How The Game Feels At Its Current State.

[Rabcor]

I'm looking outside the box here at what keeps me playing, why i started playing less, etc. so lets start from the beginning. I'm also sorry for how long this is but if you're busy and want to skip the extra bits, the most important part in here is down where i discuss the business model.

 

i ragequit in the tutorial cus i ran outside of the "circle" and couldn't find a way back because everything was white all over. that felt like "game's so bad i won't play it" until a friend was playing and drew me back in (me skipping the tutorial that time ofc.) the tutorial needs a whole redesign for sure in my opinion.

 

The game has some sort of story, or "lore" the games not in alpha, it's in beta. This means that this should have already been dealt with, but instead of giving us the story, you make the player wonder what the story is like and just give small (no, tiny) parts of it up. DE should get their story down and give BIG portions of it to the player. New content should also be based around the story, it's a nice thing to have on your right or left hand. Often it is ok to do this, but in this case what i feel is that everyone is wondering about humans. Which species are the most human like? are the tenno just humans (i mean... they sure look the part, but they're just much better in many ways.) is lotus a human? (impossibru!!! she has a pig nose, she must be a grineer with makeup.) Give us something to chew, you have not given us enough story for us to be able to guess parts of it efficiently. Hardly enough story so that players can discuss it. (Notably, story has helped keep many games alive way past their lifespan, like WoW for one good example)

 

so far we know the tutorial feels S#&$ty to some (not all) and that many players feel like more story is needed.

 

Lotus just feels annoying after you've listened to her say the same things for over an hour to many aswell, some can take it for a few more hours, she's the tutorial lady that wont stop telling you how to play. She wont let go of your hand!

 

So far the gameplay mostly feels fine, (i love the shortened extraction routes btw) lacking variety of viable weapons doesn't help, and lag doesn't help either but theres only so much you can do about that right? (Well you could actually work around a mechanism that determines which of the connected players is the best host and improve your host migration for that purpose. this might be a little hard to do but since you've got the game code which can be used to send ping statistics to a server, you should also be able to use the ping statistics to see which player gives the best speed to the most people. This function should be disabled in private sessions if something similar is implemented) the other alternative ofc is server hosted game-sessions rather than user-hosted. But that'll cost a lot of money and i understand that you wont do that (at least not yet anyways)

 

the business model is next in line here. Let me just point out first that there's a very good video about the "microtransaction business model" right here: 

I encourage anyone interestedt on that topic to just watch that but you can read on if you want, as explained in the video a good thing to do is the revive system already in the game(or similar.) that's the only good thing tat's in the game with the microtransactions. The currency feels way way way too expensive. Imagine hamburgers... A traditional AAA game would cost between 6-8 hamburgers. for 1 hamburger you get 170 plats.

 

For 170 plats you can buy: Some of the worse sidearms and Aklato, Boltor and Braton and a few other primaries, a lot of the melee weapons, volt and excalibur.

 

There i counted up a lot of things you can only buy one of. after that you can also usually buy maybe a handful of "potatoes" or a mod pack, pets or special helmets.

 

Some of the things here are fairly priced, others aren't.

 

How fair is it to buy one weapon for 1 hamburger when you could often buy entire games, good games for 1 hamburger... or you could buy a hamburger in order to eat so that you can live? If prices were lower, more people would buy (I can promise this one) and it may feel like you're bound to the players who already spent (such as myself) but try looking at the bigger picture, and if you feel really that bound to us, you can try compensating by giving us + the extra plats you would now give for the amount we paid, or you could give us back the plats spent on overpriced items after fixing the prices. In beta... sure things would be ok as they are if you hadn't gone advertising yourselves on STEAM!!!! the game is live on steam now which means that the game is out. It's already considered version 1.0 rather than 0.x because now most of your potential playerbase is either already in the game, has already dropped it or at least already knows about it.

 

This means that since you guys were in such a rush you will have ruined your own game if you don't fix its flaws, and fix them fast.

