A New Player's Perspective, Overview, And Experience Of Warframe (Warning: Long In-Depth Post)

[Aishi]

Now, before I begin, I would like to state that I have been working towards this post and will release once I hit my 50 hour make on Warframe. Upon nearing completion, it really does seem like I have said all I want to say and I feel it holds much weight to the improvement of Warframe. This information is basically an interior look into the mindset of a starting Warframe player, I will try my best to share my experience and thoughts in a complete way as a veteran MMO and gamer. I can give my credentials if necessary but let’s just say that I’ve been playing MMOs since the 4^th grade, and been through grindfests such as Pre-Big Bang Maplestory, Aion, TERA, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, soforth.

Now, I have clocked 50 hours in the game, and started playing this game 6 days ago, averaging around 8 hours in-game a day, now I would like to emphasize in-game rather than actively playing the game, and I will elaborate on this later.

 

First, the question that surfaces is why my extreme interest in the game? I first heard of this game at E3, I am not a graphics person but the game does look quite nice, optimization and the like, the game runs smooth and this is all a great plus. The reason I downloaded Warframe the instant I saw it was because, aside from space ninjas, the likeness to GunZ: The Duel. Having played GunZ since childhood (it was my first shooter), I have been through the ups and down of the game as well as the exploitation of the game’s mechanics to develop a new system of movement that turned the originally loose gameplay into hectic, combo button frenzy, glitch cancelling sword slashing infinite wallrunning enemy flipping double shotgun swapshotting goodness. The American scene has died out to three digits in players, I’m active on the Korean servers where the game is still thriving and invited to the closed beta of GunZ 2, saw Warframe, and here I am. Why Warframe? The gameplay initially looks fast, the weapons look well done and varied in animation and use, and the general flashiness and speed of play was what drew me.

I start the game with Loki, choosing him simply because I feel movement in any fast based gameplay was key. I did not know at this point if there was any built-in PvP or dueling functionality but this slightly went into my decision as well. I also just loved stealth. Moving on, I started to solo my way in Mercury up until Vor and hopped online. I was invited into a squad full of completely geared people! With shiny fire-lightning weapons who ran at the speed of light and basically looked at all the enemies to death. I took advantage of these pros to tag along and farm him for a Cronus BP, which seems to be the first craftable weapon. I figured it was a new weapon type, but it’s just another remake of the Skanda. I also found the normal attacks to be wholly useless early on and the single target nature of the weapon was irritating. I also had no joy in my first boss battle either because of these pros I ran with (where I found they were farming Morphics), I think the cutscene lasted longer than the boss. I tried to solo him but it was much too difficult for a level 4 modless frame for now.

 

Moving on! I fought more Grineer areas. Grineer here, Grineer there. I found my way to Venus I think. Suddenly, I hit my first Infestation and Corpus areas, where I realized: So many indoor areas, what’s good with that? I understand the whole ship raiding things, but the Corpus areas with the mountains and snow are the first literal breath of fresh air, I would love to see more of these rather than trapped in big spaceships all day.

 

I entered my first defense mission as well, incredibly fun, got carried hard, I was expecting this to be part of the end-game for Warframe since it was endless and the rewards probably scaled. I learned the usefulness of Decoy here for Loki, and it was a Corpus defense so it took much of the heat. Then it hit me: The rewards per 5 waves are just RNG, I got maybe 5 commons in the 20’s range and more of the elements in the lower range (which I really wanted but was outvoted).

 

And for a minor gripe – I had to wiki which elements were effective against which races, and ice was much too rare compared to the others, maybe a description that clarified the effectiveness can be placed.

 

I looked towards my next weapon after some online research and fought my way around the galaxy to the next weapon: Dual Heat Swords. The difference is like night and day, I learned to love my DHS. I did a few void runs and farmed up some credits. A friendly Tenno took me to the void and I was hooked, not because of the credits, but because of the mystery of it. In the Void, I could sense the eeriness, how empty it was after a few rooms without enemies, and what’s this? Hidden rooms? Why wasn’t I informed in the slightest? It took me 4~5 runs before a group told me about them. But when I was acquainted with many of the secrets: YES PLEASE. The Void should continue to expand on parkour rooms, hidden secrets, much more, there’s so much potential for the Void since it can be expansive as I found out by tiers. Let’s see some more parkour and platforming, we’re ninjas damnit. Obstacle courses and race to the finish style, I would love it.

 

Rank 2 time! I can’t wait to get that blueprint I’ve been wanting, I even went through the trouble of getting the materials in advance. Alright, time for the test, let’s do this! Oh, oops, I forgot to remove my sentinel, what’s this, melee only? Okay that’s f-*fails*. No problem, sentinel removed, I’ll just try ag-PLEASE WAIT ANOTHER 24HOURS TO DO THE TEST AGAIN.

… 24 hours? I think the 12 or 24 hour model this game bases wait times around is ridiculous, I almost wanted to quit at this point. Guess what I did, just tab out and play another game until it came up again, motivation lost and everything with it temporarily. **It didn’t even tell me my ranking points would roll over, I spent a couple more hours with a different weapon waiting for my rank 2 test so I could use it and rank up to 3 faster. This distinction needs to be made.

More bosses, more farming, I finally caught up to some bosses that I found more interesting (Tyr, melee boss, wrecking face, kiting, etc) and some not (Golem, died in a few seconds cause three of us stood across a bridge and unloaded a bunch of clips unscathed).

