Why I Feel Warframe Is In Some Ways Regressing Faster Than It's Progressing. Warning: Extremely Long Post

[FalseCape]

Let me preface this by saying I still like warframe and I wouldn't have sunk nearly as many hours into it as I have if I didn't enjoy the core concept behind it. That said, I feel like DE has been making some seriously rookie mistakes lately that hurt the gameplay significantly while offering no actual advantages to the player. Some of these changes are:
 

1. 1. Reducing the number of uncollected mods that can exist at once to 50. This was in the latest hotfix and so I'm putting it at the top of this list not because it's the most severe but because it's the most recent. I can understand the logic, reduce lag and AFK farming, but I feel they failed to look past those short term fixes at the more serious implications. Say you are playing a defense mission; now, instead of defending the pod like a good little tenno you will be running around every couple of minutes across ALL points of the map to make sure you start picking up mods before they disappear. 50 mods is not a very large number, in a defense that's maybe every other wave whereas in interception that's like 1/8th of a wave if not less. So now instead of defending the points as a team you have multiple people constantly running off to collect mods randomly to make sure they aren't wasting their time. Even in survival this isn't a great implementation because you could easily have a rare mod drop, not be discovered until another 10-20 mods drop, someone marks it, and by the time, the third and fourth player get there it's already despawns. This is frustrating not only because it punishes players for actually focusing on the objective rather than their own self oriented goals, but also because there's a much much more logical fix: Having mods of the same rarity in a similar location stack. Anyone who's played Viver has seen piles of 5-25 mods all stacked in the same location, yet each of those mods model is individually rendered leading to much more lag than is necessary. That's not even accounting for all the particle effects and pillars of light that each mod is individually giving off. Having mod stacks would solve the lag issue almost completely while not &!$$ing off anyone who's playing an endless game mode.
    

2. 2. The new enemy accuracy changes. Say you are in the situation listed in point 1. You know you haven't picked up mods in a while so rather than defending the objective with the rest of the team you decide to run off on a loot run solo. Guess what? You are now dead because no matter how fast you move the enemy have perfect aimbot accuracy and can nail every single shot on a volt going 100kmph+. I can see the logic behind this kind of buff for the Corpus, they are actually a threat now when they were comically easy before and since most of their projectiles have travel time, even with this accuracy buff you can dodge some of their shots if you keep moving. The grineer on the other hand? COMPLETELY UNCALLED FOR. At this point you literally cannot go against the grineer without playing like a cover based shooter or using an invincibility frame because 90% of their projectiles are all hitscan. Heavy gunners will absolutely shred any frame regardless of range now and you have absolutely no hope of dodging or speed tanking them because of their new 100% accuracy. If I wanted to play a cover based shooter I would be playing a cover based shooter. This change has made the grineer completely unfun to play against and completely eliminates the advantages of maneuverability that the game was based around. The accuracy change for the Corpus's non hitscan weapons should stay, but the changes in accuracy for hitscan weapons 100% needs to be changed back to the way it was or at least some medium between the old system and the current one.
    

3. 3. Syndicates. DE is hellbent on absolutely destroying everything that makes Viver Viver, but what they are failing to realize is Viver is not the cause of the problem but a symptom of a failure in a way for player to reliably grind reputation. The current syndicate missions are an absolute joke, giving between 580-1400 syndicate rep at maximum syndicate rank for mission types like survival, defense, interception, ect. That type of reputation is hardly worth getting out of bed for even if Viver didn't exist with just how much rep you need to maximize rank and buy the mods. The fact that the rep bought sigils do absolutely nothing and give no bonuses to your reputation gains are just icing on the cake. It's understandable that DE has tried to make syndicates something that players don't just finish in a day and move on to the next thing, but they also need to realize that those people grinding viver are mostly a bunch of mastery rank 17 players that have absolutely nothing else left to do in the game and that Viver actually requires well modded frames with good team coordination. The difference between having 3 good players and 4 good players can be the difference between 2.3k a run w/o booster and 4.5k a run w/o booster. If you have 2 bad players that gap widen even further. If there were other reliable ways to grind reputations and it wasn't almost solely based on affinity gained, Viver probably wouldn't even be a thing, it certainly wasn't before U15.
    

