[Feedback] A bit more than a week played

[AmmokK]

So, you seem to want feedback, otherwise you woulnd´t have reated this forum section. Well, you will get it!

First a bit information about myself.

I´m 32 y/o and gamer since over 20 years, playing mainly shooters and MMOs as well as many other things like racing games, RTS or MOBAs.

Over these years i gathered many Alpha/Beta experiences, more lately in Warface and FFXIV:ARR, so i do know how this (usually works). But more about this later.

So, let´s start where i started:

The tutorial.

WASD & shooting explained as well as the UI.

Well, i was expecting to have a UI, expecting to shoot and also expecting to use WASD, so that´s pretty standard. What i was also expecting was a more in depth tutorial, like jump-melee attacks or other stuff you just had to find out later on without being told before. These things are missing and should be there for sure.

Yeah well okay, the tuto wasn´t state-of-the-art but okay. Most games have pretty basic tutorials, so let´s move on.

Choose a Warframe.

Hm, while it is nice to have the possibility to choose, the downpart is that you don´t really have decent descriptions, like eg. damage numbers, AoE range, that kind of stuff. Also it is pretty bad to not know that the 4th spell is Pro-locked (at least i didn´t remember it to be mentioned). So i thought "Hey, let´s play some kind of teamplayer (Loki), sounds cool to be able to render the others weapons useless in a shooter."

You know where i´m getting...

Basic weapons.

Okayish, nothing to say about them.

My first missions.

Omgomgomgomg, they just keep coming, even from where i just cleaned everything and i am 100% sure there wasn´t anybody left. So hmm... wasted like 2 Revives in the first mission and the other 2 in the next few ones. But i was getting there, being more carefull, watching my back as i now understood a cleared room doesn´t mean anything.

A little more relaxed approach to these mechanics would´ve been nice as it may (read: will!) upset some people for sure.

Leveling up my stuff.

After reaching a few level-ups i came to the pint where i had the chance to get the same upgrade a second time. Now i saw after adding it, that the values did change after al, although it wasn´t visible in the overview. These numbers showing there must be real values to see what effect you will have. So when you get a second "clip size" you should see the effective number you will have afterwards, not the same numbers as before, calculated from a 1 value.

This also applies to warframe upgrades as well as their description lacking information. "Armor 20%", now what does that mean exactly? Damage reduced by 20%? Basic armor having another 20% more effect? Just guessing and trying out here. Not really a perfect way to create a build suiting your playsytle if you are just guessing what some things do.

Mods.

Interesting feature that let´s you personalize your things. As before, more details are needed here.

As already mentioned by other players, the limited to X only mods are pretty much useless, since they don´t differ from normals mods. Might as well just drop them completely or, which would be better, improve them by actually being something special you might want to see. Things like +50% cloaktime or further swap on Loki as examples. (<- does exist, just seems to be rare like hell)

Besides that, i´m fine with the system so far.

The gear.

Especially now, after the 5.3 update, there isn´t much bad things to say about it, since now you can craft everything. Only thing lacking here are values that are correct. For now, many of them seem to be totally wrong. Snipetron and Gorgon have same accuracy, yet ones sprays like hell, the other doesn´t; Bustron says 16.7(?) firerate, yet compared t other guns having 16.7, it´s way slower and so on. So the values seem to be messed up.

It would be a great idea to let you try out a weapon/warframe for like 30 minutes (once!) so you can decide if it really fits your needs and desires.

So let´s move to the actual gameplay and focus on the real thing now.

Gameplay.

It was cool in the first levels, seeing the same architexture in a kind of randomised setting and i liked it. After switching to another planet however i became a bit bored and was like "Again?!" and after been on every planet there is and not having anything changed i am highly disappointed at this point.

I know, you say it´s coming and we will get that stuff. Just... when? You opened all levels (which is cool) so we can level and test and fool around and on the other hand it´s all the same (which is not cool).