 

My acquaintance with the alert system started to give me a few artifacts, but a few I have yet to realize how useless they were. Take the melee artifact: It doesn’t work on charge attacks? This leads me to the fact that normal attacking is so lackluster; it has nowhere near enough damage to compensate for… well, no advantages at all really. And the fact that charging speed, normal attack speed, and their respective damage mods are already separate, very odd. Also I didn’t even realize that the little black squares are how many times the mod can be upgraded to the left of the mod card, maybe I missed some tutorial, but this game does lack a lot of detail that would be incredibly useful to know and forces me to rely on third party sources.

 

It was time to start actually crafting guns instead of using the Braton forever (it seems way too good relatively to the other guns I’ve bought with credits). I stared at my shiny new Vulkar with bated breath and ranked it up to around 20. I even potato’d it in advance because I always loved a shiny new sniper and sniping in games in general.

Cue disappointment. Sniping truly does nothing with a game this fast paced. The majority of the game lies in fast pace action and the sniper just could not seem to keep up. Sure, I could take out enemies from afar, but that just means I need to run further to catch up while my friends are all blasting it in the face. In fact, I found myself using the sniper more as a pseudo-shotgun, never aiming down the sights and using it for the burst damage in between slashes. No silencer either so I couldn’t stealth around in missions. It’s sitting in the back of my inventory, probably going to sell it soon, not for credits, I have way too much of those, but for inventory space.

 

Which brings me to this suggestion: Have at least one of each weapon type available for purchase via credits, I don’t want to wait 12 hours + the amount of time I need to farm materials just to be disappointed. “BUT AISHI IT’S NOT EVEN RANK 30 TRIPLE FORMA’D WITH +329532905% MODDED SERRATION DOUBLE RAINBOW ELEMENT MODDED QUADRA PUNCTURE MAP CRASH ON IMPACT MODDED”.

But bro or dudette it may concern, I’m a new player, I took 12 hours to wait for my first crafted gun, and it’ll suck for the next 20 hours of gameplay? End-game I would say the damage is pretty moot with how mods scale, I want to have the satisfaction of leveling a gun and watching it go from usable to epic. I understand the concept of being a late bloomer and you’ll reap the rewards of getting 2 kills a map, but when you see your other teammates leveling their early-blooming Rank 10 Kunai and two shotting everything at the speed of light and get it to rank 30 to clear nearly as fast, there’s something wrong. How I see it, every gun in this game reaches “end game, clear everything in a few shots” status, no gun lacks so much in practice and if they are, they’re outlier, they all reach this end-game at different speeds and enjoyability, which is not cool. The fundamental question is, “Is this fun?” cause if it isn’t, it’s broken. Not broken as in unusable, just not desirable as a weapon or concept, something that needs to be fixed.

Next also brings me the Paris that I crafted after some yearning for stealth gameplay, because just Loki’s stealth isn’t going to cut it for these 100 enemies I need for an extermination mission. After scouring the solar system for materials I wait in anticipating once again, leave the game around for a couple hours as I make something. This makes me realize when I craft and do other things, I would just leave the game around. The wait is incredibly nerve-wracking because I’ve been trained and wired for wanting instant gratification, but twelve hours or an entire day? C’mon, I’m not spending a couple bucks for a new weapon, I’d rather tab out and play on TERA (and I have) while waiting for a blueprint design. A good chunk of my 50 hours of gameplay is just tabbed out and waiting for an alert worth doing or a T3 request to pop up on global chat. The rest of it goes into Void raiding, Ash farming (2/3 pieces thus far!), resource farming, and defense missions for fun.

Note: We really do need global (outside in the solar system), region (on a planet), and void (so people can spam there instead) chat distinctions, it’s way too much clutter at the moment.

 

Finally I close out towards my 40 hour mark and I noticed I could buy pretty much half the blueprints in the market: are we going to see more things to buy with Credits? Because, honestly, credit builds up infinitesimally faster than resources I can potentially gather to make the blueprints, then I have to wait for the weapon, 12 hours (bearable, I start building it so it’s usable when I wake up) or 24 hours (really).

 

Now, I would like to leave many of my suggestions and summarizing comments here for a tl;dr-esque finish, but I strongly encourage you to give a read or skim over my thoughts above if you would like to find your way into a discussion on this thread.

- Geared players are speed running the hell out of my bosses, it’s no fun most of the time.
- Defense mission end-rewards are lackluster
- Would like to see more than the inside of a spaceship (See: Corpus maps)
- More gameplay-based description on mods (Yes, I know this mod makes my shotgun set things on fire, it’s in the picture, tell me it does x more damage against Infested or something useful)
- The Void is absolutely amazing, please expand it more
- Forma is a good step in replayability, but I think it would need something more, maybe a multiplier on affinity gained? I mean, you’re not getting ranked,
- Sniping is a hard one, it’s tough to find the balance between broken one-hit-killing-machine with a long reload and something too slow-paced for gameplay, I see it leaning towards the lower end of the spectrum.
- Stealth is very unforgiving, if you mess up once, even the trash mob’s mothers are going to be alerted you’re in x location of the map with a DUNCE cap on your head
- Melee distinctions between charging vs normal attacks add variety to the customization, but the latter seems to be incredibly lackluster when DPS matters.
- Credits are very scarce in the beginning and overloaded in the end, I would suggest allowing to “convert” to platinum at an absurd conversion rate to allow for a credit sink (i.e. 2million credits for a frame slot, 1.2million credits for one inventory slot, convenience things)
 

Finally, a disclaimer: That’s all really I could point out skimming it over. Please remember I am no game developer, I am simply another hardcore gamer who enjoys any skill-based gameplay or activity. In participating in such a wide scale of games and activities, I have become acquainted with many perspectives into high level gameplay and what is often requested or preferred at these levels. I only wish to share my thoughts because I feel the need to reciprocate my happiness in playing the game to the people who made it possible in the only way I can, and hope it is seen.

