Orokin Catalysts/Reactors NEED to Change: A letter to the Game Devs

[Zmajlajka]

Just woke up (6:15AM) and got ingame to have a buddy ask me "where where you?" and i say i played soccer yesterday and was too exausted to play why?... Man you missed an Catalyst he says to me and im like okay just wasnt my day i guess... But i get the Energy Syphon one. After that i got to the forums only to see that i missed not 1 "?" Alert than i missed 4 of em!!! and im like f**k f**k wth?

Every single alert was between 12:30 and 5:50AM, NOT PM, AM. This days i played till about 3-4AM my time(Croatia) every day for the last week in the hopes to get an "?" Alert pop up and maybie see and Catalyst drop inbetween but that didnt happen. That needs to change asap and not soon because its not even fun anymore and it gets more and more frustrating the more it happens. Having over 80 playhours and having all your stuff rank 30 but without a Catalyst Locked at rank 15. im in for a new Bp that you can buy but need to grind a lot of resourses for as it would give me and others a sense of progress and not this randomness of crazy pop up times. Dont get me wrong i LOVE this game and intend to play it even more but this really needs some rework.

[Mak_Gohae]

I beg to differ. I feel no reason to play the game if I cannot have access to half my skill tree or a weapons power. My warframe is level 30 and my weapons are all 20+. What reason to do I have to keep playing? Effectively, the fact that I have to reply on 3x rng roles means there is no progression for me which means I get to twiddle my thumbs and watch a forum hoping for a ? alert to give me what I need to play more. I honestly do not get why you're so unwilling to even admit the system might have some rather large flaws.

Having to watch a forum so I know when to play is just silly. I've never seen anything like it any game ever, pretty much. It's the anti-thesis of fun. What do you expect people to do once the game becomes more popular? If it ever makes it that far.

Edit: Speak of the devil.. there was an ? alert that gave a catalyst and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! It's in an area you'd likely need a catalyst to get to in the first place. What a joke.

Why dont you level other weapons and frames?

And you dont need a catalyst to get there, the first thing you need in higher levels are more people in missions.

I got my weapons inventory full with weapons all 30 or close to 30 without any Orokin stuff in them and im running through those missions fine.

[Kyuzo]

still they should allow us to 1 time detach them for a amount of credits hell i would be happy if it gave us the BP :( i really need 1 for frost since ima have to delete my volt to make room q.q

[DetergentPod]

still they should allow us to 1 time detach them for a amount of credits hell i would be happy if it gave us the BP :( i really need 1 for frost since ima have to delete my volt to make room q.q

That is actually a great idea. I like it. Let us detach the Reactor/Catalyst for a price. After nerfing the Volt to the point where it's useless I would love to remove the Reactor I used on him and use it on my Ash instead.

[Blatantfool]

There is no overlap, the orokin things are given in alert missions. The rarety of the items doesnt change anything gameplaywise. The game doesnt stop because you dont have supercharged items or frames. You can still play the game. I know some folks want to play at full potential and all that jazz but you can in fact STILL play without that stuff. Things might be slightly more difficult but what's wrong with that?

There is an Overlap. You can rank any item to 30 but without the Supercharge it can only be as powerful as level 15. This is an overlap. It is where an item you are encouraged to buy directly effects gameplay.

The rarity, in this case, does effect the gameplay. I can rest easy saying that, since my proof is so much hate for the items in the first place. Because the ability to obtain this item without paying is so heavily RNG it causes an aggravation of the issue surrounding their overlap with gameplay. You'd find a lot less people opposed to them if the system for distributing the items was better and was something a player felt they had better control over.

You will never, at any point, be able to convince people they should be happy with the game gimping them because they aren't a paying customer. Don't try to pretend it is realistic to say "It is not so bad settling for halfway there!" and expecting people to just be cool with that. In fact, on the subject of Difficulty. What happens when later content DOES start to get harder to react to the much stronger weaponry available to some players? Level 15 weaponry could very easily cease to be adequate since their actual power sharply falls off in comparison to the boosted versions.

I am leveling now a Gorgon which isnt supercharged and when fighting Kril i ran out of ammo probably cause my Gorgon wasnt doing it's max damage or it could be that the other players also didnt have super charged stuff, etc, etc. How did i solved that? I bought extra ammo boxes. For 1k, easy to get from selling a few mods, i get full ammo which kept me in the fight.

This is fine now. What past that? They can't just cap out the difficulty at one level in all future content, that could turn out to get awfully bland.