 

I'm certain a lot of thought was given to the business model but something somewhere went terribly wrong with it.

 

final part i'm going for is grinding. The game has given back that feel the good old mmos (you know WoW without expansions, EverQuest and many before them)give you, you need to work for it if you want to get stuff, but it's so rewarding once you're there. and this game does it in a unique way, i like the grinding model it has now because it's addicting, but for the same reason it's a dangerous system known to completely destroy many peoples lives back in 1999 by EverQuest. It forces people to spend time in the game if they want to be good at it or get better at it and less time on their own lives, From a publishers perspective this is good, from a developers perspective this is bad, from the users its mindless and from all 3rd parties it's just plain evil. But to me it really felt refreshing and maybe, just maybe the world is a bit better prepared for it now than it was in 1999. The problem with this system is the alerts system. Every  "?" reward in the alert mission should be attainable through other methods (like a new planet thats twice as hard as pluto? or even harder than that?) where you really need a team of 2+ fully leveled warframes with fully leveled guns at it's early part and 4 skilled players at it's end. on that planet maybe you could have bosses that have a low chance to drop different "?" rewards, final boss having a low chance to drop potatoes maybe? but what i'd really like to see is potatoes removed from the game and automatically being a part of every weapon. Alert missions are bad as they are because they require a player to be playing at a specific time to get specific rewards, that is just not cool and i'd rather not be a part of that.

 

Overall, the game feels a lot like it tries to grab a hold of you and not let you go, and it does this well you think until you level something to the max level, but that is not the problem. Once your items hit max level you still have to level up your mods and figure out the best loadout of mods for your guns and all kinds of stuff, but what really breaks it is that after leveling everything you've got and want to 30 there's no use for it anymore. The levelling is the fun part (as it always was in old mmorpgs) but after that you just don't have anything to do. In my case what i found nice is the Defense missions cus they can get so devilishly hard after a while and you really need all your stuff in its top shape if you want to get far, the reward for defense missions should be upped however (like if the base reward for a mission is 1500, give 1500 at 5 waves, 2500 at wave 10, then 4000 at 15, 5000 at 20 and 6500 at 25 and so on. that isn't a lot of money for the time spent either. and of course every fifth wave should remain as a checkpoint where all the stuff you've gathered (reward, moneys, components, mods, etc) will be locked in and rewarded upon failure or abortion)

 

Apart from the defense missions theres hardly anything fun anymore after 2 or 3 weeks of playing viciously.

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Mietz]

I stopped reading where you linked Extra Credits as a sensible representation for...well anything really.

[ASH_PRIME]

Thats alot of Hamburgers!

[Rabcor]

Sorry if you hate extra credits but it's a good vid!

 

And yes, my whole point was (on the business model part anyways) it's an unreasonable amount of hamburgers needed to get stuff in this game.

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Aure7]

do you even think before you write? This game follows business model almost exactly as the video you posted suggests.

- Every weapon and warframe is available for f2p's, only with more effort or time. So balance is not broken and everyone is playing in the same group.
- Convenient items such as slots or extra revives also are implemented just like the video said.
 

In fact this is the first f2p game I really want to spend money on, even though I am having a bad time finding some money for such things.

[Rabcor]

I do think, and they're doing it wrong in my opinion, the alert missions don't really work out so hot because you have a small chance of getting the items you want when the developer just so happens to feel like giving you access to it. that small chance all depends on when you're playing and how much of the game you've unlocked, Alerts missions are only good in my head as an "extra credits" (no pun intended) scheme so you can farm money a bit faster.

 

Glaive isn't available for f2p for example. you can't buy the blueprint, and no alert (to my knowledge) has been made that gives it as a reward. Everything you can buy for real money that is a part of gameplay rather than just cosmetic products should be purchasable also for a free in-game currency.

 

Also as you can visibly see i've spent at least 50$ on the game. i do too think it's worth spending moneys on because it after all has been fun enough and i've spent enough time having fun in it to think that i should be paying to support its development. (that was not a microtransaction.)

