Brand New Account Feedback

[Xylia]

So, now that the servers are stable and I had a couple hours, and some bugfixes have been out, I started a brand new account to see what the newbie is going to experience upon starting Warframe for the very first time.

 

I played Vor's Prize + First Two Mercury Missions thusfar, and will be providing feedback based upon what I saw and experienced. I choose Mag to start with.

 

The Good

 

--The Starter Weapons (I chose Skana, MK1-Kunai, MK-1 Braton) seem much better, at least the MK1-Braton and the Skana. The MK1-Braton wasn't as weak as I was expecting it to be, and could very well hold its own even against Lv4 enemies. The MK1-Kunai continued to be one-shot headshot throughout the whole experience, but relied upon some skill for the arcs and such.

 

--The enemies (for the most part, see 'needs improvement below') are very reasonable and sensible in challenge. The Troopers are hard to kill but weren't really doing all that much damage. The normal grunts were easy, though if you let a couple of them shoot at you it started to hurt quickly but at least they die fast and easy. The Butchers hurt, but you had to actually let them hit you which they shouldn't be doing as they die in nearly one hit from anything.

 

--As I've said in other places, the quests are very well done, the immersion is top-notch compared to anything else in Warframe, and the start of all of this is very well designed.

 

--Not sure if it is a bug (I hope not!) but the 12 Revives to start with was a nice touch.

 

--At the end of Vor's Prize, the newbie has a choice between Earth, Venus, and Mercury for a semi-meh range of materials.

 

Needs Improvement

 

--No Pistol Mods At All? I didn't get a single Pistol Mod during the entirety of Vor's Prize, nor the two missions directly thereafter. I don't know how good/strong the Lato is these days, but I would certainly feel sorry for anybody who did not choose the Kunai as their sidearms are going to be virtually useless as I doubt they put out the kind of damage the MK1-Kunai does.

 

--Seekers. These are way too powerful to be throwing at the newbie in the starter quests. Or at the very least, Lotus should warn the player about these ridiculously powerful enemies. I ran into a room during the mission they spawn in (the mission to get the Mercury Nav and also Vor's mission) and these guys were taking down Mag's 220 shields in two to three bursts. BA-BLAM BA-BLAM and I'm seeing red borders already. These guys seriously need toned down. I didn't think to test the damage from the sticky grenades.

 

--Missions Post-Vor's Prize. If you're the Solo Tenno, you're looking at doing Terminus (because it's lowest level). Once you finish Terminus... your only choices are Mobile Defense (4-5) and Mobile Defense (6-7). Did we really need two Mobile Defenses on either side of Terminus? I was able to finish one (the 4-5 one), but it was fairly tough for me, the experienced player. Since it is an asteroid, it is a mandatory 2 consoles + cryopod defense, in large open areas. A Solo Newbie is going to get slaughtered on this unless they are exceptionally skilled at shooters. I suggest changing one of those Mobile Defenses to something else other than Mobile Defense, maybe Spy or Deception since Mercury has none of those that I could see.

 

--Terminus. On the subject of Terminus.... why am I seeing 4-5 Eximus units and several Arc Traps per room? I feel Eximii and Arc Traps should not be appearing on Mercury. While I could kill them and they net nice XP, they are also very strong and difficult to deal with if you don't know how to do it properly. My suggestion is to remove them from Mercury entirely, or perhaps only remove them from Mercury in Solo Games. Two Tenno would be able to handle them much easier, but solo... unless you know what you're doing, you won't live long against these guys.

 

--The Market. I suppose once the other MK1 Weapons make it into the Market, the player will have more to choose from, but at the end of Vor's Prize, I suggest having Lotus mention the Market and mention that the player should look for an upgrade to their starting weapon. Also, I feel the prices should be tweaked: MK1s (Except Paris, given its ludicrous power) should be 5,000 credits and the Braton/Strun should be 20k. I'd say the MK1-Paris should be 10k; it is somewhere between the MK1s and the Braton in power. The reason for this is that once you get out of Vor's Prize, those awesome credit missions are gone and you go from getting 10k a mission down to getting 2-3k a mission. Just fusing ONE rank on my Damaged Serration cost me 1,200 credits. That's half of the profit from doing one Terminus run. Buying the Braton ate over half of my current credits and left me with very little.