People like me who are on vacation now or are unemployed or have too much sparetime will finish the game in no time. Doesn´t help them it will be added somewhere in the future, since they will all be maxed out anyway and there is nothing more to achieve for them. I just have about 50 hours playtime and i am almost "done" already! Got 3 warframes building (Ember, Ash & Trinity), all weapons i want and actually nothing to be any different from the guy next to me (more about this later).

Anyway, to shooting part feels okay for a 3rd person shooter and seems to be the core way to do missions. I don´t know if this is intended or not. If yes: achieved - if you wanted to have a mixed gameplay where you could decide on either weapons or melee gameplay: not achieved!

As stated by many other users, melee is far from perfect and rather a struggle than actually a way to have fun. Sure, it´s cool versus infected but against most other enemies it´s useless and a waste of time. Now, if there would be things like 1-hit killmoves if sneaking unseen from behind or jump down from above to AoE strike then or even just the actual fact that you could hit several enemies at the same time, this would add a lot of fun to melee gameplay!

Another downside if the fact you can´t switch your camera... Okay, forget about this point, i just double-checked that ingame and saw you actually CAN switch the shoulder camera. I just didn´t think "reverse camera" would mean "switch camera" so i never tried it. My fault.

Let´s come to the challenging part of the game, or at least which should be the challenging part: the enemy AI. While you can see they do try to hide, take cover behind shieldguys and are even shouting orders one to another, in 50%+ of the cases they seem to stop acting and read their instruction manual for AI. So basically it´s okay, just need to adress those "timeouts" they seem to have.

Next challenge part: bosses. While most of them are possible with a bit of teamplay and conserving ammo getting there, there are those bosses that are just way too OP imho. When you have a level 52 boss, it sometimes is a real pain in the a** to kill them, slashing him down 20 minutes just because he has way too much life, regains shields when being downed for whatever reason that is and you are out of ammo way too soon even if all 4 people are gearing Gorgons and didn´t fire a single shot until the got to the boss. Then again you have bosses you fire 1 magazine at and they fall down. So you might reconsider at least some of those bosses you have.

The Pro system.

After 5.3 really fair and going into the direction of "want it faster-> pay", which is perfectly okay. BUT (and yes, some will hate me for this): i do think things for free players are aquired way too fast. Like said above: not even 50 hours playtime and i have 1 warframe maxed, 1 weapon maxed, 3 warframes building and way too much money to do anything with.

Even if you take the average gamer, playing maybe 2 hours a day, you will get all these things in about a month, which is really fast. You´re a company that want´s to make money, not presents for a happy community! So make it harder to get the good things and, to compensate for that, make a credit sink by adding cosmetics for ingame money (as well as Platinum of course) so people actually get something that makes them happy, without giving them too much without much effort. For example make them buy colors for 100k of heck, even only 25k. Limit the purchase to one color at the time, makes 64 colors to unlock. Good sink there, even if most people won´t buy all of them.

Gerneral thoughts.

As said, i played a lot of alphas and betas, most of them being P2P/B2P games like Battlefield 3, Lineage 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild wars 2 and so on.

I do realise F2P games need to adapt to the fact they do not have millions to spend until "it´s done" but seriously: Beta? Really? This game has so many flaws for now that need to be worked on, i am pretty sure it at LEAST need another 6 months of development. I do not know your plans for the future or a planned release date but i seriously hope you will take your time and fix those issues you have before going into Open Beta, since (especially F2P) players tend to adress the OB as a demo. So be aware that those people will rip you apart faster than you can say "sorry", if something goes wrong! Things like the huge lagspikes that happen pretty frequently for now, as well as levels getting bugged, markers trolling you and other stuff you probably already know, will kill the game in no time if you let in the hordes and call it Open Beta.

Apart from my criticism, i really like the way you respond to demands and needs of the players. It´s rare to see the DEVs react so fast. Thumbs up on this one. No really, i mean it. You are a rare kind of developer, hope you will stay like that in the future!

So, all the game actually needs primarily is time. Lot´s of it! I hope you can aquire this time before someone tells you to go live with a half finished product, get in the costs and shut down because it wasn´t done and players got bored/scared away by the bugs.

Hope this is a helpful review to you guys. Keep it up!

