An Idea to Manage the FOMO

[sly_squash]

T I C K E T S

 

What is a ticket?
"A ticket is a pass allow you to do one week's worth of historical FOMO content".

What is FOMO content?
Well, things that can only be done once per week.  Archon Hunts.  Kahl.  Circuit.  Whatever.

 

The Breakdown

• Let's say that we're on our 50th week of archon hunts.
• That means, whether you're a veteran who has done no archon hunts at all or a new account, you have 50x archon hunt tickets.  You can attempt archon hunt 50x times and earn a shard each time (obviously the missions and shards have to rotate, but w/e).
• Once you've used up all your tickets, you're caught up to the veterans who have done their hunts every week.  You'll have to wait until next week to earn a new ticket.

 

Advantages:

• Provides a mechanism for new players to "catch up" to veteran players when it comes to rare loot.  As it stands, a new player can never recoup the shards and other collectables they missed from weeks prior to making their account.  Now if they work hard enough they can.
• Gives more weekly freedom and flexibility to all players.  Are you really busy one week?  Do two weeks worth of weeklies next week instead.  You don't need to make yourself miserable trying to get everything farmed out in time every week.
• Progression still limited.  Every week the max ticket count only progresses by one, so you can't farm an infinite number of shards; you can only catch up to the pack leaders.  This limits power creep.

Disadvantages:

• Would have to sort out a system to rotate missions and/or rewards after every ticket (per user) instead of every week so that we don't just farm out 50x red shards all in the same week.

Monetization:

• Could charge plat for the various tickets.  In much the same way new players farm plat to buy vaulted gear they can't normally access, they can farm plat to buy tickets for historical weeklies to recover rewards they could otherwise no longer access.
• Engagement remains high because every week you get 1x free ticket for that week, but after the week is up you'll have to pay plat to recover that content.  So every week is free if you can keep up, but if you can't you still have a way to catch up (though it comes with a plat penalty).

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

None of those are that FOMO, it's not like you miss a Nira week and she never comes back.

New players can already catch up and perform just as well as any veteran even without shards, shards aren't that game changing just some nice QoL

[sly_squash]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

None of those are that FOMO, it's not like you miss a Nira week and she never comes back.

New players can already catch up and perform just as well as any veteran even without shards, shards aren't that game changing just some nice QoL

The reward never comes back.
You can farm her again next time around, but the people who farmed her both times now have 2x rewards.  You missed out on one of them.  Forever.

And even if you don't believe shards are strong now, with shard merging on the horizon they sure are likely to get pretty strong pretty soon.  I'm confident quite a few people in the community would appreciate a mechanism to go back and farm shards they missed, particularly since a lot of people skipped blue shard weeks but now blue shards will be an important ingredient in creating specific new shards.

[ShogunGunshow]

Aren't they adding a way to farm shards in the new update/game mode? Just it seems without the tauforged potentiality - but that's even less of a thing you're missing out on than a regular shard.

[Circle_of_Psi]

Or DE, can just, you know...

Not have it weekly but active 24/7?

 

But IIRC, Pablo said that the reason why such is on a weekly basis is to stop people from farming it all in one go and then not having a reason to play???

[trst]

But why? Nobody should ever come into a ten year old live service game and expect to ever catch up to the exact point that players who've been there longer.

[CephalonOlphus]

37 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

The reward never comes back.
You can farm her again next time around, but the people who farmed her both times now have 2x rewards.  You missed out on one of them.  Forever.

I guess we have to apply this system to Maroo's Ayatan hunt then? Or bring back every nightwave because of the free slots and other useful non-cosmetics, New players missed out on a handful of those while rich veterans just got richer.

[sunderthefirmament]

46 minutes ago, trst said:

But why? Nobody should ever come into a ten year old live service game and expect to ever catch up to the exact point that players who've been there longer.

I think with DE floating (and then immediately dropping) the idea of a story skip, they're realizing that the massive mountain of content they've created is actually a bit of a turn-off for newer players.  I imagine that the idea of never being able to catch up can also dissuade people from even trying the game.  A few years back, I tried to get one of my friends to play, but his reason for refusing was that he would feel like he could never catch up.

 

Warframe depends on new players, not just the crusty veterans who spend too much time on the forums.

 

As for the OP, I love it.  It's too gentle though, so DE will never do it.  F2P games need to be at least marginally player-hostile to turn a profite.  FOMO is just one of the many tools in DE's arsenal, and I don't see them abandoning it anytime soon.

