Note To The Development Team Re: Dojo Costs

[Aquifn]

First off, I'd like to say I love Warframe, and Update Eight is awesome. Well done, and thank you.

 

I'd like to offer some feedback for you to consider, from a currently happy and supportive customer concerning the costs of dojo building.

 

The costs are unrealistic for the type of clans your game suggests supporting. All of the maps thus far, are four person. So my friends and I created our own clan, only around twelve of us, but we play often and have fun. We were all really looking forward to building our dojo, your livestream suggested things might take a minute, but would be well within reach.

 

Eight hit, and we were all super excited to get to work, some of us even spent 10 plat to fast-track our keys to get things rolling. The first corridor costs more then the lot of us had stocked up since your game hit steam. That's a good amount of play time, many of us over a hundred, hundred and fifty hours.

 

Then there's the platinum cost of the forma materials, or the long wait time trying to farm them. I understand having some, but the numbers required per room are obviously suggesting you want clans of hundreds, not friends. My friends, and I, are dishearted that the entire system appears designed with large numbers of members required. Why was the medium not something like twenty people, instead of three hundred?

 

We can't even recruit because of the high costs, people see we're small and just instantly ignore us. Heck, its hard enough for us to convince friends to play with the market changes. Add the fact that progress is very hard on new people to the fact that apparently they must join a massive clan to gain access to more weapons and people just don't want to join in.

 

Suggestions:

1) Drastically lower the costs of everything. You can look at the forums, the giant top five clans already are basically finished building, there is no reason for the high costs. Fit the costs to a realistic week long goal for a clan of 15-25 people who live normal lives to achieve something.

 

2) Scale the costs based on membership, this would actually be frustrating I imagine, so you could alternatively simply have different membership level tiers. Rooms cost X based on X members in said clan.

 

3) Remove clans all together, make 2-3 'Offcial' story supported clans that people are encouraged to pick one and join it. Have some sort of method to raise through the ranks, with leaders being able to pick building stuff.

 

 

 

Something needs to change however, because its very disheartening when a game thats designed around four people working together, alienates a clan of twelve friends into making them join a massive clan to progress.

[tactical_surgeon]

just to add to that ~ most of my clan members ( clan of 10 ) have been here since closed beta.... still don't have enough ~ 

 

the only answer at the moment is to recruit or farm 

[chandail]

I strongly support suggestion #2, We are 14 in my clan, and though I've farmed and farmed since Update 7, I'm can't even build a simple connection. The irony is that the only materials I can fully contribute to are Credits.

 

I really hope the cost will be drastically lowered for small clans, I really want to duel and get my hands on the new weapons that the top clans already have :(

[tinyrodent]

Yeah it was a bit of a shock to see the dojo prices. Especially after we heard in Livestream that Rebecca herself is in a small clan, and that small clans would not be left out of the fun. Not sure what the best solution is, but the current system seriously discourages small clans. For that matter why wouldn't everyone join the same gigantic clan?

[Angius]

Me and my friend are with WF since closed beta. We spent all our resources and what do we get..? Half a reactor...

Not to mention disappearing resources, while deleting  a dojo segment...

[Delsaber]

I wasn't to concerned over the initial Dojo costs, cause I thought it was just a cosmetic place to hang out. And if you had the resources you could make it larger and add in some funny time sinks, like dueling. Then I found out about the Dojo Research...meaning there's content (weapons, maybe more) that are only available if you build it; and I probably won't be seeing that content ever.

I think the material costs should be lowered across the board; and even more so for the hallways, connectors, ect. There's no reason for a hallway to cost as much material as a giant Reactor room.

If DE won't lower material costs, I ask that they at least look into alternative ways of researching those weapons for smaller clans; I'll take some corpus laser weapons over a giant dojo any day.

[Angius]

If the cost won't be lowered, and if I won't get back my resources lost during deletion, I see no other option, but joining a 600+ clan. I don't like that huge clans, but well...

"We encourage you to be in a clan" - over 1000 members, they should add in their livestream...

[Yorinar]

Agreed. I have been around since update 4 and I have barely to build a connector. My small clan might be able to unlock weapons by update 10. :p

[Caernarvon]

Direct cost scaling on the current system would destroy the point of large clans though.