4. 4. Kubrows. This largely ties into the issues mentioned in point 2 but in the current meta Kubrows just aren't competitive enough with regular sentinels, and that's before you even factor in their upkeep costs and such into the equation. With the new accuracy changes you just can't risk having a companion that has no concept of cover and that loses potential damage every time it gets killed by a heavy gunner. Cost issues aside, even just looking at the skills they are pretty lacking. Let's compare the two most popular sentinels (Carrier & Helios) vs the two most popular Kubrows (Raska & Sahasa). Raska essentially gets Nekros's terrify and every sentinel's guardian skill as it's two main skills while Sahasa gets a non corpse dependent desecrate and... a finishing move? Overall not a very impressive show from either Kubrow and the other two Kubrows are even less impressive. Now, let's look at the sentinels. Both Carrier and Helios get Guardian, Coolant Leak, Sanctuary, AND Regen, on top of both having a unique attack mod and the ability to suck up loot and scan targets with ease respectively. Even if the sentinel skills weren't vastly superior, there's just no way 2 skills per Kubrow could compete with the wide variety of skills that any sentinel can bring to the table. And that's just addressing the skills part. When you look at survivability, yes they have more raw HP/shields/armor with maxed rank mods, but in exchange they also lose the ability to take cover when you do (or, take cover ever for that matter) and the ability to regen once when they die. It's hardly a fair trade, especially with the current accuracy changes. Having a consumable that revives companions and adding more Kubrow skills that are competitive with sentinel mods would be a start to making both competitive, but it would only be a start. No matter what, their usefulness is not enough to be worth their costs, maintenance, and general end gamey-ness of their acquisition.
    

5. 5. Archwings. This may end up being the least urgent of these 6 rants, but I feel it's just as relevant as the rest. I'm more than willing to accept the reality that this mode is newly implemented and still has many kinks to be worked out, but that doesn't mean that there aren't MANY kinks to work out with this game mode. First and foremost, it can hardly be classified as a different game mode, it would be more apt to call it an entirely different game based on warframe elements. None of your progress outside of defensive warframe mods carries over so as far as intertwined gameplay the two sides are almost completely separated. Archwing missions only drop archwing mods and regular missions only drop regular mission mods so there's absolutely zero overlap their outside of the occasional frustrating common fusion core. On the issue of mods, there's absolutely no reason that mods in space are as hard to spot as they are. If the original warframe who got the kill that dropped the mod doesn't explicitly place a marker on it, chances are that mod is lost forever to at least 2 people. I'm not saying there should be the standard "module" waypoint on every mod by default, but it should probably be an option or at least come up with some other method that makes mods easily visible from at least 1k meters. As far as the actual archwing mods themselves go, it's already been said ad nausem how they are pretty widely underpowered, but that's by design apparently with the intention to buff them as needed so I'm willing to let that slide for the moment, but that doesn't mean I don't think it needs to be addressed. The game modes are obviously pretty lacking too and there's very little reason to keep playing archwing missions after you've gotten your second archwing/primary/melee and most of the common/uncommon mods. There's no void missions for them, no alerts, and most importantly nothing that doesn't just serve to make your warframe more powerful against content you'd already be able to need to power up your warframe in the first place. I also have faith that this will be addressed with time, but it's important for the issues themselves to be addressed before more game modes that don't address these issues are added. Finally, the last point about archwings that needs to be made is very closely tied to point 2 (yet again) in that there's very little cover in space (shocking, I know) and speed tanking does next to nothing to mitigate damage. I don't honestly have issue with Uranus archwing interception's difficulty since it was one of the first challenges I've had in the game in a long time, but the missiles stagger in that mode certainly need to be toned down and there needs to be more ways to actively mitigate damage in space besides spamming the obviously broken Repel and hiding behind the interception towers. All of that said, I do feel that archwings will in time add plenty of potential to the game once the initial kinks are worked out and they are more closely tied into the "normal" game mode.
    