 

I am a person who does not care for the word Grind, I enjoy grinding, only if the gameplay is fun, if there’s something I can improve on gameplay wise I will take my time and move towards it. I think of it as playing Tennis, something else I enjoy doing. I am literally hitting a ball back and forth for hours, but if I take pleasure at it, become fit, get better, and learn new things or perfect my serve, I will continue to do so. This is my own take and hopefully any insight I have given here is taken into consideration by anyone who may see this post and take a step forward on their opinion to further the development of Warframe.

Cheers,
Aishi

p,s, and if you like what you have read or prefer to discuss anything with me, upvote it, bump it, and add me in game: "Aishi", I'm holding the clan name "Framework" just by myself in hopes of expanding it someday and if you like a place to just chat about the game, it's there at request, but right now it's just a personal use for me to stop getting invites. Happy hunting.

[Venarge]

Convert credits to plat? Never...

Everything else, thanks for the feedback

[SleepingGuy]

I Actually enjoyed reading this.

It's so many Truth's, And other things written in it.

For you good sir. A Well Cooked Potatoe.

[Aishi]

Convert credits to plat? Never...

Everything else, thanks for the feedback

Convert, in quotations.

As in purchases of conveniences, such as inventory slots, color palettes and frames slots (things that are plat only) with credits at in absurd rate for a credit sink. Although I think the void key nerf will quell the mass credits from T2/3 void but I think it's still a possible answer to the people with 5mil+ credits in the bank.

No problem, just a little side project I was doing over a couple days.

Edited June 19, 2013 by Aishi

[Venarge]

Convert, in quotations.

As in a high rate of purchases of conveniences, such as inventory slots and frames slots (things that are plat only) with credits at in absurd rate for a credit sink.

No problem.

They are thinking about adding slots for progression(Mastery) Other than that, no thanks.

You can already get every item by just playing. The rework of the rng and rewards for mastery are enough in my eyes.

[Aishi]

@Venarge: That's fair enough to say, the rework of such things only brings forth more room to obtain items.

My point is that, yes, you can get every items in the game by playing, but I said conveniences because at some point you will pick and choose weapons and frames unless you take out the cash for inventory/frame slots.
 

[unmog]

Hi Aishi! :) And welcome to the forums. Your experience sounds a lot like my own when I started out, except I did most of my stuff solo and avoided online play for awhile. Tried playing with some friends specifically. After that didnt pan out how I wanted I started doing online more.

 

Liked your topic though. Hope your having more fun now though, and if I would have known you were new and needed help Id have asked you what you needed help with. You can hit me up later if you want. :)

[matrixEXO]

Convert, in quotations.

As in purchases of conveniences, such as inventory slots, color palettes and frames slots (things that are plat only) with credits at in absurd rate for a credit sink. Although I think the void key nerf will quell the mass credits from T2/3 void but I think it's still a possible answer to the people with 5mil+ credits in the bank.

No problem, just a little side project I was doing over a couple days.

Rather, I'd be happy if it were only for slot expansion as well as a couple of other weapons to be buyable via credits only. Color packs as Plat are necessary to promote a more "I want this pack, lemme shell some $5 out for the game." cause not many would ever pay the developers (via Plat purchases) if you would be able to farm them all.

 

Credit sinks are a necessary requirement though. I am actually having a slow pace getting my credits while not relying on T3 voids and majority of the Alerts at all. This is actually a good pacing set by the game and happens only when you truly have nothing to do with the credits anymore.

 

You also ought to check the Clan system. Given that you are "new" to this game, you really need to spend some time to see how the resource & credit sink works via Clan Dojo. IMO, credit sink needs to be higher per Dojo block.

Edited June 20, 2013 by matrixEXO

[Zero.No.Hikari]

You started out like I did, cept I went for Snipetron not Paris and sure it was slow but if you have a sniper mindset and patience getting top kills and damage become null when you're getting less than 10% damage per run.  I saw that sure other weapons were fast and hit like trucks but where's the fun of that one shot from half the map when chaos is all around you. The waiting on stuff isn't bad right now I have my Banshee cooking once she's done no one will stop my bullets.....MWUAHAHAHA....sorry lapse in sanity there.....Anyways we all started like that I remeber nickel and diming my way towards those 50k I'd need for Snipetron and man was it worth the wait, anyhow I mostly run Ext on my own either void T1 or normal due to the fact that no one is there to mess up my zen, bosses became laughably soloable with an Ember and her OverHeat,  Defense I use to try and get that ever elusive Split Chamber,  one thing I feel you may have missed out on was that excitment of sticking around and unlocking more parts of the map while you waited, alt-tabbing is nice but why not get a full map, like me right now all I'm missing is Eris and Pluto and I have the full system unlocked. if you ever wanna team up I'll show you how to properly use a Sniper rifle bro

 

P.s. You'll love Ash I know I did.

[Ghobe]

I read it all but I'm going to specifically respond to your bullet points.

