Story Skip: Compilation of why this is a bad idea

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

I think if they remove as many gates as possible, P2S isn't even necessary.

It shouldn't be another 8-10hours to move from Second Dream to War Within. The prerequisite should simply be The Second Dream for Chains of Harrow/War Within.

Then make War Within the prerequisite for The Sacrifice, and so on. Keep players moving in relation to the quests. They can complete them at there own pace, but there shouldn't be any other prerequisite for progressing to them other then the required quest to move on.

And honestly I wouldn't even see it being an issue to just give new players a Railjack for completing Rising Tide. 

With Whipers also adding in the Necramech faction, they could also be adding in a 3rd Nechramech to farm. I say, once you complete Deimos the  Bonewidow should be a quest reward.

Just eliminate as many gates as possible. Now due to the amount of content required to get to Whispers I do see the merit of at least looking at P2S for new players to experience the new content, because ultimately that's the content that DE is currently selling. 

But I think the reason why they are is because they haven't gone far enough to keep progression moving relating to the content they've already created.

Edited October 30, 2023 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[-Krism-]

11 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

Just eliminate as many gates as possible.

Added this as a possible solution, as my post didn't give any until now

[SneakyErvin]

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

Now due to the amount of content required to get to Whispers I do see the merit of at least looking at P2S for new players to experience the new content, because ultimately that's the content that DE is currently selling. 

The problem is just that they wont actually be accessing that content. They'll access the quest and then potentially the replayable mode tied to it. However, take a look at past releases. Look how messy Deimos was for undergeared people trying to farm the vaults, getting wrecked by the mechs there while having gear poorly suited to kill them due to their mechanics. Or what a pain in the ass it was in RJ when you ended up with a noob captain flying their paper railjack. Or how troubled people are with loaner items in Circuit (not even SP). That will be the experience those new player pay to access quickly once done with the latest quest. Since none of them will be properly geared for anything.

And going by recent releases, Whispers game modes after the quest will likely be the new baseline "star chart" max level at that. So even less probability a new player that skipped will have a grand ol time there.

[Aruquae]

Skipping Quests isn’t the solution, it’s skipping the sheer grind it takes to do the quest. 
Developers in Tower of Fantasy also did this “quest skipping.” Which is why I stopped playing it. Skipping the quest and being thrown into new content without context sucks. 
One good thing I can think of is an example from Genshin/Honkai Impact which is an option for new players to do the newest quest with recommended quests pointed out to get the full experience, but not needed. The opportunity to do the newest quest would only be available in the update the quest releases in. 
Sounds fair imo

[Circle_of_Psi]

On 2023-10-28 at 10:29 PM, -Krism- said:

• will severely tarnish its reputation

More than the Packs have?

This is partly the reason why I want to see this Pay to Skip happen, to prove that whatever Tencent touches, dies.

[-Krism-]

2 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

More than the Packs have?

Yes

As I already said, the game will be known for being Pay to not play, by everyone, including people who didn't know the game before

I never played Overwatch, but I know what happened to it, one decision was all it took to ruin the game & the trust people had in the devs

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

34 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

The problem is just that they wont actually be accessing that content. They'll access the quest and then potentially the replayable mode tied to it. However, take a look at past releases. Look how messy Deimos was for undergeared people trying to farm the vaults, getting wrecked by the mechs there while having gear poorly suited to kill them due to their mechanics.

The problem has and will likely always remain in warframe is the reliance of the community teaching players Warframe.

So having this coupled with the amount of grind is what actively prevents new players from wanting to put the required time necessary to get to the new content and results in players qutting the game. DE 

Duviri does attempt to bypass some of this but it wasn't ever going to be perfect or the ideal solution to have it as an alternative to Vors Prize.

34 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

And going by recent releases, Whispers game modes after the quest will likely be the new baseline "star chart" max level at that. So even less probability a new player that skipped will have a grand ol time there.

Absolutely it will be baseline, that's generally the case and also something that P2S will not fix. But P2S to this point, the player will likely recieve the quest items like Umbra Excalibur and all the items from The Sacrifice, the blueprint for the Paracesis and Nataruuk from New War, which with an average build would be sufficient to at least make the content an enjoyable experience. 

But does that translate to actual knowledge to accomplish this: Not at all. And with all the questions that do come with this ultimately comes down to this:

You can't fix stupid.

P2S is not perfect by any means but I do see why they are looking at its merits either for returning vets who don't want to deal with it or new players wanting to play with there friends.

