Warframe, balance and community.

[Sajochi]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)Elctrcstel said:

using the steam chart is a far reach at best. the steam chart does not show standalone PC players. the steam chart does not show PS4 players. the steam chart does not show XB1 players.

just to add some comments to back up Kai

 

If you compare Warframe and TF2 side by side on the site, you'll notice a very similar trend. Summer is over and kiddies are back in school, which means numbers will fall, and not even by a large margin. Warframe has a higher yearly net player growth. 

So agreed, people that toss around the steam charts like it's the end all be all of the state of the game need to take a statistics class.

Edited October 12, 2016 by CrazyCortex
Stupid phone and random caps

[Calwon5]

Well my opinion about why the ones who either made many threads bashing DE, DE's  choices, made threats, or any other presumption, are because they formed a mob. The individual would most likely not act in this way, but when you have others joining hand in hand, then we start to have riots in the forum. It's like a peaceful protest. Some people initially posted genuine opinion about the changes DE made, but soon a single person broke the line and turned it into a non constructive post. Soon many follow and then you got a whole bunch of tennos feeling that DE is absolutely wrong and they  start making bashing threads and so on. It's like a plague. I stay clear away from it and just check back after the plague is over.

[BlackCoMerc]

Steam charts reflect gains and losses in new PC players. Over the last year, those numbers are...not great.

Funny. Grind is supposed to retain players, yet, as it worsens, more of us leave...

[Sziklamester]

4 hours ago, xXx_mtv_xXx said:

I would love to see mandatory mods removed (and refunded obviously) with damage 3.0 because I can never find enough slots on my weapons for all the specialised mods we have. If people rage about that then they have personal issues lol.

Me not because this currently gives us power against our foes and it is still works better than nothing.

If they removing mandatory mods then they should remove slots for compensating the removal because if they remove directly the mandatory mods on weapons and they add that damage to the weapons just as a passive level up thingy then they created our arsenal more powerful because we can add 8 other mods into our weapons which can make our gear more powerfull than was before damage 3.0.

Same with the warframe mods because many peoples using the ability mods and the system built to use those mods to boost our gear on warframe but this cause again slot problems and you cannot build your frame for survivability which mean those mods which supposed to help you instant become worthless and stay everything in the pre touched state. I am sure you won't add a intruder or thief with or maglev on your frame if you have more slot to choose from "bad example : warm coat" which gives you literally nothing.

If they want to keep the mod system they need buff all those mods which currently uttery bad or underwhelming to a level where you can consider to use them but then again those mods will be unbalanced and others were balanced before turn into unbalanced and we talk about again powercreep.

I imagined the future when peoples call for nerf because that filthy intruder mod too op and you need less second to hack (my avarege is 5 sec).

 

A damage 3.0 would be nice but not on the way how the devs imagined because for it they need or nerf everything to be equally bad and gives minor extras or buff the bad mods to a level and remove the current meta mods equal frame/weapon/sentinel etc or they could just drop the mod system which seems just recreate the powercreep because they release mods which overpowered (current mods underpowered or just non so useful). Because they eat slot and you don't like when you need sacrficie mods which makes you survival. They releasing mods and not compensate it with slots or just adding passive buffs which gives you slighty extras.

 

They worked with the mod system so they won't remove it but that would be happen if they want stop the powercreep and instead making a skill tree system where you can make more personalised choices and boost your weapon-frame passively.

If they not do this and just removing the mandatory called mods without removing slots and balancing the damage output then they made worser the system and the community will blame them again for making that system unbalanced.

 

Personally I prefer the skill tree systems because that gives more variety if executed well and can be balanced better than this current working system. There is good examples and as well have bad examples for the skill tree but I would consider to use it instead of this.

 

-----------

 

Another thing is what do we really want from the game? Skill based game where just the hardcore skilled players can live with the choices or we want to make a fun based game where thousands / millions of peoples can play casually and just enjoy the game without making it too difficult or too lame.