 

--Cronus. For some reason (bug?) Vor did not give me a Cronus BP when I killed him during Vor's Prize. The Newbie probably is not going to realize that he can (and should!) go kill Vor again at some point to get an upgrade to the starter weapon. Therefore, IMO, we should have Vor giving the Cronus BP during Vor's Prize. Just add it to the End-of-Mission rewards and have Lotus mention the BP once you get back from the mission (perhaps along with the talk about the Marketplace and upgrading weapons).

 

--Materials. While I said above that it is good that the user has a choice between materials; there should have been a node somewhere on a planet that gives Nano Spores and Plastids to allow them to make more weapons from the Marketplace. I'm fairly sure that Orthos and Cronus are the only two weapons a newbie can make until they can go somewhere beyond Earth. The Vor's Prize method of allowing you to visit Earth, Venus, and Mercury shows us that we could do better -- we could have put a Lv5-10 mission on Saturn, for example, to fill this purpose. Or perhaps we could add another optional quest that sends the player to raid a transport ship containing enough of these resources to make one weapon of the Tenno's choice.

[Curaidh]

I appreciate the time you put into doing this a lot.

 

Every F2P game needs a constant influx of new players, so the new player experience is crucial to long term success. Kudos for checking it out from an experienced player perspective and taking the time to "report" back on it. I hope DE reads this.

[ReptileZA]

What is your stance on the increased difficulty in the majority of the starting planets and the fact that you have to be a Rocket scientist to be able to navigate the new starchart.

Heres the forum post I made: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/267184-npe-sucks-beachballs/

I know I sound abit ragey but it just frustrates me to no end that there is no progession now due to the fact that I cant farm apollodorus or Lares for the most essential mods in the game known as: SERRATION and HORNET STRIKE, due to increased levels of enemies.

[noveltyhero]

Haha I agree on the difficulty on Mercury, they took down my Iron Skin XD

 

However the quests leave the player with not fade, as in after you finish Vor's Prize there is no sign that you finished it, there is not guidance as to what you should do, heck I didn't even know about the damaged mods until the livestream >.<

Which shows that this quest still needs some improvements but overall it is very very good and most of all fun :D

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/265419-how-to-fix-u14/

[Xylia]

What is your stance on the increased difficulty in the majority of the starting planets and the fact that you have to be a Rocket scientist to be able to navigate the new starchart.

Heres the forum post I made: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/267184-npe-sucks-beachballs/

I know I sound abit ragey but it just frustrates me to no end that there is no progession now due to the fact that I cant farm apollodorus or Lares for the most essential mods in the game known as: SERRATION and HORNET STRIKE, due to increased levels of enemies.

 

Mercury being bumped up to Lv4-10 I'm still kinda 'meh' about.

 

On one hand, Terminus was still easy (except for the aforementioned Arc Traps and Eximus units), and they were still dropping like flies even to an unranked Braton.

 

Even the 4-5 Mobile Defense I did, the problem was not killing the enemy, but rather keeping them off the objectives and trying to keep myself alive at the same time; I found the wide open areas with little cover to be more of a problem than the actual enemies' strength.

 

I will, however, note you do have a good point about the nodes -- I was looking at the chart and I was not sure how exactly node unlocks work. From what I could figure out, is that doing a node unlocks anything touching it (except for during Vor's Prize). So if you wanna get to Apollodorus, you have to start with the easier Mobile Defense (the name escapes me at the moment), then proceed along that line.

The only trouble is, there's a Defense node before Apollodorus. That's probably not going to be very fun for a newbie, especially if it is an asteroid (I forgot to check what tileset it is). In fact, I'd think that an Asteroid Defense would be nearly impossible for the solo newbie to actually pull it off. I don't think _I_ could do it with the tools a newbie has at that point in the game.

 

It looks like you should be focusing on the damaged mods they gave you -- you can get up to 40% Serration, but as I said above, No Damaged Hornet Strike at all. This seems.... very odd, kinda like an oversight.

 

So IMO, they intended you to farm Terminus and a few other nearby nodes until you can handle the first Venus node.

 

heck I didn't even know about the damaged mods until the livestream >.<

 

The damaged mods are listed in your end-of-mission screen, plain as day during the Vor's Prize quest?

 

They are end-of-mission rewards which means they are guaranteed and I found a few while playing (mostly Ammo Drums though).

 

Not sure how you missed them.

Edited July 20, 2014 by Xylia