Better New Player Experience > Improving Core Gameplay Elements ?

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

I'm sitting here going wat

Perhaps they thought that you were trying to get DE to fix core mechanics, which would be feedback? I don't know.

[AlchemicMike]

Morpheus: "What if I told you ... you can have more fun?"

 

"Good things come to those who wait." ~Heinz Ketchup advertisement

[Eternal_Shrine_Maiden]

well, atleast if the New Player Experience is good enough to teach players and get them to like the game, they'll stay around to see all of those bad things you saw.

 

 

instead of now, where most Prospective Players leave Warframe before they even see those types of problems, because the New Player Experience doesn't play in an interesting way whatsoever.

 

It is actually interesting now that I think about it...

If New Player access has been so unfriendly as the argument is being made.....how did we as new players in the past get so attached to the game until now?

 

This is a legit curiosity, and I myself am just brewing through the thought.....why did I keep playing Warframe? What anchored me to it until now?

Edited July 2, 2014 by PEELZHERE92

[BizarreFetalChimpanzee]

It is actually an interesting now that I think about it...

If New Player access has been so unfriendly as the argument is being made.....how did we as new players in the past get so attached to the game until now?

 

This is a legit curiosity, and I myself am just brewing through the thought.....why did I keep playing Warframe? What anchored me to it until now?

This guy. A strong point, he makes.

Edited July 2, 2014 by BizarreFetalChimpanzee

[taiiat]

It is actually interesting now that I think about it...

If New Player access has been so unfriendly as the argument is being made.....how did we as new players in the past get so attached to the game until now?

 

This is a legit curiosity, and I myself am just brewing through the thought.....why did I keep playing Warframe? What anchored me to it until now?

i'm astonished that i'm still playing Warframe too.

 

what the hell happened that let me have enough fun that i was able to progress to where Warframe actually shines?

 

i think the answer to that was playing Warframe with only Clannies early on, so while the game was frustrating as all hell, i was still having a good time with people i already had a good time with no matter what we were doing.

 

 

so while my Clan in general doesn't play Warframe anymore (everyone quit a long time ago, and i eventually joined a Warframe specific Clan), as far as i can tell, they're the reason i'm even playing Warframe today, and without them, i wouldn't be a part of this game.

[Tengu-musume]

It is actually interesting now that I think about it...

If New Player access has been so unfriendly as the argument is being made.....how did we as new players in the past get so attached to the game until now?

 

This is a legit curiosity, and I myself am just brewing through the thought.....why did I keep playing Warframe? What anchored me to it until now?

For me, it's Saryn. Beautiful tribute to the feminine figure without being vulgar. You can feel the confidence from her noble animation...

Once they release Saryn Prime, my stubborn feeling of need for mastery points will probably go away because I won't care anymore.

I strongly think the visuals of Warframe are one of the few things that saves this game. Without the unique looks, I doubt this game would stand out.

 

Shame the gameplay doesn't match up to its looks...

[BizarreFetalChimpanzee]

Shame the gameplay doesn't match up to its looks...

 

The artistic design of this game is definitely good. I think it's fantastic. The gameplay I can't really say the same for, though.

 

I can't find the post, but I saw one a few days ago that just so eloquently put the core issues with the gameplay into focus. It basically discussed how the mechanics are OK at best by themselves, but fail hard when trying to run together as a cohesive whole. IE, You're either wall-running OR you're shooting. While the mechanics most certainly allow shooting while wall-running, and while that was the intended result, they only fight against eachother for your time and attention while playing. They never form together to be a cohesive, unified game mechanic. That was just one of the many great things I read in that guy's post.

 

EDIT: Oh sweet. Speak of the devil. Just found the post. I'll go ahead and copy-pasta it in this spoiler.

 

Ryme, on 25 Jun 2014 - 2:10 PM, said:

The individual mechanics of the game are not bad, it's just that they don't come together as one system, but remain disjointed features that have no synergy with one another.

 

Wall running acrobatics work great for getting around a tile set, but have no viable application with the combat mechanics. You wall run. You fight. There is no seamless integration between wall running and fighting. Trying to engage in gunplay while wall running results in either wasted shots or a person falling off the wall, as they fail to concurrently maintain all the key inputs required of both activities. There is no wall run melee, because there are no wall running enemies; they simply super jump across obstacles that Tenno have to wall run to traverse. 

 

The same can be said of the melee 2.0 system and enemy AI. Melee 2.0 seems more tuned as a one-on-one dueling system, ie. Assassin's Creed or Batman Arkham games. The goal of enemies in Warframe is to straight up swarm and dogpile you, ie. Diablo or Path of Exile. Try to mix the two and the complexity of Melee 2.0 is either wasted on weak enemies with simplistic AI that don't engage dynamically in response to the combos, or Melee 2.0 becomes ineffectual against strong enemies who don't need complex AI because they are simply unfazed by it and proceed to steamroll the player regardless.

 

They are all cool in concept and pretty to look at in a featured trailer of their own, but are out of place when placed together.