 

 

[- Geared players are speed running the hell out of my bosses, it’s no fun most of the time.
- Defense mission end-rewards are lackluster

Defense mission rewards come in 3 tiers. Each tier has its own loot table. If you look around hard enough on these forums, I'm sure you can find those loot tables. They aren't really that random(limited by tier and race). Defense missions are NOT the end-game, at least not the ones we have now. Our CURRENT end-game is the void, which has the better rewards. However, I don't expect the void to be the true end-game of the game once we have more content(hell I expect Sol to only be early-mid game at best). Do I think defense needs more tiers? Yes, problem is, what rewards would appear on those higher tiers.

 

 

- Would like to see more than the inside of a spaceship (See: Corpus maps)

Content like this comes out fairly slowly, but it does come out. The Grineer Galleons(the ships you're talking about) were just the most recent addition, so it's still a breath of fresh air to us that have been here a while.

 

 

- More gameplay-based description on mods (Yes, I know this mod makes my shotgun set things on fire, it’s in the picture, tell me it does x more damage against Infested or something useful)

I'd rather see a knowledge base in the game. If every one of the cards listed absolutely everything it affected directly or indirectly, those cards would take up the whole screen.

 

 

- The Void is absolutely amazing, please expand it more

From what I remember you saying, you're just looking for more parkour type content, not necessarily tied to the void. Which it exists to an extent, keep your eyes open, go experiment, it's out there. Hidden rooms exist in more areas than just the void ;)

 

 

- Forma is a good step in replayability, but I think it would need something more, maybe a multiplier on affinity gained? I mean, you’re not getting ranked,

Forma is the end-game. Once you've found your favorite loadout and don't need mastery anymore, this is what you do.

 

 

- Sniping is a hard one, it’s tough to find the balance between broken one-hit-killing-machine with a long reload and something too slow-paced for gameplay, I see it leaning towards the lower end of the spectrum.

The problem is that in order for weapons to all be effective in a fast paced game they need to meet the following criteria: They must be fast shooting, high damage, and fast reload and/or high clip size. When using a sniper rifle, you've covered most of the damage portion, so you need to attach basic damage types(armor pierce, fire, freeze) and then attach your mods to speed up the fire rate and reload rates. The snipers are very much a finesse type weapon though, no-scope headshotting has to be a common thing for you.

 

 

- Stealth is very unforgiving, if you mess up once, even the trash mob’s mothers are going to be alerted you’re in x location of the map with a DUNCE cap on your head

I encourage you to watch the latest livestream. Come next update stealth is finally getting a major update. Btw, I suppose you missed the enormous stealth thread that's stickied to the top of this forum section eh? ;p

 

 

- Melee distinctions between charging vs normal attacks add variety to the customization, but the latter seems to be incredibly lackluster when DPS matters.

The problem here is you're using melee weapons that get their damage from charged attacks. There exists weapons that pool their damage from regular melee attacks. For example, the Ether Daggers attack fairly quickly on their own(0.8) and hit 3x every time you hit something with the regular melee swing. Combine this with fury and damage mods, and you're looking at a devastating weapon that is not used for charge attacks and attacks incredibly quickly and absolutely annihilates infested bosses(3x damage!), not to mention stun-locking! So I'm writing this point off as "hasn't explored the game enough."

 

 

- Credits are very scarce in the beginning and overloaded in the end, I would suggest allowing to “convert” to platinum at an absurd conversion rate to allow for a credit sink (i.e. 2million credits for a frame slot, 1.2million credits for one inventory slot, convenience things)

This problem amasses due to the insane amount of credits you can get from some alerts(lol 8k+ ones). However, I wouldn't mind a credit sink. Something like 100k credits for 3 common mods, 400k for 1 uncommon and 2 common mods, 1 mil for 1 rare, 1 uncommon, and 1 common mod. However, I think that slot unlocks, color palettes, etc need left to plat only. Right now they're the primary source of plat, and taking them away, would just be mean.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Ghobe

[The_Markie]

Overrally this is just being a cissy all over the OP, literally.

 

1/ The Wait Time

> Build Time

So you can't handle the 12/24 hours build time? What is this game, freaking WoW? There isn't that many weapons in the game, even if the wait is 30mins, you can still build all the weapons that has blueprints ready in the market. And that's also if you can farm that much resources, which you didn't sound like you can stand farming.

 

Why would we want to buy weapons straight from the market if the we could make it easily with a few clicks of a button? That's when the wait time comes in, it's a matter of fairness between the F2Pers and the Founders.

 

> Mastery Rank Test

About the Uprank Test, 24h isn't so bad. That one rank isn't gonna screw you over in most cases. The only people I see getting annoyed or iritated about this are people that are a bit "compulsive". There's absolutely nothing to be annoyed.

 

There is no reason for the retest delay to be lowered, and probably no reason for it to be that long. But it's a matter of punishment, and I'm sure that they're doing their best to improve it.

 

>Recap: Stop being a pussy.

 

2/ The Whining About Almost Every Little Thing

> Artifacts

They are all useless, there are actually extremely useful artifacts that help you in specific gamemodes. The devs did say that they'll improve the Artifacts. Stop whining.

 

> The Weapons

The weapons are a bit unbalanced, WE KNOW, THEY KNOW, EVERYONE KNOWS. Instead of doing a little research and shut up and wait for the upcoming hotfixes. YOU STARTED WHINING. The devs, who are good guys, are trying to balance this out for all of us. Don't keep mentioning them.

 

And yes, Braton is a good weapon (not the MK1), I have a friend who has a Potato-ed Frost Prime and still mainly uses Braton.

 

The reason why we need to craft more new weapons is because, well, WE NEED MASTERY POINTS.

