesis?, so the same could be done for the vehicles).  The rest of Warframe is grindy enough, the quests are kinda separate, just let people do them fairly easily, there's still PLENTY of grind left.
• If the aim is to get players through to the story as quick as possible, then removing all requiements other than preceeding quests would surely be the best way to do that.

Edited October 28, 2023 by 0bsi

[Slick]

2 minutes ago, WidescreenJohn said:

Cannot agree more. Too many people are falling back on the lore, story, etc. as an excuse to force the grind. Those have little meaning to those, including veteran players, who just want to jump into a mission and kill things.

I love the lore and story behind Warframe as much as anyone else. I've spent hours completing the Cephalon Symaris stories, hunting the Solaris data fragments in Orb Vallis, looking for kuria, and such. But forcing new players to go through the story just because we love it is projection. It's no different than "I absolutely love this book, so I expect you to love this book as well!" It's very disappointing to see how many people are using the story/lore as an excuse to force people into a 100+ hour grind.

Newer players do not need to know the lore behind Vox Solaris (for example) to understand the mechanics of an efficient Eidolon hunt or how to optimize an Arca Plasmor and Smeeta kavat to hold off level 60+ infested during a defense mission. It bothers be how much people are attempting to mix the two.

Exactly. "I suffered so you must as well" mentality. I've been using the same gun, warframe, and companion for almost 10 years. I come back when there is a new update to shoot new things. The projection from players is wild. I do not care at all about the story, the lore, the world, Lotus (sorry), or anything really. I like the gunplay and endlessly killing things. My friends are grinders like me but don't have history with the game to justify spending that much time doing unimportant content they couldn't care less about. Let us skip it and shoot stuff.

[Blightkill]

Hi everyone o/

In my opinion one of the biggest early game problems for warframe is the required time from vor's price to natah. To challenge this problem there are many different aspects that need to be changed and in the following i would like to make a suggestion:

 

1. As already mentioned loadout lends:

The frame is lend to another person with all mods irremovable locked in the loadout and the lender keeps all his mods but looses access to the lent weapons.

Furthermore this should exclude kuva and incarnon weapons as they are way to late game and could cause confusion when the new player wants to get these later.

As we already use the body of our crafted warframes I don’t see a reason to not implement this loadout lending as a permanent feature but it should have some time limit attached per loadout.

2. Starchart “skip” when a new player embarks on the journey through the star chart they get to know the gameplay mechanics but also combat features. Unfortunately that takes hundreds of hours of self exploration and trial and error. That’s why I suggest a skip from Venus or Mercury to Uranus where they can start the natah questline.

But there needs to be some additional tutorial which condenses important aspects of the gameplay experience.

I would expect some sort of a mini quest which combines the loadout lend feature with this introduced somethink like that: The other tenno would like to lend you their power but before they do so there are some combat tutorials where they show you their experiences.

I know most important are combat related aspects like:

These elements are regarded as good, these work well against this faction, how more advanced movement looks compared to just running around, how movement affects survivability, …

They may also be a need that there are a few loadouts permanently borrowable which are created by DE staff, streamers,...

3. The last step is to guide the new players after or while they are still lending the loadout: A way to farm the weapons/ mods so they can get up to that point in equibment fast. This may also cause that below MR 10 loadout lends will default to non prime frames/weapons (for vaulted gear) and non prime mods as to make them achievable in a reasonable time (or you can advertise your pay 2 skip the grind here)

 

I really hope that suggestion helps you in streamlining the new player experience :D

 

 

[AshRangerX]

Story Skip almost feels like a cop out for all the "new player streamlining" they've been doing. Like, instead of continuing to improve the new player experience they just kinda said screw it. I feel like improving the actual story missions would be way better, like making every story related item an instant craft. Streamlining that and making stuff like Orokin Catalysts easier for new players to obtain would do so much more for new players than speed running them to the end of a story ever would.

[Wanyal]

I think more options is fine. I think being able to get new people into the game is great, and I think this an be done in more than one way, and I don't object to a pay-wall so long as "the price is right".

You can have a "just catch me up" option with a video and tutorials on Warframe and Operator, and maybe even a compressed campaign that locks you in until you are done like The New War. Each way would have to have to give the player at least one of a selection of Warframes and weapons, a Railjack and Necramech. It should also provide pre-made builds for each.

I know some people that would actually appreciate the story being compressed into a more traditional campaign as they like the core game-play and want to be able to figure out what is happening as it unfolds, though I appreciate that might be too much work and maintenance.

I don't think we have to be concerned about there being a pay-wall in the first place, just how much that pay-wall is. $20-40 can be quite fair depending on what is offered with it, and additional measures can be put in like making any plat included untradable, and making it only offered to new players. Again, I know people who would probably pay $20-40 if they could play all the story quests strung together and being given equipment to complete them with.

I think, as people who have been playing this game for 10 years, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking that we are better than people who pay to skip for things, as that is the primary way this game makes money. You don't necessarily know who paid cash for what, and how much they paid. You are not better than someone because you went through a grind for an item instead of paying for it, and you are not worse than someone because you paid for an item instead of grinding for it.