But I do feel they need to look at ways to reduce the grind to get this point in the games life and also look towards removing having players locked into certain elements (War Within/New War) to create a better experience for newer players.

But from the reaction that was received: I think DE got the message loud and clear that P2S is something that should not be added. So kudos to Rebb to at least brining it up during a devstream and taking the heat. 

Edited October 30, 2023 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

1 hour ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

More than the Packs have?

This is partly the reason why I want to see this Pay to Skip happen, to prove that whatever Tencent touches, dies.

They at least listened to feedback and made appropriate changes to the Heirloom Pack, future packs will also take the feedback into consideration.

 Seeing where the new PA packs land should also show this aspect. So if that's the case then great.

It was a mistake but at least give them credit when it's due when they accept the responsibility and correct it.

If they had a response comparible to say EA on things then that's a sentiment I wouldn't disagree with you on however, DE has never really portrayed that.

So for now I disagree with it.

Edited October 30, 2023 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[-Krism-]

I would really want to see what Josh Strife Hayes would have to say about this, he always has a pretty objective view on this kind of stuff

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

The problem has and will likely always remain in warframe is the reliance of the community teaching players Warframe.

So having this coupled with the amount of grind is what actively prevents new players from wanting to put the required time necessary to get to the new content and results in players qutting the game. DE 

Duviri does attempt to bypass some of this but it wasn't ever going to be perfect or the ideal solution to have it as an alternative to Vors Prize.

Absolutely it will be baseline, that's generally the case and also something that P2S will not fix. But P2S to this point, the player will likely recieve the quest items like Umbra Excalibur and all the items from The Sacrifice, the blueprint for the Paracesis and Nataruuk from New War, which with an average build would be sufficient to at least make the content an enjoyable experience. 

But does that translate to actual knowledge to accomplish this: Not at all. And with all the questions that do come with this ultimately comes down to this:

You can't fix stupid.

P2S is not perfect by any means but I do see why they are looking at its merits either for returning vets who don't want to deal with it or new players wanting to play with there friends.

But I do feel they need to look at ways to reduce the grind to get this point in the games life and also look towards removing having players locked into certain elements (War Within/New War) to create a better experience for newer players.

But from the reaction that was received: I think DE got the message loud and clear that P2S is something that should not be added. So kudos to Rebb to at least brining it up during a devstream and taking the heat. 

Which is why the grind should be reduced and the whole p2s idea be scrapped. Since p2s will just not help at all, atleast not the players.

While you bring up good points regarding Umbra, how will they treat paracesis? Will it be pre-built or will it still need all the materials for it, like ducats etc? Does this mean the pack price with also get hiked up to justify the "plat sink" that ducats otherwise are? And what about all things that the player might want to grind for in the latest release, that will likely also require alot of old materials among the new, which is pretty common throughout WF? Not to mention slots to actually build and use those more likely than not fodder items that they just farmed from the latest content. Which they probably also get the impression are BiS because they come from the latest content in the game.

I'd say p2s is the opposite of perfect, heck the opposite of perfect doesnt even describe it. But I do understand why they are looking at it, even though it seems like people that have never touched WF are looking at it. I'm kinda prepared to bet my left nut or both on DE having hired a consultant to come up with ideas for a catch up mechanic, a consultant probably not familiar with WF at all. Atleast it reeks of it. If it is someone at DE that has come up with it I gotta shoot straight here and say with full honesty "get back in touch with your game and get a grip!". And I'm not saying that to be mean, I think it is more a result of "staring too long into the sun" if the idea came from someone within DE.

And yeah I'm really glad this got mentioned in the devstream and people reacted so harshly and quickly, and that we got the thread soon after with a wide variety of feedback on why this is bad bad bad. I just really hope they also do listen and scrap this idea and maybe postpone any catch up ideas they might have for Whispers, and instead restructure the old quest experience in preperation for 1999.

[Circle_of_Psi]

2 hours ago, -Krism- said:

Yes

As I already said, the game will be known for being Pay to not play, by everyone, including people who didn't know the game before

I never played Overwatch, but I know what happened to it, one decision was all it took to ruin the game & the trust people had in the devs

Indeed

1 hour ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

They at least listened to feedback and made appropriate changes to the Heirloom Pack, future packs will also take the feedback into consideration.

No, they did not, all they added was a bit of plat and quite bluntly told us to go F ourselves.

[bad4youLT]

Here's my take on why skipping story to get to the latest piece of content is a bad idea .

