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

[McGuffin]

Even as a Grand Master I agree with the OP's post. While to be fair, a completely random system is also a completely fair system, the issue stems from having a large amount of potential rewards to draw from, as well as how 'unknown' the factors are. Here's what I think might go part of the way to fixing this issue, and another (semi-unrelated one as well).

Have a 'Spin Again' feature for the daily login reward that uses credits. Basically, when you get the login roulette you have 2 options: Take Item on the right, and Spin Again on the left. The price could start low, say 500 creds for the first re-spin (about a mission reward's worth) and increases each time you do it. Having this also doubles as a credit sink for people who have insane amounts of it and gives players a sense of control over the randomness. It also requires players to have consecutive logins to get to the tier that provides the rewards they want, and they can only do it once a day. Plus, if players want to keep spinning to better their chances, they would need to play missions to be able to afford it. The system feeds itself!

Alternatively, have a guaranteed but very rare / slow way of getting the Catalysts / Reactors. A good way to implement this is to give one or both of those items as an Account / Profile level reward. Each time you pass Lotus' test, she gives them to you as reward. This still encourages people to playtest multiple 'frames and weapons to efficiently rank up and makes the system matter a little bit more aside from for unlocking 2 weapons that come relatively far apart.

Thoughts / Suggestions?

[Frazeil]

I agree with the OP Catalysts/Reactors are far too rare. If free players get stuck half way through leveling their equipment AND the only way to effectively see Alerts is to complete EVERY misison on EVERY planet, how are they going to achieve that with low level equipment?

Groups would be the most logical answer but even then they wouldn't get far.

Simply make the blueprint drop from a boss but at a low rate, or make it avaible in the shop but increased resources requirements compared to Warframe Blueprints.

Edit: The above posts "Spin Again" feature sounds good but I find it far too easy to farm money at the moment. Surely you'd get people grinding their &#! off for money but it wouldn't be too long before people had completely maxed out their equipment. Very few runs on Pluto can net me insane amounts of money if I simply sell everything I find, and anyone with a level 30 Warframe with level 30 gun and sword can achieve this easily.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Frazeil

[Ronteque]

Agreed. I have created threads on this issue before.

By the look of how things are going now and the pace it is going. Does not look too positive for me.

The best system out there in a F2P game is Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends. And yes, I have spent money in both games!

I played both games for free over more than 50 - 100 of hours WITHOUT FEELING THE NEED TO SPEND MONEY TO PROGRESS!

Yet in Warframe, once my weapon reaches level 15, I look at the top left and noticed this catalyst thing and then checked the market and noticed what this game really is about. Free to play -> Pay to progress.

In Team Fortress 2, you can turn all your useless items into scrap metals and craft them into hats or actual weapons.

Imagine yourself turning all your useless scavengers and freaking jawsword blueprints into scrap metals and crafting them into an Orokin Catalyst. How awesome would that be? THAT is PROGRESS!

In League of Legends, I have bought champion with money because I didn't want to wait and I wanted to play them right away and also bought skins that made them look different with different models, animations and sounds.

In Warframe, if I do not spend money on the orokin reactor/catalyst, my warframe and weapons will just be gimped until I get the catalyst and reactor. Not to mention the only way to acquire without spending is through the outrageously terrible alert ? system and rigged login reward that give me frigging 1000xp everyday. Yeah thanks a lot I really needed this 1000 xp every day on my rank 30 warframes and weapons that are gimped with no catalysts/reactors.

I think I am done with Warframe by looking at the direction they are taking.

Take for example the developers of Path of Exile. It is their philosophy that the players in their game MUST NEVER FEEL THE NEED TO PAY TO PROGRESS. They have that mindset as a foundation and built their entire game based on that. The only thing that you can spend on are cosmetics. No restricted content, no progression restriction.

The very moment I saw this in Warframe, I just know it isn't going to get any better in the future.

Oh and let's not forget about the ridiculous inventory/warframe slot system. To get mastery points, you need to level weapons and warframes but your inventory slots are gimped if you don't spend money too. So you either sell your weapons once they reach level 30 and maybe never get to play them again. If you do buy them again they are level 1 again....... wait...... WHAT?