 

> The Sniping

This I can't defend, the game sometimes does go too fast for sniping. Although in some specific cases, like if you're passing a chokepoint with huge amount of enemies, your teammates aren't all powerful and that's when sniping, taking covers start to shine. BTW have you heard about sniping to defend in DEFENSE MISSION? I bet you did because that leads us to...

 

> The Rewards

They can be frustrating, the RNG and such. But they can also be very... rewarding. I usually go to kiliken and do a few waves, and like half of the times I got myself some sweet Void 1 keys.

 

RNG's something people are all trying to improve. And you just dig it up and whine about without and help or suggestion on how to make it better. Then it's just a waste of... words.

 

>Recap: Stop whining.

 

3/ Every Little Convenience You Want

> Mod Description

If it says "Deals 15% fire damage" then it will deal 15% fire damage, to everything. It can be any more specific just for the sake of you being too lazy to do a little research on the wiki. Maybe one day they'll add a little guide on what faction fears of what elemental damage. But right now, it's still just a little bit of research. Google.

 

IMO, I think the descriptions are solid, compact, easy to understand.

 

>"Forma is a good step in replayability, but I think it would need something more, maybe a multiplier on affinity gained? I mean, you’re not getting ranked"

 

Oh come on, stop being lazy, and they do sell affinity boosters.

 

>Credits is never a problem for me, although when it comes to dojo building, it can be rough, but you do have other members beside you. Just do like Void missions.

 

>Recap: The game can't just become as convenient as possible for the players. This ain't Plants VS Zombies, this is not kid's game, don't be lazy.

 

 

>>Bottomline: This game is growing days by days, fixes by fixes. Don't just go out and whine about anything that people have been whining about for quite a time. You gotta have a sense of balance, that the game isn't revolving around a specific player or a group of players. Don't be a little cissy about anything that's in your way and not worth the raging. Please see Warframe again with a more optimistic view.

 

THE BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU: JOIN A CLAN!

[Hayden11121]

Do not get the Ash.

 

Even though Loki is a "Trickster" class, he is more built for stealth then Ash.

 

Disarming your foes? Placing a dummy? Switching Spots with almost anything?

 

That is better then a S#&$ty shuriken, a bugged ult, and a Smoke Bomb which isn't as energy efficient as Loki.

 

 

PS:

I too know what you are talking about. I had no idea what was going on at the time. I started around U7, the Fusion MOA event, and I had no idea where to do anything. I had Loki with a Skana while people were carrying glowing swords of flaming death and pumping shockwaves into the ground instantly killing everything.

 

The game really changes from when you start to when you end

Oh, wait, no endgame. I forgot.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Hayden11121

[JimJam_]

DE, Make this game more noob-friendly!

[Fleischkloppa]

I dont know about you guys, but the only thing the super-geared guys in my early missions gave me was motivation to become as powerful as them - I also dont quite get how there is too few information on the gameplay around and such - You have to play some time to find out everything, that´s true, but I think that is especially intriguing; I like it when a game doesnt treat you like a baby and explains everything in giant letters.

[Aishi]

 Yes, with all things considered, this game -is- in open beta and these are legitimate concerns that, albeit slightly nitpicky, are still issues that are brought up here and there. If you take this post at face value, I'm sure it would seem overly pessimistic (and I do not deny that it partially is), but the point of the post was to just inspect a new player's perspective on the game, I may be whiny but everyone hates not being instantly gratified, it's just a smaller fact of human nature. I am simply conveying the thoughts that I have honestly made, into writing. Thinking about something and actually expressing it are two different things, I may find something annoying that I'll pass off and deem unnecessary to worry about, but the thought is still there. I'm sure the dev team knows what the repeat issues are but I still gave my two cents. I'll address something things I picked up in the past posts. I don't prefer the game in 'easy mode' as much as I prefer the game to hold my hand, but it's just a very train-of-consciousness writing process I used to write this to convey raw thoughts.

The super geared guys are great in that aspect, the first one I saw had 80% of the team's damage and I thought he was auto-attacking the hell out of enemies while running at light speed, this inspired me to do the same. Turns out I was quite wrong, he was throwing kunai.

Behind all the pessimism it really is just minor griping about the game, I've recently only joined the community and it seems like, from responses, my points do line up with the general consensus of the community and should be considered as such rather than being a parrot. All in all, I'll repeat, I won't play the game if I don't enjoy it, and DE is make an excellent move into more variable TPS gameplay that I love, be it fast paced and hectic that appeals to the eye or the ninja-esque gameplay that prods at the Metal Gear Solid fan in me. Hell, keep up the good work is something that is already expressed.

Small note, I did end up joining a clan (TCPI), and while I did take note of all material required, it seems like we're in wait for an expansion because all the necessary research is already done and the dojo layout already planned ahead for upcoming patches, I do see the credit sink being decent and existing, maybe time will tell what happens with the updates.

Also hiya unmog. It's fine, just always glad to exchange words of game mechanics. I left out much of what I did later on after the wrap-up at the end, I felt I would keep droning on and miss my point. I picked up my Despair soon before I met you but the damage isn't too good unscaled with my level of mods >:
 

Edited June 20, 2013 by Aishi

[deathmaths11]

Now, before I begin, I would like to state that I have been working towards this post and will release once I hit my 50 hour make on Warframe. Upon nearing completion, it really does seem like I have said all I want to say and I feel it holds much weight to the improvement of Warframe. This information is basically an interior look into the mindset of a starting Warframe player, I will try my best to share my experience and thoughts in a complete way as a veteran MMO and gamer. I can give my credentials if necessary but let’s just say that I’ve been playing MMOs since the 4^th grade, and been through grindfests such as Pre-Big Bang Maplestory, Aion, TERA, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, soforth.

