Starting to burn out a bit (feedback)

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

Not complaining just want to leave some feedback. As a “relatively new player” everything has been super good but I’m finding the last two weeks I’m starting to burn out pretty hard. I went incredibly hard for 3 months but the last two weeks I’ve had little motivation to actually play (this could be general life or Warframe. I’ve been taking the time to explore some single player games I’ve had on backlog).

Being that I also largely only play live service / MMO games as well they all kind of compound on eachother with a lot of the same issues 😂 So a lot of my “play cycles” typically last 3-6 months switching between games.

What seems to be discouraging me is time limited content like Archon Hunts and Circuit, making me feel very overwhelmed and pressured to play or miss out. It’s making it really hard to just explore what I want without feeling bad about it. Credits and endo have been a reasonable struggle to get motivated to finish maxing out some of my mods. Index is really boring. I’ve discovered endless relics can be a decent source of credits but again, overwhelmed with time limited content that’s been making me not want to.

Circuit is really fun once you get into it but I don’t like that it takes longer than archon hunts to complete and “getting into it” usually requires a group that is going to stick around for a while which doesn’t always happen. Endless missions in general are my favourite but it is hard getting people to stay for an hour in matchmaking 

Because of all of this I’ve also found it pretty hard to get into Eidolons. Which is something I absolutely need to do but they’re a pretty massive undertaking to fully learn and master mechanically and not be a burden to your team. Theyre also time sensitive content - but on a different schedule.

I also found out the other day, because of all this I actually missed Torid Incarnon about 2 weeks ago and I’m pretty disappointed about that. I thought I did it.

I think just over all in general I’m not really getting along with a lot of the “time gates”. Syndicate standing, certain bounties, archon hunts, circuit, nightwave These things are all really good and the checklist is nice but it’s really a bit overwhelming with so many years of it ahead of me. I sort of feel like the pacing of it is more in line with a veteran players progression with having a lot of that stuff behind them.

I definitely wouldn’t want these things to go away though or be skipped and I DO NOT support the “story skip” that is planned.  I also do like that there is literally years of content that is relevant for me to do. Just lessened to a degree maybe with less FOMO. Something like a targeted loot system for archon shards would alleviate the fomo a lot. This already kind of exists with the Tau shards pity system - but that again I feel is more targeted towards veterans. I feel like chippers shop should serve this purpose but its shard is also RNG and the cost of it really makes acquiring the other items like the ephemera and blueprints a struggle. Especially deciding between deciding to purchase a shard or a blueprint/mod instead. Because of this, the shard in chippers shop acts more like just a “bonus” shard.

Circuits grind should be lessened a bit and let you pick what ever you want for incarnons. The time gate on its own isn’t too bad, but the rotation along with the time gate is what makes it bad. It takes about 2 hours to clear steel path with a solid team - but that then leaves normal mode still as well which is something I also still need. With just matchmaking it seems like about a good 4-5 hours to do both and that’s a lot for a weekly task. If I wasn’t a no life nerd and had a job this would be an incredible undertaking for the average player in my position
 

Then on top of all of this I’ve also got time limited “events”. I’m pretty disappointed I couldn’t do a lot of plague star, so I missed out on a ton of formas.

Theres just a LOT of things asking me to do something “right now” or miss out on it and it’s pretty overwhelming and taking away from other actual non-time limited content that I want to do like relics or Railjack

Edited December 9, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[Circle_of_Psi]

It happens to even the best of us, take a break, the game won't go anywhere, trust me when you come back, you'll feel like you've never played WF before and then die like an idiot because you played another game and you forget how to play xD. 

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

10 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

It happens to even the best of us, take a break, the game won't go anywhere, trust me when you come back, you'll feel like you've never played WF before and then die like an idiot because you played another game and you forget how to play xD. 

Thats probably what’s going to happen. It is disappointing still though. I really do hope I’m not incompetent after a break. I did experience that post break incompetence quite a bit with Destiny and it actually made getting into raids more and more difficult after more and more extended breaks. Warframe isn’t super complex though so hopefully won’t be an issue. That’s actually why I haven’t been able to pick up Monster Hunter or Bloodborne again… quit before Iceborne for an extended break, bought Iceborne and got stomped and haven’t been able to get back into it since 😂

Maybe my gaming habits are just bad too. I have a backlog of like 20 SP games I haven’t even taken out of the box. I go pretty hard in everything and then burn out lol.

Edited December 9, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[--F--NerevarCM]

There's no story skip planned.

[Aruquae]

1 minute ago, --F--NerevarCM said:

There's no story skip planned.