The balance is not easy personally prefer the more casually approach with skill and non skill required missions. I would like to see also more logic-puzzle based game modes and mission types and more social life within the game with improved dojo-relay mechanics.

 

Edit : Sorry for the wall of text.

 

Ps : I know the subject is not exactly this but this is close to the topic and can be work as a solution or a little hint.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Sziklamester

[BAD9eR]

i thought meta threads are not allowed ? hmmmmmm.........

[DxAdder]

1 hour ago, CrazyCortex said:

If you compare Warframe and TF2 side by side on the site, you'll notice a very similar trend. Summer is over and kiddies are back in school, which means numbers will fall, and not even by a large margin. Warframe has a higher yearly net player growth. 

So agreed, people that toss around the steam charts like it's the end all be all of the state of the game need to take a statistics class.

First thing just wanted to make clear, I like Warframe in fact it the game I have played the most in the past year and I want it to be a success.

That being said I am NO White Knight and I have no problems pointing out flaws in there development cycle in the hopes they will learn from there mistakes.

In regards to to Steam Charts it is the only data set we have to look at (that I know of) and while it may not be perfect it is a indication none the less.

Comparing TF2 to Warframe  makes no sense, while there might be some seasonal correlation in time played  for both games in the past three months Warframe's development cycle has been vastly different.

 

 

 

[Sajochi]

1 hour ago, DxAdder said:

First thing just wanted to make clear, I like Warframe in fact it the game I have played the most in the past year and I want it to be a success.

That being said I am NO White Knight and I have no problems pointing out flaws in there development cycle in the hopes they will learn from there mistakes.

In regards to to Steam Charts it is the only data set we have to look at (that I know of) and while it may not be perfect it is a indication none the less.

Comparing TF2 to Warframe  makes no sense, while there might be some seasonal correlation in time played  for both games in the past three months Warframe's development cycle has been vastly different.

 

 

 

Let me break it down for you, most free to play games follow a similar trend of player numbers in the summer months over the fall, winter and spring months. The comparison is how both warframe and TF2 have the same dips and rise in players (generally the same, not exact value but you get the idea.) Here is what I'm trying to say:

You see the same rise and dips in the top games on steam alongside Warframe. This is just the past week. If you look at July, which steam charts says is the largest gain in players in the past 3 months, you notice the correlation is the SoTR update. New content will always old players back, or the players who just play the new updates. once they're done, they take a break and do something else until the next update. Febuary and March had similar gains because of Operation: Shadow Debt, and Sands of Inaros respectively.

Bigger picture, on Warframe's release in March of 2013, there were 19,000 players on steam alone. Today, Warframe's peak players are at 66,000 players. That's three times the amount of players, not including the standalone launcher, XB1 and PS4 players since they do exist. What a lot of people don't get about stats is Correlation does not equal Causation. The cause for these low numbers a select few like to throw around is not solely because players don't like DE's decisions. People take breaks for many reason but you have to account for many variables besides "The entire playerbase is angry at the devs." I'm not angry, and I'm sure others aren't. I'm not a white knight either, I have issues with some aspects of the game as well but hold back more often then I probably should seeing as it's nearly impossible to get a good discussion going for very long. I say most of the threads under feedback don't last for a week.

So no, the steam charts are not a good source to use unless you actually know how to use it, and not everyone that disagrees with you is a white knight. It's like I said before, there is not reason or middle ground with internet culture, it's one extreme or the other. I don't expect you to consider what I stated in this post, at all.

Edited October 12, 2016 by CrazyCortex

[Zerathos_Dagon]

13 hours ago, BornWithTeeth said:

-snip-

 

DE want players to play the game.

Players gravitate towards a meta which allows them to skip playing the game.

-snip-

 

Though I respect your opinion, I have to disagree mostly with that part right there.