Suddenly small clans can get dojos the size of large clans' ? And they have to contribute less materials and such too? Yeah no. A dozen people together aren't supposed to get the same commodities as a hundred player group.

 

My take on this is that you can chose between three "types" of dojos prior to creating one: small, medium and large.

Each offers about the same kind of tiles, but the tiles themselves differ in cost, size and usefulness depending on the pre-selected dojo size.

As such a small clan can properly build a dojo with reactor, junctions, labs and all, but everything will be smaller and the R&D portions won't allow for all research.

Allows a dozen people to create a small comfy base with benefits over loners, while larger clans in their larger dojos will also get their own extra benefits.

 

Hell I might make a topic about this idea.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Caernarvon

[bubblecaster325]

I agree with this so much. I made a small clan for myself and a few friends, and the build costs are appalling.

[Hybridon]

And on livestream people already pointed out costs where overpriced for the dojo... and they said they have realized it and would work on them, guess lets wait till livestream #6 and hope the small clans like mine get a voice out on the 1 hour and 30 mins =)

 

My best tip is to wait, and continue posting well written and not offensive threads like these, they give us a higher chance of being heard other than spamming threads only bad talking instead of proposing a solution (:

[Aquifn]

I really don't care if the huge clans can finish everything in one day, but it takes my group of friends a month. That's an acceptable trade. You want instant, go massive clan. You want to feel personal accomplishment, work with your buddies. Instead they finish everything in one day, but it'll take us half a year or more. No difference for them, the desire to quit for us.

[Unknown924]

Another idea would be for the cosmetic part of the Dojo to cost a lot of resources while functional parts are much cheaper.  I laid out one way of doing that in my thread here:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/50238-a-dojo-solution-make-current-rooms-top-tier-cosmestic-upgrades-add-much-cheaper-and-worse-looking-versions-of-rooms-for-smaller-clans/

 

The main problem I see with a straight price cut is it would be unfair to those who already paid the current costs already.  There needs to some way of scaling costs that can't be exploited by reudcing clan size temporarily for cheap prices.  One idea for that I saw on the forums was to make prices based on a membership cap.  Upgrading the member cap would requiring paying to upgrade all existing rooms to the cost for the new cap.  I think cap based is better than per current member since people could just leave the clan and then rejoin.  The current prices could be the maximum price in a scaling system.

[Angius]

Basically - everything is better, than what we have now.

[SgtCapricorn]

I feel the main issue is the Forma.

I am in a 2 person Clan and we can almost build a few hallways besides the Forma.

 

I wouldn't mind farming the materials, except that Forma is impossible to farm since it is only from alerts and daily login.

[FrostWolf]

One suggestion I saw was just make everything time based and all getting resources does is speed up the timer.

[Aquifn]

Its beta, its okay for us to lose what we've already put into rooms. I -hope- the game design is to cater to the more average clan size, rather then the freaking huge clans where you're just another drone in the cog. Time based seems like an interesting choice. Room sizes is also interesting. But the only option shouldn't be 'Go huge or go home.' At least not if it has real in game content application. If its just decorative rooms, then it can cost as much as whatever they want.

[Nod_Off]

Direct cost scaling on the current system would destroy the point of large clans though.

Suddenly small clans can get dojos the size of large clans' ? And they have to contribute less materials and such too? Yeah no. A dozen people together aren't supposed to get the same commodities as a hundred player group.

 

My take on this is that you can chose between three "types" of dojos prior to creating one: small, medium and large.

Each offers about the same kind of tiles, but the tiles themselves differ in cost, size and usefulness depending on the pre-selected dojo size.

As such a small clan can properly build a dojo with reactor, junctions, labs and all, but everything will be smaller and the R&D portions won't allow for all research.

Allows a dozen people to create a small comfy base with benefits over loners, while larger clans in their larger dojos will also get their own extra benefits.

 

Hell I might make a topic about this idea.

Best suggestion yet, as your first statement is spot on.

If they scale, large clans would be slapped in the face.

[bubblecaster325]

Direct cost scaling on the current system would destroy the point of large clans though.

