How warframe acheives a great player community?

[Trooper402]

Hello Tenno,

I am currently a student that is studying game design. I have been a fan of Warframe for some time now.  Recently I was assigned as a final project to do a critical analysis of Warframe.  While I was thinking about this assignment I started thinking about the community that has developed with the game. It have not had any negative experiences while playing Warframe; which is something that I really cant say about most other games I have played online.  I was hoping to get feedback from the community about this topic regarding Warframe and how Digital Extremes has created such a great community around the game.  This is a topic I thought would be worth writing a paper on.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Trooper402

[vasRayya]

Any dissent or toxicity gets deleted

[Roboplus]

It doesn't? It doesn't.

If you're looking for evidence you can document to support such a claim, even if it's untrue, that's another thing.

As an action game, even when people are upset it's better to keep your hand on the controls than bang on your keyboard angrily. Even when downed you have at least limited control of your character and the ability to fire. As soon as you die fully, you can respawn right away. There's never time to verbally abuse someone.

[Kryshok]

I think that since this is a co-op game instead of a PvP based game players are more open to help other players as well. A lot of this community does help new players as well as older ones returning, I know in other games they are more like I don't have time etc. Here with Warframe being a grind game its more about getting said part or resource over beating other players. That being said there are negative players both in game and some that visit here. But most players in game just ignore the one being problematic and finish the mission, there are times when said jerk is throwing a fit but even then I find them funny.

 

I think what helps here is the admins and moderators do a excellent job of keeping dissent down etc.

[Trooper402]

4 minutes ago, Roboplus said:

It doesn't? It doesn't.

If you're looking for evidence you can document to support such a claim, even if it's untrue, that's another thing.

As an action game, even when people are upset it's better to keep your hand on the controls than bang on your keyboard angrily. Even when downed you have at least limited control of your character and the ability to fire. As soon as you die fully, you can respawn right away. There's never time to verbally abuse someone.

This is exactly why I posted. I never would of thought of it as simply a player doesn't have time to verbalize how upset that they are.  However, after spending some time with some of my instructors I have a sneaking suspicion that the game designers thought about this in some way when designing the game.

[Kryshok]

There are some who will in the middle of a fight run their mouth because they think they are god's gift to gaming...I usually ignore them and they are usually the ones who get downed the fastest and more often than the rest of the team.

That being said all games are going to have their trolls but depending on gameplay and how you can communicate that dictates the in mission mouth running.

[calmchaos]

It's all luck. As this is a coop game, players are more likely to try and work with another to achieve a common goal. That said, there will always be people that are really easy to set off, or those that simply don't care about their fello Tenno. However, there are just as many of us who enjoy playing with others and who actively try to be nice and/or helpful to one another. Sometimes you get lucky and only run across players with certain mindsets, but there will always be players out there that don't adhere to a code of conduct you deem decent.

Your lack of negative experiences is most likely because of the type of game this is. So long as everyone is at least trying to complete the objective, it's rare for anyone to form a negative attitude towards another player in the mission. We all want the rewards after all, and infighting doesn't help achieve that. The primary situations in which you'd see the unhappy part of the community is when someone isn't doing his/her part in the mission or when something just goes terribly wrong (be it getting crappy rewards, the entire team screwing up, etc...).

The forum on the hand... that's a whole different beast than the game itself. Everyone here is basically leaving themselves bare by posting their unfiltered/mostly unfiltered thoughts, so it's much, much easier to take things personal when someone disagrees with those personal thoughts. Luckily the forum is still just a small subset of the community, primarily the subset that likes to voice their opinion.

The time it would take to say what you think in-game vs on the forum is also severely different. You rarely have the time to spill your thoughts brains in-game without that actually happening to your frame. If it won't help the mission, it's generally best to shut it until the mission is over. Then you can simply ignore that person and/or just rely on the sheer number of people playing to prevent you from ever meeting again. The friends list and ignore list serve to keep players happy in that regard. Helping you keep tabs on those you enjoyed playing with and at the same time stopping you from walking into a past mistake again.

I'm glad you've had mostly positive experiences though. Hope your lucky streak continues indefinitely.