TL, DR: gtfo, i didn´t write this to get skipped! ;)

AmmokK

Edited January 13, 2013 by AmmokK

[VelenoHargreaves]

Loved this post! Very complete and really, really says what everyone thinks (at least it is what I think of the game so far, but still loved even with the needed fixed ups)

Thumbs up and Let's keep this awesome thread alive for the Dev's to see!

Nicely Done AmmokK, Nicely Done...

[AmmokK]

Well, to be honest, this post still lacks like a lot of the little annoyences that occur, like eg. host DCing after bossdrop and stuff like that. But i felt if this would all be in this post, the issues here (which are the most important ones) would get mixed up too much with the smaller ones (i am adressing in several other posts).

[jowell24]

To the OP, in your 50 hours of game time have you not figured there is a 1-Hit finisher and an AoE sword attacks?

[AmmokK]

To the OP, in your 50 hours of game time have you not figured there is a 1-Hit finisher and an AoE sword attacks?

1h-finisher? Oo

You mean the charged attack that can onehit low enemies?

AoE sword attacks?! You mean those jump + melee thing? The one that doesn´t even get 2 infested down at the same time? Yeah... very nice AoE attack ^^

Edited January 12, 2013 by AmmokK

[RubyPilot]

Jump and hit the melee button. WHAM, shockwave around you. Really useful for destroying reactors quickly.

[jowell24]

1h-finisher? Oo

You mean the charged attack that can onehit low enemies?

AoE sword attacks?! You mean those jump + melee thing? The one that doesn´t even get 2 infested down at the same time? Yeah... very nice AoE attack ^^

What exactly do you mean by 1-hit finishers? A special attack move when the enemy is on the last parts of its health or a new skill?

having a new skill that could 1-hit any enemy could be game breaking

[Zakalwe]

What exactly do you mean by 1-hit finishers? A special attack move when the enemy is on the last parts of its health or a new skill?

having a new skill that could 1-hit any enemy could be game breaking

The word "finisher" epxplains it. A locked in, satisfying, killing blow that plays a very brief animation to end your enemy.

Something like: you grab the target, throw it in the air, slice it in half. Could all happen in a second or two.

Get a bunch of these context senstivie, ie: angle of apprioach, ducking strike, normal strike, air strike, stealth strike, crit hit, etc...

Edited January 12, 2013 by Zakalwe

[AmmokK]

Actually i meant thing like backstab an enemy to instantly kill him. i admit the word "finisher" is somehow wrong, i´ll change that. For this you MUST remain unseen, otherwise they will get alerted, of course. Otherwise it would be way too overpowered, no doubt about that.

But adding such "small" things would make melee gameplay a lot more satisfying than it is now.

[FreshJB2]

Good synopsis Ammokk,

My one real disagreement is your and other's complaint about how "little time" it takes to level up. The one question the devs need to ask, is, if this were a retail non-mmo type game, how many hours would it take to reach max level. That is the only factor that should be used to determine progress. I say this because catering to "hardcore" gamers always alienates those who simply aren't as "hardcore." Being that this is an mmo of sorts, raids, bosses, special instances, and other such content should be what keeps more active players coming back.

Edited January 24, 2013 by FreshJB2

[Rusalki]

Mods.

Things like +50% cloaktime or further swap on Loki as examples.

Warframe mods Duration and Power Range are in-game.

[AmmokK]

Good synopsis Ammokk,

My one real disagreement is your and other's complaint about how "little time" it takes to level up. The one question the devs need to ask, is, if this were a retail non-mmo type game, how many hours would it take to reach max level. That is the only factor that should be used to determine progress. I say this because catering to "hardcore" gamers always alienates those who simply aren't as "hardcore." Being that this is an mmo of sorts, raids, bosses, special instances, and an eventual pvp system should be what keeps more active players coming back.

You are right about this, of course. But 41 hours to reach maxed level with my warframe does really seem too low, don´t you think?

Warframe mods Duration and Power Range are in-game.

I heard that lately, thanks for pionting that out so i can change my post. Never gotten a sigle one of these in all this time, that´s why i assumed they weren´t there.