Suddenly small clans can get dojos the size of large clans' ? And they have to contribute less materials and such too? Yeah no. A dozen people together aren't supposed to get the same commodities as a hundred player group.

 

My take on this is that you can chose between three "types" of dojos prior to creating one: small, medium and large.

Each offers about the same kind of tiles, but the tiles themselves differ in cost, size and usefulness depending on the pre-selected dojo size.

As such a small clan can properly build a dojo with reactor, junctions, labs and all, but everything will be smaller and the R&D portions won't allow for all research.

Allows a dozen people to create a small comfy base with benefits over loners, while larger clans in their larger dojos will also get their own extra benefits.

 

Hell I might make a topic about this idea.

I'd much rather pay the insane costs for the Dojo rooms than have less useful rooms, honestly. Smaller and uglier but less expensive rooms I'm okay with, but taking the usefulness away...no, please no.

[KvotheTheArcane1]

I'd much rather pay the insane costs for the Dojo rooms than have less useful rooms, honestly. Smaller and uglier but less expensive rooms I'm okay with, but taking the usefulness away...no, please no.

this ^ +1, ugliness can be dealt with. If you could upgrade the dojo's "small" lab to a "medium" lab to a "large" lab, maybe it'd be an ok idea, but I still feel scaling would be better (with a cap so 300 person clans don't have like triple the cost or something, perhaps it would just scale up to the current prices.

Edited May 24, 2013 by KvotheTheArcane1

[Wriith]

I'd love some sort of scaling based on the size of the clan.  As said, the huge clans already have a good deal of stuff built, but the small clans?  Oh dear god is it going to take forever.  I'm really looking forward to playing with the dojo system, but as it stands currently I'm going to have a long wait ahead of me before I see anything functional in my clan's dojo (I'm the warlord of a small 4 man clan and even if I were to throw everything I own into the dojo, we'd have about half of a cross connector - yikes!).

[Mak_Gohae]

How come people dont want to wait for stuff? Seriously...

How long are you going to be playing the game that you want to be able to built your Dojo now?

I'm in my own one make clan so i probably wont be seeing Dojo stuff for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time unless i join a clan and guess what? I dont care. Why? Because it gives me something to do, it's a goal.  If the dojo was something that could be pumped out in a week by everyone people would just be complaining about there being nothing to do the next week. Which is probably what is going to happen with the big clans.

 

Now here is a picture of my pet.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Mak_Gohae

[TraumaHunter]

Direct cost scaling on the current system would destroy the point of large clans though.

Suddenly small clans can get dojos the size of large clans' ? And they have to contribute less materials and such too? Yeah no. A dozen people together aren't supposed to get the same commodities as a hundred player group.

 

My take on this is that you can chose between three "types" of dojos prior to creating one: small, medium and large.

Each offers about the same kind of tiles, but the tiles themselves differ in cost, size and usefulness depending on the pre-selected dojo size.

As such a small clan can properly build a dojo with reactor, junctions, labs and all, but everything will be smaller and the R&D portions won't allow for all research.

Allows a dozen people to create a small comfy base with benefits over loners, while larger clans in their larger dojos will also get their own extra benefits.

 

Hell I might make a topic about this idea.

It doesn't "destroy the point"

You still get everything MUCH faster.

But this way 80% of the player base isn't locked out of content only 2-3 large groups have access to (or will have access to for a very long time)

[KvotheTheArcane1]

How come people dont want to wait for stuff? Seriously...

How long are you going to be playing the game that you want to be able to built your Dojo now?

I'm in my own one make clan so i probably wont be seeing Dojo stuff for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time unless i join a clan and guess what? I dont care. Why? Because it gives me something to do, it's a goal.  If the dojo was something that could be pumped out in a week by everyone people would just be complaining about there being nothing to do the next week. Which is probably what is going to happen with the big clans.

I disagree, the labs unlock ~20 weapons which gives people A LOT to do, with making the weapons, testing and leveling them, etc.

[Nod_Off]

I disagree, the labs unlock ~20 weapons which gives people A LOT to do, with making the weapons, testing and leveling them, etc.

It does give you a lot to do, working towards unlocking them.