Has DE ever explained why the demo exists? I'm confused.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I find myself confused as to why a demo for 1999 has been released, so I'm going to communicate why that is.  If DE has already talked about this, I hope someone can point me to that video or document.  And if DE hasn't talked about this, I hope that by expressing my interest in this, they might talk about it in the future.

At a base level, I'm accustomed to demos serving the purpose of giving players the opportunity to experience some of a game free of charge, in the hopes that the player will enjoy the experience and in doing be convinced that the full game will be worth the price of admission.  But that doesn't really apply to Warframe, as the game is already free to play in full.

I've played Warframe for the better part of a decade now, and in all that time, I can't remember there ever having been a demo.  The closest thing to that that I can think of is the interactive portions of TennoCon, where Tenno can gather to look at upcoming assets in-game.

So the combination of this straying from the norm and my not being able to grok the demo's purpose have be a bit perplexed.  I wish I had a better understanding of why a demo was being released. 

Another aspect of this is that I've been hyped for 1999 since it was announced; I'm very eager to play it!  And because I want to play the actual thing organically, start-to-finish as a full experience, I would normally skip playing a demo.  I already know I'm going to play the thing, and I don't just want an out-of-context sip; I want the full thing the way it was intended to be experienced.

But there's an incentive attached to playing the demo: a cosmetic reward.  If I pass on the demo, I'm passing on this reward.  And there being a carrot attached to this demo makes it feel even more odd to me: why incentivize players who are already playing the game to play a demo for content they're going to play anyway?

I could make my own guesses, but historically I've found that that's a great way to put words in someone else's mouth, so when possible I try to avoid that. That's why I'm curious if DE has actually said anything about the "why" of this demo.

Anyway, thanks for hearing my feedback on what feels like a confusing situation to me.

(to be clear, I haven't played the demo yet, so please avoid discussing its contents)

[(PSN)Sentiel]

My assumption and hope is that DE learned from their past mistakes and want to make sure the full release of 1999 is as problem free as possible by releasing a demo first. This is important because they plan to release 1999 right before their holidays so no major changes and fixes can be done post launch.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

I'm guessing they're simply looking for feedback. I don't think there's any spoilers in the demo; it's just a nice way to show off mechanics, enemy-types, environment, et cetera.

[Void2258]

I hope the point of this was to take feedback and make changes. They might be calling it a demo, but I am hoping they act like it's more of a Beta.

[Quest]

There are no spoilers. It's a regular exterminate mission where you kill ~90 enemies then leave.

[Khold90]

Feedback long before release around the holidays.

Already some of the biggest feedback is how the motorcycle is a worse k-drive where several people are openly saying "ditch the motorcycle asap and play it like a normal exterminate".

It also sets expectations, like I theorised that 1999 will be Kahl of duty 2.0 and the demo heavily reinforces that. Get in, get the rewards, get out. Especially being locked out of Drifter despite Drifter being heavily involved story wise.

[Quest]

4 minutes ago, Khold90 said:

Especially being locked out of Drifter despite Drifter being heavily involved story wise.

I think transference to drifter will be allowed post-quest

[Yakosh]

I don't think they stated the reason but I feel like it was for multiple reasons: it's hard to keep developed content out of a live service for too much time, at some point you need to shove it in. I think they used the opportunity to both give players a little appetizer while also, as other said, gather feedback, hence why the reward (gather more players to test the Demo, even just for automatically gathered statistics/data). 

[Khold90]

4 minutes ago, Quest said:

I think transference to drifter will be allowed post-quest

I certainly hope so. Especially since my fully built Drifter will have a much easier time than any of the proto-frames in any mission shows so far.

[--Leyenda-yight6]

hace 23 minutos, Khold90 dijo:

Feedback long before release around the holidays.

Already some of the biggest feedback is how the motorcycle is a worse k-drive where several people are openly saying "ditch the motorcycle asap and play it like a normal exterminate".

It also sets expectations, like I theorised that 1999 will be Kahl of duty 2.0 and the demo heavily reinforces that. Get in, get the rewards, get out. Especially being locked out of Drifter despite Drifter being heavily involved story wise.

But if what we had is exactly an extermination mission, where is Khal here?

[matt11mz]

It seems like a twofold thing. The official reason and the speculative reason.

Officially, it's all about hype, it's just marketing. Slap on the gimmick of 1999 era downloadable demos and give us a teaser.

The speculative reason, it's a not-so-subtle testing ground. It's all about feedback for the new units and the atomicycle, while hopefully catching any stray bugs.

As for spoilers, the TennoCon demo was worse as far as spoilers go. If that didn't bother you, this won't.