So they heard our feedback and decided to not do it?
This is why I love the Devs 

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

1 minute ago, --F--NerevarCM said:

There's no story skip planned.

Did they cancel it? I thought it was announced a month or so ago?

[MystMan]

17 minutes ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

Did they cancel it? I thought it was announced a month or so ago?

It wasn't per se announced back then, it was more of a suggestive proposal.
But in the last devstream (or the one before it, I forget) they very much said that this was off the table. It's not happening.

[sly_squash]

I agree with OP, but honestly I don't think this qualifies as just your good ol' vanilla burnout.  There really is some rot going on with the things you've mentioned.

A daily login to grab a login reward item or a quick event that only happens once per week is one thing.
But the sheer amount of cruft you would have to do every week to "keep up" with this game is getting quite excessive.

Nightwave.  Kahl.  Archon Hunt.  And the beast of them all:  SP Circuit, which can take an entire evening to farm out each week all by itself (particularly if you include the clamp farm to slot).

And it's only getting worse now that we are getting more weeklies for more shards to feed into the shard distillation machine...

[-Krism-]

1 hour ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

As a “relatively new player” everything has been super good but I’m finding the last two weeks I’m starting to burn out pretty hard. I went incredibly hard for 3 months but the last two weeks I’ve had little motivation to actually play

I don't understand when people say that, what's keeping you from taking a break?

Anyone would feel burned from playing the same game, every day, for three months straight

[-Krism-]

50 minutes ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

Did they cancel it? I thought it was announced a month or so ago?

They said it was an idea, nothing more, Rebecca, (I mean Steve), herself said they wanted to discuss it with us before taking action

A lot of us explained why this was a bad idea, & they listened, focusing on making the game more accessible & fun over simply skipping it

[Voltage]

53 minutes ago, Malikili said:

So they heard our feedback and decided to not do it?
This is why I love the Devs 

Still concerning they thought of it to begin with. They really shouldn't have needed feedback to see the obvious. Plus, most solid feedback was actually disregarded. Removing the MR lock is a step, but most players were pointing out the massive issue with Starmap and gear acquisition in the early game. It's only been forever that players point out the steep hill to climb and lack of proper tutorials.

[-Krism-]

12 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

Nightwave.  Kahl.  Archon Hunt.  And the beast of them all:  SP Circuit, which can take an entire evening to farm out each week all by itself (particularly if you include the clamp farm to slot).

Counter point:

I only do Nightwave act if I like stuff in it, meaning I never go for the Umbral forma or the Arcanes

I never do Kahl's mission, & Archon hunts maybe twice or thrice a year

I completely stopped playing SP Circuit

 

All of that, & I have no problem with "keeping up", as you said; the problem is on the players wanting everything all the time, start playing for fun & stop treating the game as a second job

[Voltage]

16 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

I agree with OP, but honestly I don't think this qualifies as just your good ol' vanilla burnout.  There really is some rot going on with the things you've mentioned.

A daily login to grab a login reward item or a quick event that only happens once per week is one thing.
But the sheer amount of cruft you would have to do every week to "keep up" with this game is getting quite excessive.

Nightwave.  Kahl.  Archon Hunt.  And the beast of them all:  SP Circuit, which can take an entire evening to farm out each week all by itself (particularly if you include the clamp farm to slot).

And it's only getting worse now that we are getting more weeklies for more shards to feed into the shard distillation machine...

110% agree. Another major hurdle is how many players will spin this on the player and say it's their fault for how these schedules stack up. The status quo of Warframe, which is honestly sad but true is to play the game extremely casual, skip the launch of major updates to wait for proper bug fixes, and never care about these scheduled content updates so you have more to do over the years. If you actually attempt to keep up, the endgame becomes a repetitive scheduled mission completion.

[sly_squash]

10 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

Counter point:

I only do Nightwave act if I like stuff in it, meaning I never go for the Umbral forma or the Arcanes

I never do Kahl's mission, & Archon hunts maybe twice or thrice a year

I completely stopped playing SP Circuit

Doesn't really seem like a counterpoint to me.  Seems like you're going along with my point.

The gyst is basically:  The weeklies are so overwhelming and annoying I ignore them entirely because if I didn't I'd get burnt out and quit.

Whether you're annoyed with the weeklies because they take up too much of your time or you have to ignore them because it's just too much for you, I think we can agree that this is not The Way.

[Voltage]

8 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

All of that, & I have no problem with "keeping up", as you said; the problem is on the players wanting everything all the time, start playing for fun & stop treating the game as a second job

This is such a bad take to blame the player for a very obvious way to introduce habit-forming mechanisms into gaming. Sly_squash is bringing up a valid point for those who really want to get the most out of the game's diverse gear. It's very easy to "keep up" if your bar is simply Mastery Rank and finishing missions. Warframe has almost no fail-states. 