 

The biggest flaw is the damned blasted potatoes, you can get them only by playing at the right times and the developer has absolute control over how many he gives you (unless you pay for it). It needs to be easier to get than this (i did not say easy. i said easier) or the alerts rewarding potatoes need to be more frequent than they are(but in my head that's not enough of a solution).

 

Also: i cannot argue all the warframes are available for f2p's but i can argue that they are way too expensive for the people who would like to pay for them. (Hamburgers my friend, i'd rather have 2 hamburgers than 1 new warframe to play, it's not like 1 new warframe is 1 new game) pricing so many things at 175 plat instead of 170 which is purchasable was also a terrible idea. it wont force players to buy more plats, it's way more likely to make people reconsider buying plats at all! (or regret buying plats)

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Schattensonne]

Hmmm... I do agree with you in some points. Platinum is to expensive. I mean... I want to spend money at this game cuz I think DE deserves it to get paid for their work and the fun I have playing their game but every time I think of buying Plat I get put off by how less I get for my money. :(

Some of my m8s think similar of this so i guess it could be a good idea to lower the price of platinum or the plat price of the items so more players get encouraged to buy plat and spend money.

 

On the other hand there is the problem which was stated from rabcor that maxed equipment isn't really useful. Actually it's even a waste of XP to wear a max lvl Warframe since you could level another Warframe up in the same time.

[Phoenix86]

The game feels like a beta, a very interesting and fun beta, with a lot of potential.

It makes fun one of the most boring things in the world: farming.

 

Ofc i'd like to see some sort of "campaing" with a story behind, a trading system and more customization both in frames and weapons but...

Hey! It's a beta!!

 

I really hope they'll also improve boss fights to not being just a toughter standard enemy which can be defeated "as usual"

[Rabcor]

It's beta, yes, not alpha. Beta is testing phase, it's where most of the content (most, not all but MOST) should already be in the game.

 

it should be (according to wikipedia)"The last pre-release in the software release life cycle"

 

It looks more like a promising game in alpha than if you think of it as beta.

 

It's a game that had (and still has) potential but it's very close to being wasted, and that's sad. Sad for everyone.

 

It's mostly this bad now because someone somewhere was in a hurry to make money and decided it was time to advertise it on steam long before it was ready to receive all the players that play f2p's through steam. Like my little brothers. Thats why they need to fix stuff and fix it fast. (i think i already said this, but that's ok, it's an important point i'm making.)

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Creavyer]

i believe the glaive is availble in alerts if not now am sure it will be added at some points, the part you talking about removing the "potatos" or making them farmable, am just asking then how do you expect the game to have any income

just check out Nexon their business model then you shouldnt complain about warframe.

I find this game very good and balanced you dont need to buy platinum to get the best items compared to combat arms published by Nexon

the thing with combat arms is that everytime there comes out new weapons there will come a free version of the weapon & a stronger one that you will have to pay for.

And these weapons are not cheap in anyway & on top of that they expire 1/7/30/90 days so this game is doing really great i would say

i bought grand master package & i do not regret it even tho i have 6000 platinum left & am just wondering what to spent them on

[Schattensonne]

Hm... Actually I see nothing wrong with a beta at which many parts of the game still need to be implemented. Think of World of Tanks. There was a similar situation and now see how successful they are. (Even if they turned into total A******s what - as I hope - will not happen to DE.)

 

I am very sure this game will be still in an evolving state in which it gets new content when it has passed his release. And I am seeing toward it since it will keep this game alive as long it grows.

[Rabcor]

World of Tanks is in most ways a good example of what not to do, it's the playerbase's fault that they're successful, it's not their achievement. i played world of tanks and i played it a whole lot. most players seemed to hate the company that made it for its greed, everyone realized the in game currency was a total ripoff but even if they felt bad about it they still got it because it made playing more tolerable (rather than fun) because it was less time consuming in so many ways if you just spent moneys.