Story quests ( well not all of them ) introduce the player to new mechanic , piece of content that they didn't have access before and three ( if I recall correctly ) serve as tutorial to new mechanics :

 - Stolen Dreams : introduces player to an NPC Maroo which grants access to weekly Ayatan hunts and allows player to extract Endo from Ayatans

 - The Archwing : introduces player to the Archwing 

 - The New Strange : introduces the player to Simaris and Synthesis mechanic 

 - The Natah : introduces player to Exilus addapter

 - The Second Dream : introduces player to Focus schools and lets the player to pick his starting Focus Tree

 - Rising Tide : introduces player to Railjack

 - The War Within : introduces player to fully playable Operator and acts as tutorial for Operators abilities and movement system

 

Side quest but I feel like mentioning it :

 - The Duviri Paradox : introduces player to the Drifter and acts as tutorial to Duviri and Drifter 

 

New player who would end up deciding to "Pay to Skip" would be granted access to all this mechanics , systems and content and end up completely clueless and lost . Its a bad design decision to allows players to skip important parts of the game .

One other issue would be if "Pay to Skip" would block off players from old content , essentially cutting away much of the meat in Destiny 2 style of content retirement , I however doubt DE would do this but its worth considering the possibility .

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

9 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

Indeed

No, they did not, all they added was a bit of plat and quite bluntly told us to go F ourselves.

They actually did, they came out and said that:

1) Feedback is being considered for future Heirloom packs.

2) Added sufficient platinum to the Packs that are appropriate to the price tag.

So no, they didn't tell us to go F ourselves, if that was the case then none of these things would be said and nothing would've been done about it.

Did they make a mistake? 100% but at least the addressed it vs saying "too bad, don't buy it then" 

So I'm not going to get hung up on it anymore, especially considering I actually bought the pack myself and after seeing my platinum increase: that was a good sight to see. 

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Which is why the grind should be reduced and the whole p2s idea be scrapped. Since p2s will just not help at all, atleast not the players.

Absolutely, it shouldn't take 50 hours (I'm being generous) to get to Second Dream anymore.

It should be much quicker. After that the one real prerequisite for further quests should be completing the quest before it. No nodes/junctions should impede this kind of progression.

Keep the player moving. Now they can move at there own pace and stopping to smell the roses (farm for frames, corrupted  mods etc) but they are aware that the next lore dump is also available.

Completing Rising Tide= Built Railjack

Complete Deimos= Built Bonewidow 

OK now we're moving into New War territory, where DE can have more requirements/difficulty to the game because at this point your going to have more items and experience.

Having Second Dream at the point it is isn't doing the game any justice. I've had friends quit the game and not even know of its existence.

Then when they try it: they're absolutely hooked again.

I've had maybe 6 people I work with say they've tried warframe, say it was alright and go "you've been playing for THAT long"

Then I ask "Have you played The Second Dream Quest yet?"

Wanna take a guess how many knew what I was talking about? We return to work 2 weeks later and the first thing I get is:

"Brrrrrruh, I've been missing out"

Edited October 30, 2023 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[-Krism-]

22 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

Absolutely, it shouldn't take 50 hours (I'm being generous) to get to Second Dream anymore.

It should be much quicker. After that the one real prerequisite for further quests should be completing the quest before it. No nodes/junctions should impede this kind of progression.

Keep the player moving. Now they can move at there own pace and stopping to smell the roses (farm for frames, corrupted  mods etc) but they are aware that the next lore dump is also available.

Completing Rising Tide= Built Railjack

Complete Deimos= Built Bonewidow 

OK now we're moving into New War territory, where DE can have more requirements/difficulty to the game because at this point your going to have more items and experience.

Having Second Dream at the point it is isn't doing the game any justice. I've had friends quit the game and not even know of its existence.

Then when they try it: they're absolutely hooked again.

I've had maybe 6 people I work with say they've tried warframe, say it was alright and go "you've been playing for THAT long"

Then I ask "Have you played The Second Dream Quest yet?"