This is how it seems like to me:
Above all, DE wants to make players spend as much time as possible on grinding, or else skip the grind entirely by buying stuff. Fun and lore are surely also very important to DE as proved by The Second Dream, but they seem to come in a very close second place.
The Players are way too numerous to pin down exactly what they want. But it does seem like the majority wants to have the easy way out every time.

However, both sides are correct and very understandable.
DE is a company, and they need to make money too to keep the game and their company going. And because 'FasionFrame' and 'getting stuff faster' are the only ways they can make money without dramatically changing the game in a negative way, it stands to reason that they add some grind to make stuff harder to get and make buying it more enticing. (They are increasing the grind a bit too extremely though in my opinion, but that's another debate entirely.)
On the other hand, it's also very understandable that players do not want to work their butts off for literally days upon days just to get a one or two items, we all have real actual lives to live as well and can't spend 5 hours a day on Warframe. And when that grindfest become harder, more tedious and slower as well, it doesn't particularly make the issue any better either.

So there you have my two cents. In my opinion, DE did indeed make a mistake (again) in the Vaccuum Within with the reduced range. However, nothing warrants death threats and extremely hostile behaviour like that, and people who did show such behaviour should be ashamed of themselves.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Zerathos_Dagon

[Tode_Gleich]

First of all, "oftenly" isn't even a word. Often is the adverb.

The game is built around grinding loot to build new items, a never ending carrot on a stick. Players naturally gravitate towards whatever makes this eternal grind far more enjoyable, but when something so important like "Vacuum" is nerfed it's asking for a response like this. There is so much loot thrown on the ground in a mission that it is a task in of itself to pick up the loot manually. It becomes very easy to understand the backlash under these circumstances. 

The meta is only a symptom of the game being a horde style loot shooter. Why would you use anything but a meta build if you didn't want to gimp the loot you can get in a short period compared to a meta build? It's entire asinine to argue against this, because it's the exact reason. This entire game is built around getting the best weapon and the newest gear, yet some in the community want all weapons to be on par with each other. This creates an identity crisis in the game that is built around progression through gear. If everything is just as good, why continue playing? Power creep might be very real in this game, but the other way around presents an entirely different problem.

Many players are feeling burnt out over the lack of events and meaningful content updates. A weapon or two is not a meaningful update, no matter how you paint it. The War Within keeps getting delayed, almost to the point of it being a sick joke. Why even announce content only to delay it over and over again? It's an amazing way of burning through the community's good faith. This game is funded on our purchases, yet we have no right to be angry? Anything this past update has taught us is that if we complain and make our voices heard, we can change things.

 

[YUNoJump]

2 minutes ago, Umbro_Excalibruh said:

First of all, "oftenly" isn't even a word. Often is the adverb.

The game is built around grinding loot to build new items, a never ending carrot on a stick. Players naturally gravitate towards whatever makes this eternal grind far more enjoyable, but when something so important like "Vacuum" is nerfed it's asking for a response like this. There is so much loot thrown on the ground in a mission that it is a task in of itself to pick up the loot manually. It becomes very easy to understand the backlash under these circumstances. 

The meta is only a symptom of the game being a horde style loot shooter. Why would you use anything but a meta build if you didn't want to gimp the loot you can get in a short period compared to a meta build? It's entire asinine to argue against this, because it's the exact reason. This entire game is built around getting the best weapon and the newest gear, yet some in the community want all weapons to be on par with each other. This creates an identity crisis in the game that is built around progression through gear. If everything is just as good, why continue playing? Power creep might be very real in this game, but the other way around presents an entirely different problem.

Many players are feeling burnt out over the lack of events and meaningful content updates. A weapon or two is not a meaningful update, no matter how you paint it. The War Within keeps getting delayed, almost to the point of it being a sick joke. Why even announce content only to delay it over and over again? It's an amazing way of burning through the community's good faith. This game is funded on our purchases, yet we have no right to be angry? Anything this past update has taught us is that if we complain and make our voices heard, we can change things.