[Trooper402]

21 minutes ago, calmchaos said:

It's all luck. As this is a coop game, players are more likely to try and work with another to achieve a common goal. That said, there will always be people that are really easy to set off, or those that simply don't care about their fello Tenno. However, there are just as many of us who enjoy playing with others and who actively try to be nice and/or helpful to one another. Sometimes you get lucky and only run across players with certain mindsets, but there will always be players out there that don't adhere to a code of conduct you deem decent.

Your lack of negative experiences is most likely because of the type of game this is. So long as everyone is at least trying to complete the objective, it's rare for anyone to form a negative attitude towards another player in the mission. We all want the rewards after all, and infighting doesn't help achieve that. The primary situations in which you'd see the unhappy part of the community is when someone isn't doing his/her part in the mission or when something just goes terribly wrong (be it getting crappy rewards, the entire team screwing up, etc...).

The forum on the hand... that's a whole different beast than the game itself. Everyone here is basically leaving themselves bare by posting their unfiltered/mostly unfiltered thoughts, so it's much, much easier to take things personal when someone disagrees with those personal thoughts. Luckily the forum is still just a small subset of the community, primarily the subset that likes to voice their opinion.

The time it would take to say what you think in-game vs on the forum is also severely different. You rarely have the time to spill your thoughts brains in-game without that actually happening to your frame. If it won't help the mission, it's generally best to shut it until the mission is over. Then you can simply ignore that person and/or just rely on the sheer number of people playing to prevent you from ever meeting again. The friends list and ignore list serve to keep players happy in that regard. Helping you keep tabs on those you enjoyed playing with and at the same time stopping you from walking into a past mistake again.

I'm glad you've had mostly positive experiences though. Hope your lucky streak continues indefinitely.

I'm not saying that there are not toxic players in-game. I personally feel that they are few and far between without having to ignore people.  When I play, for example a MOBA,  they seem continuously more frequent (I know its very competitive and players will place blame on everyone) or another example is a recently released competitive online FPS game that I play quite often in which I find consistently more toxic players in and the unfortunate part is they are not toxic about the game itself, they are just toxic in general making inappropriate comments on chat or just having inappropriate gamer tags.  This is what my overall interest is in and how future games can be designed to avoid this.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Trooper402

[calmchaos]

3 minutes ago, Trooper402 said:

I'm not saying that there are not toxic players in-game. I personally feel that they are few and far between without having to ignore people.  When I play, for example a MOBA,  they seem continuously more frequent (I know its very competitive and players will place blame on everyone) or another example is a recently released competitive online FPS game that I play quiet often in which I find consistently more toxic players in and the unfortunate part is they are not toxic about the game itself, they are just toxic in general making inappropriate comments on chat or just having inappropriate gamer tags.

I meant to address that by mentioning coop as the primary reason. To further explain what I was trying to say, MOBAs and FPS' are generally completely focused on Player vs Player interactions. In Warframe, if you go down the other players normally won't care as much because it doesn't directly hurt your team's chance at success. After all, you can just be revived, and since the enemies are all controlled by AI they don't actively take advantage of the fact that a frame has been downed. In those other two genres however, going down or dying can, and in many instances does, very seriously affect the outcome of that match. People like to win. No one plays a game with the intent of losing bar the intent to troll. When they believe someone is preventing that oh-so-coveted win, they lash out unnecessarily. It's just that when the enemy is able to take advantage of weak links, that's when many people take things much more seriously than they would in other cases.

Also, and I don't mean this as an insult or to be rude or anything, but in my experience those genres lure in the types of people who have big egos, superiority complexes, and sometimes those that enjoy causing others misery (be it those on their team or those on the enemy's team). That's just my take on what I've personally experienced, no facts involved there. I'd gather that it also has to due with venting frustrations. Some people probably can't release their negative emotions towards a lifeless AI, instead needing the satisfaction of knowing that there's another human being behind the target of their verbal and in-game attacks. To that end, Warframe would be a terribly, horrible surrogate since it makes its name as a PvE horde shooter. That would definitely help to push away people with those kinds of intents.