6. 6. Optimizations and bug fixing. This is more of a timeless problem for games in beta than one that's specifically been added in the last few updates. That certainly doesn't mean that it isn't just as pressing as any of the other issues listed above. Optimization is fairly obvious and I'll try (keyword: try) to not go into to much detail about this one, but it's obvious that warframe could use a bit of tuning up to where even high end gaming computers aren't chugging at 10fps on ice levels or interception missions. Point 1 was not an adequate solution to these issues, if anything it was like a poisoned bandaid that will be harming you long after the wound has healed. Optimization is obviously an extremely tricky and technical issue that requires hundreds or even thousands of man hours to something that does very little to draw in new players and may not even be noticed by some. That doesn't make it any less important to the health and longevity of the game. As far as bug fixing goes, I feel there are three major areas that are of vital importance in this category to be fixed ASAP: Falling out of levels, UI lockups/freezes/lag, and squad disconnects/failed to join.

   • The first has been in the game as long as anyone can remember and has only seen minor patches to the issue that don't address the problem. Hell, on some levels (derelict especially) there are spots where you can consistently fall out of the level or get stuck that have been there since the tiles were introduces months ago. This issue wouldn't be nearly as problematic if DE would just swallow their pride and implement a /stuck option. Their reasoning for doing this is if they did, players would stop reporting these incidents. From my experience, players aren't reporting them anyway and if they are, they certainly aren't being addressed. If they really want to take that hardline stance they could make it to where using /stuck either automatically takes note of where the player currently is or requires them to fill out the standard popup window with optional comment. Even with a method as intrusive as that, many including myself would still probably find it a superior option to falling endlessly though space with no options but to leave a game where you may or may not have already invested several minutes to an hour.
      
   • The second has only recently become a major issue post U14, but I can say that it's common enough to where every player of warframe has dealt with it at least once and 30% of my games on viver the chatbox will just straight up stop working. I can't speculate as to what's causing these problems besides the new UI focusing too much on being too shiny, all I can say is that they should be a top priority to be addressed because it's extremely frustrating to be a host trying to coordinate a team only to find out that you aren't allowed to communicate with your team anymore or to find a trading partner only to find your UI has locked up as soon as you agree to a trade leaving you with only the option to Alt + F4 and hope your trade partner hasn't forgotten about you by the time you've logged back on.
      
   • Finally, the third point is also rather timeless and is obviously intricately linked to the fact that games are hosted by players rather than on a DE owned server. The most obvious of this category is the classic "failed to join" error message which every player has seen at least once. This error entails two computers being in a cold war with each other and absolutely refusing to have anything to do with the other one. This bug is universal across dojos, missions, voids, and any other physical interaction these two players could ever hope to have with each other. The other half of this issue (frequent squad disconnects) is also somewhat timeless but has reached a new pinnacle since U15, to the point that I've started making all of my games invite only because in 50% of games it can be guaranteed that one player will disconnect by the time everyone loads in and this usually means another random player loading into that players spot completely ruining any strategy/warframe composition you had built before the match. I'm not sure what it is in U15 that has caused the rise in frequency of this issue, but I feel I can safely say that something in U15 has caused this to happen much more frequently than it used to.

Well that's my rant. Those aren't my only issues with the game to be sure, but they are certainly the most pressing that need to be addressed before DE moves on to the next big flavor of the month (hubs or focus system I'm assuming, remember the focus system? That thing that's been in the works for over 3 main updates now). I know that all of these issues won't be addressed before the next big FotM, but my hope is that if enough players bring these issues to DE's attention, at least some of them will start being worked on, especially those that have been around for several months now.

 

[Pepz]

COuld you make a short part of that?

Edited November 12, 2014 by Pepz

[izzatuw]

I don't know half of the stuff but I agree

You should be reminded though, that there are tons of improvements.

Edited November 12, 2014 by izzatuw

[vaugahn]

I'm not seeing it.

For every one place you think Warframe has regressed, there are just as many, if not more, where it's improved.

[izzatuw]

COuld you make a short part of that?

1. The 50 mod thing before they despawn seems like an issue for defense missions because it may encourage people to leave the pod more than to defend it.

2. Although the Corpus are a tad harder because of the accuracy buff it's fine since some of there weapons have travel time. Grineer on the other hand just punish you like heck most of the time since most of their arsenal consists of hit scan weapons.

3. Syndicates were badly implemented but now DE's not gonna think of reviewing the rep system but instead "reviewing" Viver. OP claims that the Viver wouldn't have been a thing if the rep system was grindy as heck and the alerts didn't give a measly 500-1.4K even at the highest tier.