Wanna take a guess how many knew what I was talking about? We return to work 2 weeks later and the first thing I get is:

"Brrrrrruh, I've been missing out"

Well, the best case scenario would be to rework those quests then, bringing them on par with Second Dream & the further ones, but that's never going to happen

They kinda did it with the tutorial, giving it a fresh, modern look, & making it a bit more cinematic-like, but that's about it, after entering the Orbiter, the rest of the quests feel like huge downgrades until Second Dream

[(XBOX)Minario99]

Warframe started without a story, we players asked for the game to have a campaign, we liked seeing how with each update we progressed in the story and if it is true that new players now have to go through a long journey to get to where we are, it is basically the story that What do they have to go through? No one ever started an anime at chapter 567. If not, you start from one and if you like it, you continue until the end. That's the meaning of a campaign and I think Warframe is not an anime. There are ways to progress quickly in the game. and getting where we are putting the paid adventure is like DE allowing new players to become spoilers is not a good decision

[kamisama85]

In my personal opinion, the attention should not be on skipping the story as opposed to skipping the star chart.

Every new player experience whether they come in fresh or friends invite them, always goes something like this:

New Player: Hey I wanna do this with you guys!
Veteran Player: Ok but first, do your star chart. Then we'll talk.

Even if they don't allow pay-to-clear star chart option, simply removing the need to follow the fixed path and going wherever you want regardless of where you are might help alleviate a lot of that blockage since you can get to the key nodes you need to be on to do the things you need (for the story or non-story). This includes being able to get around the steel path star chart freely so you can join friends on the nodes they are playing and work the rest out yourself on your own time.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

2 hours ago, -Krism- said:

Well, the best case scenario would be to rework those quests then, bringing them on par with Second Dream & the further ones, but that's never going to happen

They kinda did it with the tutorial, giving it a fresh, modern look, & making it a bit more cinematic-like, but that's about it, after entering the Orbiter, the rest of the quests feel like huge downgrades until Second Dream

They don't have to rework the quests. But what they can do: Make it as fast as possible for players to get through it to then get to Second Dream.

And make prerequisite items like the Railjack and Voidrig quest items/rewards that don't have a build requirements:

Congratulations you beat the quest here you go, here's some mods to get you started. Send them on there way or have prebuilds if they just want to continue through the quests.

Simply put the time to get to Second Dream (50hrs, being generous) should be where players get to The New War.

Even accomplishing that you still have 3 Open Worlds, Zariman and everything else that the game has to offer, which is thousands of hours if they choose to explore it.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by (XBOX)Cram Duahcim

[-Krism-]

6 minutes ago, (XBOX)Cram Duahcim said:

They don't have to rework the quests. But what they can do: Make it as fast as possible for players to get through it to then get to Second Dream.

And make prerequisite items like the Railjack and Voidrig quest items/rewards that don't have a build requirements:

Congratulations you beat the quest here you go, here's some mods to get you started. Send them on there way or have prebuilds if they just want to continue through the quests.

Simply put the time to get to Second Dream (50hrs, being generous) should be where players get to The New War.

Even accomplishing that you still have 3 Open Worlds, Zariman and everything else that the game has to offer, which is thousands of hours if they choose to explore it.

 

 

What made me say that is, when they hear about the game, they most likely hear that the story is incredible

But then, that have to play older quests like Howl of the Kubrow, Once Awake, The Archwing, Stolen Dreams, & The New Strange, these quest just aren't very good, mostly being, Mobile Defense > Bit of lore > Defense > More bits of lore  > Sabotage > Lore > & so on

Compared to the Second Dream & onward, these just aren't very interesting to play

[Kaotyke]

Just now, -Krism- said:

What made me say that is, when they hear about the game, they most likely hear that the story is incredible

But then, that have to play older quests like Howl of the Kubrow, Once Awake, The Archwing, Stolen Dreams, & The New Strange, these quest just aren't very good, mostly being, Mobile Defense > Bit of lore > Defense > More bits of lore  > Sabotage > Lore > & so on

Compared to the Second Dream & onward, these just aren't very interesting to play

And isnt that a bit of a pineapple?

I made a thread a while ago wondering if Sweet Nothings Behind the Thin Walls would be before New War since we had no Operator/Drifter dialog... which didnt make much sense since Wally is there, but the reasoning I had in mind was a bit of this.

The quests before Natah are severely lackluster, Natah introduces a curveball... and Teshin, who has not introduced in any form and can be skipped if you avoid CONCLAVE, appears. 

I would prefer if DE set aside resources to make the early game more story driven.

And now that I think about it, after completing Mot on the Void, its Quest after Quest after Quest, with the Zariman being an exception. The later part of the game suffers a bit from the opposite of the early game: too much story, not a lot of gameplay around it. But since Murmurs Behind the Scenes is adding a tileset and gameplay and is seemly being so since Zariman? I think this issue is being addressed... but not for the early game. 

