Some Feedback From A Moderatly Experienced Player...

[Khanthal]

Edit: moved to three categories instead of just major/minor

 

I posted back in March ( https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/14643-some-feedback-from-a-fairly-new-player/ ) and figured I should do a followup post since there have been many changes.  Here are my thoughts.

 

Things I love since last feedback:

 - Forma (see below)

 - Endless Defense, massively fun, such a great addition

 - Void missions, amazing

 - Stalker, love him

 - Lots of new fun weapons, always good

 - Community events are great

 

 

Things from prior post that were resolved:

Major

 - No forced progression:  Forma solved this and...was really an elegant and enlightened solution.  This is actually what made me come back and stay back.  I had mostly quit, playing rarely here and there, but forma really solved everything in this, my largest sore spot.

 

Minor

 - Laser walls are very co-op unfriendly: The lights on the cameras really helped.  It in theory is still possible to grief with them but at least new players can see there is a red camera pointing at something and hopefully get the idea to shoot it.

 

 - OMG INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: Love the new mod system.  It's amazing.

 

 - OMG GRINDER ROLLER THINGS: Not sure you actually changed them much but the addition of sentinels pretty much solved the problem.  They can track and kill rollers easy if you just avoid them for a while.

 

 

 

Issues I still see:

----Major----

- Mod Pack's suck: The expensive mod pack drops two rares guaranteed.  Only often they are rare warframe powers for random warframes.  This is terrible.  Warframe powers are junk drops.  It takes no time at all to level your main warframe powers to rank 3.  Even if you get a new frame you only need a few cores to max the new powers.  If I pay 90 plat ($4.5 ish?) I shouldn't get terrible useless warframe powers as my rares.  I should get RARES.  You NEVER need warframe power drops unless you accidentally lost yours...you get them free with your frame.  For $4.5 I should get things I at least MIGHT need.

 

 - Clan Dojo pricing encourages the wrong things: Having clans in a game that lets you team up is always good.  It lets you form friendships and those friendships help keep you playing.  The big player carrot to join a clan is the Dojo and research.  The guns there are unique and powerful (and they should be or why invest?). 

 

The problem is that unlocking that research center is faaaaar too expensive.  It means the only way you have any reasonable chance of getting them inside several years of play is to create large mega-clans.  But mega-clans are exactly what you DON'T want.  In a mega-clan it's hard to make lasting friends and very easy to just be lost in the crowd.  With the system as is you aren't actually gaining player longevity from your clan system...and that's a shame since that's the entire point in building such a system.

 

A new player might form a small clan with his friends.  But they will quickly realize they have no hope of progression and, if they want research guns, will have to abandon and join a mega-clan becoming just another face in a huge crowd. 

 

 - Crit and other stats are not well explained in the UI: Really all the weapon stats are explained poorly and I suspect (especially for melee) even the listed stats are not really accurate...especially swing speed.  I have a sneaking suspicion that animation speed controls the weapon rather than it's stats...which is sad.  That was the same terrible problem that AoC had when it launched.  Weapon buying costs substantial in-game resources and (potentially) real world money.  It should be 100% clear before you buy a weapon every stat you are getting and it should be easy to compare to your other weapons.

 

 

----Intermediate things----

 - Voiceovers need....a lot of work: My lord.  Ok so.  Rebecca is really great but you need to hire writers to give her lines that are not...silly.  "Something's wrong, a heavy unit is approaching"...no...nothing is wrong; it's normal and to be expected that they send a heavy unit when I just killed 40 grineer mooks.  We are constantly "overhauling" security when we should be "overriding" it.  Etc Etc Etc.  Please delete all of the voice overs, hire a writer, and remake them.

 

- Breaks in flow/story:  I'm not sure how to explain this except by examples. 

Mobile defense missions in grineer ships (step 3) have you defend an artifact until the extraction team arrives.  Only no extraction team ever arrives.  You just get told you are good to go and can leave...even if there are 80 grineer right there still shooting the artifact.  If you are going to tell me that help is on the way then a bunch of tenno should appear out of nowhere and explode the area or something and guard it when help arrives.

 

Rescue missions do not require you to actually get the captive to the end...even if you do get him there often you see him standing and looking at you while you fly away and shots are ringing out around his head.  Him being at the pad should be required.  Him standing there looking whistful as you fly away should never happen.

 

Sabatoge missions often have voiceovers that suggest the mining machines are...I dunno...some kinda boss or something.  Also some of them make little sense as you are blowing up mining machines in an infested controlled area.  I suggest removing/reworking all of these apart from the reactor core destroying ones...those actually make some sense.

 

 - Rare mods: Rare mods are rare...sure I get it.  But I have been playing a long time now and I simply can never get a Flow to drop.  Either there needs to be a better way of farming a specific mod, a way to buy with plat outside packs, or something. Fixing pack buys (above) would help.

 

 

----Minor things----

- Minigames: There should be more.  The hacking minigame is great but we need separate ones for Corpus and Grineer at the very least.  More little minigames would be even better.

 

 - Exiting game: It still takes many clicks to exit.  There should be a single button exit (other than alt-F4).  Right now I click X, are you sure, Yes, X again at the login screen, are you sure, Yes...and I have to move my mouse all over the screen to do it.  Way too hard to quit.  One button, maybe a single Yes, and out.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Khanthal

[Finch.]

all I can say is +1

 

This is accurate and elegant feedback, something we need more of. I agree with everything stated.

[Khanthal]

Thanks :).  Hopefully the devs agree.

[LongDraw]

Chances are they'll only see the thousands of 10 year olds screaming that they want hats/scarves/etc, dancing/sitting/etc and more free mod slots.

[InsomniacOvrLrd]

Yes. Overhauling the security would be like, if you were a security tech installer guy, and you went about replacing and upgrading all of hteir security with better stuff.  It's just flat wrong, like when they wrote down the stuff they needed DErebecca to say, they didn't have any idea how it would pertain to the agme itself.  Just makes you guys look like you have no idea what any end of your company is doing.

[Khanthal]

I'm not sure I agree with that.  I suspect it was just dialog written by a coder/designer rather than a writer or it was misread when it was recorded.  Given that the voice talent sits in the office though it can't be more than a few hours work to record again, however....this time with a script that makes sense :).

[Khanthal]

I just read about Dojo prices changing...so that's good to hear :).  I'm hoping the 10 man clan prices are much more attainable amounts than the current pricing model.