The game is fine. But the pay to progress philosophy isn't.

[sambarpowder]

When left to chance, we might as well say that there is a possiblity, however hard we try, for us to never get a potato. There's no grind you're skipping by paying. We should be playing the game to get these things, not watching videos while refreshing a forum tab 24/7.

[Bl4cklisted]

I only really have 2 main gripes:

#1) Alert missions (yet alone alert missions with a ? reward) are way too random. I play as much as I possibly can between work and school, and in total since I started playing maybe 2 weeks ago I've seen a total of 10 of the ? reward missions.

#2) For a F2P game the conversion rate for RL currency > Plat seems a little low. At least it feels low when you take in consideration that to buy a warframe entirely with plat (let's use Ash for this example) you'd be spending roughly $25, or about the price of a used game for a console. For $25 in another F2P game, let's use LoL as an example since their model is brilliant. $25 will give you 3450 Riot Points. With that amount of riot points I can buy (using a baseline 975 for a champion not on sale) I can buy 3 champions and have 525 left which is enough for one of the cheaper skins that some champions have or enough for a champion or skin they put on sale. I honestly think the prices for some of the store items will hurt them in the long run if they continue to use the same conversion rate since personally speaking if I had the extra money to just throw around I still wouldn't see the value of buying a single warframe (bypassing the farming/crafting) for $25. The prices for the helms/reactors/catalysts though I believe are fine, those are 5 bucks and purely cosmetic (amusingly enough cheaper than most LoL skins which are purely cosmetic).

While we're on the subject of their pricing, should really consider adding a $20 teir for buying plat. Kinda lame that it goes 5 > 10 > 30 (especially when you consider you're only getting an extra 60 plat compared to buying $10 worth 3 times)

I have to agree, relying on pure randomness to advance your frames and weapons beyond the half way point is not a good way to make players feel they are progressing. Most F2P games sell "shortcuts" that allow people to progress quickly by spending money but still allow all players to achieve the same thing by investing more time and effort. Right now that's not possible here because you know that catalysts and reactors only drop in random so for many who have reached the point where they need them to advance, there would be no point to login at all unless there's an alert, which will inevitably lead to less and less people playing the game.

I'm really enjoying Warframe but I hope this will be changed to allow the game to grow,

Even as a Grand Master I agree with the OP's post. While to be fair, a completely random system is also a completely fair system, the issue stems from having a large amount of potential rewards to draw from, as well as how 'unknown' the factors are. Here's what I think might go part of the way to fixing this issue, and another (semi-unrelated one as well).

Have a 'Spin Again' feature for the daily login reward that uses credits. Basically, when you get the login roulette you have 2 options: Take Item on the right, and Spin Again on the left. The price could start low, say 500 creds for the first re-spin (about a mission reward's worth) and increases each time you do it. Having this also doubles as a credit sink for people who have insane amounts of it and gives players a sense of control over the randomness. It also requires players to have consecutive logins to get to the tier that provides the rewards they want, and they can only do it once a day. Plus, if players want to keep spinning to better their chances, they would need to play missions to be able to afford it. The system feeds itself!

Alternatively, have a guaranteed but very rare / slow way of getting the Catalysts / Reactors. A good way to implement this is to give one or both of those items as an Account / Profile level reward. Each time you pass Lotus' test, she gives them to you as reward. This still encourages people to playtest multiple 'frames and weapons to efficiently rank up and makes the system matter a little bit more aside from for unlocking 2 weapons that come relatively far apart.

Thoughts / Suggestions?

I think I am done with Warframe by looking at the direction they are taking.

Take for example the developers of Path of Exile. It is their philosophy that the players in their game MUST NEVER FEEL THE NEED TO PAY TO PROGRESS. They have that mindset as a foundation and built their entire game based on that. The only thing that you can spend on are cosmetics. No restricted content, no progression restriction.

The very moment I saw this in Warframe, I just know it isn't going to get any better in the future.