Didn't read the others

[TheSeannachaidh]

I was particularly disappointed with Syndicates. Not the system - I totally dig the system - but I know as much about each Syndicate now as I did when they teased them in the live stream. There was no story or intro quests added. Just more vagueness and holes where story should have been implemented at the launch of this system.. They insist on releasing half-cocked content that has massive potential... :( I love DE but this really made me sad that it was just an "avenue" for the same old grind rather than a field of new information about the people that actually inhabit the solar system in the fantastical future that Warframe should show us..

Honestly if DE gave us nothing but story for 15.2-15.9 I would be content. Take some of the content dump away in terms of weapons and stuff (they are beautiful Kary et al but we have plenty), and instead dump stories about these wonderfully mysterious subfactions and the role they play in the power struggle for the planets and moons surrounding the Sun.

Edited November 12, 2014 by TheSeannachaidh

[RugerMK1]

All of these topics point to DE's tendency to leave things only half-done. Archwings and Syndicates are in serious need of attention.

And the hotfix today limiting mods to 50, well that just seemed unnecessarily punitive and explained as being a 'performance fix'.

[Aspari]

I'd also like to add that DE has done very little to change the stagnant game formula that is:

 

> New event

> New reward

> New toy for MR

> New event's gameplay is the same old stuff with a slightly different twist.

 

DE's level and mission design is extremely static and the current missions really aren't all that fun because they're too simple. It's always:

 

1. Point A to Point B while completing X objective (with occasional Lotus changing the objective)

 

or

 

2. Defend this/these points and leave when you feel like it.

 

 

There's zero deviation from that.

[(XBOX)o SQUEEZY o]

after reading this im kinda glad x1 has to wait on U15

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

Moved to a more appropriate section.

[KnorrSoup]

1: I feel like I'm in the vast minority when I disagree with you on this. I'm fine with mod drops overlapping, because a person who lets 50 mods drop before collecting them obviously doesn't seem interested in collecting them in the first place. Chances are that if a rare mod drops, somebody is going to waypoint it, or you're going to pick it up between rounds when there aren't any enemies.

 

2: Agree. Corpus are in a nice butter zone, but grineer are a bit ridiculous.

 

3: I feel that farming for syndicate points kind of contradicts the whole point of the syndicate system. It's meant to be a long-term endgame goal, something you earn a little of with each mission. The people grinding madly on Viver are going to reach max rank and get burnt out again and leave. That being said, the syndicate system could use a rework to make the prices for offerings make more sense. And since sigils are cosmetic only, chances are we're only ever going to see the starting and maybe the final syndicate sigils on warframes.

 

4: Agree. Kubrows require more maintenance and are less effective than sentinels. Plus I think they don't fit with the theme of the game at all.. They probably shouldn't have been put into the game in the first place.

 

5: I really like archwing missions and I'd love to see them get expanded. Perhaps they could even overlap with regular missions, where you can blow out a window in one ship, call for your archwing and fly to another. They should definitely have a way for archwing players to see loot in a better way, maybe permanent loot radar or a carrier-like vacuum. I think the difficulty is about where it should be personally.

 

6: There are always going to be bugs and problems in a game that updates weekly. DE is doing the best they can, but I agree that there are long term bugs that have never been addressed properly. They've probably happened because, at the time, they probably noted [said bug] but didn't rank its importance very high, thinking that they will come to it eventually. As time went on, more and more high-importance things came up and they just never got around to working on it.

[Zagrax]

Yeah, pretty much this. Also, that mod cap change was so thinly veiled as a viver nerf it hurt, also concerns me for survival missions and other interceptions/defenses as teammates might be running around looting when we need to defend.

[(XBOX)LegendRaySTR3]

I have to say, well done on explaining yourself in your post. However I disagree on a lot of issues.

Mods. So what? Now the game is more challenging or you need better strategies? That doesn't bother me. I don't think I have ever seen over 20 mods left on the ground at once. I always do a sweep and pick up mods constantly. I don't see this being an issue.

The syndicates and archwing are new features. Of course there will be some things to fix, change, add, replace or remove. But I love the idea. More grind? Means more playing time. Archwing has separate mods? Awesome. Means more playing time. Means I won't be bored so easily. Once again, I don't see these features as negatives but huge positives.

I agree Kubrows could be "better" but they are pretty amazing. You can revive them. Armor (or more Armor) would be nice for the Kubrow. Sorry, I don't know if they have Armor. I use a Carrier. My gf uses a Kubrow though and loves it.

