To Aid The Newb: A Goal Most Noble

[RagnorakTres]

Apologies for the wall of text...

 

To preface, I'm not super new to this game, I started back when Volt was a starter frame (and he's still my favorite to play), but I don't think I've seen any sort of tier-lists for weapons and frames or even any beginner's guides to modding. The mod system is a sea of confusion for most people, which is a problem as it is the singular reason I consider this game so good and the primary reason I find myself returning so frequently. It's incredibly in-depth and touches every facet of your playstyle, from how you move across the battlefield to how often you shoot that *censored* Corpus *even more censored* *ED is a serious medical condition, not an insult* Alad V right in his *now that's just offensive* face.

 

*deep breaths*

 

But this isn't about me. See, having played for a while (though I would in no way consider myself an expert; I'm terrible at this game), I have some clue what I'm doing when it comes to mods. I pretty much know my preferred playstyle and what mods I require to be most effective. I know how to use the tools at my disposal to greatest effect when building a loadout or considering a new 'frame. But the newbies don't, they need all the help they can get. DE has made huge strides to improve the new player experience, but it's still pretty terrible, and that limits our community's growth in an awful way. Some of the onus falls to DE (I think the shop could be arranged in a much better way, in particular, with more of an emphasis on the Cred shop), but they know our feelings on this, and there's a lot we can do to help. We need to meet them halfway and do our part to improve the lot of the newb.

 

One way we can do this is to collate freely available information into an easily digestible format, say an FAQ or a Player's Guide for Newbs and keep it up-to-date, at least to the last major iteration (13 at the time of this post). One of the first things we need to do if this is to be a goal is answer some very basic questions:

 

1. What are the essential roles in a well-developed Tenno Cell? What 'frame is the absolute pinnacle in each of those roles? What 'frame is the best for solo play?

 

   This is "meta-building," which is helpful for newbs because it gives them an idea what they should be doing all the time in a match. Are you a Rhino? Get into the middle of a group of enemies and start wreaking some havoc with Iron Skin up. Are you playing Excal? Weave in and out of the fight. Are you trying out Nova? Stay back and pump damage out like a busted fire hydrant. Et cetera. Every 'frame has a place (yes, even Trinity).

 

2/3/4. What are the most powerful (primary/secondary/melee) weapons currently in the following categories:

  a. Anti-Grineer?

  b. Anti-Corpus?

  c. Anti-Infested?

  2d/3d. Sniper-style (one shot, one kill, long range)?

  2e/3e. Assault-style (reliable damage, mid range)?

  2f/3f. Danger-close (for you black, Scottish cyclopes)?

 

   These help narrow the field for the newb. There are more than a hundred different weapons in Warframe. When I started out, there were considerably less, but I still based my farming decisions more on "what looked cool" than "what was good." Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's nothing more disheartening than discovering that the fancy new Bo staff you finally managed to put together is basically as effective as a plastic lightsaber. Not to mention that space is limited, you can only have so many weapons available at a time. It's worth it to consider your farming carefully.

 

5. What are the 5 most essential mods that every player ought to have a max rank copy of in each of the major categories (Warframe/Sentinel/Primary/Secondary/Melee)?

 

   This is the meat of the guide. We who are experienced know that 25 mods is a drop in the bucket. Remember those 100+ weapons? Each of them has 8 mod slots, 9 in the case of melee weapons. There are currently 19 'frames available, not counting the prime variants, each of them has 11 mod slots. There are hundreds of mods and millions (billions? I don't feel like doing algorithm work tonight) of potential combinations. But to the newb? 25 max rank mods is a long-term goal. That's a week of contiguous play at minimum. In the course of their play, they'll get rare drops, lots of cash for fusion and unlock a lot of the map. We're going to ignore Aura and Stance mods for this question, simply because those largely depend on your playstyle.

 

The mod system is, I think, where we lose most of our new playerbase. It's confusing, it's huge, and it's hard to delve into without getting wiki'd. There's nothing wrong with directing new players to the wiki, but the wiki is an ocean of information, it has to be because of the size of the game it's representing. That's a lot of research to ask a person new to the game to do. So why don't we who've already done that research share it out? My thought is that we provide a link to the mod's wiki page so that the newb knows where to go to get the mod. This provides direction and, more importantly, a goal after the guided tutorial.

 

I welcome your thoughts and suggestions and most especially your answers to the questions posed above. As I said, I'm terrible at this game, I'm not even sure how I would begin codifying all of this information, but I'm more than willing to collate and curate it if no one else wants the job. I think this game is great, and it can only get better the more people we have playing it, so if I can have even a small part in expanding our playerbase, I'd be overjoyed.