Oh and let's not forget about the ridiculous inventory/warframe slot system. To get mastery points, you need to level weapons and warframes but your inventory slots are gimped if you don't spend money too. So you either sell your weapons once they reach level 30 and maybe never get to play them again. If you do buy them again they are level 1 again....... wait...... WHAT?

The game is fine. But the pay to progress philosophy isn't.

I certainly hope that the devs are actually reading what is being discussed in here. Even though I've already thrown down money for this game, these are all excellent points and ideas about how to acquire progression items as critical as catalysts and reactors (considering the difficulty of higher level missions/bosses, yes, they are critical). Cosmetics and speed items (rate of credits/xp doubled, instant crafted stuff) keep coming up as the way for the devs to acquire RL money.

Again, all they need to look at is other extremely successful F2P games and see that we are not pulling these ideas out of our @$$es. You encourage people to spend money on your game not because they're required to in order to progress, but because you've made an excellent game.

Warframe is an excellent F2P game. Its fun, its got great ideas, and has an interesting backdrop. However, its Pay2Progress(P2Pro) model is, frankly, off-putting. It is holding an otherwise amazing game back.

I will bring up League of Legends again as an example. There is nothing progression-wise that cannot be acquired with in-game currency. Their "platinum" allows you to bypass some grinding though boosts like the aforementioned "speed" items, access to new characters instantly, and completely cosmetic costumes. Runes and masteries (their progression system) can ONLY be acquired through play. Real money cannot buy these items - they're rewards for playing the game.

Why not phase a similar system to Warframe? Reward your dedicated players with progression and cater to your paying customers/founders with cosmetic items to show off.

I don't regret spending my hard-earned money on Warframe. I see incredible potential here.

However, the current P2Pro shenanigans need to stop. You risk losing the very customers you've worked so hard to acquire.

[Volume]

We've had similar threads a few times. It would appear that in most cases, people who say the F2P system is fine are the ones who don't need to use it. Most of the posts come from people with the $50+ packages, so they're not the ones who are actually affected by it or playing within its constraints.

For a while it was plat-only (called "Pro upgrade"). They recently added the Orokin Reactor and Catalyst blueprints (which, again, as you said, show up whenever they feel like. I think I got one on login, and one or two from "?" alert missions).

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/1849-platinum-per-level/#entry12435

^ See my previous thoughts on the "old" system. A lot of the same things still apply. So they made the Pro skill trees non-plat-only, which is a great step in the right direction.

However, slots are still platinum only.

I've done the math. It's something like $1.25 for a slot to hold a Warframe, and $0.37 for two weapon slots. Now, this doesn't sound very bad, but when you look at it, you're paying just to buy an empty space to put something, if you're a collector, or want, say, 4-5 Warframes and a couple more weapons from the default, that's $5 you could have spent on something else..

It feels bad to pay for a slot to hold the potential for something else. Mind you, you can then pay for that "something else" or craft it (which takes like 3 days unless you pay), and takes a few hours to gather the required components, but I don't mind that. We're allowed to craft any Warframe (except Loki? Maybe new bosses can drop his stuff, not sure), so that's a good thing. We can purchase many weapons with credits. The ones we can't, we can purchase a blueprint and craft. That is a good thing. The devs allow access to all missions for free, and theoretically you could get your Warframe and one Primary weapon to the level 30 cap with your starting plat, or crafting. That is a good thing.

There is an immense amount of content here available for free. I love that. But hitting a F2P wall is not fun. I had, until this patch, done all the missions. I still have weapons at 30, some pretty optimal setups, able to solo most things, and there's no reason to play the game when I have Trinity complete and ready to claim in the Foundry, but I don't have a slot for her. I also have the blueprints for Rhino, but why bother getting the mats? If I build him (which takes 3.5 days anyway, by which I doubt I'd even care if I had him or not), I don't have a slot to put him in. So I have no reason to collect the mats until I have a way to earn a slot.

I don't want to pay for a slot. You know why?

1: I'm being "forced" to (as in, I have no other way to acquire this item). That is not satisfying. Making a purchase because I feel forced to do it isn't fun, it makes me feel dirty.

2: If I don't buy it, I either can't use the progress I've made (crafting Trinity), or I have to throw away progress by selling a Warframe I've leveled.