Now, I have clocked 50 hours in the game, and started playing this game 6 days ago, averaging around 8 hours in-game a day, now I would like to emphasize in-game rather than actively playing the game, and I will elaborate on this later.

 

First, the question that surfaces is why my extreme interest in the game? I first heard of this game at E3, I am not a graphics person but the game does look quite nice, optimization and the like, the game runs smooth and this is all a great plus. The reason I downloaded Warframe the instant I saw it was because, aside from space ninjas, the likeness to GunZ: The Duel. Having played GunZ since childhood (it was my first shooter), I have been through the ups and down of the game as well as the exploitation of the game’s mechanics to develop a new system of movement that turned the originally loose gameplay into hectic, combo button frenzy, glitch cancelling sword slashing infinite wallrunning enemy flipping double shotgun swapshotting goodness. The American scene has died out to three digits in players, I’m active on the Korean servers where the game is still thriving and invited to the closed beta of GunZ 2, saw Warframe, and here I am. Why Warframe? The gameplay initially looks fast, the weapons look well done and varied in animation and use, and the general flashiness and speed of play was what drew me.

I start the game with Loki, choosing him simply because I feel movement in any fast based gameplay was key. I did not know at this point if there was any built-in PvP or dueling functionality but this slightly went into my decision as well. I also just loved stealth. Moving on, I started to solo my way in Mercury up until Vor and hopped online. I was invited into a squad full of completely geared people! With shiny fire-lightning weapons who ran at the speed of light and basically looked at all the enemies to death. I took advantage of these pros to tag along and farm him for a Cronus BP, which seems to be the first craftable weapon. I figured it was a new weapon type, but it’s just another remake of the Skanda. I also found the normal attacks to be wholly useless early on and the single target nature of the weapon was irritating. I also had no joy in my first boss battle either because of these pros I ran with (where I found they were farming Morphics), I think the cutscene lasted longer than the boss. I tried to solo him but it was much too difficult for a level 4 modless frame for now.

 

Moving on! I fought more Grineer areas. Grineer here, Grineer there. I found my way to Venus I think. Suddenly, I hit my first Infestation and Corpus areas, where I realized: So many indoor areas, what’s good with that? I understand the whole ship raiding things, but the Corpus areas with the mountains and snow are the first literal breath of fresh air, I would love to see more of these rather than trapped in big spaceships all day.

 

I entered my first defense mission as well, incredibly fun, got carried hard, I was expecting this to be part of the end-game for Warframe since it was endless and the rewards probably scaled. I learned the usefulness of Decoy here for Loki, and it was a Corpus defense so it took much of the heat. Then it hit me: The rewards per 5 waves are just RNG, I got maybe 5 commons in the 20’s range and more of the elements in the lower range (which I really wanted but was outvoted).

 

And for a minor gripe – I had to wiki which elements were effective against which races, and ice was much too rare compared to the others, maybe a description that clarified the effectiveness can be placed.

 

I looked towards my next weapon after some online research and fought my way around the galaxy to the next weapon: Dual Heat Swords. The difference is like night and day, I learned to love my DHS. I did a few void runs and farmed up some credits. A friendly Tenno took me to the void and I was hooked, not because of the credits, but because of the mystery of it. In the Void, I could sense the eeriness, how empty it was after a few rooms without enemies, and what’s this? Hidden rooms? Why wasn’t I informed in the slightest? It took me 4~5 runs before a group told me about them. But when I was acquainted with many of the secrets: YES PLEASE. The Void should continue to expand on parkour rooms, hidden secrets, much more, there’s so much potential for the Void since it can be expansive as I found out by tiers. Let’s see some more parkour and platforming, we’re ninjas damnit. Obstacle courses and race to the finish style, I would love it.

 

Rank 2 time! I can’t wait to get that blueprint I’ve been wanting, I even went through the trouble of getting the materials in advance. Alright, time for the test, let’s do this! Oh, oops, I forgot to remove my sentinel, what’s this, melee only? Okay that’s f-*fails*. No problem, sentinel removed, I’ll just try ag-PLEASE WAIT ANOTHER 24HOURS TO DO THE TEST AGAIN.

… 24 hours? I think the 12 or 24 hour model this game bases wait times around is ridiculous, I almost wanted to quit at this point. Guess what I did, just tab out and play another game until it came up again, motivation lost and everything with it temporarily. **It didn’t even tell me my ranking points would roll over, I spent a couple more hours with a different weapon waiting for my rank 2 test so I could use it and rank up to 3 faster. This distinction needs to be made.

More bosses, more farming, I finally caught up to some bosses that I found more interesting (Tyr, melee boss, wrecking face, kiting, etc) and some not (Golem, died in a few seconds cause three of us stood across a bridge and unloaded a bunch of clips unscathed).

 

My acquaintance with the alert system started to give me a few artifacts, but a few I have yet to realize how useless they were. Take the melee artifact: It doesn’t work on charge attacks? This leads me to the fact that normal attacking is so lackluster; it has nowhere near enough damage to compensate for… well, no advantages at all really. And the fact that charging speed, normal attack speed, and their respective damage mods are already separate, very odd. Also I didn’t even realize that the little black squares are how many times the mod can be upgraded to the left of the mod card, maybe I missed some tutorial, but this game does lack a lot of detail that would be incredibly useful to know and forces me to rely on third party sources.

