Tenno Clock, Discussions Of The Community [Youtube] (Ep 89)

[Xenogelion]

No offer has even been made yet, PWE are currently looking over the financial records of DE, no money has "jumped aboard". Heck PWE hasn't even put in an offer yet.

[MDRLOz]

Not really any new information but this is what journalists are saying:

http://www.mmobomb.com/news/perfect-world-prepares-to-buy-warframe-developer-digital-extremes/

 

It is a buyout and nothing but. However they do say DE does have a point where they can opt out. 

 

Maybe DE are just doing this for publicity. Let them look at our finances and then just pull out. 

[Traeyze]

That's a pretty carefully worded response from DE. As someone who spends a lot of his job writing dodgy spin responses that sets off my alarms.

Well, I guess it really is one of those things that you just have to let it play out. Frankly with the weird way U13/14 has played out I get the impression this may have been a factor.

[notlamprey]

I'll stick around in "wait and see" mode. Until it becomes obvious that some alien presence has its fingers forever in the Warframe pie, it seems prudent to hold off on pronouncing ultimate doom.

 

I feel like this dev team has earned at least that much from me.

[Lorche]

I'm also on the 'wait and see' stance here.

 

And so sorry I haven't watch the videos, yet.

 

Oh, totally off topic, but this thread may pique your interest LOz

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/253709-lets-talk-lore/

Edited July 4, 2014 by Lorche

[Xenogelion]

Episode 38 can be found on the first post as well as here:

 

 

[Sixty5]

Calling me out eh Loz?

 

What'll it be? Skana's on Mercury?

 

Bring it on

 

=P

[Xenogelion]

Vastos in the Dojo, VASTOS IN THE DOJO!!!

[Sixty5]

Vastos in the Dojo, VASTOS IN THE DOJO!!!

wait I don't have a vasto, can I use a Tigris?

[MDRLOz]

Calling me out eh Loz?

 

What'll it be? Skana's on Mercury?

 

Bring it on

 

=P

I did? I think I was very tired Friday night and was running on sugar and caffeine alone, probably apparent from how incoherent I was when recording. Even drew said so afterwards.  All I recall is mentioning that you got your shotgun question mentioned by name but Rebecca not only did not credit me for my question but could not even articulate to the devs so obviously the response was merely "Its not in update 14" which was obvious and not worth the breath of saying it. What did I call you out on? All I recall before hand was I kept saying to myself that I had to mention your name because even Scott asked "Sixty5?". Which was awesome.

 

However I am all for skana duels. How would that be done? Any frame lvl 30, no frame mods, no primary, no secondary, no sentinel, basic skana no mods except stances? Mercury conclave

 

Also similar thing with latos would be cool.

 

I game for whatever.

Edited July 7, 2014 by MDRLOz

[Sixty5]

I did? I think I was very tired Friday night and was running on sugar and caffeine alone, probably apparent from how incoherent I was when recording. Even drew said so afterwards.  All I recall is mentioning that you got your shotgun question mentioned by name but Rebecca not only did not credit me for my question but could not even articulate to the devs so obviously the response was merely "Its not in update 14" which was obvious and not worth the breath of saying it. What did I call you out on? All I recall before hand was I kept saying to myself that I had to mention your name because even Scott asked "Sixty5?". Which was awesome.

 

However I am all for skana duels. How would that be done? Any frame lvl 30, no frame mods, no primary, no secondary, no sentinel, basic skana no mods except stances? Mercury conclave

 

Also similar thing with latos would be cool.

 

I game for whatever.

Unmodded Excalibur Primes and Skana Primes.

 

No Crimson Dervish though, that is a tad too broken.

 

 

Tbh I think mine was answered because it leads into more weapon balance stuff and they can give a truthful answer. I am not sure that DE even know what they are doing with the other endgame systems at this stage. 

[MDRLOz]

If I am honest my overall view of the live-stream was that it was useless. They did not want to deliver any new U14 info and for most questions the answer was "Well that's not in update 14" or "We can look at that after U14". They all seemed tired and unfocused and most questions were answered with those answers. I guess it is a change from "We would love to do that and its on the cards for the future, when we find some time".

 

Also do you guys think that questions put to devs on the live-streams should be kept to short simple questions. Any long complicated question seems to get met with frustration and confusion because Rebecca has to summarise down someone's info into maybe one or two lines of spoken dialogue. This was evident with twice in this stream. There was the graph which explains game progression, it is something that was very simple and to the point but only got a vague answer. Also the devs did not get to see the image before hand and were kind of not getting all the info. Maybe if it was put up on a monitor for them to see / passed around for them all to look at. 

 

The second was the "foundation re-work thread" this is a complex thing and poor Rebecca had to summarise it a bit and feed info to them. Steve then gave an outburst which I feel was a little justified but not proper and he has apologised since. Such a complex thing needs a complex evaluation and reply. Steve knee-jerked an answer which was unfortunate. If they had time to formulate a repl I feel it would have been better. 