[-Krism-]

3 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

The gyst is basically:  The weeklies are so overwhelming and annoying I ignore them entirely because if I didn't I'd get burnt out and quit.

I never said they were overwhelming & annoying, don't put words in my mouth, , I simply don't do them because I don't want to

 

5 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

Whether you're annoyed with the weeklies because they take up too much of your time or you have to ignore them because it's just too much for you, I think we can agree that this is not The Way.

Again, I did not say that, & if that's what you took from my post, then: that's not what I meant

 

6 minutes ago, Voltage said:

It's very easy to "keep up" if your bar is simply Mastery Rank and finishing missions.

My bar is: "Play games to have fun", not "Force myself to play at the detriment of fun"

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

34 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

I don't understand when people say that, what's keeping you from taking a break?

Anyone would feel burned from playing the same game, every day, for three months straight

I mean, I want to play. I’m just feeling overwhelmed from everything being demanded of me and pulling me in so many different directions. Like I said I have a lot of relics and some Railjack I’d like to do. I actually have like… 10 side quests to do still. It’s just so many different limited time gated progression systems overwhelming me.

Burnout to a degree is expected but I think these are specifically the largest contributors. Like I said I usually go 3-6 months. 3 is where I’m at now and is on the low end of my gameplay time/habits.

I can see myself “just playing for fun” but a lot of what makes good game design (I studied a lot of game philosophy back in the day) is how things make your players feel. So like I’m totally free to do what ever I want, I realize I don’t actually have to do these things, but it’s how I feel. It’s all kind of relating to the whole challenging/punishing philosophy. FOMO things are punishing and bad design. You are seemingly punished for not engaging. A little bit of it can be good for encouragement but there’s just a lot of it for a newish player with so many different limited time gated progression systems that it’s overwhelming. It’s also a lot to mentally keep track of as well and has led to a few days of completely forgetting tasks exist because there’s so many of them.

Im not sure how to address the issue as a whole but I think there is definitely room for improvement specifically relating to archon activities and duviri activities

Edited December 9, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[Aruquae]

26 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Still concerning they thought of it to begin with. They really shouldn't have needed feedback to see the obvious. Plus, most solid feedback was actually disregarded. Removing the MR lock is a step, but most players were pointing out the massive issue with Starmap and gear acquisition in the early game. It's only been forever that players point out the steep hill to climb and lack of proper tutorials.

That's true, they were thinking of solutions... and this happened

On the plus side they didn't roll with it

[Voltage]

6 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

My bar is: "Play games to have fun", not "Force myself to play at the detriment of fun"

That's everyone's bar. A majority of Warframe's fun comes from the collectionism of loot and direct impact it has on missions. Most missions have the same mechanics, hence why so many players agree with the joke/meme of "this is all Mobile Defense" for many years now.

You're preaching for players "not to treat the game like a job" while failing to acknowledge the mechanics that have been added that treat the player like an employee clocking into a shift to make their progress. Not every player is obsessive just because they approach these things as something to finish and eventually being burnt out by it.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Voltage

[trst]

If you truly do play a other live service MMO type games as you claim then none of this post makes sense. All of the issues you're pointing out exist in all those other games and to far larger degrees in most.

I genuinely can't think of another similar game that doesn't have substantially more FOMO, a larger amount of time gated/weekly/daily content, mandatory progression content that's either gated or far more difficult, and/or far grindier and more basic resource grinds (often without an obvious out like here with Index even).

Really seems like this is just some bog standard burnout and you're trying to blame the game for it by looking for faults in its systems. And even if some of those faults are there they should be nothing compared to the faults you'd find in other games once you burnout on them too.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 hour ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

Not complaining just want to leave some feedback. As a “relatively new player” everything has been super good but I’m finding the last two weeks I’m starting to burn out pretty hard. I went incredibly hard for 3 months but the last two weeks I’ve had little motivation to actually play (this could be general life or Warframe. I’ve been taking the time to explore some single player games I’ve had on backlog

It's bound to happen sooner or later, taking breaks is important too.  I wouldn't worry too much about things like archon hunts or incarnons because they WILL come around again, and while you wait you can tackle other grinds too. Hopefully archon shard acquisition will be more comfortable with the new game modes as well.

Eidolons, you can probably find someone who'll take you through it. Once you get a decent amp it then becomes a lot easier, but nothing can be done about the day/night cycle sadly.