 

It was time to start actually crafting guns instead of using the Braton forever (it seems way too good relatively to the other guns I’ve bought with credits). I stared at my shiny new Vulkar with bated breath and ranked it up to around 20. I even potato’d it in advance because I always loved a shiny new sniper and sniping in games in general.

Cue disappointment. Sniping truly does nothing with a game this fast paced. The majority of the game lies in fast pace action and the sniper just could not seem to keep up. Sure, I could take out enemies from afar, but that just means I need to run further to catch up while my friends are all blasting it in the face. In fact, I found myself using the sniper more as a pseudo-shotgun, never aiming down the sights and using it for the burst damage in between slashes. No silencer either so I couldn’t stealth around in missions. It’s sitting in the back of my inventory, probably going to sell it soon, not for credits, I have way too much of those, but for inventory space.

 

Which brings me to this suggestion: Have at least one of each weapon type available for purchase via credits, I don’t want to wait 12 hours + the amount of time I need to farm materials just to be disappointed. “BUT AISHI IT’S NOT EVEN RANK 30 TRIPLE FORMA’D WITH +329532905% MODDED SERRATION DOUBLE RAINBOW ELEMENT MODDED QUADRA PUNCTURE MAP CRASH ON IMPACT MODDED”.

But bro or dudette it may concern, I’m a new player, I took 12 hours to wait for my first crafted gun, and it’ll suck for the next 20 hours of gameplay? End-game I would say the damage is pretty moot with how mods scale, I want to have the satisfaction of leveling a gun and watching it go from usable to epic. I understand the concept of being a late bloomer and you’ll reap the rewards of getting 2 kills a map, but when you see your other teammates leveling their early-blooming Rank 10 Kunai and two shotting everything at the speed of light and get it to rank 30 to clear nearly as fast, there’s something wrong. How I see it, every gun in this game reaches “end game, clear everything in a few shots” status, no gun lacks so much in practice and if they are, they’re outlier, they all reach this end-game at different speeds and enjoyability, which is not cool. The fundamental question is, “Is this fun?” cause if it isn’t, it’s broken. Not broken as in unusable, just not desirable as a weapon or concept, something that needs to be fixed.

Next also brings me the Paris that I crafted after some yearning for stealth gameplay, because just Loki’s stealth isn’t going to cut it for these 100 enemies I need for an extermination mission. After scouring the solar system for materials I wait in anticipating once again, leave the game around for a couple hours as I make something. This makes me realize when I craft and do other things, I would just leave the game around. The wait is incredibly nerve-wracking because I’ve been trained and wired for wanting instant gratification, but twelve hours or an entire day? C’mon, I’m not spending a couple bucks for a new weapon, I’d rather tab out and play on TERA (and I have) while waiting for a blueprint design. A good chunk of my 50 hours of gameplay is just tabbed out and waiting for an alert worth doing or a T3 request to pop up on global chat. The rest of it goes into Void raiding, Ash farming (2/3 pieces thus far!), resource farming, and defense missions for fun.

Note: We really do need global (outside in the solar system), region (on a planet), and void (so people can spam there instead) chat distinctions, it’s way too much clutter at the moment.

 

Finally I close out towards my 40 hour mark and I noticed I could buy pretty much half the blueprints in the market: are we going to see more things to buy with Credits? Because, honestly, credit builds up infinitesimally faster than resources I can potentially gather to make the blueprints, then I have to wait for the weapon, 12 hours (bearable, I start building it so it’s usable when I wake up) or 24 hours (really).

 

Now, I would like to leave many of my suggestions and summarizing comments here for a tl;dr-esque finish, but I strongly encourage you to give a read or skim over my thoughts above if you would like to find your way into a discussion on this thread.

- Geared players are speed running the hell out of my bosses, it’s no fun most of the time.

- Defense mission end-rewards are lackluster

- Would like to see more than the inside of a spaceship (See: Corpus maps)

- More gameplay-based description on mods (Yes, I know this mod makes my shotgun set things on fire, it’s in the picture, tell me it does x more damage against Infested or something useful)

- The Void is absolutely amazing, please expand it more

- Forma is a good step in replayability, but I think it would need something more, maybe a multiplier on affinity gained? I mean, you’re not getting ranked,

- Sniping is a hard one, it’s tough to find the balance between broken one-hit-killing-machine with a long reload and something too slow-paced for gameplay, I see it leaning towards the lower end of the spectrum.

- Stealth is very unforgiving, if you mess up once, even the trash mob’s mothers are going to be alerted you’re in x location of the map with a DUNCE cap on your head

- Melee distinctions between charging vs normal attacks add variety to the customization, but the latter seems to be incredibly lackluster when DPS matters.

- Credits are very scarce in the beginning and overloaded in the end, I would suggest allowing to “convert” to platinum at an absurd conversion rate to allow for a credit sink (i.e. 2million credits for a frame slot, 1.2million credits for one inventory slot, convenience things)

 

Finally, a disclaimer: That’s all really I could point out skimming it over. Please remember I am no game developer, I am simply another hardcore gamer who enjoys any skill-based gameplay or activity. In participating in such a wide scale of games and activities, I have become acquainted with many perspectives into high level gameplay and what is often requested or preferred at these levels. I only wish to share my thoughts because I feel the need to reciprocate my happiness in playing the game to the people who made it possible in the only way I can, and hope it is seen.