 

It's not just about having the best weapon, it's about having a weapon that you enjoy using. Weapons play differently in every game, even in CoD when it's all just assault rifles with the occasional shotgun or sniper rifle, all of which are very similar, people have favourites based on how they play and what they enjoy doing. In Warframe we have the luxury of weapons that have all sorts of different abilities and playstyles, even outside of the massive playground that is melee. We have bows, we have grenade launchers, we have laser beams, we have lightning guns, we have guns that fire globs of mysterious goo everywhere (more than one in fact!). In a perfect world, players would have an endless array of choice at their disposal. This is already mostly the case with Warframes. However, meta builds ruin this choice, as pure effectiveness trumps playstyle when your grenade launcher can destroy entire crowds without damage to yourself. You might like the look and feeling of carrying around a Scindo Prime or a Penta, but why use it when the Galatine Prime or the Tonkor is much better?

All these posts about TWW delays fail to address the point that DE surely hates delaying it as well. They have to deal with all this community anger, they have to consider the supposed impact of players leaving because of it. When they sit around a table and talk about how TWW is coming along they probably really, really hate saying that they'll have to delay again, but in the end, they have to delay again. Being angry isn't going to change the fact that they are working as hard as they can on TWW, and it's coming. What reason would they even have to want to delay it if the community is leaving because of the delays, and the release of TWW will add stuff for people to do?

[Tode_Gleich]

13 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

It's not just about having the best weapon, it's about having a weapon that you enjoy using. Weapons play differently in every game, even in CoD when it's all just assault rifles with the occasional shotgun or sniper rifle, all of which are very similar, people have favourites based on how they play and what they enjoy doing. In Warframe we have the luxury of weapons that have all sorts of different abilities and playstyles, even outside of the massive playground that is melee. We have bows, we have grenade launchers, we have laser beams, we have lightning guns, we have guns that fire globs of mysterious goo everywhere (more than one in fact!). In a perfect world, players would have an endless array of choice at their disposal. This is already mostly the case with Warframes. However, meta builds ruin this choice, as pure effectiveness trumps playstyle when your grenade launcher can destroy entire crowds without damage to yourself. You might like the look and feeling of carrying around a Scindo Prime or a Penta, but why use it when the Galatine Prime or the Tonkor is much better?

All these posts about TWW delays fail to address the point that DE surely hates delaying it as well. They have to deal with all this community anger, they have to consider the supposed impact of players leaving because of it. When they sit around a table and talk about how TWW is coming along they probably really, really hate saying that they'll have to delay again, but in the end, they have to delay again. Being angry isn't going to change the fact that they are working as hard as they can on TWW, and it's coming. What reason would they even have to want to delay it if the community is leaving because of the delays, and the release of TWW will add stuff for people to do?

I can see the reasoning behind using a weapon you enjoy, why else would you play the game if you didn't enjoy what your were doing? I agree that meta builds do destroy personality and the uniqueness of having a diverse weapon variety, but it is something that is very difficult to tackle in a loot based horde shooter with gear tied to progression. Mastery Rank being tied to something as arbitrary as affinity on weapons is just asking for something like this, grinding in the most efficient way possible. It's why Draco was such a popular location, as is Akkad now. 

Yes, it's obvious that a company hates delaying content because it loses them money. It was a massive marketing mistake to even announce the content so early, only to delay it. Dealing with "they probably" seems like a massive attempt to pull straws in an argument, if they were really worried about this they wouldn't have even announced the content until they were sure it would be a quality release. This, however, is becoming a trend in the gaming industry. Many publishers in this day and age have a mindset of delaying a game to ensure quality, then they release something akin to "No Man's Sky".

You say being angry doesn't change things, but look at the Vacuum update. Massive community backlash changes things very quickly, and it's a lesson the majority wont soon forget. Sure, mob justice isn't a good way to go about things, but it gets it done. I don't condone death threats or anything of the sort, but they seem to bring these things upon themselves as if on purpose.