 

 

Also side note have any of you read the concept:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/137875-a-complete-rework-of-the-foundation-of-warframe/

 

I have always been aware of this thread but not commented on it. I am now currently reading through the whole thing (page 6/59 so far) and already I am disgusted with this concept that has received over 1000 up votes. It is not out of date and bad but people keep up voting it. The OP's concept is written in politician speech and decries DEs Mod system and bigs up its own plans without explanation of how everything will work and explaining details. Anyone who puts a decent counterpoint forward is verbally attacked by the OP and even accuses one person of derailing the thread for asking for more details. I am tempted to make it my misson to read the whole thing, Evaluate the thread, then re-read the op before posting till its done. It saddens me that such a thing is still being brought up.

[bejuizb]

Well, I am on the fence with both sides to be honest. I know that the current mod system is quite good in comparison to most games, but it still needs some love. Customization and viable builds are completely against one another, since there are always a few CORE mods that are needed to do well. 

[MDRLOz]

The only two problems with the mod system are:

1) Essential mods (Redirection, vitalilty, Serration, Hornet Strike). 

2) The Devs do not spend enough time evaluating the mods and adjusting things that need changes (Warmcoat, Resistance mods, I think its electric damage on melee). 

 

Now point 1 is apparently going to be changed/looked at for U14 with mod quality or something. However point 2 is just unacceptable. 

 

(Side note - according to warframe wiki some resistance mods seemed to have been buffed to 60% e.g. flame repellent. Is this true/did I just miss that patch somewhere? Warm coat is still awful however.)

[bejuizb]

Yeah, and that single fact that the mods themselves aren't getting much love, coupled with the rather stupid attempts by people to make the mod system mimic systems from OTHER games, is the reason why Zamboni's getting so much love. I was one of those people a few months ago, and after "maturing" per se, I've also come to agree with the two points you put forth. 

[notlamprey]

Re: #38

 

On PW:

 

I'm having a hard time being optimistic about the involvement of Perfect World with DE. I don't like the way PW does business. I think they're bad for the games industry. Many players already feel that Warframe toes the line of abusive design when it comes to RNG; I hate just thinking about Prosecutors and "New Vay Hek."

 

As it is, there are so many big and small games competing for my attention all the time. I almost don't care whether PW chooses to actively meddle or not. If they're going to be profiting in any way from the Warframe IP, it really kills my desire to play.

 

The "Foundation Re-work" Thread:

 

I'm quite ready for this beast to die. It's all well and good to make suggestions, especially if you're fleshing out your ideas minimizing the legwork needed for Dev to include them. That's great, but you have to be paying enough attention to see the point at which you're meant to understand your ideas will not match up with the direction the development team wants to take.

 

This hemorrhaging abomination keeps shambling along, despite being in obvious conflict with parts of Warframe's core design intent. It's no wonder Steve and others get frustrated when people do this, and further when they have the gall to assert (directly!) that their ideas are "better." It's like having little Phil Fish clones running around everywhere. No thanks.

[Xenogelion]

Oh Em Ef Gee! I'm actually commenting on the Tenno Clock topic that isn't just a bog standard "Hey, here's the next episode!".

 

PWE:

    So yesterday Loz decided that he needed to install ARC because he's "preparing for the worst and hoping for the best" and he was like "Oh my god, ARC is terrible!". Anyhoo I'm not sure what to think anymore about Perfect World, in conversation with one of my clannies, CROMB, he informed me that PWE have never let one of their games go offline. Apparently Rusty Hearts has next to no players because it is that grindey yet they won't take the servers offline. While conversing with Sixty5 he theorizes that DE's big announcement is tournament style PvP, if this is the case then having servers is a huge must on DE's part but I don't believe DE could manage that level of traffic without huge financial backing. If PWE have such facilities that DE could take advantage of them then *thumbs up*.

 

I'm also of the belief (yey theorycrafting!) that PWE might not be responsible for such design choices as "buy a box for a 2% chance to get a part" as such cases are scene in the likes of Blacklight: Retribution. It might be a case of the developers going "hmm... we're not pulling in enough funding" and coming up with this really painful payment model. Frankly if PWE are manipulating design choices with games like Star Trek Online or Neverwinter then I'm going to assume that they won't do that for Warframe because DE have been standing on their own two feet with Warframe for so long. Call me naive but I'd like to give DE the benifit of the doubt that they will remain in control of Warframe's development.