And I agree there are a lot of bugs and fixes that need to be done for this game. But there are a lot of stuff in this game. I'm impressed with this game. Maybe that's because I'm a console guy and played Warframe before Destiny. Got on Destiny and thought it was a complete joke. Haven't played it in a month and have been playing Warframe every day since. Even got my gf into the game. Anyways, I understand the performance issues and more bugs since there are a lot of things in the game. But they are working at it. They do fixes. I'm sorry, I didn't read the last point you made about the fixes.

In my opinion, I think they are making the game much better. I'm excited for Update 15. I'm looking forward to Focus being added in as well. This is one of my favorite games and I think DE is doing an amazing job. You have wonderful points, I just wanted to address a different side of it.

[paplo]

1: I feel like I'm in the vast minority when I disagree with you on this. I'm fine with mod drops overlapping, because a person who lets 50 mods drop before collecting them obviously doesn't seem interested in collecting them in the first place. Chances are that if a rare mod drops, somebody is going to waypoint it, or you're going to pick it up between rounds when there aren't any enemies.

 

2: Agree. Corpus are in a nice butter zone, but grineer are a bit ridiculous.

 

3: I feel that farming for syndicate points kind of contradicts the whole point of the syndicate system. It's meant to be a long-term endgame goal, something you earn a little of with each mission. The people grinding madly on Viver are going to reach max rank and get burnt out again and leave. That being said, the syndicate system could use a rework to make the prices for offerings make more sense. And since sigils are cosmetic only, chances are we're only ever going to see the starting and maybe the final syndicate sigils on warframes.

 

4: Agree. Kubrows require more maintenance and are less effective than sentinels. Plus I think they don't fit with the theme of the game at all.. They probably shouldn't have been put into the game in the first place.

 

5: I really like archwing missions and I'd love to see them get expanded. Perhaps they could even overlap with regular missions, where you can blow out a window in one ship, call for your archwing and fly to another. They should definitely have a way for archwing players to see loot in a better way, maybe permanent loot radar or a carrier-like vacuum. I think the difficulty is about where it should be personally.

 

6: There are always going to be bugs and problems in a game that updates weekly. DE is doing the best they can, but I agree that there are long term bugs that have never been addressed properly. They've probably happened because, at the time, they probably noted [said bug] but didn't rank its importance very high, thinking that they will come to it eventually. As time went on, more and more high-importance things came up and they just never got around to working on it.

3. I have no problem with grinding for long term goals, but there is no content for us the veterans players to play to at least make the grind enjoyable

that's why we try to do everything faster (sorry for the bad english)

Edited November 12, 2014 by paplo

[KnorrSoup]

3. I have no problem with grinding for long term goals, but there is no content for us the veterans players to play to at least make the grind enjoyable

that's why we try to do everything faster (sorry for the bad english)

True, I guess vets who have maxed the game really don't have much else to do. But tbh I don't think it's content made for veterans (which is kind of stupid since DE claimed syndicates would be end game content).

 

Your English is good by the way~

[AM-Bunny]

1. 50 mods is not a very large number, in a defense that's maybe every other wave whereas in interception that's like 1/8th of a wave if not less. 

 

Jesus christ have I been playing the game wrong this whole time.

 

So... if you do 10 waves of defense you'd expect to rake in 250 mods?

 

EDIT: just noticed it's your first post despite being a founder~ welcome to the forums ^.^ 

Edited November 12, 2014 by AM-Bunny

[gaurdianaq]

In regards to kubrows, I do agree with you on the upkeep of them, but I thought I'd point out that they can open lockers... but the main advantage to kubrows is their durability compared to sentinels, while it's true sentinels generally aren't targeted as much, if you're playing as a primarily melee playstyle, kubrows are practicably indestructible, especially on valkyr...

[(PSN)Pharen]

 

Let me preface this by saying I still like warframe and I wouldn't have sunk nearly as many hours into it as I have if I didn't enjoy the core concept behind it. That said, I feel like DE has been making some seriously rookie mistakes lately that hurt the gameplay significantly while offering no actual advantages to the player. Some of these changes are: -snip-

You make some good points, but I think some of the criticism is a little harsh.

[LeoDominus]

"It's meant to be a long-term endgame goal, something you earn a little of with each mission."

