The Real "cost" Of 24-Hour Revives

[NoCatharsis]

So I'm a newcomer as of this evening, and I was wholeheartedly blown away & impressed with graphics & gameplay immediately - I loved it. A friend & I started playing some missions together, probably 2 hours before he had to go. Because I'm about to head to bed, did not want to join anybody else & decided to give the Solo mode a runthrough (after all, it's a gameplay option - it can't lead to certain death, i.e. credits, i.e. hard-earned cash).

My reactions after about 2-3 hours of playing & reading up on this game:

1) Within 10 mins of Solo play, all 4 of my revives had been used. I am now locked out of my character for 24 hours. This means (if any developers haven't noticed yet?) that I will not be logging into nor touching your game for approximately 1 entire day. So much for advertising & marketing - right? I'm no business major, but the idea behind marketing a good product is to keep it ever-present in a customer's psyche. I thought it was fun, guys, but I won't be dreaming about the game nor will I skip work & sit around waiting for my timer to tick away so I can play my own character again tomorrow night. The marketing tactic seems exactly counter-intuitive, if you didn't get my point.

2) Building upon item #1:

I came across the realization that 24 hours is a very bad amount of time to lock players totally out of their own characters. Think about it. You play @ 7 PM each evening w/ 2 other friends. Things are going well at first (like for myself), no revives used. Then around 8:30 PM you start a particularly difficult mission. Within 15 mins - given you're a noob such as myself & perhaps 90% of the audience out there falls in this category? - all 4 revives are used & gone for good. Now your friends are also either dead or out 1 partner at the very least, meanwhile I am forced to leave and go do something else unless I want to chuck out some cash on an impulse (always a great financial tactic).

Now here's the really fun part. 7 PM rolls around the following evening & you get online to meet your friends for your daily stress relief, play some games before bed. Unfortunately, your first death/revive was @ 8:30 PM. You haven't hit your 24-hour golden time unlock yet. Your friends also get on, maybe they didn't have to use all 4 revives. They start playing without you - now short 1 player, and honestly my friends and I prefer to play co-op games between ourselves. That means they don't replace me with some rando from the internet. 2 players < 3 players in co-op and they have a hard time. They use all their revives by 8:30 PM. Then happy days - your 4 revives have, well, revived! And you have absolutely nobody to play with, since by preference, you prefer to play with your friends (I don't think this is a rash preference for some players - we all trust each other & know each other very well, why not play together consistently & exclusively?).

In summation, the night is over before it began. What may have been your usual stress relief after a day at work has now ended abruptly and you have to play another game, in which case you may just find something that gets your mind off Warframe.... like totally off of it - to the point that you forget it's even installed anymore. I have 200 games on Steam: tell me this doesn't happen to lots of gamers out there.

2 months pass, I leave the game installed but since we had a pretty bad experience we haven't played it since. Meanwhile we've been running through Borderlands 2 or Diablo 3 or any other number of co-op games in the world. After those 2 months, I generally do a clean wash of old games I don't touch anymore. With 2 clicks, Warframe would be gone from my hard drive along with any potential profits I would be willing to expend, if only my experience & my friends' experiences had been more positive out the door.

Everything mentioned here is not out of the question for my friends and myself, nor do I think it's unusual gamer behavior. We play to get a quick thrill usually, or to relax, or to actually SAVE money instead of going to the mall or the theater to spend more of it (trust me, I know - I'm currently an unemployed engineer). If 2 or 3 of these factors are not satisfied by your game, which they would not be, then what is the purpose? We would see none and I think you would lose 3 highly devoted gamers, who would eventually spend a couple dollars here and there to advance through the game - given they aren't locked out for 24 hour intervals against their will.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the pun - I haven't spent 2 cents on your game just yet. I might be willing, if I can see some sort of long-term benefit, minus the 24-hour lockouts. Hope this is taken as purely constructive criticism, I don't mean to be trolling. Thanks for your time.

[Grinstone]

I haven't lost all my revives since U7, so it's possible that this has changed, but having 0/4 revives only means that if you die again you will automatically fail the mission you're on. There is no "locking out".

Also, you get four revives per warframe. If you have more than one 'frame and you run out of revives on that, you can hop onto the other.

[Thirdstar]

"I am now locked out of my character for 24 hours"

What led you to believe this is true?

Running out of revives does not lock you out of your Warframe.

[shoudra]

first of all, you aren't really locked out if you play with others you can get a revive before bleeding out. Since you are new I am going to guess you didn't know that. Secondly, you can still play without any revives however, you can't revive after which is all that it means aka mission failure. Also, while I know a lot of people have a habit of being a lone wolf, I would advise getting modded first before doing such thing.

