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

[Kyuzo]

i feel bad for those who wasted the 75 plat...

[Blatantfool]

You can't actually grind for them. The distribution of those two items in the game are 100% random chance. There is absolutely no player input involved. It is all luck.

That is one of the myraid of reasons people hate the items for the time being. There is a healthy list of reasons people don't seem to like them at this stage.

[Blatantfool]

i feel bad for those who wasted the 75 plat...

Don't. They got their item straight away without any wait or work. That is what they pay for. Most of the buyers probably knew you could get the items via Alerts.

And in defense of their purchase, what are the odds it'd come up in the Alerts? Very poor.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[McGuffin]

The other other OTHER way to get around the Orokin problem hasn't been mentioned yet so I thought I'd throw this one to the wolves and see what happens :P I'm not going to talk about slots and microtransactions, as purchasing extra space for whatever you want to store, be it characters or items is a relatively (I stress relatively) standard feature in many F2P games.

So, back on topic.

I'm thinking an interesting way to get around this issue would be to (perhaps) try an 'Energy' system instead though, to perhaps for Warframe 'Durability' might be better.

Let me just outline the basics of how this could work, and factor in our love (or hate) of those potatoes.

Much like our per 'frame pool of revives, each 'frame and weapon in the game is allocated a pool of say 100 Durability (which recharges over time, obviously. The recharge rate isn't something I'll go into, but expect to be back up to maximum in the standard 'a few hours' :p).

Each mission you go on will first 'reserve' the durability of your 'frame and equipped items by say 10. To protect from disconnections and the like, it uses the same system as the game currently does if your connection goes dead and you drop out. You don't get to keep your pickups and such until you see the Mission Complete screen. When the mission is complete, the reserved durability is drained. To put it in another way, you need to have at least 10 to start the mission, which is deducted at successful completion. If you get disconnected, the 10 isn't deducted.

Each time you die and choose to revive, you have to pay another 10 outright. If someone revives you, you pay nothing. This gives you a bit more chances to revive and complete the mission you're on, but reduces the amount you have left to play with for other missions. A bit of a risk / reward sort of thing.

How does supercharging factor into this? Well, first off, we remove the requirement for Reactalysts to max out your weapons and 'frame. Instead, supercharged 'frames and weapons can either recharge Durability / Energy at a much faster rate, or perhaps have no mission durability costs. The death cost still applies.

For people who don't supercharge, this encourages having multiple 'frames, and weapons as their each one has an independant Durability pool. For DE, this encourages people to buy plat to expand slots so they have more options at their disposal. This also means that DE can keep selling potatoes.

For new players with only 1 'frame to their name, perhaps they start off with a supercharged 'frame and weapons, but no bonus 50 plat.

Considering the rarity of Alerts, perhaps they don't cost durability at all to play, so that people who are tapped out can still join in and do something, even if its not a ? reward.

Just some thoughts. Feedback is welcome :)

[Blatantfool]

I'm not feeling it. That is a pretty drastic change and would probably bring a whole slew of nasty new issues into the game.

So cool idea, but I'm not for it. Energy systems ought to be shyed away from anyway. They have a nasty tendency to burn players out really, really fast even if the gameplay is nice.

I'll cite Spiral Knights as an example. Their energy system causes a pretty large number of new players to quit just as they start getting really into the mid-game content. When you are constantly feeling like you have to slow way down because your energy is low you'll eventually reach the question "Why don't I just go play a game that doesn't ask me to stop/slow down?".

Warframe doesn't deserve that sort of nastiness.

Even if you put a lot of work into trying to consider all possible situations and player needs you'll also find that it is just generally difficult to beat the stigma about energy systems outside of Korea and Japan. Nexon had a pretty fair (Well, that is questionable. But bare with me.) token energy system in Vindictus originally and damn near got their fingers bit off by their North American consumers over it. The same players who where buying 20$ pairs of panties for their female characters where vicious about the energy system. It wasn't a matter of players having to spend money, it was a matter of the way Nexon was trying to make it.