3: It is nothing. It is literally an empty space. Most people don't like paying for an empty space. I'm not buying something. I'm buying the potential location to put something.

Imagine if League of Legends let you start with Ashe, Ryze, or Master Yi, gave you one more slot for one more champion, and although you could unlock other champions with IP, you need to pay Riot Points (a nominal amount, but still, RP only) for slots to put the champion in.

I doubt the game would have 5% of its current userbase. And that's how this game feels. "Gee, can't get any further, might as well stop playing" - literally all most people do is leave the mission screen up, afk and wait for alerts for certain artifacts or upgrade potatoes.

Obviously the system is different since it's a PvP game, and they have a ton more champs, and they rotate weekly free champs, which is something this game should do with Warframes and Weapons, probably, but that's another topic (at least a trial or rental to see if the weapon mechanically appeals to you so you don't buy a Burston as your first new gun and get buyer's remorse), and I don't want to digress.

My main point is that you have players like me who love the game, love the devs, love the videos, love how they respond to feedback, love the updates, and would monetize the hell out of this game if there was something worth monetizing.

Almost all content is available for free, I've leveled stuff to 30, hit a wall, can't pro my level 20+ weapons (pistols, melee weapons, a couple extra rifles), and there are some people with 6.5 million credits, everything at 30, etc, but they aren't F2P players and never will be.

As I said in my previous post, if things don't change on the F2P front, and the "new player experience / new player retainment" department, the game will soon become a founders-only game. I just hope they open their eyes before open beta hits, or a Steam release hits, or some other stupid thing like that which you can only do ONCE so you better do it right (there's only one "release" day for a "f2p" title that's been in beta).

I don't think a LoL-like system would necessarily work for this game. But a TF2-style one might (crates/keys, item drops, P2P trading). I'm sure the devs are evaluating things, and I just hope they don't lose sight of what's important here. It's better to have 50,000 people give you $1 instead of having 5,000 people give you $10.

[Ced23Ric]

I like they way you put this, and the longer I think about it, the more do I agree with you, on the slots, that is.

Maybe there could be some sort of rank-tiering. Say, rank 2, 4, 5 and 6 give +2 Warframe slots, +4 weapon slots. You can still buy slots to circumvent this and gain as many slots as you like. It gives you a choice: Play with the stuff you are content with, or work towards expanding your arsenal by mastering what you have.

PS:

It's better to have 50,000 people give you $1 instead of having 5,000 people give you $10.

Actually, it is a lot better to get US$10 from 5,000 than US$1 from 50,000 - the processing, information tracking on 50,000 transactions is a lot higher than on 5,000 - 900% higher. The revenue is the same, but the effort to make that revenue is tenfold. Bad example.

PPS: The current Warframe playerbase is around 24,000 users.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Ced23Ric

[Volume]

I like they way you put this, and the longer I think about it, the more do I agree with you, on the slots, that is.

Maybe there could be some sort of rank-tiering. Say, rank 2, 4, 5 and 6 give +2 Warframe slots, +4 weapon slots. You can still buy slots to circumvent this and gain as many slots as you like. It gives you a choice: Play with the stuff you are content with, or work towards expanding your arsenal by mastering what you have.

PS:

Actually, it is a lot better to get US$10 from 5,000 than US$1 from 50,000 - the processing, information tracking on 50,000 transactions is a lot higher than on 5,000 - 900% higher. The revenue is the same, but the effort to make that revenue is tenfold. Bad example.

PPS: The current Warframe playerbase is around 24,000 users.

I would rather have the x% of 50,000 happy vocal players telling their friends about the game than even 3x% of 5,000 happy vocal players telling their friends.

Long term growth is important.

I guess I also forgot to mention in the post that you COULD say, sell Ashe/Ryze/Yi for 1/2 the IP, and get another champion, but it resets your runes/mastery level for that champion (which conveniently cap at level 30 for both games, so that makes this easy). So you grind up your Ashe to level 17, sell it and pick up a level 1 Garen, find out you don't like Garen, and want to pick up your Ashe for an IP/Credit price, but it'd end up being level 1. That kinda sucks.

