Cash Market With Free Blueprints Is Confusing For New Players

[Lorane_Airwing]

As the title says. Opening up the cash market automatically explodes with "ads" for various war-frames and the current sales. The last few friends i have introduced to warframe simply closed the tab and expected certain enemies to drop methods to create weapons after encountering leaders. The game seems indecisive about how it teaches new players about crafting weapons. Lotus mentions the market and being able to craft weapons later, but the market immediately opens up to a cash shop. Even more so platinum is not described as being a cash only currency to new players. Meaning weapons simply LOOK like new weapons to buy instead of blueprints leading to more confusion. To add to the confusion leaders now drop oberon parts. while this is a major upside to making this easier for new players ( an easy to get warframe, besides their starter. ) , it leads to confusion as now enemies drop blueprints. To a new player who rejected the cash-money market as ONLY cash-money this simply leads them down the path that if they look hard enough an enemy will drop a weapon bp.

 

 

Solutions?

 

A) Make the tutorial more clear when introducing platinum, blueprints, and introduce the market properly.

 

B) make a separate button for blueprints, NOT IN THE MARKET, this way new players don't feel they are being force fed ads for warframes and sales and instead what they can make as a player. If you really wish to still push the market than put an "ad" while you buy the blueprint offering the fully constructed weapon for platinum instead. As long as new players can see that making weapons with credits and resources is easily possible and not buried under market>weapons>blueprints.

 

C) The rng option that everyone will dislike; If leaders are the new example of getting weapons, be consistent and don't hold back. Make lancers drop the grakatta blueprint , and elite lancers drop the hind blueprint. As long as each blueprint has an enemy it drops from. Leaders, and captain vor already do this with oberon,the seer, and the cronus, all of these the player encounters in mercury and leads to their expectation that enemies drop weapons. It's not like having an inventory filled with hind blueprints is a bad thing when you can just sell them to help crafting that amphis you wanted to.

 

D) the later solution: Starcharts are leaving anyway. maybe when we get the MMO style hubs we will have a proper market for blueprints in one part and platinum in another. Even if the platinum market place will obviously be larger and flashier at least the blueprint vendor will be easy to locate and buy a bluerprint from.

 

 

thoughts?

[Orbister]

Yes, warframe can be confusing, but sometimes new players dont want to make the smallest effort to understand the game, and that is a bad thing too.

[(NSW)LilVanu]

Yes, warframe can be confusing, but sometimes new players dont want to make the smallest effort to understand the game, and that is a bad thing too.

 

It's not really about effort. It's about getting the wrong idea. Warframe isn't exactly doing things like 90 other games out there so it actually makes sense to have the idea that "It's probably something I have to get from drops" Which was actually my first thought when starting fresh.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Sutherland

[Lorane_Airwing]

Yes, warframe can be confusing, but sometimes new players dont want to make the smallest effort to understand the game, and that is a bad thing too.

There is a difference between spending several days hunting for bluerprints wondering why you can't find other weapons, and thinking the market is ONLY for cash when you open the first tab and it consists of "BUY THIS,BUY THIS,BUY THIS, SALE HERE!, BUY THIS PACK FOR SAVINGS" and lacks any mention of blueprints and how free players progress, I'm sorry but as older players we have experiences that make stuff like this feel like "duh of course you go to tab 3 of the market and click the small blueprint icon that's a third the size of the platinum shop icon for weapons". It's something we've learned to cope with. However providing a new player experience will only HELP warframe and not hinder it. I understand the purpose of warframes market is to make money, but players who don't want ot spend money anyway are just going to be upset by the absurd amount of "ads" between them and the free player blueprints. Leading to the loss of both a player, and in the future if they enjoyed the game enough to buy something a potential customer willing to spend money.

 

 

It's not really about effort. It's about getting the wrong idea. Warframe isn't exactly doing things like 90 other games out there so it actually makes sense to have the idea that "It's probably something I have to get from drops" Which was actually my first thought when starting fresh.

It doesn't help the recent addition of leaders re-enforces that sort of "false" fact that enemies drop blueprints. DE seems to be making a lot of awkward game design choices lately.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Lorane_Airwing