Ironically that is the same thing I think is wrong with the Orokin items now. The disdain has little to do with players hating to pay and a LOT to do with simply being against the sort of stuff DE wants to sell.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[Jatgeirr]

The other other OTHER way to get around the Orokin problem hasn't been mentioned yet so I thought I'd throw this one to the wolves and see what happens :P I'm not going to talk about slots and microtransactions, as purchasing extra space for whatever you want to store, be it characters or items is a relatively (I stress relatively) standard feature in many F2P games.

So, back on topic.

I'm thinking an interesting way to get around this issue would be to (perhaps) try an 'Energy' system instead though, to perhaps for Warframe 'Durability' might be better.

Let me just outline the basics of how this could work, and factor in our love (or hate) of those potatoes.

Much like our per 'frame pool of revives, each 'frame and weapon in the game is allocated a pool of say 100 Durability (which recharges over time, obviously. The recharge rate isn't something I'll go into, but expect to be back up to maximum in the standard 'a few hours' :p).

Each mission you go on will first 'reserve' the durability of your 'frame and equipped items by say 10. To protect from disconnections and the like, it uses the same system as the game currently does if your connection goes dead and you drop out. You don't get to keep your pickups and such until you see the Mission Complete screen. When the mission is complete, the reserved durability is drained. To put it in another way, you need to have at least 10 to start the mission, which is deducted at successful completion. If you get disconnected, the 10 isn't deducted.

Each time you die and choose to revive, you have to pay another 10 outright. If someone revives you, you pay nothing. This gives you a bit more chances to revive and complete the mission you're on, but reduces the amount you have left to play with for other missions. A bit of a risk / reward sort of thing.

How does supercharging factor into this? Well, first off, we remove the requirement for Reactalysts to max out your weapons and 'frame. Instead, supercharged 'frames and weapons can either recharge Durability / Energy at a much faster rate, or perhaps have no mission durability costs. The death cost still applies.

For people who don't supercharge, this encourages having multiple 'frames, and weapons as their each one has an independant Durability pool. For DE, this encourages people to buy plat to expand slots so they have more options at their disposal. This also means that DE can keep selling potatoes.

For new players with only 1 'frame to their name, perhaps they start off with a supercharged 'frame and weapons, but no bonus 50 plat.

Considering the rarity of Alerts, perhaps they don't cost durability at all to play, so that people who are tapped out can still join in and do something, even if its not a ? reward.

Just some thoughts. Feedback is welcome :)

Easy one first.

I hate Durability / Stamina systems like this that limits how much you can play the game. It originated with asian MMOs where there were issues of some people getting WAY to into games and forgetting about responsabilites such as work. It was put in so people were limited in how much they played the game to help get rid of the issue. If I get in a mood for a certain day and I want to just veg out on it after a hard week of work for 5 hours then I don't want my game saying "nope, you gotta pay us again". I far prefer a 1 time payment that can be justified.

You can't actually grind for them. The distribution of those two items in the game are 100% random chance. There is absolutely no player input involved. It is all luck.

That is one of the myraid of reasons people hate the items for the time being. There is a healthy list of reasons people don't seem to like them at this stage.

You can Grind for them, by jumping on every (?) reward alert until you find it. Granted its a simplistic version of grind and involves alot of waiting for the missions, but grind none the less.

Possibly in the future once there is enough content to justify it they can move away from the reactor and catalysts, or atleast the reactor, but currently the amount content available for platnum is pretty insignifigant and not enough to coax a purchase out of limited FTPers.

[Blatantfool]

You can Grind for them, by jumping on every (?) reward alert until you find it. Granted its a simplistic version of grind and involves alot of waiting for the missions, but grind none the less.

Possibly in the future once there is enough content to justify it they can move away from the reactor and catalysts, or atleast the reactor, but currently the amount content available for platnum is pretty insignifigant and not enough to coax a purchase out of limited FTPers.

That isn't grind. Grind is hardcore repetition. It is buckling down and smashing through the same thing over and over and over again in one go to try to tear a chunk out of a goal.

Getting the stuff set up to build a Warframe? That is grind.

