New Player Experience and Mods

[Aevire]

Don't all new players get all four base damage mods and Continuity, Stretch, Intensify, etc from Vor's Prize? I thought all of the flawed mods from that quest are normal mods now, which would mean all new players start with the full sets of those, as well as several of the 90% elemental mods. Flawed Mods are largely a trap since they can't later be upgraded to normal mods, so the Endo and Credits invested don't carry through to later progression, and given that new players start with all of the warframe base stat mods, all of the base damage mods and at least one elemental damage mod per weapon type, etc., I don't really see what use the flawed mods give new players.

I do think it is worth pushing new players to fight the Grustrag Three early on, since they drop the multishot mods very consistently and currently the game doesn't give new players a direct introduction to Invasions. It also seems worth considering adding the "can't sell the last copy" mechanic to those base mods like what exists with Sentinel attack precepts to prevent early players from getting excited, dissolving some of their starting mods for Endo, and then not having them for the first 10-20+ hours of the game. I do agree with you that a tutorial on status effects and damage types would be good, but I would much prefer that to be implemented as an overhaul to broader systems to make the Codex and UI as a whole more readable and information-accessible.

I don't think it is a flaw in the game that corrupted and nightmare mods, etc., can't be bought directly from the market, or indeed that no mods can be bought directly from the market. Not every problem in the game should be solvable with platinum, or at least not directly. New players are given several mods for their warframes and for each weapon class which will take them considerable time and investment to max, over the course of which time they can choose to participate in the farms for those mods. i definitely don't think we should go back to flawed mods after Vor's Prize awards the better versions of those mods, as it would confuse new players.

 

[--Xalted-LuaGuard--]

7 hours ago, Aevire said:

-snip-

Trade lock is mr2 so quite literally galvanized mods are achievable if so desired with platinum before leaving earth. the only elemental mods you receive in vors prize are heated charge and convulsion, (which especially without a tutorial on status, sets players up for worse performance than either individually as they apply to corpus and grineer)

But you’re not considering newer players (mr1-5ish) joining Q&A and asking how to do stuff and seeing level cap builds and buying stuff based on that when they are also referred to market and trade chat.

 

Being careful to avoid offense here, but Im not gunna lie, it does seem like a large part of the forums is entirely against making the new player experience more understandable and in favor of requiring brute force learning of game mechanics just because that’s how they did it?

at MR 29 I’m having new clan members who struggle through the entry content because mod mechanics aren’t explained in any kind of depth, but that my clan is centered on teaching the game, we see people hit steel path in about a month or two of normal progression. Playing through the new player experience again shows you 1) that help is not given to you in the tutorial which basically teaches only controls 2)other new players *struggle*

[--Xalted-LuaGuard--]

I also disagree on the codex

its a relic that has never performed to the level it can because aside quests and Levarian it is a non-intuitive ui. If it got redone to resemble the aesthetics of the game markets or foundry/mods more, but it’s still just better to stick tutorials in the game with some kind of attention grabbing voice line.

If Varzia did the status/armor tutorial (which fits lore as a Dax) and had the flawed mods which she could verbally describe what flawed is, versus just a dumpster in iron wake

Lastly: I’d encourage you to glance at the flawed cold damage for example when filling small amounts of mod space. It’s not all garbage

[Hobie-wan]

Regarding the flawed mods, they were going to completely remove them from the game so that new players don't run into the trap of spending endo and credits on them at the beginning of the game when they have less to spend. They gave us back the flawed mods so that vets could use the occasional instance of odd ranks that were more efficient with points and for those of us that like to hoard collect stuff.

New players don't need flawed mods so they're fine not being available until later when players start having a better flow of resources or have nothing else to spend stuff on.

[--Xalted-LuaGuard--]

23 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

Regarding the flawed mods, they were going to completely remove them from the game so that new players don't run into the trap of spending endo and credits on them at the beginning of the game when they have less to spend. They gave us back the flawed mods so that vets could use the occasional instance of odd ranks that were more efficient with points and for those of us that like to hoard collect stuff.

New players don't need flawed mods so they're fine not being available until later when players start having a better flow of resources or have nothing else to spend stuff on.

Sure. Because spending 100 endo on a flawed elemental damage mod is worse than A) not having them and B) buying the “essential” damage mod bundles, if the goal is to just have new players struggle with no direction.

The real issue was never the investment, it’s the fact that there wasn’t any info on mods being flawed or the differences between flawed and standard *at all*. But if it was an informed decision, **with a tutorial/ visual and audible description** (which for the record, I qualified in the original post) people could choose to have access to literally >1/3 of the games damage mechanics, or they could say pass.

as it is now, the new player experience is very not good. The mechanics aren’t getting more simple as the years go on. Try running a new account through sayas vigil *knowing how to play* and it’s bad. Just because at some point we all had to figure stuff out doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be improved.

It’s significantly worse now than it was starting with rainbow builds whos mods all dropped in mercury.