But how much time can that weapon or your plug away uselessly before it iis just getting excessive? Why is it okay to be so penalized? Why would you expect a player to be okay with this penalty?

Not having super charged stuff isnt the end of the game.

Too true. The game keeps going. Only your item progression is frozen. Can't improve an items strength past 15 unless you pay or win at the Alert slots.

But again, I'll admit, peel away the opinions and the only thing seriously wrong here is how inadequate the Alert system is in regards to distributing the extremely valuable and necessary Orokin items.

Well, yes, they are getting money but i think of success as gaining profit. If the the milestones were for, "If we reach this point we are breaking even." and they do that's cool. But just breaking even isnt what companies strive for. Breaking even as a goal it's mostly when you fail and you dont want to end at a lost, these folks want come cash in their bank.

Firefall might have broke even. I think Path of Exile has wandered pretty far into 'making profit'. That part is speculation though.

Reaching those milestones at all is still a sign of a successful setup.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Blatantfool

[Albinobunny]

Seeing how this is the biggest thread on this topic I feel I'll put in my opinion:

I am willing to pay for two things in free to play games:

1) cosmetics

2) gameplay alterations.

Reactors/Catalysts aren't either of those two things. They are a halt on my ability to progress with a given play style. The two things I'd recomend are:

1) Make it so they can drop rarely from non alert missions. This would both alieveate the issue of a lot of players not being able to come on while an alert is up and spice up the loot pool a bit from just mod.

2) Alter the way they work to turn them into permenant Xp boosters for the given item and then set the Xp curve to spike sharply at the 15 level mark. This helps by both not being a blunt STOP to progression and also giving a seperate reason to purchase the reactor/catalyst for veteran players who are excited over a new warframes release as they can use it to help boost their way past the 1-15 period.

Also on people commenting on PoE: It's raised 2.3million NZ dollars for a small studio game. I'm certain they're making a boat load of profit off of what is essentially 100% cosmetics/early access as the incentive.

The reason reactors/catalysts are bad is they bluntly tell you 'pay us money' as a new player. If you have one warframe and it hit's level 15 then Xp becomes wasted until you luck into an alert that drops one. At that point there's a good chance the new player just drops the game and goes 'well F*** it, I get treated better by game X'.

Also League could easily charge for more things if it wanted:

Monthly access to ranked.

Limited IP earnings after a certain amount of games per week unless you pay

Limited use of summoner spells/summoner spell rotation

Make new champions RP only with in the first week.

But they don't, because all these things do the same thing that Reactors/Catalysts do in bluntly stopping free to play players from playing the game.

If I'm not playing a game I'm certainly never going to drop money on it.

[Fenrisulfr]

+1, well said.

[Kerfilicious]

To me paying for a game should be all about convenience and cosmetics. When something is put in place to halt my progression, and basically force me to pay to play i'd rather just play a pay to play game, since in the end it would be cheaper in the lon run. The orkin reactor isn't a item that does anything. It's a modifier setting progression to true or false.

I cannot for the life of me see how this is a good model. Should i take comfort in the fact that some other people crap money, or just don't care? That's the feeling i get from many of the "pro orikin" people out there.

In the end i play games cause it's fun, and using my money to buy progression is not my idea of fun.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Kerfilicious

[Various]

So I'm on page seven and still trying to catch up, but this video keeps popping up in my mind:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/microtransactions

It talks about the... it analyzes the microtransaction model, and suggests ways on how it could work and why. After rewatching the video, I think DE is doing a really good job so far. The only point of contention (in terms of what the video talks about) is the orokin reactor/catalyst part. It's kind of on the line, but I think it IS selling power. The items, especially the reactors, unlocks the final power (which seems to always be uber) and mod slots that allow a customizable increase in power, may that be in survivability, utility, or damage. Yes, you can get these items for free, but currently it feels impossible. Since I've started playing about a month ago, there's only been one chance for a reactor, to my knowledge, and it was at 3am. A time I could not have gotten to it. As for the daily lotto, luck has never favored me. Or if it did, it favors me the wrong way. I've gotten the Pistol Ammo Box. Every. Single. Time. Well... almost. I've gotten a health restore thing. Once.

I know one of the DE admins said that they're always looking at the stats and that they're trying to tread carefully. Which is fine. But if they tread too carefully, they may be too late to keep hold of a number of their potential customers. Besides, this is a closed beta. The way I see it, it's their job to run the experiments, and it's our job to break it. Just saying. :P

Sorry if this is no longer relevant. If so, then feel free to ignore this.