[taiiat]

it's debatable if repeatable Content has any FOMO in it at all.

play it if you want, don't if you don't, you'll get all of the stuff eventually, primarily based on if you're playing or not. if you don't feel like playing some Content for some Weeks or Months, you can always get those Rewards in the future when you are playing.

 

i can't actually be bothered to do most of these chores every Week, i got lots of other games to play too plus actual stuff to do. some Weeks i just don't feel like spending the Hour or two to hit all of those cyclic chores.
the only thing i have much of any care about is Nightwave since it sometimes offers unique Rewards you can't get otherwise for Months at a time - but the Seasons last a long time and you can totally reverse binge them whenver you want, so it's no big deal if i don't feel like playing some Weeks, there'll be plenty before the Season ends.

 

shrug

[trst]

8 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

I think with DE floating (and then immediately dropping) the idea of a story skip, they're realizing that the massive mountain of content they've created is actually a bit of a turn-off for newer players.  I imagine that the idea of never being able to catch up can also dissuade people from even trying the game.  A few years back, I tried to get one of my friends to play, but his reason for refusing was that he would feel like he could never catch up.

 

Warframe depends on new players, not just the crusty veterans who spend too much time on the forums.

 

As for the OP, I love it.  It's too gentle though, so DE will never do it.  F2P games need to be at least marginally player-hostile to turn a profite.  FOMO is just one of the many tools in DE's arsenal, and I don't see them abandoning it anytime soon.

Anyone turned off by the idea of not being able to catch up should avoid any and all MMO/live service type game then. No matter what there's going to be some amount of exclusives/advantages that they'll never get simply due to having not started playing sooner.

But even then the whole issue is pretty absurd in the context of WF. Since there's zero content on offer that mandates the use of any of the time gated content. The only things anyone starting WF later is missing is exclusive cosmetics and the convenience of having more Archon Shards.

Also DE going back on the idea of story skip is just silly when players can already skip most of it with a dozen smaller transactions. Only difference there is forcing players to go through the story missions or not. Which makes no difference for the types who'd pay to skip the story as they're not going to care about those missions anyways.

[Tsukinoki]

1 hour ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

But IIRC, Pablo said that the reason why such is on a weekly basis is to stop people from farming it all in one go and then not having a reason to play???

This has historically been a huge issue with warframe and it's content.

It's why we have so many timegates.
It's why we have limited daily standing.
It's why we have daily caps on focus.

 

People will farm and farm and farm until they are sick and tired of the game and don't want to play it anymore just to go "I'm done with the system!  And done with warframe for the foreseeable future!"
And then they'll whinge and complain and throw a tantrum at DE because "Content drought!!!!!  We have nothing to do!  Why don't you release something that takes us any time to finish!!!"
Completely ignoring that they just did 48 hours of straight farming with little to no breaks to finish the entire focus system in a single weekend (and this was back in focus 1.0 where it cost more and was harder to earn)....

With the archon system people would just run the boss hundreds of times a given week to have tau-forged shards for every single frame that they own.....and then complain that it was too grindy and complain that they don't have anything to do and complain that DE can't make content that takes longer than 2 weeks to finish.

 

It's been a fairly consistent issue with the warframe playerbase, and it's why there are so many "Can only do so much per day, per week, etc".  It forces people to slow down and not just farm everything till they are sick of the game and then immediatley turn around and blast DE like it's DEs fault.

Sure people complain that they can't run archons 24/7 and get what they want now but it is far quieter than the number of people yelling and complaining that they did the entire system in a week or two and now have nothing to do and it's DEs fault.

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, trst said:

But why? Nobody should ever come into a ten year old live service game and expect to ever catch up to the exact point that players who've been there longer.

What has kept Warframe a strong game as it has aged is keeping the maximum account level/completionism/progression accessible to a new player. Why shouldn't a player starting today be able to sink that same amount of time and have the exact same progress as me? You should expect to come into a ten year old game and have the same progression, but they should absolutely have the ability to reach that progression at some point. I see what your point is, but exclusives only alienate those who have the opportunity of completion from those who don't even get a shot at it. Archon Shards are a pseudo-exclusive. It's not that a newer player can't have any, but they will forever have less than someone who's played longer. Umbra Forma functions similarly, but is slightly better given the very limited uses of them.