Edited July 2, 2014 by BizarreFetalChimpanzee

[Ashnal]

New player: "Oh wow, this game has an amazing tutorial system. I'm having a great start with minimal confusion! I can't wait to keep playing to see what the rest of the game is like! It must be a fun-filled adventure!"

 

...

 

Little does the new player know..

 

...the Market he will soon visit will have hilariously overpriced items...

 

...he will have to grind like a madman for basically everything until he is the very highest MR he can be...

 

...DE has a history of leaving interesting weapons in the dust, including his soon-to-be favorites...

 

...he will either have to get himself a "Boltor Prime" of his time in Warframe or play pretend...

 

...he won't be able to take the lore seriously because every enemy he meets is dense...

 

...he will wonder where the endgame is, why people refer to endless stat-scaling enemies as endgame...

 

...the best way to null the pain is to join an active clan to share in the pain of grinding together...

 

...he will eventually join us in the forums as either a broken white knight or a bitter veteran.

Well ... at least he might be with the game long enough for it to be improved.

 

Business wise, I think the game will be more successful catering to new players with a good tutorial and early game experience, tempting new players to buy platinum and stick around for a while. Keeping players around for more than a few hours is way more important than trying to fix every problem the vets complain about. The vets will stay and wait for improvements (mostly), while new players are much more fickle. There's also more money to be made from fresh meat, than bitter vets.

 

Not saying I don't want improvements, seeing as I'm a vet myself, but I know that if the player count and platinum sales go up, that give's DE more resources to improve the game with.

 

Ehn.... I'd beg to differ on that. DE has gotten into a very nasty habit of completely breaking their promise of "we'll reduce the grind!" to the point of taking two steps back for every step forward they make (not to mention many other issues with their design choices).

 

For example....

 

Melee 2.0: Overhaul on Melee. Could use quite a bit of work, but overall is a good start. And those nice combos we were told we could do? Haha, you f#$%ers! You have to play the lottery to even have a chance at using a lot of these awesome combos! (i'm lookin at you, gleaming talon)

 

T4: Promoted as a way to help clear dilution on void drop tables. Sounded great. And then the tables got FUBAR'd more than they already were.

 

Those are just two examples of the crap they've done lately and why I'm, as of late, in a very bitter state of mind towards DE and Warframe. Not to mention that there are so many long-standing issues that have yet to be addressed properly.

 

Sincerely, an extremely bitter veteran.

 

The T4 thing was to be expected. Especially since there wasn't a problem to be fixed in the first place with T1-T3 from DE's perspective. People say dilution like they know what it means. Many people stupidly assumed that the more things in a drop table there are, the rarer any single item is, which is NOT the case. Every drop table in the game is weighted, so it's easy to make any given piece have 0.1% drop rate, regardless of the amount of other loot in the table. So when people were campaigning for "NO MORE LOOT TABLE DILUTION" and DE gave them exactly what they wanted, less item types per mission. They then adjusted the weights so that the rare parts are just as rare as they were before, resulting in players having to grind just as much after T4s intitial, the hotfix, and before T4's, but with there being less dilution in the tables. Cue bitter Vets becomeing more bitter because DE gave them exactly what they asked for, but it didn't produce the results the vets wanted.

 

Them weights are financial calculations that affect their bottom line you know. No amount of whining from the playerbase is going to change that. What they need to do instead, is find a way to make the grindfest more entertaining, kind of like how the breeding grounds event went.

Edited July 2, 2014 by Ashnal

[Eternal_Shrine_Maiden]

This might just be my thought, but I am looking forward to the quest mechanic in the coming updates. It might not be end-game or imposing any greater challenges to existing players, but it looks like a major step towards expanding the lore which so far only consists of codex entries and specific events. I personally would be motivated to get back into the game (assuming I have lost interest) with the lore expansion even if missions are not necessarily harder.

 

Furthermore, I am also thinking that whatever DE might be planning to attract new players might also interest existing players to return to being active. The Dot points in the latest devstream kept me excited, even if I am one of the few not completely hyped about kubrows.

 

I am somewhat agreeing DE to polish start-game stuff before delving deeper into end-game. Lore-wise, given the open beta nature, I had expected that DE may not have reached end-game stage yet, and I might think that it will be expanded much more as it leaves the beta stage.

[TenshuYuusha]

...he won't be able to take the lore seriously because every enemy he meets is dense...

I think generally, not many people take the story of an online game seriously anyway (hence why most are cliche like this one's or just give us a foundation, for it gets our creative juices flowing to make up our own little backstories)

A tutorial is definitely what this game needs though for new people, it's disheartening to have to keep persuading a new person to "just stick with it, it gets better" that's Kingdom Hearts Starting Pineapple Puzzle crap. :v Had a wiki not exist for the game, a lot of people would be left in the dust about how certain mods work, and especially boss strategies, a lot of stuff here is not intuitive. Lotus is the equivalent of Omochao except while Omochao is annoying as hell, he at least drops a hint for you when against a boss with a particular ability that's something you haven't dealt with before fighting them. :v