[Mietz]

World of Tanks is in most ways a good example of what not to do, it's the playerbase's fault that they're successful, it's not their achievement.

 

This sentence is like the mother of all stupid.

[Rabcor]

This sentence is like the mother of all stupid.

I don't see you make any sound argument for why that sentence is stupid. It's the playerbase's stupidity that allowed WoT to make money is basically what i was saying, it's also the playerbases own fault that they'll feel ripped off after spending a handful of moneys on the game (because they decided to spend it) it's the developer/publisher/whoever's fault however that this can happen so easily by overpricing everything in the game.

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Earl.Grey]

I don't see you make any sound argument for why that sentence is stupid. It's the playerbase's stupidity that allowed WoT to make money is basically what i was saying, it's also the playerbases own fault that they'll feel ripped off after spending a handful of moneys on the game (because they decided to spend it) it's the developer/publisher/whoever's fault however that this can happen so easily by overpricing everything in the game.

Yeah I agree, and I'm one of those stupids - problem is, (a) it's still a fun game after 2 years so you can play it between other releases of games (b) playing without premium sucks and progression is way too slow so I do pay and © the games don't frustrate you as much as other pvp games because they are so short usually 10 mins for a long game.

[Rabcor]

Yeah I agree, and I'm one of those stupids - problem is, (a) it's still a fun game after 2 years so you can play it between other releases of games (b) playing without premium sucks and progression is way too slow so I do pay and © the games don't frustrate you as much as other pvp games because they are so short usually 10 mins for a long game.

So am i. ;)

And i agree with every word you said aswell.

 

Also @ComeAgian

I want the potatoes removed or farmable because as they are now they're pretty much nothing else than pay2win for players and make money quick scheme for DE(which is understandable, but doesn't paint a very pretty picture of DE nor Warframe).

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Story4]

I agree with your points, but i would also like to point out that a F2P player can't get every weapon or warframe in the game since he is limited by slots and he won't sell the stuff he played a lot of time for just to get something else that he may or may not like. 

Also the more warframes/weapons appear every month the more money you have to pay in order to get slots for them, which is not good IMO. After 1 year there would be so much stuff in the game that any new player would feel pretty overwhelmed. It's kinda like LoL, in the beginning there was no problem because there weren't that many champions but now it's really hard for a player to get even half the champions through IP, which is why DOTA 2 will probably defeat LoL over time. I am a LoL player myself, but i cannot deny the fact because if i haven't played since closed beta i would probably not even have started.

DE should make slots either free or available for credits, because i for one will not pay just to be able to grind. It seems too money-grabbing, you already have to play hundreds of hours to grind everything, limiting this is only making it worse for F2P players which are pretty much the best source of advertising.

Or at least do it like TF2 does, if someone pays even 4 euro all the slots are unlocked and you don't need to worry about it anymore.

[Rabcor]

hehe and, now if you are an old returning player in LoL it's pretty much impossible to return since you're used to knowing all the champions and all their abilities, i had played them all at some point and owned like 80-90% of them then stopped playing for a few months and the game was then dead to me when i tried to return.

 

i agree with you on the slots issue aswell. they don't need to remove them though, just make them purchasable for a fairly high sum of in-game credits instead of plats only.

 

And that LoL definetly went in the wrong direction by adding tons of new champions to the point where everyone hated them for doing nothing else than adding new champs.

 

this game could use a reward system for inviting new players (if it doesn't already)

 

but instead of making new weapons and warframes (similar to what lol did) i think DE should try and do what everyone wanted RIOT games to do, instead of new champs, make new maps... new playgrounds are harder to make but much more highly appreciated.

 

Instead of spamming new weapons and warframes, polish the ones already in existance and make them all about as good as each other with the only difference being the playstyle of each weapon/warframe, a new weapon or warframe every now and then is ok, but too much is always gonna be too much and just like with all MMOs after too much new content(expansions) the game just isn't what it used to be, add something new and you are bound to lose something old.