To OP: Nah. The way to "solve" this issue is through fixing the root of the problem. "Tickets" defeat the entire point of the weekly rotation, in which case you should just properly rework the mode to be replayable at anyone's pace.

1 hour ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

But IIRC, Pablo said that the reason why such is on a weekly basis is to stop people from farming it all in one go and then not having a reason to play???

Sad. I vividly remember Steve expressing Warframe as a "mistress" that you return to periodically to enjoy. The fact Pablo is focused on retention metrics with how Archon Shards are designed is why the system feels like crap. I'm sure he cooked up 7 weeks (and soon probably 8) weeks of Incarnon rotations too. This reminds me of the handful of past and present Call of Duty developers who were mad at Christopher Judge's joke about the short length of the Modern Warfare III campaign at the Game Awards. Their response was how much more money and retention Call of Duty receives compared to God of War. Congratulations, your game is designed by market analysts and psychologists. 

If you don't want players to farm all your content in one go, don't make the mission take 3 minutes. Archon Assassinations are laughably short. Trials were added in 2015 and they offered a better (and longer) three part mission to farm rewards in. You could farm an Arcane per Trial per day, and it still took years to farm a set of everything given the drop chances. A group functioning as a well-oiled machine still took ~40 minutes to do all three Raids in a row.

What I really enjoyed about the past of Warframe is that the game aimed to make a satisfying grind, and then you finished it and could relax and take a break until something new came along. I feel like now Warframe is trying make sure you always have something you need to do, and this is just how you frustrate and burn out a percentage of players who would otherwise just be reasonably active and farming how they wish.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

1 hour ago, sly_squash said:

Disadvantages:

contrary to what you might believe, you'd actually be contributing more to burnout, not less. if you hand a bunch of these "tickets" over to a new player and say "for each of these you get a shard", they're gonna rush through that content as fast as they can, with no breaks, and they'll more than likely attempt it without considering what gear to bring, or how powerful the enemies are, and end up getting stressed at not being able to complete the missions, so then they get frustrated and upset and eventually decide this game isn't worth it anymore.

the fact is, most people can't control the urge to do absolutely everything as quickly as possible, with no thought given to the potential absence of content afterwards, so content gets gated. new players will still be able to get plenty of shards, especially with one of the new modes offering them as a reward. in fact, they should catch up quite quickly if they do every activity for them: so far we've been able to get two shards per week, but it's going to go up to at least 3, so plenty of shards will be around for new players. 

 

[Voltage]

26 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

This has historically been a huge issue with warframe and it's content.

It's why we have so many timegates.
It's why we have limited daily standing.
It's why we have daily caps on focus.

 

People will farm and farm and farm until they are sick and tired of the game and don't want to play it anymore just to go "I'm done with the system!  And done with warframe for the foreseeable future!"
And then they'll whinge and complain and throw a tantrum at DE because "Content drought!!!!!  We have nothing to do!  Why don't you release something that takes us any time to finish!!!"
Completely ignoring that they just did 48 hours of straight farming with little to no breaks to finish the entire focus system in a single weekend (and this was back in focus 1.0 where it cost more and was harder to earn)....

With the archon system people would just run the boss hundreds of times a given week to have tau-forged shards for every single frame that they own.....and then complain that it was too grindy and complain that they don't have anything to do and complain that DE can't make content that takes longer than 2 weeks to finish.

 

It's been a fairly consistent issue with the warframe playerbase, and it's why there are so many "Can only do so much per day, per week, etc".  It forces people to slow down and not just farm everything till they are sick of the game and then immediatley turn around and blast DE like it's DEs fault.

Sure people complain that they can't run archons 24/7 and get what they want now but it is far quieter than the number of people yelling and complaining that they did the entire system in a week or two and now have nothing to do and it's DEs fault.

The historical issue is that there is still, after 10 years, 0 evergreen content that actually makes use of the power you accumulate. The reason players in Warframe naturally "run out of things to do" is because Raids, Dark Sectors, Operations, and any semblance of this type of content has been lost to time. This playerbase also can't handle fail conditions. Endurance gamemodes should strangle the player with enemies until they are overwhelmed and need to extract. In Warframe this has never been the case. Whether it's Excalibur and Greedy Mag in a Void pipe or Accumulating Whipclaw Khora, people have been able to comfortably sit in Survival with a movie playing on another monitor. The game makes no effort to challenge the player's knowledge of the game's expansive universe of systems and mechanics towards the end of the game. Both Orb Vallis and Steel Path were quickly undermined by nerfs and powercreep due to players being unhappy that enemies actually challenged their loadouts.