[Silligoose]

8 hours ago, Darkrya said:

Pre-Disclosure: I am not criticizing/ putting the blame solely on the developers, Pablo and Rebbeca know their community well and would not make a decision like this, likely this push to monetize their game this way came from higher-ups. That being said while a lot of these potential monetization methods on the list are hyperbole, I think some of them are terrifyingly real with this new Pay-To-Skip feature in the works, but that'll be up to you to decide. 

That being said, let's put on our developer thinking caps and brainstorm some other ways we could monetize other redundant core features in the game. 

1. Pay to Automatically Unlock Relics | 5p base, and 2 added for every tier of refinement), this action can be performed from your relic station
2. Pay to Autocomplete Missions on the StarChart | 20p for incomplete nodes, and 10 Platinum on complete nodes, side note we've also added a 500p bundle to instantly gain access to Steel Path
3. Pay to Rank up Syndicates | You can now pay to rank up any syndicate to Max 25p/50p/75p/100p/125p respectively, a "Max All Syndicates" bundle has been added to the market for 625p
4. Pay to Temporarily increase Mod Capacity/Slots | You can now pay 20p for 1 extra mod slot, and 3p per mod Point Capacity (at a made of 15 points or 45p), these buffs only last until login reset
5. Pay to Unlock access to the Third Mission in Sorties/Archon Hunts | 
6. Pay to add temporary resistance to Warframes | You can pay 25p to be completely immune to one resistance of your type for 10 missions
7. Pay for Extra Lives in Game | Our beloved feature of paying for Revives for Warframes is now returning with 30p per revive outside the typical Max 6 you can get in-game
8. Pay to increase Nightwave standing | Taking a tip from Bungie each rank costs 10p to rank up
9. Pay to Decrease Pet Cooldown timer | Akin to the Genetic Stability/Loyalty mechanic removed years ago, you can pay 15p to increase your pet stats temporarily including their cooldown timer up to 50%
10. Pay to Unlock Hemlith Abilities | Each Ability will cost 10p to unlock, Each rank up in health will cost 25p/50p/75p/100p/125p respectively (unless you have the Max All Syndicates Bundle), a "Unlock All Hemlith Abilities" has been added to the market for 425p
11. Pay to create a color loadout | You can now create a custom color loadout for 20p per loadout, with a max of 5 loadouts possible
12. Pay to Heal Defense/Rescue Targets | You can now pay 30p (in-game) to fully heal a defense/rescue target
13. Pay to Pause Multiplay Sessions | You can now pay 15p to pause a multiplayer match for 5 minutes, added a cooldown for this option
14. Pay to Autocollect Foundry Items | Pay 75p to have 12 hours of auto-collect coverage, this timer can be extended past 12 hours to a maximum of 144 hours
15. Pay to have the game Play for you | You can now pay 150p to have the game play your loadout for you, for 30 minutes

 

DE used to monetize revives: Players received 4 revives per frame, per day and additional revives could be purchased: 

 

It is very in line with how some mobile games handle their "lives"/"continue"/"revive" system, so when mobile hits in the next 0.5 - 10 years, I'd not be surprised to see some form of this return. I can actually see some of the above suggestions being implemented in some form - paying to skip (story) missions sets a marked precedent.

[(PSN)rexis12]

21 minutes ago, WidescreenJohn said:

There are 35 quests in the game. Some don't take long at all, sure, but some take quite a while. If we consider an average of 1.5 hours among all of those quests, you're looking at 50+ hours just to complete all of the quests. So to say that the quests have nothing to do with 100 hours is not correct. I understand that the various missions, junctions, and open world grinds are more impactful, but quests absolutely are part of the pain.

We can already play plat to buy warframes and weapons off the market and skip the grind for those. (I'm looking at you, necramechs!) I see this idea as simply an extension of that.

How DE decides to implement it is the key factor; but no one should have any objections to something like "Ugh, I'm not in the mood to do that quest, but I can't move on without it. Fine, here's 10 plat to skip. I can go back later if I want."

Ok again, say they skip the whole quest.

What's the rest of the game going to be like, if the rest of the game is waiting several hours, 72 OF THEM FOR SOMETHING AS BASIC AS ANOTHER CHARACTER, to do other things.

"Well we can just skip them"

So is that going to be Warframe's legacy now?

"Play Warframe and just pay to skip everything so that you play the new shiny thing."

Like again, they're going to skip to play a short in comparison quest and then the new players are going to be shot into the hell that is the rest of Warframe's grind.

Pay 500 plat to get to new content, and then the rest of the horrid content that they wanted to skip is not only still there. But is still worth the 500p that they  pay to skip, meaning that they paid to skip for nothing.

Besides, you know, one quest that is going to have mechanics that'll never show up again in the rest of the game.

Imagine having to pay to skip to Zariman, and then seeing that the new character and weapons are from the Zariman is still behind the grind that you paid to skip, but all of them still have the #*!%ing several hours of wait time, PLUS the four missions that you paid to play are only there and the rest of the game is nothing like that.