Edit: 2 other people beat me to the main point!

Edited March 27, 2013 by shoudra

[husnielyas]

^ what he said. you can still play with no revives. and your friends who play with you can still revive you when youre dying/bleeding out (not dead yet). so that whole.. 2 cents worth of text - kinda invalid :/

[Geryon]

One last thing to note - revives reset (now) at 12 am GMT, so it wouldn't matter when you or your friends lost revives; they'd all reset at the same time.

[fatalis92]

Four revive for each frame. You still can play without revives. If you use 4 revives in 10 minutes or in the same mission, maybe, you should change mission or think about that projetiles arent candies XD

[shoudra]

Four revive for each frame. You still can play without revives. If you use 4 revives in 10 minutes or in the same mission, maybe, you should change mission or think about that projetiles arent candies XD

Forgot that point, thanks for adding it!

[Tvol]

It's a fair point. The game should be clearer about just how valuable those revives are until you have more frames. I've seen newbies pop them like candy before, when experienced players are saying over comms "You know, bugger this, I just dumped two revives and we aren't making progress."

[shoudra]

until the tutorial gets updated just need to teach newbies via forums :-/

[ZAPTONE]

its 4 revives every 24 hours not from when you used the revive. they reload at the same time every day

[Zonzai]

The paying for revives thing is a terrible idea. It's fine if you have a bunch of good mods and you've vested hundreds of hours into the game but when you are playing at low level, it's a terrible idea. There needs to be some kind of level limit for this. Like you have an unlimited number of revives until level 10 or something.

And no, the free platinum thing doesn't suffice. This is about turning people off from the game. They will instantly think, "Oh this game is just another pay to win." Even though we know that's not true, that will be one of their first impressions of the game. As much as I love Warframe, DE should be scolded for implementing this system. And it upsets me because I want the game to succeed.

Three times now I have had discussions with people who decided that they weren't going to keep playing Warframe because it was pay-2-win. All three of them pointed to this very thing as one of the reasons they (erroneously) believed it was. No good will come of it and DE needs to change it. DE, don't turn away new players with this. It is happening.

[Zonzai]

All of you guys correcting the OP are completely missing the point. The technicality of the issue isn't important. You're right in that regard. But it is still giving new players a bad impression. Address the issue.

[shoudra]

Honestly, I did not...The problem in my opinion the tutorials need to explain it better and be updated. Right now, at least I tried to explain it in its current state. The game's revive system is more than plenty if you are grouped, I will admit the bleed out time could be a little longer imo and the revive bug is mostly fixed, the revive system as is to encourage grouping. I will admit the low level maps might need tweaking as well because eventually everyone will disappear in low level areas after they get shield cap mods if they are online status.

[JamnikPucek]

If you use up all 4 revives within 10 minutes of starting to play, you are doing something very, very wrong. Seriously.

Do not use revive if you die at the beggining of the mission, just fail it and restart. Revives should be saved imho for those moments where you die right in front of the evac chamber, or something similar.

If you are dying in the first system on anything other then the Boss or the Infected mission, then you seriously need to consider why you are dying so much and do something about it. Even the 2 systems you advance to after the initial one are not that hard to survive with very basic, no mod gear.

Do not treat revives as a mandatory part of the game. If you died, you failed. You either took on a mission that is too hard for your current setup/skill level solo or in a group, made a mistake that ended up with you dead, or just had a spot of bad luck.

Well that, or you met the Stalker ;)

More often then not, especially when soloing, I find myself forefiting and restarting way, way more often then using a revive. The 4 daily revives are there as a gratuity, not as an element of the game. You can, if you want, buy more with plat, say if you are getting ready for an endless defense with your buddies but just finished a run of 666 boss farms and sort of have this sinking feeling a certain black clad friend will come visiting.

In short: A revive is an exception, not a standard. Your focus has to be surviving the entire mission (buy health packs *hinthint*) not the assumption that you can die and revive. In a group setting, it is basic curtesy to do what you can to try and raise your teammates, within reason of course. A casualty (and revive) means failure, someone either ran off and got themselves killed out of reach of their teammates, or their teammates failed to react to their down.

WF missions last 15-20 minutes. You are expected to survive the entire engagement.

Edited March 28, 2013 by JamnikPucek

[CosyPigeon]

It isn't important that the OP is wrong about not being able to play after losing the revives, the important thing is that they thought that and stoppped playing the game. And many other players probably have thought the same thing and left the game. This game NEEDS players to succeed, and losing them over a simple mechanic like this that could easily be changed seems like a tremendous waste.