The best DE can do is slow players down, because accessible and easy content is more profitable to churn out compared to anything that delivers on the idea of challenging the powercreep in a mission that feels earned to finish.

There are many ways that DE can extend the life cycle of content without making it a weekly check-in simulator. The speed at which you earn something isn't quite relevant if the way you earn them is genuinely rewarding. I think the elephant in the room that DE doesn't want to admit is that most of the game can have the gameplay boiled down substantially, and this turns it into a reward-simulator for many players. The issue is that DE is designing reward structures around these people, instead of rewarding the people who are genuinely enjoying the modes they add and playing them frequently. What has ended up happening here is that many players have shifted their focus from enjoying the journey to only caring about the destination. I'm in this group myself when it comes to certain content. The reason is because instead of making a new gamemode feel fresh and take a long time to complete, they've opted to keep their stale formula and just time-gate the player. This shifts my focus away from the mode itself and more towards what my reward progress is and if I am ensuring I don't miss a time-gate cycle.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Voltage

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

Endurance gamemodes should strangle the player with enemies until they are overwhelmed and need to extract. In Warframe this has never been the case. 

what happens instead is that the Damage of Enemies scales up until those two Bullets actually Kills you. which certainly feels less exciting than feeling overwhelmed and wanting to leave.

[Nira]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)C11H22O11 said:

None of those are that FOMO, it's not like you miss a Nira week and she never comes back.

He's right, I am quite a regular these days

[Xzorn]

Warframe has no FOMO.

It doesn't really have any sort of promotion to keep playing it consistently in fact. The more time you spend away from the game. The easier everything becomes to farm. Comparatively after being away 5 years I know with near certainty I spent less time catching up with content than anyone who played on release.

That's sadly how this game works. The only thing I missed out on was some Umbra Forma from Nightwave.
I wouldn't be surprised if Archon Shards end up with a catch up feature similar to Nightwave in the future.

Also, not a fan of this new weekly gated content. Least I could buy Arcanes from raids.

[Ghastly-Ghoul]

Farm resources for Bile and you'll never have to continue farming shards after a certain amount. You aren't entitled to rewards that you missed out on because you had other obligations or desires to do things that took time away from playing the game. If you can make-up for the lost rewards via your ticket system, there'd be less of an incentive to log-in every week. No player needs every shard that has ever been available. It's nice for those who have several different loadouts and play many frames but this play style can still be achieved to lesser extent through farming Bile resources. Don't want to swap shards as frequently? Tough, you either didn't play the game when the system came out or didn't do the Archon hunts every week since their release. Those who did are rewarded with the ability to play many sharded frames without having to swap them out as frequently. This is a free video game which means DE relies on players coming back EVERY week. Lower your expectations and come back to reality.

 

With the next release, either you have enough shards to fuse into the newer ones or you don't. If you don't, you won't be able to experience the new end-game builds as you haven't obtained enough shards. You will have to wait just like other newer players who haven't obtained many shards or players who skipped out on many of Kahl's missions and Archon hunts.

I believe this account was made at the end of April so I have missed out on many shards but I am not complaining and actually am glad FOMO exists as a way to retain players in free-to-play games. It's not bad game design. It's just that the f2p venture would not be worth it monetarily if there was enough content to have players come back every day of the week as the costs of developing such content would not make the business profitable. To meet your wants, this game might need to require a one-time free or a subscription model. What multiplayer game costs a flat amount and also tries to bring you back every week for 10 years without having time-gated mechanics? It must not remain popular just for the sake of it's replayability for the sake of obtaining new and interesting rewards. I'd like to hear it.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Ghastly-Ghoul

[Leqesai]

The trend towards rotating/weekly content is largely why I rarely play anymore.

Not because I actually care about any of the rewards but because it has encouraged less constant play in favor of intermittent play. With less pushing me to play constantly I've had time to find other games to keep me busy. 

Honestly I think this new type of rotating/limited reward is ultimately harmful to longterm player retention. Especially since much of the stuff locked behind it isn't necessary. Having to wait weeks/months to unlock everything has made me realize how little I actually care about any of it.