I think progress should be archived, if we can't have slots. I'd gladly pay the credit-sink to swap things around. Perhaps have a group of "bank slots" that we pay (a large amount of) credits to store a Weapon or Warframe in, and then pay (a large amount of, but not as much as a deposit) credits to take it out (think "Void storage" in WoW, if you're familiar).

Edited January 31, 2013 by Volume

[havox2]

Have a 'Spin Again' feature for the daily login reward that uses credits. Basically, when you get the login roulette you have 2 options: Take Item on the right, and Spin Again on the left.

My troll-senses are tingling, this could get good.

Ammo box. Respin. Ammo box. Respin. Shield restore. Respin. Ammo box. Respin. 100 warframe exp. Respin. Ammo box. 10 kazillion credit respin. Sniper scavenger. Ragequit before even getting into game. Pure evil, I like it.

[McGuffin]

My troll-senses are tingling, this could get good.

Ammo box. Respin. Ammo box. Respin. Shield restore. Respin. Ammo box. Respin. 100 warframe exp. Respin. Ammo box. 10 kazillion credit respin. Sniper scavenger. Ragequit before even getting into game. Pure evil, I like it.

Hahah you always have the option of just taking whatever it gives you and quitting while you're 'ahead'. Something tells me that the hypothetical person you describe there would ragequit anyway :P

[Gestalt]

You guys all type a lot...

Very simple problem with very simple solution:

-Problem: ?Alerts too rare, and since there's a forum dedicated to show people when they pop up and what rewards they give, this renders regular non-? Alerts USELESS. Nobody does them anymore. It's either you're not on and missed the orokin alerts: frustrating, or you ARE available to play and basically get a FREE reward w/o much effort. Hence the feeling of players NOT IN CONTROL of working towards the reward.

-Solution: Take out ?Alerts, and give all Alerts a small chance to give the orokins. Make it random for everyone; reward decided upon mission completion. Now there is no more waiting around bored. Now it's GET TO WORK doing alerts.

Pre-emptive counter-argument: But that's too much GRIND and too based on LUCK!!!!!1! So is obtaining Warframe blueprints from bosses. Nobody complains about that. Why? Because they have some control over it. Sure there's always the RNG and luck involved, but it's also statistics: Everyone has the same chance of getting it, and statistically if you run bosses more, you'll get what you need with greater sureness. Same should be with the orokins.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Gestalt

[GatsuRage]

I posted all the cons this game has in different forums and i also of course told my friends about... and i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one doin that.

The modules for uprade your warframe skills should be more accesable to the f2p player, and is not.. this game is 100% Pay for have fun and thats it. They better change alot of things regarding the shop and f2p system, they better DO listen to the community like i heard around they do so.... otherwise i don't see a future for this game either (at least wont have me and my friends in it... )

Edited January 31, 2013 by GatsuRage

[Bios]

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.

Exactly.

Funny how whenever you give an opinion that is a tad critical, you always have Fan Boys jumping at your throat. Even when you clearly stated that you loved the game.

This is a Beta, stating what we like is good, saying what's wrong is even better, because it's a wish for improvement.

[Volume]

You guys all type a lot...

Very simple problem with very simple solution:

-Problem: ?Alerts too rare, and since there's a forum dedicated to show people when they pop up and what rewards they give, this renders regular non-? Alerts USELESS. Nobody does them anymore. It's either you're not on and missed the orokin alerts: frustrating, or you ARE available to play and basically get a FREE reward w/o much effort. Hence the feeling of players NOT IN CONTROL of working towards the reward.

-Solution: Take out ?Alerts, and give all Alerts a small chance to give the orokins. Make it random for everyone; reward decided upon mission completion. Now there is no more waiting around bored. Now it's GET TO WORK doing alerts.

Pre-emptive counter-argument: But that's too much GRIND and too based on LUCK!!!!!1! So is obtaining Warframe blueprints from bosses. Nobody complains about that. Why? Because they have some control over it. Sure there's always the RNG and luck involved, but it's also statistics: Everyone has the same chance of getting it, and statistically if you run bosses more, you'll get what you need with greater sureness. Same should be with the orokins.

