New Player Experience

[Choggo]

So last night I went back and played through the starting planets, spending most of my time using a melee weapon and focused on chatting and observing how new players experience the game, and I was just astonished how different the game is played, it was like watching a totally different game.   

 

As any veteran framer knows, most missions in WF involve players solo rushing through the map as fast as possible with little to no chat among players, you may get some conversations in Survival or Defense missions, but even those can be uncommon.

 

But watching brand new players, nobody was rushing through the maps, players were sticking together and fighting groups of enemies, I saw people exploring  and hunting down every crate they could find to gather up the valuable resources.  Overall, it was a much slower paced experience where people worked together.

 

And the reasons for this was obvious, enemies take a lot of bullets to kill and you don't, so you had to work together or you don't survive.  It made me realize the amount of issues that arise if DE wanted to bring this experience to the endgame level, it was be very difficult to balance but due to the way dmg mods are currently designed, the difference between a new player with average mods, vs a vet with a formaed weapon and maxed out mods is huge.  

 

Right now, DE has it balanced by having the Tiered void missions, and endless missions that continue to get more difficult the longer you stick around.  Which works but comes with issues, newer players have difficulty running the higher tier voids to get the gear they want, and vets have to stick around a void for 30 minutes before it starts becoming a challenge.  

 

I realize this would take a major overhaul, as you would have to not only change mods, but lower every enemies health to balance.  But my only suggestion I could make is to significantly cut the boosts gained by damage mods, make the element more important than the % damage boost it provides.  

As right now, except for a few crit weapons (yeah I'm talking about you Soma) you pretty much stack damage mods, with a few "filler" mods filling the gaps. 

 

If you cut the boost, people are still going to stack dmg, but it would really gives more options, choosing between 90% dmg and 30% clip size...you choose damage, but if it was brought down to say 10% more damage vs 30% clip size, both are very good choices.  

 

I think if you curb the damage boost gained from mods, in the long run it would make it a lot easier for DE to balance out endgame and make the game more fun, players would have to start sticking together more to survive.  

 

Thoughts?

[MDRLOz]

Kind of a misleading title. Also this probably belongs in feedback. 

 

It is hard for DE to balance. They do not seem to want to set an ideal ceiling for damage of weapon even though mods have maximum levels. 

 

We will really have to wait and see if DE can deliver on any endgame projects and how well they balance them. 

 

Some people agree with you and say we should just take away the damage mods (aka serration, hornet strike) but its hard to say. 

[(PSN)Budukai_Man]

In truth I did a lot of exploration when I started in Ps4 as well. In fact, that's how all of us were in the beginning. I would imagine one way for DE to get players to slow down again would be to have some mods come out lockers and crates too.

[immolator1001]

Is this really a problem? The game is about you progressing, not only your frames or weapons but your entire profile. So in the beginning your an inexperienced Tenno who slowly builds up to being an absolute bad***!

[Kestral9999]

Here's an idea that would likely get me shot down with verbal abuse.

 

Why not just get rid direct damage increasing mods? That would make the game drastically easier to balance.

 

You're right though, I actually will occaisionally break out one of my starter frames and go back to Mercury or Venus because I like helping and teaching new players and I appreciate how much more teamwork there is to be had there. It seems to me like there is an inverse relationship with players' teamwork orientation and their arsenal strength. The more powerful they are the more self serving they become.

[AM-Bunny]

I can't be bothered to look for it now, but a recent thread in the feedback forum traced part of the problem back to forma. I know it's far too late to remove forma from the game, and I appreciate that forma add some level of "specialization" in a certain weapon, but I don't think they help the game, overall.

 

Without forma, innate polarities are extremely important. Depending on what a weapon has if any, is a huge deal, and can be balanced versus lower stats. This adds a lot more variety to weapons (this one has higher damage, but this one has a V polarity). Also, without forma, you'd have to be a lot more careful with what you put on your guns. Serration and Split Chamber an elemental combo and maybe one utility mod is all you'd have room for.

 

Forma effectively removes the limitation of mod points, a system designed to keep you from stacking too many powerful mods and obtaining unbalanced dps. Think about it for a while and ask yourself how the game would be without them.

[IANOBW]

Keep in mind that you do see mastery rank 4-7 players using low tier weapon in places like pluto, and you often see them in teans of 2 or 3. Its the same as on mercury/venus/etc, its just that once you get past earth, there are so many diffent paths the tenno can take. Often, many player stick to one planet to farm and level their equipment up to the point that they are able to solo those planets, they do the same again and again until they can solo all the planet's missions.

 

And everyone does this. DE cant change a player's way of playing the game: most choose the option to grind so that they will be able to go on by themselves. This is why teamwork diminishes as levels get higher and higher: its almost like the player becomes independant, which is actually a good thing. You dont want to have someone with you on pluto survival who cant survive on their own and have to be at your side the whole time.

 

Well, there goes my train of thought

 

Infact, my post isnt even on the right tracks anyway. carry on.

Edited June 24, 2014 by IANOBW

[DaWolv]

Is this really a problem? The game is about you progressing, not only your frames or weapons but your entire profile. So in the beginning your an inexperienced Tenno who slowly builds up to being an absolute bad***!

... and then slowly dies of boredom.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/242928-new-content-with-a-side-of-nerf-please/

[BiancaRoughfin]

Things are diferent when a game or world is new to you, your excited and afraid of everything, every move or interaction is special and diferent, you still dont know your limites and your too scared of crossing them and compromising your whole team and getting excluded from it.

 

When your as experienced as we are, you know your limits and you always walk on the line and try to bring the enemies down to it. We chat less becouse we know what our teammates are thinking when we see an enemy. We rush to the end of the mission becouse we already know what to do and know we have more important things on the "To do" list.

But yes, the thrill we feel being unexperienced and playing is much greater then we feel today!

Edited June 24, 2014 by BiancaRoughfin