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, Ghastly-Ghoul said:

Farm resources for Bile and you'll never have to continue farming shards after a certain amount. You aren't entitled to rewards that you missed out on because you had other obligations or desires to do things that took time away from playing the game. If you can make-up for the lost rewards via your ticket system, there'd be less of an incentive to log-in every week. No player needs every shard that has ever been available. It's nice for those who have several different loadouts and play many frames but this play style can still be achieved to lesser extent through farming Bile resources. Don't want to swap shards as frequently? Tough, you either didn't play the game when the system came out or didn't do the Archon hunts every week since their release. Those who did are rewarded with the ability to play many sharded frames without having to swap them out as frequently. This is a free video game which means DE relies on players coming back EVERY week. Lower your expectations and come back to reality.

With the next release, either you have enough shards to fuse into the newer ones or you don't. If you don't, you won't be able to experience the new end-game builds as you haven't obtained enough shards. You will have to wait just like other newer players who haven't obtained many shards or players who skipped out on many of Kahl's missions and Archon hunts.

I believe this account was made at the end of April so I have missed out on many shards but I am not complaining and actually am glad FOMO exists as a way to retain players in free-to-play games. It's not bad game design. It's just that the f2p venture would not be worth it monetarily if there was enough content to have players come back every day of the week as the costs of developing such content would not make the business profitable. To meet your wants, this game might need to require a one-time free or a subscription model. What multiplayer game costs a flat amount and also tries to bring you back every week for 10 years without having time-gated mechanics? It must not remain popular just for the sake of it's replayability for the sake of obtaining new and interesting rewards. I'd like to hear it.

What you're saying isn't wrong by any means, and it's actually quite on point. However, don't you find it concerning that threads and conversations about this topic lean towards a conversation on monetization, business strategy, and metric optimization and not gameplay or content quality? Of course there is a spectrum to this like anything, and DE is far from being in the deep end. It really is a major flaw in how we analyze things when we boil it down to a cell of a spreadsheet. It's why there are many people out there who hate their job, because their performance is only seen this way, not through the lens of what they are actually contributing or their relationship as an individual. When we deduce that FOMO is because of monetary reasons (direct or otherwise), we create disconnection between what the players perceive with what they are getting, and the goal of the content added. Games like Call of Duty will just plaster in your face red signs that basically say: "yeah, this is the way it is purely to optimize metrics. We don't actually care if you're having the most fun or if things are intuitive, creative, or innovative." 

Archon Shards could be much worse, but they could also be much better, and DE has built a reputation for not flying towards the sun, even when most other games start to. When Battle Passes became big, DE had every opportunity to milk players in the same way. They chose not to with Nightwave being extremely fair (with minor issues). Archon Shards feel like an example where DE was more focused on performance metrics than learning from the past and how this kind of system is perceived by many older players.

Saying you are glad FOMO exists for player retention performance is quite dangerous to say. I could make the same "positive" argument about addictive gambling mechanics. If you want to toss morals aside and just focus about performance, maybe you should look into other games that are designed from the ground-up to be as predatory as possible to extort time and money out of your play sessions. I would like to hear what constitutes a "bad" game design. To me, what makes a design good or bad is how players interpret it, not based on monetary performance. If we look at whether FOMO is positive or negative through the means of performance in games, we arrive at the kind of discussion where we would be indirectly praising games like Diablo Immortal for being "well designed" given that their design revolves almost exclusively around business incentives, rather than player perception or health.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Voltage

[ShogunGunshow]

FOMO is one of those double-edged swords where it's very effective against those that are susceptible to it, but they are also the kinds of players that are likely to lose interest in playing if they miss something, because the mind-goblins that feed the one behavior also feed the other.

(This is, incidentally, why a lot of us thing that the heirloom pack being a 'get it or it's gone forever wooo~~~' is sh*t. The game doesn't need more of that dumb stuff.)

That said, I look at archon shards as more like getting loot from a raid in an mmo. If I miss a week, sure I don't get the gear, but it's not a big deal, I'll try next week. I don't really get bothered by that, and that's when I'm on a time-limit for that gear to remain relevant, too. 🤷‍♂️

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Someone is regetting not asking that certain someone to the Senior Prom. It ain't FOMO when you consciously made the decision to disregard the event taking place.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb trst:

But why? Nobody should ever come into a ten year old live service game and expect to ever catch up to the exact point that players who've been there longer.