New Warframes are optional - a "nice to have" if you will.

Increasing your level cap from 15 to 30 is a pretty big deal, arguably mandatory for Pluto (and Eris/Ceres, now).

Being stuck at level 15 from the F2P wall because of a lucky grind is a much bigger problem than not getting to play another class because of a lucky grind. Having one Warframe at 30 is generally enough to complete most of the content in the game. Starter warframes are solid, especially Excal and Volt. Loki maybe not as great as those two, but still viable.

A luck-based grind is okay if it's for something you want but don't need (unlock another class) that isn't holding you back from completing content.

A luck-base grind is not okay if it's for something you need in order to progress.

Personally I hate the entire alert system.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Volume

[Aggh]

Same old fallacies.

If you don't want to wait, you pay. Standard Free to play practice. You are not going to get 11 reactors and 30 catalysts in a week. Also, Beta - Beta also means acquiring metrics from the cash shop, so giving stuff away for free or giving people more Plat would change on what's bought.

Spend your Platinum on Slots. Pay US$5 and you can get quite a few. Even more for US$20. Considerably more.

Most people haven't gotten even one of either in weeks unless they spent cash on them.

Those metrics won't mean much in release if people are turned off from the game in beta.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Aggh

[sambarpowder]

I'm liking Cedric's rank based slot unlock idea, and I think almost all that can be said on the subject of catalysts/reactors has been said. At this point, it's up to DE. I just hope whatever change they put in doesn't take too long, because I have been stuck at the f2p wall for ages. I'm getting slightly bored.

[Judgebanks]

You guys all type a lot...

Very simple problem with very simple solution:

-Problem: ?Alerts too rare, and since there's a forum dedicated to show people when they pop up and what rewards they give, this renders regular non-? Alerts USELESS. Nobody does them anymore. It's either you're not on and missed the orokin alerts: frustrating, or you ARE available to play and basically get a FREE reward w/o much effort. Hence the feeling of players NOT IN CONTROL of working towards the reward.

-Solution: Take out ?Alerts, and give all Alerts a small chance to give the orokins. Make it random for everyone; reward decided upon mission completion. Now there is no more waiting around bored. Now it's GET TO WORK doing alerts.

Pre-emptive counter-argument: But that's too much GRIND and too based on LUCK!!!!!1! So is obtaining Warframe blueprints from bosses. Nobody complains about that. Why? Because they have some control over it. Sure there's always the RNG and luck involved, but it's also statistics: Everyone has the same chance of getting it, and statistically if you run bosses more, you'll get what you need with greater sureness. Same should be with the orokins.

Personally I would like to see that upon completion of all alerts you earn some sort of currency that could be used to make progress towards all Alert rewards on top of the already existing "?" Alert bonus. Also Boss-Rushing is easily twice as fast as actually completing the mission, so much so that I'd say the reward system for bosses might also need to be changed.

Of couse there's always the option of having a truly skill based loot system, which rewards players more for performing better in missions and alerts. Naturally that would be much harder to achieve, and would probably be a much longer term goal.

After all, knowing that you're actually making progress would feel much better than boss rushing General Ruk 86 times for a single Ember Systems Blueprint.

[cypherhalo]

+1

OP has it exactly right, people need to feel like they're making progress towards a goal, not waiting for the loot gods to smile upon them. Personally, I also think we shouldn't have to farm blueprints to build a warframe, we should be able to buy the blueprints and just farm the materials. I know they want to people to pay, but there are smart ways to go about it and there are bad ways to go about it. The current model is entirely too reliant on luck and not reliant enough on player effort. I can't play this game all day every day waiting for alerts, I can only play an hour or two every night.

Personally I'm against slots as well. I really understand they want to make money but it makes people feel like they have to pay and some people will resent that. Given the rich selection of warframes available, having only two slots strikes me as ridiculous. Yes, they are really cheap, but people just resent being forced to pay in a free to play game and yes they will feel forced because seriously, who only wants two warframes?? That is a compliment to DE btw, the designs of the frames are cool and I'm sure most of us would love to own all or nearly all of them (personally I'm not too sold on Ash but I'm an odd duck :-P).

