De Fails Hard~

[OblivionNecroninja]

It was worth it to get him to post that. His post was beautiful.

Indeed it is.

I guess my half-joking didn't really come across with the emoticon.

Time for an edit!

[The_Traitor_Executioner]

Adding a saucy, smug little ~ to the end of the thread title doesn't help your case, son. 

[Ritchel]

BETA BICH DO U EVEN BETA?

[bejuizb]

BETA BICH DO U EVEN BETA?

Keep sticking to that crutch please. Lesser and lesser people will take you seriously.

 

Everyone here has provided valuable points regarding the matter, and I agree with every single one of them. The community as a whole has become rather one sided in terms of how they think. People who play with new items/quipment/guns for the fun of it seems to have reduced drastically in comparison to the people who try to be "competitive" in a PvE game. They tend to look for developers to do their job instead of finding a way to work around these conflicts.This has been my observation of the playerbase, and I may be right only in face value. As we all know, those who love the game and are having fun tend to spend more time actually playing than lurking in the forums.

 

By participating the snowball effect that is this one-sidedness in mentality, the playerbase is simply scaring the developers into making compromising decisions, lest they enrage the thousands and let forth a tidal wave of nerf/buff/rage/DE sucks threads here. Honestly, the maturity of a significant amount of players is quite baffling. A game mechanic gets changed, make a thread. Reduces metagame viability, make a thread. I'm bored and want to insult the developers with half-baked facts, make a thread.

 

I'm genuinely sorry if I sound frustrated with the community, but things just seem to be getting out of hand. When I joined the forums, the amount of mature and level headed players far outnumbered the brash and rather abrasive elements to our community. Sure, they do have the right to speak, just as the calmer members do. But the fact everyone needs to understand is that the dev team is full of humans, who rely on feedback to make their decisions. And humans can be afraid. Just swallow your pride and consider this scenario: several hundred thousand players (rough figure/not true) are eagerly waiting for a new, game-changing mechanic. They are frustrated and you as a developer want to give them the best. But you see a fatal flaw with a concept that could basically make the game far too different from what you envisioned, and the players love it. What do you do? Appease the thousands who would exploit this flaw or fix it and make the game tougher and risk losing a significant amount of players because of it. 

 

DE is in that predicament right now, and we as a community are responsible for it. Walls of text are meaningless unless they are thought upon and allow valid, helpful discussion. We as a community need to collectively put on our big boy pants and act like grown-ups. If we don't do that and if we don't let the developers make the game THEY want, we are burying this game along with our hopes for it.

 

I won't make a TL;DR because that is against what I'm going for. I typed this wall of text so that people read it. If you don't, then you've got a part in this immature community. Sorry for being a prude, but honesty let's me get the words across easier.

[felldian]

My favourite line is "WHY DIDN'T THIS GO THROUGH QA!"

 

WE ARE THE QA FOR DE! They want our opinions, not blind rage. I enjoy the new Frost, sure it'll require a few tweaks but the man is now fun to play. Scott wasn't swinging blindly, he hit the nail.

 

Great post, couldn't agree more, let's get the community back to where it should be.

[Kamal965]

You know, when I joined back in U7 and I agreed to the beta ToS and EULA, I fully expected the usual, radical changes that come with betas. It never happened, though. Sure, DE has released changes or reworks of implemented systems, but we never got a full, sweeping change!

 

And you're absolutely right. I am too used to that; too used to jumping on the bandwagon (not necessarily the popular one, mind you), and I'm set in my ways of that. I'm more than willing to change, though! I've spent over two thousand hours in game in a previous community and was a beta tester in their beta server -- I've dealt with alpha/beta content and I'm ready to deal with that again.

 

Give us the coal, DE, and we'll help you make the diamond.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Kamal965

[victor_victory]

I think our community should post less rage comments and start giving more constructive criticism.

Even the nicest person have it limits, noone can ignore rage comments forever, it always hurt their feelings. And there will be one point that DE will just said " F*** it, I'm out" then just stop listening to the community. 

the situation now shows that DE still cares about our opinion, if we want DE to stop worrying, we should change our attitude first.

[Shehriazad]

Yea... I think it's a mistake of DE trying to push out things super polished and "finished" when all we are is a bunch people in a beta.

You want to implement stations and get rid of the star chart? Put in the most basic version NOW. Fix bugs along the way and add features that the community wants.... gather feedback in the open...dont dev in the shadows.

You want to release melee 2.0? DO IT NOW. What if the community comes to hate your iteration? Bring in the semi-finished version and see how it goes.