 

Mods:

    I like the mod system as it gives you a reason to grind for drops, grinding for experience to go down a linear path has been done to death in games like World of Warcraft to the point of even Blizzard don't like talent trees anymore. I've been playing Marvel Heroes recently (so has Loz) and it really annoys me that if I want one of my abilities I need to put a talent point into it; OK this kind of system wasn't bad in the era of Diablo 2 but that was 14 years ago, surely we can have better systems of progression that as simple linear line of boxes to tick.

 

On a side note I loath posts like this, that I see all too often on the Feedback sub-forum, where people whine about how they don't like something, they don't give a reason why and then demand DE recreate the entire system to be based off their foundation (if they even decide to give a "solution"). When Loz and I decide to find topics to talk about for an episode of Tenno Clock I sh*t you not when I say I will never go to the Feedback sub-forum, it's too much complaining about the same thing over and over again.

 

Sidenote:

    I don't honestly know how many of you guys have an issue with Mobile Defense but I wrote this post:

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/257876-mobile-defence-improvement/?view=findpost&p=2989842

[bejuizb]

I agree with your points regarding PWE. For now at least. I was a hardcore Blacklight player two years ago. I used to be part of competitive teams and all that, and I tried getting back into the game a few months ago. Literally 0 changes have been made to the game is nearly 400 days. All the dev focus is going to PS4. Which is why a lot of veteran competitive players, myself included, decided to back out of the game. The P2W changes made to weapons and gear screwed up the competitive scene, and the overall direction of the new content seemed gimmicky. I tested this out on other PWE owned games, and the same applied. The servers are either dead, or full of bored, foulmouth trash who make it their job to ruin other people's fun. Why they don't take down servers, I have no clue. My primary concern if there ever is a takeover is not how they change or influence the game, but rather how violently this game's community is going to react. As well all know as regular forumgoers, Warframe players have a...penchant...for overreacting and blowing things out of proportion. Now mind you, this is a generalization. Not everyone lives with torches and pitchforks all the time, but the blow of the takeover will probably split and destroy this community. That's just my view on it.

 

With regards to the mod system, I've been experimenting with builds after last week' talks with Loz here. I'm seeing a few glaring issues with regards to the "must have" mods: they don't have drawbacks, or interesting mechanics. Who wouldn't simply slap on a mod that directly doubles or even triples your potential damage output, while there are 0 drawbacks or uses for other mods in that slot? The corrupted mods add some interesting features to the table. You get massive min/max potential, with quite significant drawbacks, at least on more frames. Perhaps if we could adjust these core mods and add variants to them, which would provide more bonuses and interesting perks, we'd see more build diversity and specialization? *shrugs* That's just my view on it.

 

As for MD, the days of Kappa are long gone now thanks to DS and Survival. I did suggest an idea several, several months ago, which I will shamelessly plug here. https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/119964-rethinking-mobile-defence/

[Xenogelion]

Who wouldn't simply slap on a mod that directly doubles or even triples your potential damage output, while there are 0 drawbacks or uses for other mods in that slot? 

 

Loki players ;) ALL DURATION ALL TIME!

[MDRLOz]

Gah we finally get a Xeno post and its just to cover his plugging his own thread whining about game length :P 

 

I remember when at one point mobile defence was going to be mobile and involve following a Lotus drone around as it hacks stuff.

 

Arc was annoying to set up (maximum password length? What crazy company puts a 14 character limit on password length? Does it not make it more secure to have more possible combinations for passwords?).

 

Why do they not close down games? Well they want more shiny things in the window of their store of course. A nice article from MMO Bomb explains the PWE plan to make ARC the F2P steam:

http://www.mmobomb.com/a-wide-arc-perfect-worlds-plan-for-warframe-and-f2p-gaming

Edited July 10, 2014 by MDRLOz

[Lorche]

Hmmmmm.

 

Well, on the PWE (also known as ARC these days) issue, they're maintaining a dead game because it's still gives them money. Profit numbs the feeling. On the Rusty Hearts case (I was playing there for some time), well it's more on the developer's problem (Windysoft are on big turmoil and under restructurization. Even their assets are on sale or something), and you would be surprized that you have to use Google to see their forum. And the forum are a mess. And the worse part? The game is still on Steam.

 

As for your theory Xeno, I really, really doubt that would happened. PWE is notorious for their super bad P2W practices. I've played some of their games to know how bad it is. Some interesting thing I found out in the internet, and surprisingly, they talk a lot about how PWE did in other games (no idea if you guys already read this or not)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/29o7jk/perfect_world_planning_on_purchasing_digital/

 

One thing I also noticed about mods, that there are misnumbers in some mods. Like, why a pure +Magazine mods for pistol has less bonus than Ice Storm? There's more on that list. I hope the balance U14 brings up will balance the number of these mods. Other than that, Mod system definitely need some extra attention.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Lorche

[Xenogelion]

Episode 39 with notionphil can be found on the first post as well as here:

 

 

http://youtu.be/bEClRjlYPaw

 

p.s. Sorry but it's a long one.