TL;DR - So, overall a great game and I'm loving it. It needs to be a bit more friendly to new players though by changing Orokin reactors/catalysts so people can make progress towards getting one rather then hoping the loots gods smile on them. Also, no farming warframe blueprints and please remove inventory slots. Otherwise, keep on, you've got a great game here.

[Rushcore]

I agree with the OP, I mean, this reminds of alot of games in which pay players own everything and the ones that doesnt get their &#! rammed... (excuse my soft profanity)..

This is not a F2P, a F2P is like LoL (which btw I got tired of but not the point here), in which the stuff u pay is either you want to get stuff faster or more pretty stuff.. A true F2P is where even if you dont pay you can access the content, it just takes u a longer time.. Which is not the case here, here u do some missions and pray u get the orokin catalysts/reactors to progress which is a major turn off on this game which I was enjoying very much... I even invited some friends for CB and got them keys to play with me and right now me and the person I play the most with are stuck on expanding our abilities cuz of this (him more than me since I started playing since the beginning of CB and have more stuff) and it isnt about how much you farm, like the BPs for new WFs u can get off bosses.. It is about how lucky u are getting that BP which randomly rarelly drops, I'd rather have it drop on a boss I can farm or something, even with a smaller rate than WFs BP than going around the freaking solar system hoping I'll get a BP to keep on upgrading my WF/Weapons...

[Kerf]

I agree. I feel no insentive at all to put down any sort of money in this game. I play world of tanks, and my budget allows for about 20eu every month. I buy some gold to get premium (increased xp and money gain) and to get the addition of buying free experience (experience i accumelate on certain elite tanks) and to bling out the tanks with some camo. They have something called gold ammo which you can buy for regular credits, and well, basically everything apart from cammo is atainable through in-game credits.

This is my insentive to buy gold. The reason is, if I buy something in this game, i know that further down the line i will have to buy something else. It's gonna become a vicious cycle where i would sink more and more money into the game. Why make a game where you don't want to experience everything it has to offer?

People with lots of money would burn through the content, eventially leaving the game out of boredom (like cheating in GTA or whatever) and people without money will leave it (have two friends who are pretty much looked at the model and said "nope") because of the fact the phrase "BUY PLATIUM" is pretty much shoved down our throats.

I will NOT buy anything in the cash shop untill things has changed. I want crafting to be a part of the game, not a hinder in my progression. Buying to get it to finnish? Find. But don't hand out the mats in the cash shop. It's a slap in the face on the people who actually want's to experience the game.

From: A fan.

EDIT: Some occasional cuss words made its way into the text lol.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Kerf

[SpiderWaifu]

Hey look, it's todays daily dose of ranting about the Catalyst/ Reactors.

To respond to a few things...

You're not being STOPPED from leveling these items up, and you're not stopped from experiencing the game.

You don't need supercharged Warframes to play with the big boys. I farm Pluto and Ceres with my lvl17 uncharged ember for mats.

You're not the first person at all to bring up this topic. It happens almost daily. And even with such a common topic, how many times have any of the Devs said something about this?

You can get all "ESSENTIAL" items from crafting. If you ENJOY the game, why not throw some money at the company who made it, instead of just playing it.

I'm getting real tired of the whole 'entilted F2P'er' mentality.

NONE OF YOU are forced to pay for this game, but if you so choose to, you get your life made easier.

NEVER expect to have the same benifits as someone who pays money to this company. They'll always have nice little bonuses.

And guess what the bonuses in this game are? Less time consumption.

/end thread

[Blatantfool]

All alerts need to be ? Reward alerts.

This fixes the problem, for now. If it still doesn't solve the problem then it'll be time to make alerts run off a timer to see if making it so player know exactly when an alert will be up doesn't help them manage to play the odds more to their liking.

The most recent nerf to Non-pro Warframe makes the Orokin Reactor more important then it was by a significant margin. They didn't make an attempt to counterbalance the need by making them more obtainable. It made a small problem a slightly bigger one.