You want the badlands? DO IT NOW. See how the basic concept would work out.



I think DE should not only fail faster...but fail out in the open. There is no review ratings that they could lose. All the players that are here are just people who are getting slowly tired of the farming and grinding anyway.
Im not saying Warframe is doing terrible right now...but "fail faster" is probably the right choice for this game.

[Kartumterek]

But they need to start failing ~Faster~

 

Please watch before knee-jerking or adding to the discussion

 

 

 

 

"Your ego can't need protecting... The only thing that matters is the game you ship, not any of the steps along the way."

 

 

Warframe and it's community is getting a little too rigid. Some of us are starting to get set in our ways to the point where our "things" becomes Preciousss. By doing that, and getting angry when our precious gets changed, we as a community are stifling the growth of this product. However, it's not all our fault, the blame falls on DE as well.

 

From about U10-12, we've seen some big additions - but what has really changed? Melee, stealth, parkour, RNG drops, and even the Damage/Armor system has been babied every step of the way. Why? Why not rip it up and give us something raw to chew on for awhile? Well...

 

I remember when Hek, Gorgon, and Rhino were nerfed. I remember when stamina was changed. I remember the recent Brakk, Detron, and now Frost fiasco. I feel like the feedback is still haunting certain developers to the point where their Ego simply cannot take anymore, so they feel like they can't change anything without getting painful negativity from us.

 

That can't, and should not stop them from tearing this game apart and pulling out the guts in front of us.

 

Do you know why the "this is beta" argument is getting old? Because the game feels too finished. It puts us into a false sense of security that, when shattered, reverberates back ten fold on DE, which causes the afore mentioned problems.

 

Communicate with your testers so that you can release more ~raw~ systems.

 

The design council signed on to be your personal guinea pigs. Why aren't you using us? Communication has been an issue from the first day I joined the forums, and to be perfectly honest: It hasn't got much better. Grineeer's workshop is full of cobwebs again because devs are scared of upsetting the community, and the community is angry at the devs for being silent.

 

No... Anger is too strong of a word... I would describe the community right now as impatiently frustrated. We want stuff fast. We don't need it perfect. Like the video touched on. Give us raw, ugly mechanics that we can actually give feedback on instead of pushing it back because the thing isn't perfect.

 

You can't win a hockey game by playing a prevent defense. You have to get out there and bust some teeth while telling the guy why he deserved to get his teeth smashed.

 

 

Tl;dr and Closing Remark

 

You are Digital Extremes. You need to start acting like it again.

 

Dont blame DE when they cant even ask a question in Design Council without some jackass leaking it 2 seconds later. Hard to bring stuff to the proper channels if it gets spread to ALL the channels. Design Council leakers are the primary reason we are not called upon to do our duty.

[Thelonious]

IMO, F2P monetization is at the same time a blessing that made this game possible, and a curse:

 

1. A great part of the development team has to focus on creating new content, constantly, and rapidly. Polishing is not always possible because of deadlines.

---> mistakes are to be expected. The final product can be far from what the devs themselves had in mind.

In itself, it's a fail. But the video clearly explains the ultimate goal is to adjust towards perfection. Which means rework, which means dedicating a part of the team work time to it, which is not always possible because of the priority necessity to create new content.

Vicious circle.

 

2. With real money involved in the aquisition of virtual goods, you can't make bold changes without litterally ripping off a part of your customer base.

 

We've seen it. You buy item A for its strength and weaknesses. It gets changed, you now have a completly different item that you just don't like. You stop buying with real money, fearing your future purchases get the same treatment. Even if it was for the better of the game. 

Company loses customer trust, and money. 

 

3. Even if it doesn't apply to virtual goods, sudden and repeated changes can be hard for the playerbase.

In this game, not everyone plays in the beta tester state of mind. People just wanna enjoy the game. 

Recent example: Damage 2.0 elemental damage chart. Changed like 4 times in the course of a month. Lots of players were just lost. And angry.

And it was supposed to be changed further (Steve mentionned another simplification during a recent livestream). 

 

I love Extra credits videos (even if a bit idealistic at times), but this one applies more to early testing phases (alpha, or early close beta) than to an already publicly released, perstitent online F2P game like warframe.

 

Failure strategies (and flexibility) is just not always possible. 

And this F2P model is largely at fault. IMHO anyway.

[Qynchou]

 

Do you know why the "this is beta" argument is getting old? Because the game feels too finished. It puts us into a false sense of security that, when shattered, reverberates back ten fold on DE, which causes the afore mentioned problems.