[bejuizb]

Phew. I managed to sit the whole episode out, and it was a damn good one too. Its great to hear Phil's voice at last and a more free opinion on stuff that's happening with the game. 

 

With regards to his thread on mod variety, I think it really touches up something that really peeved me and still does with Warframe: straight upgrades. Everyone knows that Serration has no alternatives, and they have no other source to go to for increasing their effectiveness into meta content. Mods with traits and drawbacks nullify this flaw. I'd personally go for the Serration with headshot bonuses and forego my old one in a heartbeat, because it caters to MY playstyle. A possible issue I see with this is a) devs not putting in effort to improve mechanics (content vs qaulity, a rant I can go on and on for) and b) community overreactions and the overall sheep mentality they have. Sure, mod pool dilution might be an issue, but that can be remedied quite easily. But the two issues I highlighted are going to be a downright pain to deal with.

 

I personally believe, and this is from watching literally every single livestream and playing the game for several hours a day for nearly 18 months now, that the dev team are afraid. This is not accusatory by any means, but rather just the effect the community has had on them. Warframe has some of the most active forum communities I've ever seen in my short life, and with the steady influx of players comes the increase in what I like to call the "sheep" effect. Case in point: Zamboni's thread. Back in December, I was WAY more naive than I am now with regards to the game, and I also fell into his politically worded trap, and one of those 1.1k upvotes is mine. Players don't have any direction to go to, so to say, and therefore, like sheep, they eagerly follow anyone who looks like they know what they're talking about. 

 

Zamboni's thread was a pile of smoking S#&$e, but back then, he seemed like a messiah of sorts to the normal forum populace: he looked like he could make changes. Players decided that he was their best hope, and lo and behold, you have thousands of upvotes and mindless support and stupid hostility. Sheep. Simple as that. I don't mean any particular offense to anyone by calling them sheep. Its just how I see things.

 

With this comes fearmongering and people trying to assert some aggression (some uncalled for, some genuinely passionate about the game) which leads to the dev team tripping on their own feet. Previously, I felt like livestreams were more about interesting content, like answering important questions and stuff of the sort, but now, I personally just go on to see content reveals. Which means nearly one hour of a livestream can be condensed into three or so paragraphs or a three to four minute video. What about the other 56 minutes? 

 

I've been getting the feeling of mild helplessness and fear from the devs whenever they interact with the community. They have been unable to be honest and forthcoming because the community loves to take their words and make them kick their own arses. U13 was a phenomenal example. They had a timer to a timer, for whatever development mishaps they might have had. Ever since then, soon has been the only response. No definitive feedback, because failing to do so (due to circumstances) is not tolerated by the community. I hope my point is coming clear. The lines of communication have been strangled and nearly shut off not just because of devs being busy, but rather the chokehold the overexuberant community has had on them. 

 

I do have a bit more to say about this, but maybe save it for later. I think I've written enough considering that I just woke up from 4 hours of sleep XD

[Sixty5]

Damn that was long episode.

 

The entire feedback thing is a meh thing IMO. right now I'd liken the forums as a whole to a dump. Mostly it is full of rubbish, some of it is pure excrement, and yet inexplicably sometimes there are a few good things in there. Notionphil's stuff makes up a lot of that, and I'd like to think that from time to time, i'll throw something out there as well.

 

Mostly the games problems boil down to this

 

Warframe is what you get when a bunch of creative people are allowed to be creative, and that is a good thing. However, so many people have wanted to make this game for so long that they each have a number of ideas of what they want it to be. And in a situation like that, unless you have someone to rule with an iron fist, things get messy. This is why the visual style of this game is so great, because ultimately it comes down to Mynki's vision.

i'll stop here before I start ranting.

 

Anyways, great episode as always, and look forward to the next one.

[MDRLOz]

I always enjoy guest episodes so much. You think that was a long episode but we were chatting before hand and afterwards for agesss. 

 

So guest list so far has been:

 

Yuakami

SilverBones 

KrashOmnis

Sixty5 

Notionphil 

 

All such awesome people with awesome voices.

 

Also I will get on and make a quote list. I am worried I will start duplicating myself or Xeno. Also I cant believe I lost on emblems, though it was Notionphil's choice and he justified it very well I still think mine was better. Oh well next week I can just bully Xeno into letting me win again. Also finding it hard to get more emblems at the moment. Maybe once wednesday hits I will find more people with cool emblems.

 

I agree with  bejuizb about the zamboni thread. If you asked me back in 2013 I would have upvoted the thread and thought it a great suggestion. I feel at the time there was a bit of emptiness felt by players about lack of game-play progress. We had damage 2.0 but not much to it and nothing really new to use it on. For the time the thread was made in it felt reasonable. Now its out of date and its poor vision is exposed.