Circuit has more incentive to go longer than other endless modes but not by much. DE have gradually killed off endurance running in favour of "bite sized" missions over the years, mainly through a lack of scaling rewards. It's not a crime to enjoy longer runs, but the only reward is being able to say that you can do it, and for me and many others, that isn't enough.

You aren't missing out much with regards to plague star, and i can almost promise you that once you start hunting for prime gear and cracking relics, you'll inevitably get more Forma blueprints than you'll know what to do with. It may even come back again, but the reception wasn't great last time around, so who knows.

The best thinb you can do is work through your goals one at a time: commit to one thing, and  see it through until you get what you want, then choose your next target and so on. Keep an eye on timers if you must, and if you can kill two birds with one stone then fine, but don't lose sight of your main goal. I'll have to go through this again myself once the update drops: frst the quest, then the Syndicate, then the game modes, then getting the frame and weapons etc. 

Its all too easy to want everything NOW or be overwhelmed, but by pacing yourself better, you can get more enjoyment out of the game. This has always been true for me, and if you're willing, it can work for you too.

[sly_squash]

3 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

I never said they were overwhelming & annoying, don't put words in my mouth, , I simply don't do them because I don't want to

Well, the rewards are very rare and powerful, so you must really not like the content if you choose to do something else instead.  And to do something you don't enjoy because you want the reward is annoying.  It's annoying to have to work, but I want the money.  It's annoying to have to work out, but I want to stay in shape.

It's annoying to farm several nights a week in missions I don't particularly care for, but I want the shards and incarnon.

The fact that your annoyance outstrips your desire for the rewards and mine doesn't is immaterial; it's just a pretty toxic weekly structure either way.
It's particularly troublesome when all these weeklies get in the way of other goals you have within the game that you can rarely get around to pursuing because you're so busy trying to keep up with the FOMO stuff.

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

7 minutes ago, trst said:

If you truly do play a other live service MMO type games as you claim then none of this post makes sense. All of the issues you're pointing out exist in all those other games and to far larger degrees in most.

I genuinely can't think of another similar game that doesn't have substantially more FOMO, a larger amount of time gated/weekly/daily content, mandatory progression content that's either gated or far more difficult, and/or far grindier and more basic resource grinds (often without an obvious out like here with Index even).

Really seems like this is just some bog standard burnout and you're trying to blame the game for it by looking for faults in its systems. And even if some of those faults are there they should be nothing compared to the faults you'd find in other games once you burnout on them too.

Well most of those games while they do have that FOMO and limited content, most of it is irrelevant if it’s old content - or if it is old content that is kept relevant (ala FFXIV) the time restrictions are removed from it (old raids and trials etc). 
 

The things I’ve highlighted are issues I’ve seen other people bring up in general with those specific pieces of content so I wouldn’t really say “bog standard”.

Im also not playing any blame game. I’m giving feedback relating my experience in hopes of improving my own or others. It is what it is. I don’t think anything I’ve said is really a hot take. Other people have described these same issues with these pieces of content, though causing different problems for them. So I definitely think it’s relevant feedback and worth investigating 

Edited December 9, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[(PSN)FrDiabloFr]

3 minutes ago, Voltage said:

That's everyone's bar. A majority of Warframe's fun comes from the collectionism of loot and direct impact it has on missions. Most missions have the same mechanics, hence why so many players agree with the joke/meme of "this is all Mobile Defense" for many years now.

You're preaching for players "not to treat the game like a job" while failing to acknowledge the mechanics that have been added that treat the player like an employee clocking into a shift to make their progress. Not every player is obsessive just because they approach these things as something to finish and eventually being burnt out by it.

It’s not everyone bar at all, sounds like you’re blanket stating, i’ve spoke to a few players who said they got to a point they don’t enjoy the game but they play to itch their ocd or that they are so comfortable/deep into a routine they struggle to stop.

[trst]

1 minute ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

Well most of those games while they do have that FOMO and limited content, most of it is irrelevant if it’s old content - or if it is old content that is kept relevant (ala FFXIV) the time restrictions are removed from it (old raids and trials etc). 

Most of WF's FOMO becomes irrelevant for being old too. It'd be exactly the same in any game when a new event pops around with some considerable reward. Or when one finishes content then no longer needs to engage with it again until given reason to.

It's all the same here, Plague Star is irrelevant to anyone who already got the unique rewards from previous runnings/other content while the Forma is irrelevant to anyone who already farmed a stockpile. Archon Hunts become irrelevant once one acquires all the Shards they'd need. You're done with the Circuit once you get all the Incarnons or at least just the ones you'd ever plan on using. And even Eidolon hunting dies once you get the Arcanes/Eidolon Shards you need from it.