 

 

So much this. A perfect example is the mod 2.0 system. Hornet strike, serration, heavy caliber, and all other +% damage mods do not add any depth into the game and are completely pointless, however removing them isnt an option anymore because everyone has them and everyone uses them and the outrage would be ridiculous if theyd be removed, even though it would be the right thing to do.

 

Before you say thats stupid logic please look back at your feedback how you (the community) are saying theres no endgame. There is endgame, its just that youre using these ridiculous pointless mods that make you overpowered and take away the challenge of the game.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Qynchou

[HAYABU5A]

massively agree

 

go forth and rip its guts out, all the way out, all of the guts

[VonWagner]

Well Warframe is still in beta test so... we have to test and help with feedbacks and more...

Devs cant do all, thats why is beta coz we are here to test, and help...

help for the game, help to the devs, and help eachothers...

we have to be a comunity when u he, her and me help to xxx player...

We dont win nothing if we continue to answer kids in game when they want just things of kids...

The entire comunity have to change...

and watch the game in other perspective, not just play... but yes for fun, and help the team who work hard for this game

They are human just like u or me...

So... i think we have to colaborate player with player, and then we can help to the devs to make this awesome game, better than now...

and yes, they listen this comunity or read us when we write something.

and they dont say F*** it... coz is a free beta access.

i have some question and i dont need an answer...

what game u played have a daily update/fixed like here?

what game u played make devstreams? or prime time?

What game have devs or admin or mods like here?

 

They focused in all what we want... and theyll do it...

i'm the first who say NO to the nerfs, improve all the others without nerf one but its ok... coz i want to see the changes...

and sorry, but i think we need patient, and help to the devs and help eachothers...

this game and this forum can be better if we make the things like a team

 

And guys/ girls... this game is evolving day by day is better and better....

And dont forget one important thing is Beta, and u like me are "Beta Testers"

 

i just say, thanks for all the devs, admins and mods who make this game better and better days by days...

just sayin...

[H0PE]

I don't recall hearing anything like this before...

Lot of seemingly wise words put together, forming a seeingly smart ... something.

Yet, it doesn't say anything ANYTHING wise, just bunch of stupid S#&$ you really put together.

 

Well done achieving what you wanted (probably?).

Thanks for giving me 2minutes of entertainment on sunday lunch break (did't watch it through, so hopelessly trying to say smart things it yet achieving 0 of that... was hurting my brains).

Edited February 15, 2014 by H0PE

[Bazools]

This game is no longer a beta, technically, though it may certainly feel like one. I believe that Scott has referred to it as a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product in the past.

 

Anyway.

 

Personally, I don't have much hope for the game at this point. Not because I'm quick to dismiss a company that makes small failures here and there. But because I feel like the WF team's heart just isn't in the right place. The game keeps developing vertically, yet beneath the veneer of space ninja run-n-gun, there is no substance. Each update gives a temporary high, only to be replaced by resentment once again because some mechanic got broken or another gamebreaking bug was introduced. The game itself, meanwhile, is built on an unsustainable model, that being an abuse of the F2P system. Weapon strength is predicated on whether it will sell, then it's replaced by the flavor of the week, and the next, and the next, and the cycle repeats.

 

But I don't want to be a doomcaster. I want the WF team to prove me wrong. The Warbros fiasco is a big ol' mess, and the WF team was caught off-guard and arguably handled the matter incorrectly (nobody is in the right here). I'm not interested in the fate of the game's largest clan so much as what the incident did for the community. Sure, you've got some trolls trying to stir up trouble. You also get threads like these. What the fiasco did was open up floodgates for criticism, as if the playerbase's pent-up tensions could finally be released. There are plenty of great idea threads floating around out there, one of which was recently acknowledged by Drew (and shut down; I don't really see the point of locking a discussion thread rather than just open a new one but that's beside the point). The problem is that though plenty of ideas have been implemented in the past, they've been implemented half-baked. The player ideas still usually end up being better (i.e., the HUD). The next step would be for devs to work with the creators of these ideas to flesh them out and make them a reality, like the OP said.

 

Is it possible for there to be greater player-staff correspondence? Whenever a staff member replies to a thread, it always feels as if they're trying to quell an uprising. "Okay, here's what we got from this thread

• . Thanks, now we're locking it... *what do we do now?*" There are plenty of games out there whose developers maintain a regular rapport with their players. Path of Exile is one. Players complained about summoning being too weak and cumbersome of a spec, so Grinding Gear Games posted in their forums (without locking the threads!!!) and now we have some pretty cool spells we can use to buff our minions. Mike Z regularly posts changelogs and discusses his game with players on the Skullgirls forum, and though the game's progress takes questionable turns at times, it nonetheless is slowly developing into a product many people enjoy.