As I've said, still catching up.

Oh and +1 to OP.

[Albinobunny]

It isn't selling power. Lets not get into that conversation. End of the line you can gain it in game so it's not selling power.

It's selling progress. Which is actually fine World of Tanks for example basically does this with it's subscription model where come around half way up the progression ladder for every nation of tank models the XP and cost of supporting a given tank increases significantly to make it hard/a significant grind to progress. That's perfectly fine because you can still play and still progress.

Under the current system until you get lucky with alerts it flat stops progress. The behaviour this encourages is to sit playing another game with Warframe open in the background waiting for an alert.

You can debate semantics as much as you want when it comes to things like pay to win (which honestly is really abused as a phrase these days) but at the end of the day the system actively discourages a new player from playing the game. If people are not playing then the chances of them becoming a paying customer goes down.

[Aggh]

Riot Games spent less than 1 million dollars developing LoL. They have a massive playerbase which, even at the BF:Heroes "Non-Pay To Win" scale of $.25 per player, would give them far more than required to make that investment back.

Looking at an AAA game engine and its costs, you're looking at easily 5 times or more for developing Warframe, which uses a proprietary engine, does something literally nobody has tried before in this current generation of games (procedural map generation died out back in the 90s), and there was an interview on how they wanted to have weekly or biweekly content dumps with new tilesets every month or so. This plus how LoL has lower system requirements and thus a broader potential playerbase.

LoL has a lot of advantages in terms of structure that let it monetize a lot less, and the PvP requirement means they need player goodwill far more than a game which you can play co-op with bros/broettes, which means they can monetize the game a lot less. I keep saying this and people keep pointing to LoL and ignore all the different circumstances.

The procedural map generation probably makes it cheaper if anything. They're reusing a very small pool of assets over and over in each map tile and get a lot of game play out of a relatively small number maps.

It isn't selling power. Lets not get into that conversation. End of the line you can gain it in game so it's not selling power.

It's selling progress. Which is actually fine World of Tanks for example basically does this with it's subscription model where come around half way up the progression ladder for every nation of tank models the XP and cost of supporting a given tank increases significantly to make it hard/a significant grind to progress. That's perfectly fine because you can still play and still progress.

Under the current system until you get lucky with alerts it flat stops progress. The behaviour this encourages is to sit playing another game with Warframe open in the background waiting for an alert.

You can debate semantics as much as you want when it comes to things like pay to win (which honestly is really abused as a phrase these days) but at the end of the day the system actively discourages a new player from playing the game. If people are not playing then the chances of them becoming a paying customer goes down.

^This is what a lot of people like Mak_Gohae don't seem to understand. This system encourages people to be logged in, but it doesn't actually incentivize people to actually play the game. Even the people spending cash will hit a wall eventually waiting for alerts for melee weapons and what not. F2p games want as many people as possible playing at all times and as with all games, if you can't keep people incentivized to continue playing, the game has failed.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Aggh

[neKroMancer]

I think that rank system should play a part in alleviating this problem.

Each rank progression should gives player one more frame slot, one more weapon slots, and one reactor/catalyst. However, limit the slot gained from this progression. Let's say 2-3 frame slots and 4-6 weapon slots. The catalyst/reactor should be earned through certain hours logged into the game.

The initial giveaways should serve as an incentive for new players to keep playing and give them sense of progression/freedom. The hours logged into the game should serve as a goal for grinder since they're mostly going after blueprints and without catalyst/reactor, their hard earn frames/weapons will be gimped at lv15. Perhaps the logged hours reward could be a choice between reactor/catalyst. At some large amount of logged hours, a slot as a reward.

While this doesn't really fix the problem, it has a clear goal to achieve with certainty of reward.

Edited February 4, 2013 by neKroMancer

[Albinobunny]

Well IMHO you really don't need warframe slots with in the game as is. The sheer time in put needed to make a warframe is enough of an incentive to just chuck cash at them.

I'd like those to be accessible for free too but eh, that IS the line where it's pretty fair to say 'pay for it'.

Having the game give you free access to certain extra stuff based on gaining a level would help deal with the issue of 'welp, got all my starter stuff to level 15 so F*** it'.

[Aggh]

Well IMHO you really don't need warframe slots with in the game as is. The sheer time in put needed to make a warframe is enough of an incentive to just chuck cash at them.

I'd like those to be accessible for free too but eh, that IS the line where it's pretty fair to say 'pay for it'.

Having the game give you free access to certain extra stuff based on gaining a level would help deal with the issue of 'welp, got all my starter stuff to level 15 so F*** it'.