[-.SP.-G43riel]

31 minutes ago, calmchaos said:

 

Also, and I don't mean this as an insult or to be rude or anything, but in my experience those genres lure in the types of people who have big egos, superiority complexes, and sometimes those that enjoy causing others misery (be it those on their team or those on the enemy's team). That's just my take on what I've personally experienced, no facts involved there. I'd gather that it also has to due with venting frustrations. Some people probably can't release their negative emotions towards a lifeless AI, instead needing the satisfaction of knowing that there's another human being behind the target of their verbal and in-game attacks. To that end, Warframe would be a terribly, horrible surrogate since it makes its name as a PvE horde shooter. That would definitely help to push away people with those kinds of intents.

But on otherside, it makes a lot of people feel that the game is lacking.
Dark Sector Conclaves (the Clan/Alliance wars) is coming back sometime soon, so that should help
If it didn't come back, then there really wouldn't have any good reason to maintain large clans and alliances, those things ask for competition, specially when a lot of players are already reaching ranks 19 - 20 - 21, and there's basically almost nothing to do besides completing the mastery xp farm from things you still miss in your codex.

Competition is a good thing and makes things move. Not every time is about venting frustations, that looks like a personal case, again it's not always about egos and superiority even if some people do have some problems with those. I don't play warframe to release any negative emotions towards killing AI, i play because it's fun, as a lot of other games, multiplayer or not.

Edited April 11, 2016 by -.SP.-G43riel

[-BM-Mitz]

As others have said before me, it's the fact it's a co-op focused game. That brings a new kind of community with naturally less toxicity. There is still toxic around but nothing compared to LoL, CoD, Destiny etc..

[Babellon]

Personally I don't think the game creates the community. I think the game is the commonality around which the community centers and the rest is a matter of the nature of the people within the community. As some have already stated this being a PVE Co-Op/solo game the community is more engendered to cooperate and focus on building towards a more stable player experience in which everyone contributes and feels they are gaining something in the exchange. 

[----Fenrir----]

It's because this game is very easy so there is very little room for complaining since it really does not matter how bad people play most of the time because for most content a single decent player can usually carry 3 dudes who do not know what they are doing easily enough.

That is a very different situation to let's say Dota 2 or World of Tanks. In those games you usually require your teammates to be at least semi competent which can easily lead to frustration when you end up with a few very very bad teams in a row.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I don't think I've heard a human voice over the mics on Warframe PUGS in over a year now on the PS4, so community probably falls into hands of numerous friend list, alliances, and clans keeping chat alive on private parties. Players still tend to revive other players, I attribute that to the Left4Dead learning curve being burned into a chunk of players playing this game.

Region Chat better sums up the community in a truthful manner over the heavily moderated forums, though that is starting to change thanks in part to more active GOTL moderation. Racism, profanity, and misogyny is abundant still, while helpful players chime in here and there answering questions as best they can, all the while surrounded by those few individuals using snark to interject some sort of conversation pertaining to themselves or random starts. 

So basically just another slice of the Internet enjoying the anonymous benefits of irking/helping one another.  

 

[calmchaos]

4 minutes ago, -.SP.-G43riel said:

But on otherside, it makes a lot of people feel that the game is lacking.
Dark Sector Conclaves (the Clan/Alliance wars) is coming back sometime soon, so that should help
If it didn't come back, there really would have not a good reason to maintain large clans and alliances, those things ask for competition, specially when a lot of players are already reaching ranks 19 - 20 - 21, and there's basically almost nothing to do besides completing the mastery xp farm from things you still miss in your codex.

Competition is a good thing and makes things move. Not every time is about venting frustations, that looks like a personal case, again it's not always about egos and superiority even if some people do have some problems with those. I don't play warframe to release any negative emotions towards killing AI, i play because it's fun, as a lot of other games, multiplayer or not.

Oh, I'm not saying that competition is bad. I fully understand how important that is, and although I'm not a fan of PvP I don't hate it so much as to ignore the benefits of it. The issue with games that are focused only on PvP is how seriously people start taking it. In a game like Warframe, PvP is like a spice that adds a bit of fresh gameplay when things start getting stale. In games where you're constantly pit against other humans as if your only existence in the game is measured by how well you can annihilate the enemy team, that's when problems arise. Healthy competition is good, and Warframe helps promote that. Games like Smite and LoL for example do not promote healthy competition. In those games, almost every player you come across will value only one thing: winning no matter what it takes and no matter who gets hurt in the process. That's beyond just having fun, completely ignoring the primary purpose of games in the first place.