The early game is still barren in story that grips the player in ways that makes them want to progress.

Saya's Vigil is cringe love-story that ends there. It introduces Cetus and nothing else.

Vox Solaris introduces the Solaris and their struggle, its a MUCH better quest, which then ties into the story of the Corpus with Deadlock Protocol. You CARE more for the Solaris than Ostrons because you see those characters for longer.

There are no introductions to the Syndicates and their motivations aside from a screen and room in the relays. A Quest about them bickering and trying to sway you to their view would be nice. Them being like Archon Hunts and have them be mission control and the enemy acknowledging the Syndicate is the who got the reins and not the Lotus would be a good touch. Iron Wake is still the ONLY Syndicate "HQ" we have and we meet someone from Red Veil there.

There is so much that could be added in the early game...

But all of those would need VAs, Scripts, Animations...

Would be great but it doesnt seem feasible with the team they have. They sadly dont exist in Eternalism. 

[(PSN)Unstar]

On 2023-10-28 at 2:29 PM, -Krism- said:

New players do not have 10 years of content to go through, someone in the original post said they reached The New War with a new account in a single day

-Krism-, I respect your desire to compile a list of arguments, but if you're going to do that I'd recommend some due diligence in regards to whether the arguments you're propagating are true or not; otherwise you risk spreading misinformation, and that's detrimental to everyone, regardless of which side of this issue they come down on.

Only a single mastery test can be taken within a 24 hour period, meaning that even if a player's day 1 session straddled the daily reset, it would only be possible to rank up twice in a single day.  The War Within requires MR 5 to initiate.  I've double-checked that this is true by consulting the wiki, so unless something has changed and the wiki is out-of-date, it would be impossible to reach The New War in a single day.

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

2 hours ago, -Krism- said:

What made me say that is, when they hear about the game, they most likely hear that the story is incredible

But then, that have to play older quests like Howl of the Kubrow, Once Awake, The Archwing, Stolen Dreams, & The New Strange, these quest just aren't very good, mostly being, Mobile Defense > Bit of lore > Defense > More bits of lore  > Sabotage > Lore > & so on

Compared to the Second Dream & onward, these just aren't very interesting to play

Funny thing is until I played the game and really gave it a chance I didn’t even know it had a story. None of my interactions with WF players outside of WF ever mentioned the story. All I’d ever heard was the monetization is fair and the mod system is good.

[RichardKam]

12分钟前 , (PSN)FirmBizkit 说:

Funny thing is until I played the game and really gave it a chance I didn’t even know it had a story. 

Even if it does, no one really care because Eternalism^TM. People join this game because of parkour, ninja, and power fantasy.

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

2 hours ago, RichardKam said:

Even if it does, no one really care because Eternalism^TM. People join this game because of parkour, ninja, and power fantasy.

I mean, if you read my post you’d see that’s not why I joined at all and my first impressions and presumptions about the game were extremely negative. It was the story that hooked me. The 400 free plat id collected from PS+ promotions “incase I ever play” certainly helped too.

Ive never seen advertising for Warframe. I don’t watch any content creators that have ever talked about it. My entire knowledge of the game was the early game experience from attempting to try it over the years (and it was bad) and WF players on the Destiny forums and sub Reddit “Warframe is a better game” “Play Warframe” never actually explaining why it’s a better game or anything about it.

The game also for some reason gets lumped in with Looter Shooters like Borderlands and Destiny even though they’re nothing alike and it’s more like a traditional MMORPG with heavy Diablo/ARPG influence.

Eternalism is also a really cool concept and I haven’t seen it touched on in sci-fi before.

Also the whole thing that there’s no actual aliens in the game is really cool too.

 

Eternal recurrence? Rare earth? Silurian hypothesis? I’m super into it 

As for power fantasy yeah it’s cool. I’m not actually really a super fan of the mod system though. Helminth and augment mods is good though.

Edited October 31, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[-Krism-]

10 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Only a single mastery test can be taken within a 24 hour period, meaning that even if a player's day 1 session straddled the daily reset, it would only be possible to rank up twice in a single day.  The War Within requires MR 5 to initiate.  I've double-checked that this is true by consulting the wiki, so unless something has changed and the wiki is out-of-date, it would be impossible to reach The New War in a single day.

My bad, I wanted to make my sentence as concise as possible, the actual quote said it took them about 15 hours, (I think), so I just said a day & completely forgot about the MR timegate

But hey, I'll add that too then, which makes it even worse in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited October 31, 2023 by -Krism-