That's why I've been suggesting a slot BP. They could even have it be a multi BP item if they wanted keep it from being too easy, just as long as people can actively work towards it if they want to. The slot limitations and forcing people to give up earned rewards if they want to progress is every bit as bad as the alert system.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Aggh

[Mak_Gohae]

There is an Overlap. You can rank any item to 30 but without the Supercharge it can only be as powerful as level 15. This is an overlap. It is where an item you are encouraged to buy directly effects gameplay.

The rarity, in this case, does effect the gameplay. I can rest easy saying that, since my proof is so much hate for the items in the first place. Because the ability to obtain this item without paying is so heavily RNG it causes an aggravation of the issue surrounding their overlap with gameplay. You'd find a lot less people opposed to them if the system for distributing the items was better and was something a player felt they had better control over.

Again, the fact that your items stop getting extra bonuses at level 15 does not stop the game. You can continue to use your gun, gain levels, and add better mods until it gets to 30 so by the time you get the catalyst all you need to do is pop it and your weapon is ready. You dont need to level it from 15 or anything like that.

One more time, you can continue to play the game with your weapons NOT supercharged.

You will never, at any point, be able to convince people they should be happy with the game gimping them because they aren't a paying customer. Don't try to pretend it is realistic to say "It is not so bad settling for halfway there!" and expecting people to just be cool with that. In fact, on the subject of Difficulty. What happens when later content DOES start to get harder to react to the much stronger weaponry available to some players? Level 15 weaponry could very easily cease to be adequate since their actual power sharply falls off in comparison to the boosted versions.

Im not here to convince you im here showing you another viewpoint which may help you understand the situation.

And right now there are a whooooooooole mess of people running eris and pluto missions which are 30-55 with weapons that are not supercharged.....are these mission unfinishable? Hell no. All these missions can be cleared and have been cleared.

Again, your weapons continue to get levels and you can continue to add better mods.

And i dont know how their system works but since your weapons are limited to 15 im guessing when stuff gets harder and max level goes up the limit level will also since it looks like is half of max.

This is fine now. What past that? They can't just cap out the difficulty at one level in all future content, that could turn out to get awfully bland.

But how much time can that weapon or your plug away uselessly before it iis just getting excessive? Why is it okay to be so penalized? Why would you expect a player to be okay with this penalty?

Too true. The game keeps going. Only your item progression is frozen. Can't improve an items strength past 15 unless you pay or win at the Alert slots.

But again, I'll admit, peel away the opinions and the only thing seriously wrong here is how inadequate the Alert system is in regards to distributing the extremely valuable and necessary Orokin items.

The limit is ok becasue players can STILL complete missions.

If your argument was that level 15 weapons stop me from completing missions you would have a point and i would agree 100% but it's not.

All my weapons in my inventory, which is full, are stuck at 15 and i go on Pluto and Eris missions fine. In fact, i just popped in Multishot into a Strun and it was awesome! I'm running around eris missions screaming, "I'll joing your flesh with this BUNCH OF PELLETS! AAAAAAAHH!!!" Doing eris defense missions i would hop on the red boxes next to the pod and pop away at anything that gets close to it. "THIS IS MY HOUSE! THIS IS MY CRYOPOD! AAAAAAH!! BLAKA, BLAKA, BLAKA!!!" The only time that pod went below 100 was the last wave. While you are worrying about your weapons not being at max i am having fun in these missions with what i got.

Firefall might have broke even. I think Path of Exile has wandered pretty far into 'making profit'. That part is speculation though.

Reaching those milestones at all is still a sign of a successful setup.

Yes, reaching milestones is good and all but let's all remember that they are still in the baby stages. So lets not take that as a definite or the rule that needs to be followed.

^This is what a lot of people like Mak_Gohae don't seem to understand. This system encourages people to be logged in, but it doesn't actually incentivize people to actually play the game. Even the people spending cash will hit a wall eventually waiting for alerts for melee weapons and what not. F2p games want as many people as possible playing at all times and as with all games, if you can't keep people incentivized to continue playing, the game has failed.

You have 8 weapon slots and 2 warframe slots...... level something else man.

I got my weapons slots full with everything but a burstron, cronus, and a heat sword leveled to max and you know what i am doing now? I'm waiting for my Frost to finish building and leveling that. I'm probably going to sell my cronus cause it's really eating a space and im fine with my heat sword and scindo and i'm going to level another weapon.

You folks are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too stuck on the fact that the tree is bigger than what is shown and just not doing anything else.