When I have a good match in Smite, it's because my team worked together and we fought with the intent of enjoying the match regardless of the outcome, even if we did want to win. Matches I've had that were not fun was when every single mistake (mine, other teammate's, didn't matter either way) was harshly criticized by one or multiple people, or when the players had differing opinions but rather than work out a solution devolved to insults. I've won many matches that weren't fun for that exact reason.

When writing up my previous post, I tried to be very careful to state that was just what I personally experienced, and that it likely doesn't reflect the entirety of the issue. The only fact I can think of is that PvP does create more toxicity than any other type of gameplay. How much and to what degree is of course up for debate, but we all know that PvP is an enabler to unwarranted behavior when masked by anonymity moreso than PvE. It undeniably happens in PvE, but it's much, much more common in PvP even though there are many who don't act that way.

[Insizer]

As I see it, the game dictates the community. Warframe has a lot going for it:

• It's a co-op, that is to say its not PvP which really causes rustled jimmies.
  • It is also a time period where people have grown somewhat tired of CoD-esque clones and the frustrations induced by them.
• It's free-to-play so if people don't like the game then they don't have to play it, no loss to them.
  • It's very well designed free-to-play in terms of its monetary system. You can get everything free if you so desire, and you don't need to jump through "its free so long as you spend 4 solid days gathering experience points to buy a gun you can't return" BS you find elsewhere.
    • People are also fully aware of what bad games and bad free-to-plays look like, and are somewhat grateful to DE that Warframe is, at the very least, better than most of its competition in this regard. As such you see comments insinuating that Warframe has a monetary system which rips you off by design, shut down within the next post or two.
• There are weapons that are definitely better than others, but there are no premium-only weapons or frames (minus the first prime, he-who-shall-not-be-named), especially ones that down right owns the competition. So players don't feel cheated when someone goes and "beats them" hands down.
• The devs interact with the community regularly and people at least feel that they have some type of connection to the development process.
• The devs also interact through live videos where people are actually seeing them. The videos are also relatively informal and don't come across as an impersonal press conference. This helps the interactions feel genuine and somewhat personal.
  • the devs seem like anyone else and have fun.
• The devs are in this project for the long-haul, and are not going simply laying a product on the ground and saying "have fun, cya!" before jumping in a limo and driving away with your money.
• The devs keep content coming, whether it be frames, primes, weapons, or events.
• People know that this is a beta (and will forever be one), so there are going to be bugs and stuff, so people approach these issues somewhat lightheartedly.
• The forums allow for a reasonable (albeit sometimes misguided) way to vent frustrations.
  • Region chat is also a great way to loosen up because it is off the walls most times.
• People on the forums, as a whole, feel like they are individually part of the growing process of the game. All want the game to get better, and acknowledge that the game can get better. And, people more or less respect everyone's right to a voice. It is almost like everyone feels like they are part of a committee for the game's developers.
• People on the forums understand that they must support their views of what is better and be ready to debate it, and so the forums are somewhat self-regulating (granted this also means stuff can get out of hand dramatically). And people love to debate in general, especially Americans (I know this is generalized, but it certainly seems like it, living in the US) who are a primary market for this game.
• The forums also have a number of highly intelligent forum-goers who offer good ideas and analysis to debate.
• The forums have a team of highly dedicated community moderators who are in contact with some department of the dev team, can delete posts, and lock and move threads.
• DE is not spelled the same as EA or Ubisoft.

Honestly, Warframe has a lot of things going for it that gaming companies ought to look at for future games.

 

EDIT: (Now I'm going to talking from my biased point of view). Not to sound like a fan-boy... But honestly, the Warframe experience has made me something of a future customer for DE. If and when they release a new free-to-play I will download it and at least give it a good shot just based on the fact its DE. I'm not sure about up-front purchases of games, I'd have to do more research than just the maker, but yeah, it very well might influence my decision. I've played a few badly made games, heard about a few terrible gaming experiences, and played a few free-to-plays that had money printer noises playing the background to know that you can't take good systems for granted. Warframe has a good system going for it in my opinion. And @Trooper402, you can quote me on this.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Insizer
added a bit

[MillbrookWest]

As others have said, i think the PvE nature of the game creates the mindset early on in Warframe to the point where even the most arrogant of players understands that they need team members to accomplish certain tasks.