 

We want this kind of interaction with Warframe. Recent events have upset the WF team's relationship with the player base, but perhaps we can mend that wound. Threads like these are us offering our hands to make this an enjoyable game, as well as a better experience for both players and developers. I mean, I'm sure the WF team would love to implement everything it talks about on stream, and realistically, it can't. Yet the numerous bugs, empty grind, and rampant power creep are clearly the result of trying to keep the bean counters satiated. As with most bureaucracies, we have to recognize that the developers in front of us are likely not the culprits of our woes and that they're probably rushing to meet the demands of the higher ups. Unless they ARE the higher-ups, which to my knowledge is not the case (please correct me if I'm incorrect). Maybe we can draw some of that willingness to make radical changes out of the devs.

 

If WF staff and players can establish a constructive dialogue, we can potentially make this game last for years. But if the WF team chooses to hide behind paywalls, ephemeral content updates, and the current disconnect between players and developers, then this game will die a toxic death faster than you can say "Pre-11.3 Acrid."

+1 Well said,

[LeAtlas]

saw the topic name, starts to leave, saw it was made by someone with 10k, stayed back started reading, and i wasn't disapointed at all

[Nexxalys]

 There is endgame, its just that youre using these ridiculous pointless mods that make you overpowered and take away the challenge of the game.

Scaling is not a challenge. When something that is easy scales up to a point when it oneshots you,  it's not "harder". At least not to me.  It would be harder when enemies AI would scale, when they would gain some skills that you need to dodge/run away from. (Of course enemies should be able to deal massive dmg too, You should be afraid of every gun on the battlefield but oneshotting is just.... ughh) Taking these mods away wouldn't change anything for me. It would just replace the "challange" from lets say 100lvl enemies to lvl30. Shooting the whole clip in the face of one enemy and remembering to keep immunities up when you see them doesn't make the game challanging. I like being able to kill things with 5 bullets, it's more fun. Challange comes from something else, scaling is a lazy form of it. It feels archaic. I would like to get rid of it from any game already.

 

So yeah, to sum it up: as long as the only form of  challange is scaling, deleting scaling mods is not going to change anything.

I would be happy to put magazine size and reload speed on some weapons though, instead of being forced to put serration or split chamber. Thats for sure but "endgame" would stay the same.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Nexxalys

[Temfist]

what this extra credit video is talking about, is having a fully flushed out "concept" for a game, well before you start spending money on it.......DE is far past this point, so I'm not sure why you thought this video is still applicable. in fact, the very nature of "gutting the game" or "Tearing it apart" at it's current point, would require them to spend far more money and time then it would to simply add something new, which is the exact opposite point you were suggesting in your OP.

 

also, don't you think that all the current balance changes maybe them just trying to "modify" things to appease the majority of players? If it doesn't work, they can always "fix it back" which DE has been fairly good about with certain kinds of issues. I'd say, hold your concern until you notice DE is actually harming their overall potential with a decision, or making big game changes that ultimately hinder the experience rather then enhance it. So far, I don't see them doing too many things that I personally disagree with, except the "Nerfs"....I personally think that instead of Nerfing, they should buff everything instead....EVERYTHING, that is not considered good enough for beating end game content with.

 

I feel like players should be able to take the starting gear into end game content with the right mods and still be able to exceed, though it might be challenging, and not feel like the game is punishing them for not using a "higher Tier" guns etc. unless of course DE wants to separate all the weapons and frames into a visible, "tier system" that requires you to rank up Mastery in order to use higher tier frames and weapons etc.....but I don't think they want to do that. I wouldn't mind a Tier system myself, I think it'd give players a reason to grind exp and get new weapons, in addition to forcing DE to buff a lot of the weapons within a tier until they are all balanced, so there would be better end game weapons to pick from, and it would feel much more rewarding to use them. thats just me though.

 

anyway, nice video there by Extra Credit, don't think it applies to DE anymore, unless they are gonna make a new game.

[Doom_Bunny]

An update every 4 months or so. Patches as soon as the update comes out due to 5.5 million players to help detect glitches, faults and such.

If a player says something is unfair, no fun Digital Extremes looks at the matter sees where the majority of the community stands and applys their own ideas to the matter. All that done by a wednesday or if ongoing the next update.

5.5 million players who provide a constant stream of money, so Digital Extremes can keep going.

The council where promised a froum to recieve notifications but there are too many spies that if DE tried to stop them they would need to open the council package again for a limited number of players. Council is like a majority decider if De is stumped between two ideas.