 

I am a person who does not care for the word Grind, I enjoy grinding, only if the gameplay is fun, if there’s something I can improve on gameplay wise I will take my time and move towards it. I think of it as playing Tennis, something else I enjoy doing. I am literally hitting a ball back and forth for hours, but if I take pleasure at it, become fit, get better, and learn new things or perfect my serve, I will continue to do so. This is my own take and hopefully any insight I have given here is taken into consideration by anyone who may see this post and take a step forward on their opinion to further the development of Warframe.

Cheers,

Aishi

p,s, and if you like what you have read or prefer to discuss anything with me, upvote it, bump it, and add me in game: "Aishi", I'm holding the clan name "Framework" just by myself in hopes of expanding it someday and if you like a place to just chat about the game, it's there at request, but right now it's just a personal use for me to stop getting invites. Happy hunting.

This is too much writing but from what l know that you are an expert player in warframe. SO l got a few questions to ask you. What is the best warframe suited for people who like shooting not melee? I don't like using melee weapons unless l have to when l have no or few ammo left or l can do stealth attack which doesn't happen very often. I always like shooting because the games l played(Halo, COD, Battlefield and so on) and not really the melee type. I am using excalibur warframe at the moment because it is best suited for beginners like me. But l do want to know in future, the next warframe l want to plan which is suited for shooting.

[Palamudin]

If* you would be looking for shooting frame that would be frost with his snow globe, immunity to almost any type of shots while inside the snow globe. You just go on a shooting frenzy with addition of  skill that clears your melee radius with 1k damage.

Add me ill take you running and wont leave you behind :)

Cheers.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Palamudin

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

Great thread, lots of feedback is always good from new players. Us old farts tend to forget how it was to be new around the block.

 

- Geared players are speed running the hell out of my bosses, it’s no fun most of the time.

 

Stop playing with Randoms, no really, it's no fun at all playing with strangers. Get together a small group of friends and you'll get much more fun out of the game as you progress together.

 

- Defense mission end-rewards are lackluster

 

Only at first, once you start hitting the high level defense missions on Eris and Pluto, you'll start out at the high level tier (there are three tiers, for normal missions, each fifth wave bumps you another tier) and the rewards will definitely scale. How does void keys sound? Or Thunderbolt? (Unconfirmed, but I  found two Thunderbolt over at Palus in the Pluto system)

- Would like to see more than the inside of a spaceship (See: Corpus maps)

 

The devs have confirmed that they're working on more outdoor maps now and from the looks of it, they're even more excited about it than we are :D

- More gameplay-based description on mods (Yes, I know this mod makes my shotgun set things on fire, it’s in the picture, tell me it does x more damage against Infested or something useful)

 

As this is beta, that's one of the things the devs want to work on more, but there's so much other stuff to do first.

- The Void is absolutely amazing, please expand it more

 

More void stuff has been confirmed as being in the works, that made me giddy too. They mentioned defense where you could control lasers too :D

 

- Forma is a good step in replayability, but I think it would need something more, maybe a multiplier on affinity gained? I mean, you’re not getting ranked

 

Forma is a pretty awesome game-changer as it enables you to "work" on your weapons without actually having to invest in the game. Of course, if you go founder and get one of those delicious packs, there's more potatoes in it for you than you can shake a Skana at.

 

- Sniping is a hard one, it’s tough to find the balance between broken one-hit-killing-machine with a long reload and something too slow-paced for gameplay, I see it leaning towards the lower end of the spectrum.

 

Sniping requires you to play differently altogether, even though it's useful in specific situations, you have to be seriously careful about how you spec your weapon to maximize ROF and damage.

- Stealth is very unforgiving, if you mess up once, even the trash mob’s mothers are going to be alerted you’re in x location of the map with a DUNCE cap on your head

 

Again, devs have confirmed that they're working on a tiered alert system which makes things more managable for the players.

- Melee distinctions between charging vs normal attacks add variety to the customization, but the latter seems to be incredibly lackluster when DPS matters.

 

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that melee is meant to be a secondary choice rather than a full solution. With that said, once you get access to some of the cooler weapons like Hate or the Dual Ether Swords, you're going to start doing whole missions with melee only.

 

Personally, right now I've been having so much fun pretending I'm the Grim Reaper when I "harvest" my way through endless infested waves :D

 

- Credits are very scarce in the beginning and overloaded in the end, I would suggest allowing to “convert” to platinum at an absurd conversion rate to allow for a credit sink (i.e. 2million credits for a frame slot, 1.2million credits for one inventory slot, convenience things)

 

The thing is, as a free player, you have nothing to lose by grinding more. The devs need to cover their costs and the inconvenience they introduced is perfect because once you start feeling that, it's definitely time you invested into the game to keep it going.

 

Also, in regards to the crafting system, I think that there needs to be more sidegrades for new players which have less demanding recepies in relation to both crafting time and resources/credits required.
 

Edited June 24, 2013 by Hap-muhr

[unmog]

you'll start out at the high level tier (there are three tiers, for normal missions, each fifth wave bumps you another tier) and the rewards will definitely scale. How does void keys sound? Or Thunderbolt? (Unconfirmed, but I  found two Thunderbolt over at Palus in the Pluto system)

Nope, its confirmed, can confirm it for you. Its a tier3 infested reward, about 2% chance to drop, me and friends have got it twice on Xini.

[Palamudin]

Yea, often i get a present from soloing 5 waves when i go mod hunting.

[Hayden11121]

Nope, its confirmed, can confirm it for you. Its a tier3 infested reward, about 2% chance to drop, me and friends have got it twice on Xini.

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