So, for most normal people, knowing that it is a team effort, we go out of our way a little when possible to help others. They may not be a permanent member of your squad, but if you have a spare X mod that will help him help other squads, people on Warframe tend to be generous enough to gift/loan said mods to up and coming players, or in the case where X mod is a little too valuable, they will instead lend their help in attaining X mod instead through missions. The latter tends to be the more favoured option as far as i've seen due to the games gameplay. 

So on that note, I think you can't dismiss the gameplay elements when discussing the attainability of Warframe, in relation to its friendly playerbase. FashionFrame aside, the game itself allows you to express your particular playstyle in missions. Run and Gun, Power Heavy, Melee only, Secondary only...etc etc. It's easy for people to find their Niche, but those Niches are all governed by the same rules as other play styles... So your Warframe will essentially be built the same, and if you like to dual wield secondaries, you still equip the exact same mods as someone who likes to merely run a secondary for 'oh snap' moments. Yet both playstyles still understand the fundamentals of what makes each 'work' - So to speak.

1 hour ago, Rachnera said:

Any dissent or toxicity gets deleted

Well, that makes sense, anything not constructive is essentially useless. It's broken logic to use toxicity as a means to get your point across. If the game annoyed a person to that degree, the more straightforward logic would be for them to walk away. The latter is likely the case with most people, DE released the stat that there were 16 million accounts... Doesn't feel like that at times, which would suggest people have indeed moved on, and those that remain do so with the understanding that being constructive is better than being destructive.

[taiiat]

Warframe fares better than most games because it (generally) avoids a competitive, PvP or direct competition environment. *
Players also don't generally need to rely on random people around the world, and can complete Missions even if someone(s) are not really helping the Mission.

 

some of the members of Digital Extremes liking Metal also certainly helps. :)
fun fact: people that listen to Metal will be some of the calmest people in regards towards interactions with other people. because they're aware enough to recognize that an outlet is good, and Metal is a huge energy outlet.
instead of spending their entire lives lying to themselves and hiding themselves to only release it in bursts towards others, and also choosing music that helps them hide from everything and everyone else.
contrary to popular belief by the very people i'm referring to, Metal is actually a section of music that is completely about community, engaging with other people, and working together.

 

*: to note - PvP is not bad, but competitive PvP is. i.e. where you're actually competing over something. whether that be some sort of prize, trophy, or whatever.
when everyone participating is participating just because they want to, rather than for a goal, things go smoothly and everyone has a nice time. in two Team situations, Teams even acknowledging good plays by both their Team and the enemy Team. respecting when someone does something legitimately skillful or awesome, regardless if it's good for your Team or not.
sadly this is extremely rare and usually it's competitive, competing over a prize or winning being incredibly important for some sort of 'muh progression'. which just breeds bad apples.

in short, competing over something outside of a PvP match (something that exists outside of the game session) is a recipe for disaster - but if the only competition is to win for the sake of winning, then things will go a lot smoother.

Edited April 11, 2016 by taiiat

[Insizer]

2 minutes ago, MillbrookWest said:

As others have said, i think the PvE nature of the game creates the mindset early on in Warframe to the point where even the most arrogant of players understands that they need team members to accomplish certain tasks.

So, for most normal people, knowing that it is a team effort, we go out of our way a little when possible to help others. They may not be a permanent member of your squad, but if you have a spare X mod that will help him help other squads, people on Warframe tend to be generous enough to gift/loan said mods to up and coming players, or in the case where X mod is a little too valuable, they will instead lend their help in attaining X mod instead through missions. The latter tends to be the more favoured option as far as i've seen due to the games gameplay. 

So on that note, I think you can't dismiss the gameplay elements when discussing the attainability of Warframe, in relation to its friendly playerbase. FashionFrame aside, the game itself allows you to express your particular playstyle in missions. Run and Gun, Power Heavy, Melee only, Secondary only...etc etc. It's easy for people to find their Niche, but those Niches are all governed by the same rules as other play styles... So your Warframe will essentially be built the same, and if you like to dual wield secondaries, you still equip the exact same mods as someone who likes to merely run a secondary for 'oh snap' moments. Yet both playstyles still understand the fundamentals of what makes each 'work' - So to speak.