The testers and guinea pigs are all the players (besides ps4 cause De has to give a finished copy to sony first) not just the council. DE presents this game as a beta meaning anyone who downloads the game and helps on forums is a tester. Though as testers the players need to be more mature about our replys to errors or someone's suggestion. We all iron out the new updates and hotfixes but we must not hand in the results as trash but as a fine suit or a silk dress, one wrong move and it's ruined.

Over all DE is a top end developer and desire nothing but the best. Yes this desire may give off a false sense of a finished game and shatter the community when it is changed but the community needs to learn that this is still the testing and not a finished game. If DE where pushed to give out updates of any kind quicker, this would overload all people in DE with stress as they rush to fix and release again. Let De smooth things out between them selves then when they have what they desire, they will hand it over to the testers and we will find the glitches, colour mistakes and so on. Giving out raw updates can not change the entire community nor will it help people at Digital Extremes.

We need to change not Digital Extremes.
 

[SilverBones]

This is a great discussion. Keep it up.

My one point to add is that in most beta games, drastic changes often result in mandatory account resets. DE have been proudly trying to avoid that since day one, and sometimes adapting code to make sure you keep all your stuff its much harder than simply saying;

"Well, guess they lose all their gear now..."

Just food for thought. Really glad to see you guys keeping it civil and well thought out in your discussions. The community needs more threads like these.

[Ganpot]

There are a lot of factors at play here.  My thoughts are on this subject are... complicated. 

 

DE absolutely needs to get players involved earlier in the development process.  However, rolling out half-finished systems or ill-conceived ideas in the main game would be disastrous.  MMOs need a certain degree of security and predictability for players.  The beta label would not be a sufficient excuse.  Most modern betas are mere demos: sessions are short, feedback is largely ignored, and changes are almost nonexistent.  Minecraft (the game which started the modern trend of selling an alpha or beta) became popular partly because it took great care not to disrupt players.  Notch did everything he could to ensure that patches wouldn't corrupt save files, players were given the freedom to not automatically update, and existing content was almost never removed or drastically changed. 

 

What DE needs to do is set up a separate server for a select group of players to test on (design council, perhaps), and give them a corresponding (hidden) section on the forums to discuss what they do and don't enjoy.  All player progress on said server should be erased frequently.  Participation should probably be encouraged by offering small rewards (credits?  random mods?) which are given to players in the base game.  This would allow them to set up varying test conditions and see the results.  What to know what would happen if sprint speed was doubled across the board?  Now you can find out. 

 

Another thing DE really needs to do is act with more common sense.  An example is the invasion issue.  DE were seemingly taken by complete surprise when Grineer started pulverizing the Corpus, despite giving players an exclusive reward if they continually sided with Grineer.  How is that chain of events surprising?  It should have been obvious what players were going to do.  There have been many, many examples of questionable decision-making in Warframe's history.  I don't ask that everything be perfect, but I do ask that decisions be logically comprehensible.  The vast majority of controversies could have been avoided with a little foresight. 

 

The last thing DE should be willing to do is rip apart major game systems in order to make them better.  Even damage 2.0 didn't really do that.  The main thing it did was add the new element and proc systems on top of the old damage system.  Armor (the main complaint of damage 1.0) was barely touched. 

 

The community does tend to overreact to certain things, especially when it comes to balance decisions.  The worst case of this was the Brakk, which pretty clearly deserved a nerf if any other weapon was going to remain relevant at high level.  Quite a few of DE's balancing decisions have been awkward, but that one was entirely justified.  While I believe that player feedback is important, statistics are arguably more-so.  If everyone is using the same gun, it's hard to argue that it isn't overpowered. 

[FlyDungas]

the smug &#! narrator of all those videos prevents me from being able to watch more than 5 seconds of it

 

question: what games have they made to earn this smugness? I looked it up and I can't find any

Edited February 15, 2014 by FlyDungas

[Kamal965]

the smug &#! narrator of all those videos prevents me from being able to watch more than 5 seconds of it

 

question: what games have they made to earn this smugness? I looked it up and I can't find any

 

It's Penny Arcade...

[felldian]

It's Penny Arcade...

 

Shhh Kam, he doesn't know how to investigate a source.

[Archistopheles]

the smug &#! narrator of all those videos prevents me from being able to watch more than 5 seconds of it

 

question: what games have they made to earn this smugness? I looked it up and I can't find any

 

He actually did a video without the cartoon... He's just another nerd who lives with cats, give the guy a break ;)