There are tons of ways to look at it, but defending Digital Extremes based upon conjecture and guesses alone doesn't solve anything.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Umbro_Excalibruh
Grammar, spelling and errors

[YUNoJump]

1 minute ago, Umbro_Excalibruh said:

I can see the reasoning behind using a weapon you enjoy, why else would you play the game if you didn't enjoy what your were doing? I agree that meta builds do destroy personality and the uniqueness of having a diverse weapon variety, but it is something that is very difficult to tackle in a loot based horde shooter with gear tied to progression. Mastery Rank being tied to something as arbitrary as affinity on weapons is just asking for something like this, grinding in the most efficient way possible. It's why Draco was such a popular location, as with Akkad now. 

Yes, it's obvious that a company hates delaying content because it loses them money. It was a massive marketing mistake to even announce the content so early, only to delay it. Dealing with "they probably" seems like a massive attempt to pull straws in an argument, if they were really worried about this they wouldn't have even announced the content until they were sure it would be a quality release. This, however, is becoming a trend in the gaming industry. Many publishers in this day and age have a mindset of delaying a game to ensure quality, then they release something akin to "No Man's Sky".

You say being angry doesn't change things, but look at the last update. Massive community backlash changes things very quickly, and it's a lesson the majority wont soon forget. Sure, mob justice isn't a good way to go about things, but it gets it done. I don't condone death threats or anything of the sort, but they seem to bring these things upon themselves as if on purpose.

There are tons of ways to look at it, but defending Digital Extreme based upon conjecture and guesses alone doesn't solve anything.

When I say "they probably" I mean that common sense would show that that is what they are thinking. There is a small chance that they really like delaying things, maybe they enjoy reading angry threads, but common sense would dictate that they wouldn't like that, because not releasing the content leads to more community disappointment and people leaving the game. I probably (hehe) overuse "probably" when I write arguments, sorry about the confusion.

In regards to waiting to announce something, companies always want to announce that they are working on something as soon as possible, as it generates hype and awareness of the product. No Man's Sky is a great example of building up hype by announcing something in its early stages. Yes, DE might have been able to announce the content later, but even before they started delaying they had a trailer ready and everything. Apparently the delays are for creative reasons so the bottom line is that they are delaying so that they can try to make it better, and if they had been expecting the delays beforehand then they obviously wouldn't say that it's coming earlier.

You are right that being angry changes things when it's content that's been added, but being angry can't make unfinished content release faster. They'll release it when they believe that it's ready. The only thing anger could possibly do is make them release the content without as much quality checking and improvement, which everyone got angry about when the first stages of U19 launched. Basically you can have it done fast or you can have it done well.

[Tode_Gleich]

4 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

When I say "they probably" I mean that common sense would show that that is what they are thinking. There is a small chance that they really like delaying things, maybe they enjoy reading angry threads, but common sense would dictate that they wouldn't like that, because not releasing the content leads to more community disappointment and people leaving the game. I probably (hehe) overuse "probably" when I write arguments, sorry about the confusion.

In regards to waiting to announce something, companies always want to announce that they are working on something as soon as possible, as it generates hype and awareness of the product. No Man's Sky is a great example of building up hype by announcing something in its early stages. Yes, DE might have been able to announce the content later, but even before they started delaying they had a trailer ready and everything. Apparently the delays are for creative reasons so the bottom line is that they are delaying so that they can try to make it better, and if they had been expecting the delays beforehand then they obviously wouldn't say that it's coming earlier.

You are right that being angry changes things when it's content that's been added, but being angry can't make unfinished content release faster. They'll release it when they believe that it's ready. The only thing anger could possibly do is make them release the content without as much quality checking and improvement, which everyone got angry about when the first stages of U19 launched. Basically you can have it done fast or you can have it done well.

Thanks for clearing your side of the argument, appreciated. I do remember the U19 disaster, and agree that quality > quantity. I'm just trying to say that announcing it so early was a mistake.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Umbro_Excalibruh