Edited April 29, 2013 by rabcor

[Promite]

If you almost quit over the TUTORIAL you might as well stop playing, you might shoot yourself over Kappa.

[VariaManX]

Commenting on the story part.  I would love to see some integration of Dark Sector's story (fitted to DE's original Dark Sector) and work out how the Tenno came to be.  Maybe it was something Hayden Tenno started or discovered, and the game could use longer missions (up to the 30-60 minute marker) driven by back story with objectives relating to the story and really incorperate some nice stealth gameplay, ect... Just my thoughts!

[Story4]

Commenting on the story part.  I would love to see some integration of Dark Sector's story (fitted to DE's original Dark Sector) and work out how the Tenno came to be.  Maybe it was something Hayden Tenno started or discovered, and the game could use longer missions (up to the 30-60 minute marker) driven by back story with objectives relating to the story and really incorperate some nice stealth gameplay, ect... Just my thoughts!

 

Could be cool having 1 or 2 missions with a full story on every planet. Maybe something about discovering your lost heritage, who you really are etc. It would be great.

[dEEkAy2k9]

There's one thing that League of Legends does better then Warframe and THIS contributes to it's huge success. You can work for everything that's gameplay related.

 

Warframe offers you slots for platinum. This means if i want to have mor then 6 weapons or 2 warframes at once, I HAVE TO GODDAMN PAY. There is nothing i can do about that.

 

League of Legends got a similar mechanic. If you want more Runepages (you start with only 2 slots) you either have to work for them (price is 6300 ingame currency or some of their real cash currency equivalent to platinum which is about 5€). 6300 IP are worth a completely new released champion after its first week (champions are now more expensive the first week if bought with ingame currency).

 

I found myself at that point

I purchased a package with about 30 champions back then, not because i needed to purchase it, because i saw how much time i would have to put into this game just to get a basic champion pool, keeping up with the release cycle of new champions (1 every 2 weeks) would not be possible without paying or playing EXCESSIVELY.

 

Same goes for the Runepage slots. I had two at the beginning, soon realized that this limits the number of champions i could play effectively. buying ONE runepage would cost me 6300 ip which in other words is the work of a whole week playing. they even gave me a 3rd slot for free because there was some voting and everyone who participated got a runepage slot for free. it was a gift. i decided to dump some money and get that 7 runepage bundle. best investment into that game ever. made playing it much more fun.

 

warframe got 2 problems. i cannot work for my weapon/warframe slots and every weapons feels kinda underpowered without a potatoe which i too cannot work for. there are weapons ingame i can only get via the alert system. i got lucky and got my hands on the plasma sword, ceramic dagger, dark sword, heat dagger, since april 10th (started that day). i think i forgot a few weapons here, nvm.

 

i can work for warframes, i can work for my credits and my resources, buying weapon blueprints and building them instead of buying them with platinum. right now, i invested 9€ into this game, mainly bought weapon and warframe slots for and am currently at the point where i would need to invest again into the game for more slots. (got excalibur, trinity, loki, banshee, saryn already, ember and ash building right now)

i really think about IF i really should invest more money into this game. there's no real endgame content there. there's nothing besides all those warframes that would keep me playing it (all those other weapons besides hek/gorgon and lex/akbolto and scindo) just feel inferior. why should i level up a ceramic dagger if i can just slice down everything with ease with my scindo?

 

warframes and slots/potatoes are the only things that would keep me playing it. but then again, there's no real content too keep me interested in getting all wfs.

[Geuax]

honestly warframe has quickly turned in to a worse grind than Diablo 3. and i certain the problem is the utterly bloated loot tables, really do we need quite this many mods that are just cut and pastes of a mod for anther weapon group.

[Psicomax]

if they nail endgame adding some more content this game can end being awesome

i suggest developers check l4d2, a tank like enemy can be fun

[OneUp.]