[CaptainJohnson]

As much as I love the wiki page (and believe me, I use that thing frequently), I'm not sure it's really up to snuff for explaining the complexities of the game in one page. Not that I wouldn't link it to some newbie who was really confused- or, well, maybe I'd just tell them to Google it- but it's also not enough. I'm hopeful that U14 will ship with a tutorial on mods, or at least will give newer players essential tools to start the process; ultimately, it's something that DE needs to actively work on.

 

Another issue is that many of the things you've talked about are not necessarily universal. In regards to the frames themselves, I've seen plenty of disagreement about all of them and how they should be used. Is Loki's role better suited for Radial Disarm, or Invisibility, or a mix between the two? What role does Banshee play in the game? What about Oberon? I'm not trying to make a point about any of these, and I'm not saying that they're useless frames (I personally love both). There is, however, quite a bit of disagreement that makes these things difficult. I'm not saying this is the nail in the coffin on this idea, but it's difficult to write objectively about these things as players who have our own opinions about them.

 

I am in complete agreement on this issue. The mods system is what I love most about this game and all the people who complain about Mods 2.0 really rustle my jimmies, but it is a flippin' maze for a newbie. I'm acutely aware of it since I was a newbie back at the start of U12 (or perhaps it was the tail end of U11, I never really bothered figuring it out back then).

[Shion963]

Well U14 is supposed to come with something that might address new player experience IIRC by introducing them to the must-have mods, so IMHO I'll see how that goes first.

 

On the tier list, that'd be an awesome thing to have, although it might (IMHO) cull curiosity and exploration. One of the things I liked most back then was NOT knowing what the best thing is, since it pushes me to try and experiment, as opposed to getting the best weapon. But more structured information is always good, you can only go so far in pointing them towards the wiki.

 

Perhaps a tech-tree esque "Weapon Progression" chart, scaling with your Mastery Rank, and split in the roles? I.E. MR0 is Braton Mk-1, splitting to Latron (Sniper), Burston (accuracy), Braton(Support), Strun(Assault). Something my new-player friend keeps asking me is "Hey, I'm MR(x) now, what weapon should I try out?". And I can't answer him reliably since I don't remember what weapon is available when.

[Utarious]

-snip

 

1. What are the essential roles in a well-developed Tenno Cell? What 'frame is the absolute pinnacle in each of those roles? What 'frame is the best for solo play?

 

Nova would be most likely the pinnacle of glass cannon type gameplay, Valk or Rhino (depending on who you ask) would be the pinnacle of tanking, Trinity being the best heal/restore support, Vauban for CC, Frost for Defense, Nekros for Survival. These are from what I know best "pinnacles" the reason why there is no supportive caster is because that section is hard to put a pinnacle on unless you include Trinity. Solo play would be Loki/Ash if you want to just invisibility spam and avoid everything, Rhino or Valk if you want to actually fight. Now there could be alternating opinions as "pinnacles" in roles is highly opinion based and remember this is just my personal opinion.

 

-snip

 

2/3/4. What are the most powerful (primary/secondary/melee) weapons currently in the following categories:

  a. Anti-Grineer?

  b. Anti-Corpus?

  c. Anti-Infested?

The thing about these questions is that the physical damage doesn't seem to make much difference, you mainly rely on elemental damage. (At least in my opinion) So I would say Boltor Prime, Marelok and Dragon Nikana would be the most powerful once you put the right elementals on. (Magnetic for corpus, Radiation for Grineer, Infested kind of are opinion based between Gas or Corrosive, Corrosive kills Ancients faster while Gas kills stuff like chargers faster)

 

  2d/3d. Sniper-style (one shot, one kill, long range)?

Best "sniper" weapon would be the Vectis unless you want to use a bow in which it would be the Dread OR Paris Prime. Now if you want a secondary sniper like weapon, Lex or Marelok is the way to go.

 

  2e/3e. Assault-style (reliable damage, mid range)?

I am going to guess you want a assault rifle, that being the case Boltor Prime or Soma are considered the "best" assault rifle type weapons but I personally love running around with my Karak.

 

  2f/3f. Danger-close (for you black, Scottish cyclopes)?

As you made I want to guess a Demoman reference from TF2 I am going to think you want explosive type weapons, for explosives there aren't much, Ogris being a primary rocket launcher, Penta being a primary grenade launcher, Angstrum being a secondary rocket launcher type weapon and Castanas being lightning grenade type kunai for the secondary.