Go do something else!!!!

[Aggh]

Again, the fact that your items stop getting extra bonuses at level 15 does not stop the game. You can continue to use your gun, gain levels, and add better mods until it gets to 30 so by the time you get the catalyst all you need to do is pop it and your weapon is ready. You dont need to level it from 15 or anything like that.

One more time, you can continue to play the game with your weapons NOT supercharged.

Im not here to convince you im here showing you another viewpoint which may help you understand the situation.

And right now there are a whooooooooole mess of people running eris and pluto missions which are 30-55 with weapons that are not supercharged.....are these mission unfinishable? Hell no. All these missions can be cleared and have been cleared.

Again, your weapons continue to get levels and you can continue to add better mods.

And i dont know how their system works but since your weapons are limited to 15 im guessing when stuff gets harder and max level goes up the limit level will also since it looks like is half of max.

The limit is ok becasue players can STILL complete missions.

If your argument was that level 15 weapons stop me from completing missions you would have a point and i would agree 100% but it's not.

All my weapons in my inventory, which is full, are stuck at 15 and i go on Pluto and Eris missions fine. In fact, i just popped in Multishot into a Strun and it was awesome! I'm running around eris missions screaming, "I'll joing your flesh with this BUNCH OF PELLETS! AAAAAAAHH!!!" Doing eris defense missions i would hop on the red boxes next to the pod and pop away at anything that gets close to it. "THIS IS MY HOUSE! THIS IS MY CRYOPOD! AAAAAAH!! BLAKA, BLAKA, BLAKA!!!" The only time that pod went below 100 was the last wave. While you are worrying about your weapons not being at max i am having fun in these missions with what i got.

Yes, reaching milestones is good and all but let's all remember that they are still in the baby stages. So lets not take that as a definite or the rule that needs to be followed.

You have 8 weapon slots and 2 warframe slots...... level something else man.

I got my weapons slots full with everything but a burstron, cronus, and a heat sword leveled to max and you know what i am doing now? I'm waiting for my Frost to finish building and leveling that. I'm probably going to sell my cronus cause it's really eating a space and im fine with my heat sword and scindo and i'm going to level another weapon.

You folks are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too stuck on the fact that the tree is bigger than what is shown and just not doing anything else.

Go do something else!!!!

I don't need to do that because I did put a bit of money into the game. I have all the frames except loki, excalibur and frost built and have plenty of weapons.

That's besides the point though, because if I want to experience something new, I'm going to have to either spend cash or give something up. This essentially is asking people to sacrifice earned rewards. At one point or another, even the people who are spending money are going to get tired of having to spend cash on literally every new weapon and war frame they get if they don't want to sacrifice something that they've put a considerable amount of time into leveling and possibly even put some cash into catalysts and reactors because of the terrible alert system. That's the case with me. I don't feel like spending money on a game that doesn't let me choose whether or not I need to spend cash to progress.

Simply put, it's bad game design. Good games incentivize players to progress through the game by rewarding them for doing stuff. But when you punish them as you reward them, the moitivization to progress through the game will continue to diminish. Combined with the current alert system, at lot of players are constantly hitting a wall in terms of progress because they can't access new content without giving something up and even if they get that new content, they can't reliably get it to a point where it can be used to progress through the game properly.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Aggh

[Mak_Gohae]

That's besides the point though, because if I want to experience something new, I'm going to have to either spend cash or give something up. This essentially is asking people to sacrifice earned rewards. At one point or another, even the people who are spending money are going to get tired of having to spend cash on literally every new weapon and war frame they get if they don't want to sacrifice something that they've put a considerable amount of time into leveling and possibly even put some cash into catalysts and reactors because of the terrible alert system. That's the case with me. I don't feel like spending money on a game that doesn't let me choose whether or not I need to spend cash to progress.

What this giving up sacrifice thing? I dont know what you are talking about with this.

[Aggh]

What this giving up sacrifice thing? I dont know what you are talking about with this.

Oh look. An apologist that doesn't fully understand the system he's discussing. Weeeeee.

Lets say someone has a pile of level 30 weapons and warframes with catalysts and reactors in them and has used up all their slots. And then new content comes out. How motivated do you think people are going to feel about getting that new content when they're going to have to sell a level 30 frame or weapon to clear out space for a new frame or weapon? Or have to spend money literally every time something new comes out? It's essentially a subscription system in disguise.

