Crafting times, available slots, MR cooldown and more things that sour the NPE

[Elaynah]

As a relatively new player, I would like to share some of the things that came very close to being a dealbreaker for me when I first started playing the game, and I feel like they are most likely what drives new players away in general. After reading a lot of comments, talking to people about their experience, and watching videos of new players trying the game for the first time, I believe that most of these things are widespread beliefs and something that would definitely benefit the game in the long run and bring in more new players overall.

1. Crafting timers

As a new player, after figuring out how to get another frame after the initial one you chose, you go out, you grind the parts, you farm the materials, and you excitedly go to your foundry to start making it. At first, you are hit with a 12h timer for parts - not good, but not terrible. You wait it out, you collect the parts, and then you can finally craft your frame - only to be hit with another timer, and this time, it's 72 hours. The excitement is still holding you, but you feel slight frustration at this point. By the time the frame is done crafting, you are no longer that excited for it, as you were forced to play something else while waiting for it to finish crafting.

While there is a lot you can do in the game while you wait for new frames or weapons to finish crafting, so the time goes by more quickly, I still feel like the restriction is too great, especially for new players, as the point should be to hook them with shiny new things, instead of pushing them away with long crafting timers.

I recently worked on getting Equinox, and that must have been the most frustrating experience that I've had while farming for a new frame. After going through the 3 phase boss located on extremely annoying tilesets dozens of times and battling the RNGsus just to get the eight parts needed for the frame, I realized that I had to wait 12h for parts to craft, then another 72h for both aspects to craft, and then ANOTHER 72h for the frame itself to craft. This to me seems complately pointless and outright ridiculous - no one should wait a whole week just to play a new frame they already worked so hard to get in the first place.

My suggestion would be to either cut down the timers in general for all of the weapons and frames, or to at least give a couple of free speed ups / rushes for new players to get them hooked on the game and give them new things to try out while they wait for the long timers moving forward. While the second option would be something that would make new players happier, I believe that cutting down the timers in general would be something that would benefit the playerbase as a whole. I understand that this might hurt DE's income in a way, but the reason why so many people are spending such large amounts of platinum on it is because it is simply too painful, and makes no sense for a game which is so heavily focused on collection and completion.

2. Available slots

On that same note, in a game which is highly focused on collecting frames, weapons, companions etc. and mastering them, having such little slots in the very beginning is simply baffling to me. Two frame slots for a beginner is just too little, as that means that you can only have mone frome aside from your starter, before you need to start spending your platinum. While yes, the initial 50 platinum can buy you two slots, having 4 slots in total, compared to dozens of frames available in the game makes no sense. Count in the fact that your weapon slots are also extremely limited, you can choose to either spend that initial platinum on frame slots, or weapon slots. This means that you will be stuck either playing the same frames, or the same weapons over and over again until you either spend real money, or grind out the prime parts which you can sell, which is definitely not something that a new player can do.

My suggestion would be to simply add more inital available slots for both frames and weapons - for example, 10 for frames, and 20 for weapons, as that is still not even a fraction of a total number of each, and it gives players more freedom and time to actually earn more platinum to get more slots at the end of the day.

3. MR cooldown

This one is pretty simple and straightforward - MR test does not need to have a 24h cooldown. It's a pointless timegate and its sole purpose is to slow down player progression.

4. Beginner quests and directions

After finishing the initial tutorial and rebuilding your ship, a part which is really well done in my opinion, the game just stops telling you what to do. The map opens before you, but you have no idea where you are supposed to go from there. Sure, there is a quest menu at the top of your screen, but nothing is telling you that that is a quest menu, so most players either start doing random missions until they accidentally run into Cetus and begin the quest there, or they roam around the ship, and then exit the game. It makes you feel lost, confused, and disoriented.

While I personally did figure out what to do after clicking on all of the available icons on my screen and finally finding the quests, I still believe that it is not intuitive at all, and there should be a clear objective telling you to go to Cetus to continue playing through the story, or at least explaining the options that are available to you moving forward.

5. Modding tutorial

Modding is a huge one for most people - I was lucky enough to have friends who were there to explain to me how it works, but after listening to a lot of new players struggling with it, I believe there should be a better explanation of how the system works - the drain, the polarity, the upgrades, the effects etc.

These are what I believe to be the main painpoints of most new players, but some other minor grievances I would add are the following:

1. Market explanation - how to find and buy blueprints instead of players being under the impression that you need to spend premium currency for all weapons and frames. The game does a really good job explaining it once you get there, but getting there is sometimes a problem.
2. Mastery and affinity explanation - each weapon needs to be leveled to 30 in order to be mastered, which you can only do once. Warning pop-up when you are about to sell an unmastered item. You only gain affinity when you have non-mastered items equipped, and so on.
3. Remove the clan key crafting timer please.

If you read through all of this, thank you. I love this game and I am really looking forward to its impovement. While I can appreciate a game that just throws you in and forces you to learn things on the go, most people don't and I believe Warframe is a little too brutal on that end lol.

Much love, stay awesome!

Edit:
P.S. This video right here echoes most of the things that I just wrote an essay on, for those who would rather listen than read: 

 

Edited September 19 by Elaynah
Adding a video link

[OgreEye]

This has been a pain point for years, the mobile game-ass timers are utterly obnoxious and don't belong in the game anymore. DE hasn't budged because hee hoo spend platinum.

[RainPU2]

The game environment of Warframe seems to be like this, it is more "casual" game :v

Edited September 29 by RainPU2