 

-snip

 

5. What are the 5 most essential mods that every player ought to have a max rank copy of in each of the major categories (Warframe/Sentinel/Primary/Secondary/Melee)?

 

For warframes I will have to say that a Redirection, Intensify, Continuity, Flow and Streamline will be the one that are most necessary, so you have better survivability and can upgrade your abilities as needed on each warframe. (This is excluding the ability mods)

 

For primaries/secondaries/melee I would have to say a maxed rank copy of each elemental (Toxin, Lightning, Cold and Fire) and the raw damage increase mods, (Serration for Primary Rifles, Point Blank for Primary Shotguns, Hornet Strike for ALL Secondaries and Pressure Point for melee) so you can increase your damage effectively to take on enemies.

 

-snip

 

The mod system is, I think, where we lose most of our new playerbase. It's confusing, it's huge, and it's hard to delve into without getting wiki'd. There's nothing wrong with directing new players to the wiki, but the wiki is an ocean of information, it has to be because of the size of the game it's representing. That's a lot of research to ask a person new to the game to do. So why don't we who've already done that research share it out? My thought is that we provide a link to the mod's wiki page so that the newb knows where to go to get the mod. This provides direction and, more importantly, a goal after the guided tutorial.

 

I welcome your thoughts and suggestions and most especially your answers to the questions posed above. As I said, I'm terrible at this game, I'm not even sure how I would begin codifying all of this information, but I'm more than willing to collate and curate it if no one else wants the job. I think this game is great, and it can only get better the more people we have playing it, so if I can have even a small part in expanding our playerbase, I'd be overjoyed.

(Answers to questions should be in color in the quote)

 

Anyways my thoughts on this are I agree we lose most of our "newer" playerbase at the mod system, it is large and without guidance can be extremely easy to get lost in, and it is constantly being expanded with no real tutorial right now which hopefully they change. A mere tutorial can stop a lot of confusion and frustration. As for weapons I like Shion's tech tree type idea so you can know what you have access too and what each weapon will fulfill as a role. Another thing that I think would help is to have each frame have a "skill tree" type thing alongside the mod system, kind of like a supportive thing so we can possibly free up some mods from the system and possibly reduce confusion.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Utarious

[toxictangent]

Well, I'll give this a go. It's certainly a good concept to get behind.

 

1. The essential roles in a well developed Tenno cell may not always have the same proportions. However, there is more often than not going to be a good tank, a crowd controller and a support role. The last slot in a 4 man cell may vary depending on the mission. If it is a survival, this would fall to the 'farming' role where the Tenno in question would be responsible for spawning additional oxygen packs/ loot (using Nekros). If not, the last slot can be a double up on another tank, cc or support.

 

Rhino, Saryn and Frost could perhaps fill the role of the tank (And perhaps a well utilised Trinity), but Rhino will have useful abilities such as Iron Skin to endure extra damage, and also has a good cc ability in the form of Rhino Stomp. Warframes with high health and armour should be considered for this role.

 

Frames filling in the crowd control role need to be able to dispatch many enemies with ease. Nova's ulti and Antimatter Drop can do this well, along with Ember's World on Fire. It is important that the frame has an ability with AOE damage that can cover a wide radius, so that they can take down more enemies. Volt, Mag and Zephyr among others might be good too. Some of these frames tend to be squishy, so hanging back and casting abilities would be a better option than running into the fray.

 

The support role is filled by frames that perhaps do not have the sheer damage output to fill the cc role, but can assist their team in stacking up kills.

Vauban's Bastille and Vortex may not directly kill as much as say, Nova's Antimatter Drop, but can make it easier for the team to do so. Loki's Radial Disarm and Nekros' Shadows of the Dead work in a similar way.

Healers can also fill the role of support. Trinity's Blessing and Well of Life is extremely useful in restoring health. Oberon's Reckoning and Renewal can assist with healing to an extent, along with Nekros' Desecrate being able to spawn more health orbs.

 

That being said, there is a lot of overlap since frames have 4 different abilities which could be used to fulfill different roles. These are just my suggestions and they are in no way the only option in which to do things. Feel free to experiment!

[RagnorakTres]

...Perhaps a tech-tree esque "Weapon Progression" chart, scaling with your Mastery Rank, and split in the roles? I.E. MR0 is Braton Mk-1, splitting to Latron (Sniper), Burston (accuracy), Braton(Support), Strun(Assault)...