You either pay money, or you sacrifice something that you have put hours into leveling up. And to top it off, with the way the ranking sytem works, all that time you put into leveling that weapon goes *poof*

Edited February 4, 2013 by Aggh

[Mak_Gohae]

Oh look. An apologist that doesn't fully understand the system he's discussing. Weeeeee.

You didnt explained yourself thoroughly on what you meant, the catalyst becomes a secondary point near the end of the paragraph.

Lets say someone has a pile of level 30 weapons and warframes with catalysts and reactors in them and has used up all their slots. And then new content comes out. How motivated do you think people are going to feel about getting that new content when they're going to have to sell a level 30 frame or weapon to clear out space for a new frame or weapon? Or have to spend money literally every time something new comes out? It's essentially a subscription system in disguise.

You either pay money, or you sacrifice something that you have put hours into leveling up. And to top it off, with the way the ranking sytem works, all that time you put into leveling that weapon goes *poof*

How about this, i know this might be a straaaaaaaaaange concept but trust me.... it works.

Leave slots open...... GASP! Think about the future and leave slot opens for possibilities!

And, yes, if you are full you are going to have to sell things.... so what? You never played a game with equipment before? Becaue this isnt anything new. Like i mentioned here, i have sold and WILL sell weapons i leveled.

So if you want to be all extremely careful about the catalyst if you spend money then only spend it on weapons you will keep and never sell. No one told you to spend on catalyst for every single weapon in your inventory. That was YOUR choice and you should know what can happen.

I spent a long time farming for Trinity and the day i got my last part they release the new Warframes which i ended up going for and building instead of the Trinity. So i "wasted" all that time on Trinity when i could have spend it on something else, right? Ok but so what? It's a video game! It's not real life.

[Meltina]

You didnt explained yourself thoroughly on what you meant, the catalyst becomes a secondary point near the end of the paragraph.

How about this, i know this might be a straaaaaaaaaange concept but trust me.... it works.

Leave slots open...... GASP! Think about the future and leave slot opens for possibilities!

So your telling us to not play warframe because we should keep slots open for the future.

And, yes, if you are full you are going to have to sell things.... so what? You never played a game with equipment before? Becaue this isnt anything new. Like i mentioned here, i have sold and WILL sell weapons i leveled.

So if you want to be all extremely careful about the catalyst if you spend money then only spend it on weapons you will keep and never sell. No one told you to spend on catalyst for every single weapon in your inventory. That was YOUR choice and you should know what can happen.

So your saying people who paid for platnum should be punished for supporting the devs because the slot limitation may force them to either buy more platnum or vendor an item you spent platnum to catalyst. The player can reach the point of either needing to spend more money on plat or vendor an item they spent plat on. Players are smart enough to see it comming and avoid or leave games when they see it. Heck you should have seen how fast the beta populaton of allods crashed when they added a 2 hour 50% stat death penalty on a game with raiding or pvp unless you bought a cash shop consumable to avoid it. I saw that and left and never touched it again.

I spent a long time farming for Trinity and the day i got my last part they release the new Warframes which i ended up going for and building instead of the Trinity. So i "wasted" all that time on Trinity when i could have spend it on something else, right? Ok but so what? It's a video game! It's not real life.

You have the trinity in your foundry unclaimed now imagine if you used a catalist and leveled it to 30. You would be alot less happy about the slot limitation to try the new frames. If you could grind for a catalyst or reactor it would be more acceptable. People are willing to waste time. People do not like having to waste money.

If items didn't reset when you reaquire them it simply refarm parts and wait 3 and a halff days but as it is its farm parts, level frame to 30, then pray and wait 2 months to get another reactor. That would make selling items to make room hurt but still be reasonable to go back to the weapons to reaquire them.

The reactors with the new skill trees are becoming more of pay to win. Soloing the charger boss with melee with a reactor is easy. Without you have to pick either melee damage mods and get instakilled by his scream or survivabilty and have your damage too low to kill him in a reasonable amount of time. With the new mod slots you lose up to 640% melee damage and 700 shields, due to double mods, just by not having a reactor. Having a cash shop item should give an edge but it should not make one cash shop person have the strength of a party of 4 f2p players.

[__J_D__]

The current system relies far too much on chance to be able to access literally HALF of the game's leveling feature. I understand that this is to encourage you to buy plat, but this is going to push a LOT of people away, and is going to result in a net loss of income. At the moment, it would take 720 plat to buy all the catalysts and reactors you would need to be able to supercharge every weapon/warframe. The amount of plat you would need to actually HOLD all the stuff in the game makes that total 1060 plat, I think. You start off with 50, so we can knock it down to 1010. Before you comment about this being the way they have to make money, keep reading, I'll address my problem with that.