Well, let me introduce you to Gen-Z! This generation packs a whole new punch of entitlement. (sorry, I am old and bitter)

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Trying to manage FOMO is a bit like trying to manage grinding... its as much a communication/linguistics issue as anything else. Like in discussions that involve FOMO, you will often have people express, "well thats not FOMO" and "no it is" and "thats not, this is" and "thats not it either", because people often infuse a little bit of their own opinion, criteria and perspective on to the term, including potential negative, positive and neutral attachments, and often they can't reconcile that with other peoples. Whether they are unwilling to, the other person is also unwilling, inflexible, or they just can't communicate that effectively to even just reach a temporary sort of common ground in which to apply the term or at least the idea behind the term, to communication other ideas. 

Thus different peoples issues and criticisms, concerns with FOMO will vary. For some, there is a discernible difference between missing out on something permanently, and missing out on something for a set period of time. A difference between missing out an item that you can acquire through other means, or an item thats exclusive and not recoverable. Not to mention other variables that can overlap and potentially offset or intensify negative aspects. As well as some natural occurring subjective based behaviours/preferences. Like an example for the latter is Nightwave having Complete 15 missions as an act. Some Warframe players do 2 minute Relic Capture missions frequently anyway, as a part of their Warframe routine. Some players may prefer doing hour long Survival, Disruption or Circuit. One type of player will find completing that task, especially as a catch up, much easier/faster. The FOMO behind that will differ just purely based on one preferring much longer missions/less missions. 

Suggested Ticket idea is interesting and decent... but eh, if introduced, I could still see it being a polarising addition. You are also asking people to manage a new system, which can often add a layer of decision making that a number of people just don't really like. Granted DE does this time to time anyway, but usually for very specific reasons, and they also have the advantage of internal data, numbers, to show player behaviours and patterns, that they then likely use for future additions. Which allows them to manipulate more effectively. Often a lot of player suggestions and ideas, are blind without access to such data/metrics, which often mean they can lack the weight and pressure involved with feasibility and practical aspects with implementation because of the monetary risks involved. 

Sometimes suggestions and ideas, can have a great intent, but also end up being counter productive. If people had tickets, could they develop a sense of procrastination. A type of FOMO is temporary alleviated... This is great, I can just delay stuff indefinitely... Well, then when the time comes to do 6 sets of Archon missions in a row... What about matchmaking? What about burn out? What about new types of regret and potential new types of FOMO involved because how you managed your tickets wasn't optimal? What if the backlash is so great, they make changes 3 months in and you no longer have tickets? Or since that would also create a backlash, what if they are stuck with an unpopular and despised system, because some people hedged their expectations on it and the sense of FOMO from losing tickets would be intense? This suggestion also only really addresses one type of FOMO as far as weekly systems, when there are many more different types of FOMO (as far as many different peoples definitions/understanding). 

Personally and I am just using myself as an example, my preferences and criteria aren't special. FOMO at its worst and most irritating and anti-consumer is when its exclusive, and never available again, never attainable again. Then in relative order, really bad the more time, and gates you add to it. I can see how someone can view missing out on a weekly item thats non recoverable a type of FOMO too, and I am not necessarily in favour of that either, but its also not the biggest issue or as bad as aforementioned. I also prefer such systems being alleviated by giving players more choices/options too, but then we get into more complex nuance around the issues of game design, player retention and the health of a game. FOMO can also operate on a larger scale too, that gets a bit surreal. The other year, I got a friend to play Vagrant Story. Thats a 23 year old game. Any of you that might have children one day, might want them to experience your favourite game from your childhood. Depending on what that game is... their might be a remake... but games like Warframe are in a different situation too... It might be the kind of game, you might not be able to play in a recognisable way in 20 years time, which doesn't invalidate the good times you had, but can also be a type of FOMO in the sense, some players won't get to experience it at all potentially. I don't imagine many people care on that level though, because a lot of FOMO management is less about what the game does, and more about how we manage such ideas, reflect on them, care or don't care, criticise or not. 

[sunderthefirmament]

12 hours ago, trst said:

Anyone turned off by the idea of not being able to catch up should avoid any and all MMO/live service type game then. No matter what there's going to be some amount of exclusives/advantages that they'll never get simply due to having not started playing sooner.

I don’t disagree. But if you’re DE, and you’re trying to do everything you can to lure in and hook new players, how difficult it is to “catch up” to established players is probably something that you’d at least discuss.