Didn't bother to quote you on it, but, something just ticked in my head. I've read in places that Warframe is ~50% complete, yes? Okay, so, game is half done. Syndicates, with their supposedly end-game stuff, are added too early. You have people that have been on board since day one, with nothing to do, BUT syndicates. As much as I enjoy the game, doing the same thing over and over, ad infinitum, seems like it would be quite the bore. There are SIX syndicates to run through, and, either way you do it, whether trying to balance respect around, or just tank a syndicate to the end, slap on a new sigil, and go for another, it's going to take. For. Ever. To be brutally honest, I"ll probably move on to other things as early as next year, which means, even WITH my viver farming, I'll never see even the one reward I want. I'm doing Red Veil first, then assisting, or doing myself, something to nab Tesla Link for my booben. I may never get that far. I might not ever see the end of this game. And I'm only MR 7. I can't imagine what it must be like for people who have played everything this game has to offer.

This same kind of thing happens in a multitude of other games. Most recent that comes to mind is GTA: Online. It had a bumpy start, but people could easily make money, and rank up. But, since they were also selling in game money, for real money, they decided to nerf every mission. Then gave it a half assed buff recently. There are very few, if any, missions that I haven't completed there, and I'm NOT playing anymore. I'm going to pick it up agian on next gen later, but there's not much to do right now. Hardly anything worth mentioning.  And it's a chore to repeat the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again for absolutely &#!-all results.  

 

Adding syndicates at this point was probably a bad move. And nerfing rep farms, in any way, shape, or form, is not the way to go about "fixing" this problem. What the solution to this issue is, I can't say, but I can say that this is just a bad move. LEt the people farm for their syndicates. It's a self-destructive tactic, for them, but taking away that freedom to make that decision isn't the smart thing to do.

[KnorrSoup]

-snip-

 

I agree with you on your last paragraph, I mean if all vets want to do is farm viver then let them do it, I'm not asking for a nerf to it. I'm just assuming that they're going to get burnt out like they have after every major update. It's happened to me plenty of times before and I'm mastery rank 12, so I'm beginning to run out of content too. I've just found that if I slow down and not grind day in, day out, I don't get burnt out as fast.

 

In my perspective, syndicates don't even seem to be designed like they're meant to be farmed. There are six of them and you lose progress with two of them as you earn rep with one. It claimed to be endgame content but it seems to be just the opposite - something new players can join and chip away at as they play the game, and by the time they become mid-high level they'll have new toys to play with.

 

I'm not even sure if there's a way to fix this. You either grind something quickly and get bored of it, or you grind day after day for a long time and get bored grinding because it's not fun anymore, it becomes a chore like you say.

[MeduSalem]

While I'm not completely with OP on the thought that the game is slowly regressing... but I actually share the feeling that at some degree the progression is canceled out by all the new problems that appear several weeks after new additions/changes get playtested by the masses.

 

And it basically always requires a 2.0 or 3.0 altogether to address all the problems that get introduced because of how they are left unattended for several months until sh*t starts to crumble down in a massive landslide. Most of which doesn't even come unexpected out of nothing because of how some people already pointed out or predicted the possible problems with a new system or a change often before something got even released but still went by unnoticed.

 

While DE shows much of new development on the devstreams... the really important questions often stay in the dark. Otherwise some of the massive balancing issues or problematic gameplay mechanics wouldn't be the way they are now if they would have asked or notified the playerbase in the first place. There's something like a developer workshop...

 

How is it possible that some of the most important changes/additions never got discussed there in advance to make sure to deliver the best possible experience?

 

Now stuff is released/changed and there's no way to really satisfy anybody.

 

While I'd prefer a democratic decision I know it can't be always like that. But at least it would give the playerbase the feeling to be involved in major decisions if there are polls or discussions in advance, even if not everything turns out to our likings. At least there would be some consensus on some stuff or at least a logical explanation as to why the Devs can't do some of the things requested by the players.

Edited November 12, 2014 by MeduSalem

[dashashou]

btw  there are working on an / unstuck button  and command 

[MeduSalem]

btw  there are working on an / unstuck button  and command 

 

Really? I mean... REALLY? o_x

 

Weren't they all like "there will be no unstuck because less people will report level glitches if there would be such a thing" and so on?