[vFlitz]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Sentiel said:

My assumption and hope is that DE learned from their past mistakes and want to make sure the full release of 1999 is as problem free as possible by releasing a demo first. This is important because they plan to release 1999 right before their holidays so no major changes and fixes can be done post launch.

This demo can't really help with that, though. It's just an exterminate with a predetermined loadout, a handful of new enemy units and minimal use of a new vehicle. Like, sure, they might be able to catch a few minor bugs here and there, but it's not the kind of bugs that would heavily impact someone's experience with the update like progression issues or quest softlocks.

IMO, assuming that 1999 has any new mission types, it'd be far more productive to demo that since an entirely new objective would be more likely to have critical bugs and also gauging player reception would have more meaning in the case of a new mission.

[_SYNTHDEMON_]

6 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I find myself confused as to why a demo for 1999 has been released, so I'm going to communicate why that is.  If DE has already talked about this, I hope someone can point me to that video or document.  And if DE hasn't talked about this, I hope that by expressing my interest in this, they might talk about it in the future.

At a base level, I'm accustomed to demos serving the purpose of giving players the opportunity to experience some of a game free of charge, in the hopes that the player will enjoy the experience and in doing be convinced that the full game will be worth the price of admission.  But that doesn't really apply to Warframe, as the game is already free to play in full.

I've played Warframe for the better part of a decade now, and in all that time, I can't remember there ever having been a demo.  The closest thing to that that I can think of is the interactive portions of TennoCon, where Tenno can gather to look at upcoming assets in-game.

So the combination of this straying from the norm and my not being able to grok the demo's purpose have be a bit perplexed.  I wish I had a better understanding of why a demo was being released. 

Another aspect of this is that I've been hyped for 1999 since it was announced; I'm very eager to play it!  And because I want to play the actual thing organically, start-to-finish as a full experience, I would normally skip playing a demo.  I already know I'm going to play the thing, and I don't just want an out-of-context sip; I want the full thing the way it was intended to be experienced.

But there's an incentive attached to playing the demo: a cosmetic reward.  If I pass on the demo, I'm passing on this reward.  And there being a carrot attached to this demo makes it feel even more odd to me: why incentivize players who are already playing the game to play a demo for content they're going to play anyway?

I could make my own guesses, but historically I've found that that's a great way to put words in someone else's mouth, so when possible I try to avoid that. That's why I'm curious if DE has actually said anything about the "why" of this demo.

Anyway, thanks for hearing my feedback on what feels like a confusing situation to me.

(to be clear, I haven't played the demo yet, so please avoid discussing its contents)

Possible Answer:

Because not everyone still plays warframe and might wander off to other games in the mean time.

This is to keep people's attention to the coming 1999 Update release in winter2024/Januari2025(if delayed)

So the players senses are sharp for when it does release.

[quxier]

7 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

At a base level, I'm accustomed to demos serving the purpose of giving players the opportunity to experience some of a game free of charge, in the hopes that the player will enjoy the experience and in doing be convinced that the full game will be worth the price of admission.  But that doesn't really apply to Warframe, as the game is already free to play in full.

If you really want to think that way, you can think about DE wanting you to purchase optional stuff later.

7 hours ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

why incentivize players who are already playing the game to play a demo for content they're going to play anyway?

Somebody doesn't feel like playing 1999.

Koumei shouldn't be released. We had new frame's reworks, some fixes (companion 2.0 rework doesn't exist) but that's it for long time. Lotus eater were just small (quoting Lotus, I expect it to be bigger).

At first I was reluctant about it. Sure, new weapons & maybe other stuff could be nice but... that's it. It was like, oh, another shooter + some action, some YET ANOTHER vehicle. So on and so forth. I played Demo. I like it. It was fast. You didn't have myriads of enemies swarming at you just to 'cease to exist' 1 piko second later. (little spoiler about usage of motorbike)

Spoiler

Throwing motorbike at enemies sounds interesting (sometimes little clunky but that's where mastery comes in; I wish we could detonate motorbike before it hits obstacle).

Level design sounds interesting enough. It looks like oldish game (I wish we could enter buildings like Max payne, find some secrets etc).

So I honestly want to at least try 1999 at this point.

5 hours ago, matt11mz said:

Officially, it's all about hype, it's just marketing. Slap on the gimmick of 1999 era downloadable demos and give us a teaser.

That's it. I guess only people from that era could get it. Whole 1999 is about our nostalgic feeling about this era. Demos were HUGE part of gaming in that time. I was buying magazines and each had some demos (in addition to full games) in every CD/DVD. I'm not sure if there were (many) releases that you have pay for unfinished product. It was (mostly) about free chunk of game to incentivize buying whole product. Indie games only has it nowadays.