[shoudra]

It isn't important that the OP is wrong about not being able to play after losing the revives, the important thing is that they thought that and stoppped playing the game. And many other players probably have thought the same thing and left the game. This game NEEDS players to succeed, and losing them over a simple mechanic like this that could easily be changed seems like a tremendous waste.

I agree which is why I mentioned that they need to update tutorials to explain that among other things. Hoping it will be done soon as well.

[Starbit]

Even if you run out of your revives (like me), you can still join games and get revived by others. If they fail to revive you, you can either leave the game or wait for them to complete the map.

No big deal, really.

[JamnikPucek]

It isn't important that the OP is wrong about not being able to play after losing the revives, the important thing is that they thought that and stoppped playing the game. And many other players probably have thought the same thing and left the game. This game NEEDS players to succeed, and losing them over a simple mechanic like this that could easily be changed seems like a tremendous waste.

Loosing them over what mechanic? That dying is punished? Since when in the history of Video Games loosing does not mean... Well, loosing. Seiroulsy. The "many others" has absolutely no backing in actual numbers, so I can't really even address that.

The tutorials need a bit of work in explaining the leveling/modding mechanics, yes. Hells, I can't say I can really oppose throwing in a "Death is bad, do not die" clause. But seriously, if "many others" leave the game because this is not immideatly apparent to them after dying a bit at the latest, I do not think the tutorial will help any.

If anything, this seems more a "let me die with no consequence whatsoever" plea then anything else. I do not see what you are implying from the OP at all.

[KazyJumps]

Loosing them over what mechanic? That dying is punished? Since when in the history of Video Games loosing does not mean... Well, loosing. Seiroulsy. The "many others" has absolutely no backing in actual numbers, so I can't really even address that.

I would be surprised if he didn't mean it was bad that the OP thought he couldn't play anymore, not that it was bad that the guy ran out of revives.

[Frazeil]

If I died twice within the first 10 minutes of mission I'd forfeit straight away, I have no idea how you're dying so often.

I'll go as far to say this game might not be for you, don't get me wrong I do understand your point about new players getting a bad 'impression', but I cant grasp why you'd continue a mission even after 3 deaths to the point you had only one left. There is a clear indicator about how many lives you have, didn't you think it was a bad idea to use them all up on ONE mission?

In a traditional MMO (Aion,TERA, WoW, Whatever) you wouldn't attempt to level up on mobs that dish out more damage than you would you? (4 freaking times!) So.... does it really take a newbie 4 deaths, with an indicator stating the maximum amount of times they can revive to come to the realization that they cant solo a specific mission? Erm...

[Kopikatsu]

Step 1. Buy Rhino.

Step 2. Run straight into battle while essentially invulnerable.

Step 3. ???

Step 4. Profit

[JamnikPucek]

I would be surprised if he didn't mean it was bad that the OP thought he couldn't play anymore, not that it was bad that the guy ran out of revives.

In other words, you are implying that the OP (and the mysterious "many others" as the poster I was replying to implied) does not understand the meaning of the word "revive" and has just assumed they are lives without the game telling him that he cannot play anymore? Or in fact clearly giving him the option of using a revive or failing the mission when he dies if he has the tokens?

I do not think there is a simpler word in the English langauge that puts the concept out. And it is one word that is not scifiy or any other wierd stuff like that. One word with a clear meaning.

I would understand if it was "lives" or whatever else, but the word "revive" clearly indicates its function. That is even worse then my assumption. Way worse. I try not to be a smug #$&(% as much as I can, but if the word "revive" needs to be explained to the modern video game player in a tutorial, to quote a certain meme from a certian show, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Edited March 28, 2013 by JamnikPucek

[KazyJumps]

In other words, you are implying that the OP (and the mysterious "many others" as the poster I was replying to implied) does not understand the meaning of the word "revive" and has just assumed they are lives without the game telling him that he cannot play anymore? Or in fact clearly giving him the option of using a revive or failing the mission when he dies if he has the tokens?

I'm pretty sure that that's what the OP said, how else would you interpret his statement that he is "locked out" of his character? He quite clearly thinks that he can't use the character anymore.

It's not the wording that's unclear, it's the context that makes you doubt. When I first found warframe I assumed that it would work how the OP clearly thinks it does. Not because it makes sense, but because Warframe is FtP and the game lets you buy more revives. Thus I assumed that this was a way the devs had chosen to monetize their game and that I would have to pay to get extra revives and be unable to play if I ran out. I was wrong of course, and I realised that when I ran out of lives, but if enough people try the game, and enough people assume that (because it is Free to Play) then at least some people will believe that they are locked out without actually checking.

[zyraconne]

I do not think there is a simpler word in the English langauge that puts the concept out. And it is one word that is not scifiy or any other wierd stuff like that. One word with a clear meaning.

Retry(ies)