The frequency of Alerts that can possible reward the items we need must be changed. There is no reason to change the random nature of what the alert rewards the player, there is however much need for lessening how random it is that the alerts occur at all.

The Alerts that reward only credits are useless. Do away with them and make all alerts roll the dice on the item table. This WILL lessen the sting without ending up in some situation where Orokin items are dropping far too often or a similar situation where they are suddenly farmable.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Blatantfool

[f3llyn]

Same old fallacies.

If you don't want to wait, you pay. Standard Free to play practice. You are not going to get 11 reactors and 30 catalysts in a week. Also, Beta - Beta also means acquiring metrics from the cash shop, so giving stuff away for free or giving people more Plat would change on what's bought.

Spend your Platinum on Slots. Pay US$5 and you can get quite a few. Even more for US$20. Considerably more.

Except for it's not. Just look at Path of Exile and League of Legends if you want to see examples of amazingly successful free to play games that don't require you to spend money to access 100% of the content in the game.

Path of Exile just went into open beta a week or two ago and they have so many people playing that game that their servers can barely keep up.

What do both of those games have in common? You only pay for cosmetic upgrades.

Edited January 31, 2013 by f3llyn

[SpiderWaifu]

Except for it's not. Just look at Path of Exile and League of Legends if you want to see examples of amazingly successful free to play games that don't require you to spend money to access 100% of the content in the game.

Path of Exile just went into open beta a week or two ago and they have so many people playing that game that their servers can barely keep up.

What do both of those games have in common? You only pay for cosmetic upgrades.

Excuse me while I laugh myself to death.

Warframe forces you to buy anything BUT cosmetic upgrades?

Everything can be got in game, except for cosmetics, and items that makes things more convenient.

I'm personally fine with only 2 Warframe Slots and the 8 weapon slots.

Oh, you want more slots you say?

How about you pay the developers some money (10 dollars would get you about 6 warframe slots) instead of just asking for handouts when you're not even paying to play a thus far, great game. Entilted F2P'er mentality.

I havn't even paid any money in to this game, and I support it's model.

[Blatantfool]

You're not being STOPPED from leveling these items up, and you're not stopped from experiencing the game.

Only partially true. How strong is a Warframe with 15 points in it? About 15? Yeah. Sounds right.

So how strong is a Warframe with only 15 points in it that happens to be level 30? Again, you'll find the answer is 15. It locks your progression without impacting your ability to acrue mastery experience, which is good but doesn't make it any less dirty in the eyes of most players.

And certainly you can still experience you game, you'll simply be gimped until you pro the item.

You don't need supercharged Warframes to play with the big boys. I farm Pluto and Ceres with my lvl17 uncharged ember for mats.

Doesn't change how annoying it is for a Developer who already charges for a whole array of other item types to also feel the need to lock progression. After the most recent patch some frames are weaker then they where due to the redistribution of skills throughout the tree. I'm only able to boost the power of a single skill on my Ember, Overheat. Which is honestly the least useful skill in her toolset with very few exceptions.

You're not the first person at all to bring up this topic. It happens almost daily. And even with such a common topic, how many times have any of the Devs said something about this?

You can get all "ESSENTIAL" items from crafting. If you ENJOY the game, why not throw some money at the company who made it, instead of just playing it.

I'm getting real tired of the whole 'entilted F2P'er' mentality.

NONE OF YOU are forced to pay for this game, but if you so choose to, you get your life made easier.

NEVER expect to have the same benifits as someone who pays money to this company. They'll always have nice little bonuses.

And guess what the bonuses in this game are? Less time consumption.

/end thread

Get over it. Conversation like this isn't going to go away until players feel like the game isn't trying to MAKE them pay. Either get used to it or get better at explaining why it works.

Regardless, the Orokin items aren't the source of the problems players are having.The Alert system is currently a poor method of rolling the dice to distribute these invaluable items. It needs changing simply because right now it is actually impossible to count on it for anything. It is random chance layered on top of random chance. It is an ugly and inefficient method of handling rewarding something players will feel they need if they want to succeed.

You didn't end any thread. You just sound like a jackass.