I like this idea for weapons, definitely. A more structured approach to guiding people into their niche, while encouraging a certain amount of branching out. Also engages people in their Mastery rank, which is something that I feel is lacking. I don't feel connected to my overall Mastery rank the same way I feel connected to the mastery rank of individual weapons and 'frames.

 

...Another issue is that many of the things you've talked about are not necessarily universal. In regards to the frames themselves, I've seen plenty of disagreement about all of them and how they should be used. Is Loki's role better suited for Radial Disarm, or Invisibility, or a mix between the two? What role does Banshee play in the game? What about Oberon?...

This is definitely something to consider. My thought process, however, is that the newb should be insulated from debate about the meta and should instead play to the meta until they start to think about why it is the way it is. That way you have some people who are perfectly comfortable in their little pigeonhole, playing exactly the role they've always played and having just as much fun as the guy who's trying Rhino out as a damage caster. Not to mention, what 'frames is the newb going to have access to? Probably Excal, Loki and Mag. Mag's a straight caster, Excal is what I term a "weaver," alternating between ranged combat and close combat and abusing superior mobility (high skill ceiling, low skill floor) and Loki shouldn't really be a starter 'frame because he's so damn complex (I'd replace him with Rhino for a tankier feel).

[BluberryKnoob]

Danger close weapon is angstrum or ogris.

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[PieFlavor]

I started around 10 days ago (actually I started a long time ago but only went as far as picking volt and giving up on the game after the tutorial)

 

I must say I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of, well, stuff in the game but this is a feeling I am already familiar with.

 

Don't underestimate newbies, most of them are seasoned gamers, they know the feeling of being overwhelmed due to the amount of stuff to learn when they start a new game.

 

Let's take for example one of my favorite games of all time, Terraria. I remember when I first started, I just had absolutely no idea what to do, maybe break a block here, explore some more, craft some armor but the game's tutorial was incredibly lackluster and the world was enormous and the amount of stuff to do was too much for me to handle.

 

I then learned an approach to these kind of games: focus on 1 objective at a time, don't try to rush everything at once, this way you'll be forced to learn every other mechanic of the game in order to eventually reach your ultimate objective.

 

In the case of terraria, I decided I wanted to build a a mansion, so I set out to acquire all kinds of blocks and materials, and during this process I pretty much learned the entire game.

 

In the case of warframe, the objective I set myself was to acquire a certain combination of weapons and cosmetics, and to make them decent for the endgame, thus I set out to the wiki and researched about how to obtain each piece of equipment I was looking for, while disregarding everything else in the game.

 

I joined a reddit guild "Test Clan please ignore" which turned out to be a pretty active clan. The first night I played with them they brought me to a series of ODE vault missions and allowed me to obtain some highly valued corrupted mods. I didn't pay much attention to them until the day I felt the necessity to learn mods since I felt my damage was lackluster at one point.

 

At the moment I'm rocking a 30 Valkyr with Dread, despair and reaper prime (bought with plat), MR4 and with a decent selection of ranked mods, and pretty much all I have to learn that is critical are small details such as loot tables and numbers.

 

This game doesn't take too much to get into, compared to say, Dark Souls or Monster Hunter, it's just that you need a kind of mentality when starting off your journey.

[Grifka]

Penta for the win! Highly effective during survival and defense mission against large groups of enemies.

 

Warning: You can be killed by your own grenade (similar to the ogris).

 

In addition I recommend taking a look at the enemies you want to target since the damages and resistances have changed. Also there are mods now dedicated to dealing more damage to specific enemy which may come in handy.

[Darzk]

I think there's really a few things that're important to focus on when starting out, and they do kind of get lost in the shuffle.

 

Understand your frame: Each frame has a 'role' that it'll perform better than others. Running into a crowd with a shotgun at the ready might work for Rhino, but will not work well for a squishier frame like Banshee. Etc.

 

Understand mods: Generally, a mod that increases anything by adding a %age adds bonus stats based on the base stat. So the higher the base stat, the more effective that mod will be. This is relevant from understanding whether to add shields or health on certain frames, to adding crit or status mods to weapons, to understanding the Bane mod mechanics, to whether to use I/P/S mods on weapons (generally, don't).

 

Elemental Combos: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0 is my most used wiki page, the one I refer back to the most. Getting the right elemental combination and leveling the relevant mods will have an incredible effect on your damage output. And it extends beyond weapons - understanding that Mag's magnetic damage will be weak against Alloy armored Grineer will shape your playstyle and explain why your abilities seem to do little damage against them.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Darzk