The only current methods of obtaining catalysts/reactors without paying money are:

1) Getting them in the daily reward (luck)

2) Getting them off of random reward missions? (luck)

3) Getting the blueprints off of random reward missions (luck)

You can't even grind for them, being that the random reward missions are so damn rare. I've been able to do one, and I play a decent amount. Yes, I was able to supercharge my Volt warframe and Burston with the plat they give you, but I've had a 21 Cronus and 18 Sicarus that I've already benched because I can't progress them (more weapons coming to that point soon), and I have absolutely no idea when I'll be able to, either. Even when I'm not actively playing, I stay logged in just to try to catch one of those missions. God damn are they rare.

Okay, so. This is not a good F2P model. Well, it actually is if your only goal is to sucker people out of money, so let me rephrase that. This is not how you make a good F2P game. Spending money in a F2P game should provide you with fun additions (the increased color pallete and different helmets, for instance). At most, spending money should speed you along the path of progress. I underlined path of progress because it's the key thing here. Waiting for random reward missions so you can get a very small chance at a vital blueprint is not progressing; it's playing slots.

An overly simplified fix to this problem would be to make the blueprints available to purchase with credits, if even for an obscene amount like 10 million (at least you can still MAKE PROGRESS towards your goal, and that feels good to players). Now, you can attach all sorts of requirements on to that to make the progress much more drawn out, but progress none the less. Give the blueprint parts that require you to do specific missions, or kill specific targets. The targets and missions could even be random if you'd like, just as long as the reward is grindable. You guys are the game designers, make it really cool, involving, and fun!

Finally, on to DE making that phat cash. Well, I'm sure you all know what League of Legends is and how big of a success it has been as a F2P game. I love LoL. I've been playing it practically daily for almost two years, and it's business model is pure @(*()$ genius. If you want a new champion, the in game currency cost is actually extremely high relative to how fast you earn it. It'd be much easier just to buy it for a couple bucks. But that's perfectly okay, because I can visibly see myself getting closer to that goal. Then, you can buy skins. The only impact skins have on gameplay is visual. The trade-off is that you can't get skins with in game currency. You guys seem to have a good grip on that, so that's fine.

Within two years of playing LoL, there has never been a time where I felt I needed to spend money to get what I wanted. I've played Warframe for two weeks and it feels like I'm being squished under the impending need to spend money. I literally feel trapped between my desire to play this game, and my desire to save what little money I have. Ultimately, I think this is what will drive me away from this game, and it'll probably happen before it even gets out of beta.

In summation, I love this game so far. I think you guys have done such an amazing job creating this world, and I truly look forward to what you add to it in the future (more lore and storyline puhleaasseeee). Not only that, but I feel this game really has the potential to be so great. That said, your current F2P business model is going to be your downfall. It is going to drive a lot of possible customers away. This might be a F2P game, but unless we get lucky enough to pick up those blueprints, the players are forced into spending almost as much as they would on a new release at gamestop. Making players feel forced into spending money, even if they don't necessarily have to, is a bad thing.

Agreed

[Mak_Gohae]

So your telling us to not play warframe because we should keep slots open for the future.

If you dont want to "sarifice" the time spent on leveling weapons then DONT level weapons and wait for future content. YOU created the both the problem and solution.

So your saying people who paid for platnum should be punished for supporting the devs because the slot limitation may force them to either buy more platnum or vendor an item you spent platnum to catalyst. The player can reach the point of either needing to spend more money on plat or vendor an item they spent plat on. Players are smart enough to see it comming and avoid or leave games when they see it. Heck you should have seen how fast the beta populaton of allods crashed when they added a 2 hour 50% stat death penalty on a game with raiding or pvp unless you bought a cash shop consumable to avoid it. I saw that and left and never touched it again.

No one is being punished here, this is all YOUR choice on how you decide to handle it.

The game is free up to a point.

You have the trinity in your foundry unclaimed now imagine if you used a catalist and leveled it to 30. You would be alot less happy about the slot limitation to try the new frames. If you could grind for a catalyst or reactor it would be more acceptable. People are willing to waste time. People do not like having to waste money.

No i would not be less happy because i have a level 30 Warframe with a reactor vs going for a new one without one.

HA!

If items didn't reset when you reaquire them it simply refarm parts and wait 3 and a halff days but as it is its farm parts, level frame to 30, then pray and wait 2 months to get another reactor. That would make selling items to make room hurt but still be reasonable to go back to the weapons to reaquire them.