Well, that makes sense, anything not constructive is essentially useless. It's broken logic to use toxicity as a means to get your point across. If the game annoyed a person to that degree, the more straightforward logic would be for them to walk away. The latter is likely the case with most people, DE released the stat that there were 16 million accounts... Doesn't feel like that at times, which would suggest people have indeed moved on, and those that remain do so with the understanding that being constructive is better than being destructive.

There may be 16 million accounts, but last I heard, there were only around 2 million forum accounts:

 

[MillbrookWest]

Just now, Insizer said:

There may be 16 million accounts, but last I heard, there were only around 2 million forum accounts:

 

That would make sense, the forum database probably pulls the userdata from the main warframe database the game uses. People tend to not sign up to forums(preferring social media instead), so not as many accounts on this database ;)

[taiiat]

Just now, MillbrookWest said:

the forum database probably pulls the userdata from the main warframe database the game uses.

it does, but only on the first time an account visits the Forums. if you create a Warframe Account, and play for N hours, but never actually go to the Forums and sign in with your Website Account, the Forum Account is never created.

[Stratego89]

Step 1: great game, with few big problems and replayability that keeps players interested for a long time so the playerbase grows large and has a great variation in the 'age' of it's players. Also a theme that creates diversity in opinions and preferences to promote discussion and open up as many possibilities for the game's future as possible- which keeps things positive.

Step 2: great developers, that communicate with their players consistently and adamantly to fix the few big problems- and as many little problems as possible- while at the same time taking input for how the game can be improved as a whole.

Step 3: great moderators, that take care of the things that would distract the developers and detract from their performance and communication with the people that matter. Yes I said it- some people don't matter, and those people are the ones who only want to create toxicity, hurt other people, and carry a negative attitude without any desire to improve what has made them unhappy. Their opinions hold no benefit so they should be- and are- silenced as necessary to keep the negativity out and let the optimism of everyone else run wild without stagnating or getting hung up on/blocked by something.

 

Step 4: the players. Sounds redundant- but there's just something about warframe that tends to draw in the right kinda people to make a community great- without drawing in a bunch of bad apples as well. Perhaps it's the co-op focus, rather than PvP. PvP tends to create bad blood, hot tempers, and outlashes between people that don't really mean what they're saying or doing, but lose themselves in the heat of the moment. Maybe it's the clear diversity of cultures within the game that makes everyone feel welcome. It could even just be that a lot of people think space ninjas are really really cool. The point is- no matter what kind of game warframe is; if the people that play it didn't keep a positive attitude and carry good behavioral habits, it wouldn't be so positive. I personally believe that Warframe's community is... strange. People are not naturally consistently happy and satisfied, etc etc- even when lots of things go wrong. Even in the best game _{*cough* Warframe *cough*} people naturally tend to become distraught when things go awry. The Devs fixing things right away and communicating should only do so much, so I really feel like there's a magic bullet that causes the players to just be happy/good- I just can't figure out what it is.

 

Hopefully my personal opinions and beliefs on what results in Warframe's community are useful to you OP.

[XaxalShiba]

2 hours ago, Rachnera said:

Any dissent or toxicity gets deleted

This. 

And the fact that PVE centered games focus more on cooperation as opposed to competition.

[DestroyerOmega]

>Warframe has an excellent community

PFFT

PFFFFFFFFFFFFT

Not really, no. Path of Exile has a community leagues better than this, even though it is in the same free-to-play category. How it manages this is beyond me.

For your best answer, look to

6 hours ago, Rachnera said:

Any dissent or toxicity gets deleted

 

[XaxalShiba]

1 minute ago, DestroyerOmega said:

>Warframe has an excellent community

PFFT

PFFFFFFFFFFFFT

Not really, no. Path of Exile has a community leagues better than this, even though it is in the same free-to-play category. How it manages this is beyond me.

For your best answer, look to

 

Huh. How is the community in PoE right now?