The reactors with the new skill trees are becoming more of pay to win. Soloing the charger boss with melee with a reactor is easy. Without you have to pick either melee damage mods and get instakilled by his scream or survivabilty and have your damage too low to kill him in a reasonable amount of time. With the new mod slots you lose up to 640% melee damage and 700 shields, due to double mods, just by not having a reactor. Having a cash shop item should give an edge but it should not make one cash shop person have the strength of a party of 4 f2p players.

Soloing a level 30-55 mission is difficult with or without the reactor. The only way ANYONE can survive such missions alone is by using every inventory slot, some sound tactics, and a bit of luck. Dont act like people with reactors are waltzing two-shotting the boss and shuffling out. Outside of using the Snipertron, that is.

[Fenrisulfr]

Heck you should have seen how fast the beta populaton of allods crashed when they added a 2 hour 50% stat death penalty on a game with raiding or pvp unless you bought a cash shop consumable to avoid it. I saw that and left and never touched it again.

As a player with several years of experience in allods, I agree with this. People should be made more aware what happens when you introduce S#&$ty store system in a game that is still under development, and allods is perfect example.

In the end, it doesn't even matter if the system actually works or not, or is it logical or fair or not. What players think of it matters. It won't matter if store and game have best design ever made.

If players don't like it, you're gonna have bad time.

If it repels player after a while, you're gonna have bad time.

And if it repels players the moment they step the their foot in game (something more than one people testified on these very forums), you're especially gonna have bad time.

There maybe is couple of players that are desperately trying to confirm that this is a good system (although, I have no idea why), but by the overwhelming amount of players that are expressing their disatisfaction, we can safely say that this is a bad system. Not because it uses very aged concepts, not because it puts wall on player progress or limits players, but because,with all that combined, players don't like it. And thats the only thing that matters, in the end.

[Aggh]

You didnt explained yourself thoroughly on what you meant, the catalyst becomes a secondary point near the end of the paragraph.

How about this, i know this might be a straaaaaaaaaange concept but trust me.... it works.

Leave slots open...... GASP! Think about the future and leave slot opens for possibilities!

And, yes, if you are full you are going to have to sell things.... so what? You never played a game with equipment before? Becaue this isnt anything new. Like i mentioned here, i have sold and WILL sell weapons i leveled.

So if you want to be all extremely careful about the catalyst if you spend money then only spend it on weapons you will keep and never sell. No one told you to spend on catalyst for every single weapon in your inventory. That was YOUR choice and you should know what can happen.

I spent a long time farming for Trinity and the day i got my last part they release the new Warframes which i ended up going for and building instead of the Trinity. So i "wasted" all that time on Trinity when i could have spend it on something else, right? Ok but so what? It's a video game! It's not real life.

Looooooooooooooooooooooooool

So your solution is for people to stop progressing through the game's content. Thank you for proving my point. Your solution literally is what every game dev never wants to happen to their game.

If you dont want to "sarifice" the time spent on leveling weapons then DONT level weapons and wait for future content. YOU created the both the problem and solution.

No one is being punished here, this is all YOUR choice on how you decide to handle it.

The game is free up to a point.

No i would not be less happy because i have a level 30 Warframe with a reactor vs going for a new one without one.

HA!

Soloing a level 30-55 mission is difficult with or without the reactor. The only way ANYONE can survive such missions alone is by using every inventory slot, some sound tactics, and a bit of luck. Dont act like people with reactors are waltzing two-shotting the boss and shuffling out. Outside of using the Snipertron, that is.

So not only do you not understannd the implications of the system that you're talking about, you're also incredibly bad at an easy game lol. Just an fyi, 30-55 missions are incredibly easy with a fully leveled frame and weapon. Unless you think spamming heck, gorgon and 4th abilities and/or melee with stacked melee mods is actually hard.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Aggh

[Mak_Gohae]

Looooooooooooooooooooooooool

So your solution is for people to stop progressing through the game's content. Thank you for proving my point.

No my solution is to use your head.

If you dont want to sell your stuff to make space then dont fill it up and wait.

If you are spending cash on orokin spend it on things you will definitely not sell.

If you have the money to orokin up EVERY SINGLE gun and Warframe in your inventory that you dont want to sell them later be a bit smart and dont orokin one thing and spend the plat on more slots.

There are many ways to go about this if you UNDERSTAND that, yes, there are limits.

Edited February 4, 2013 by Mak_Gohae