Getting an Orokin item is just patience man. Little gameplay involved even if you blaze through every ? Alert. It is too random to be grindy. You could go hours or a whole day without an ? Alert.

I think it has been 4 days now since the last Orokin item Alert. I invite anyone who knows to correct me.

Grind is called grind because it has to do with going in hard and wearing down your end goal. You don't grind by waiting. Don't get me wrong, it isn't like I don't get your initial point, I'm just saying. Grind isn't what you called that. Even grind can be worthwhile gameplay. The waiting and hoping for an Orokin items is just ugly right now.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[McGuffin]

Easy one first.

I hate Durability / Stamina systems like this that limits how much you can play the game. It originated with asian MMOs where there were issues of some people getting WAY to into games and forgetting about responsabilites such as work. It was put in so people were limited in how much they played the game to help get rid of the issue. If I get in a mood for a certain day and I want to just veg out on it after a hard week of work for 5 hours then I don't want my game saying "nope, you gotta pay us again". I far prefer a 1 time payment that can be justified.

True true, but it is a system that has also been done well, in not just asian games. No one has mentioned this yet, but have a look at something called Spiral Knights. In many ways, it is virtually the same as Warframe (PVE coop, randomised environments, crafting system and even the sword and gunplay mechanic). If anything you could say that Warframe is an evolution of the Spiral Knights formula.

That game has an interesting take on the Energy system. In many ways it is as I outlined in my post. You have a recharging pool of energy called 'Mist', that is deducted everytime you take an elevator 1 floor down to the next level of a dungeon, or if you choose to revive yourself when you fall in battle. Mist recharges over time to a maximum cap of 100.

Now here is when things get interesting. Using in-game currency, you can purchase 'Crystals'. Crystals have no limit on how many you can have, and do not degrade over time (ie; its 'banked' energy you permanently have until you spend it). And even MORE interestingly, Crystal is bought and sold from players themselves in units of 100. Say I have 500 energy but no more Crowns (the in-game currency). Anytime I'm in the hub town, I can put 100 Crystal on the market, where it will be instantly sold to a waiting buyer at a price that the playerbase as a whole dictate. The economy self-regulates. You are shown the current lowest cost per 100 crystals and of that price is bought out, it goes to the next lowest cost a player is offering them for.

New Crystals enter the market via microtransactions. prizes or players who've used up their Mist but want to keep playing.

The average cost for 100 Crystals? Easy, players peg it at the average amount of crowns you gain from a midlevel dungeon run using 100 Mist so it fluctuates over time, but not by very much at all. If there's a seasonal dungeon offering tons of Crowns, prices increase accordingly.

The system is also clever enough to always use Mist first whenever its available before dipping into Crystals.

Seriously, go check out Spiral Knights, if nothing else for the very VERY strong parallels to this game. I'd go so far to state that it is a far better example instead of TF2, LoL, etc etc that people have been quoting before.

Edited February 2, 2013 by McGuffin

[sambarpowder]

Watching the forums 24/7 isn't grinding, it's just waiting. Grinding involves actually playing the game.

[Blatantfool]

Watching the forums 24/7 isn't grinding, it's just waiting. Grinding involves actually playing the game.

Cute.

[Kyuzo]

Watching the forums 24/7 isn't grinding, it's just waiting. Grinding involves actually playing the game.

so should i just leave my game open can i call it grinding now?

[Blatantfool]

so should i just leave my game open can i call it grinding now?

I must be on some next level S#&$ cuz I do all this alt tabbed.

Get on my level.

[Kyuzo]

I must be on some next level S#&$ cuz I do all this alt tabbed.

Get on my level.

*is watching movie* *has alert threads in another tab*

say what... get on my.. post level...

[Soulie]

I'm fine with DE not giving out orikin blueprints, but I don't like how they're currently unicorn status. There needs to be a tangible goal for free players to work toward.

How bout giving players orikin blueprints ever time they reach a new mastery level? Or every 10,000 kills?

[Blatantfool]

*is watching movie* *has alert threads in another tab*

say what... get on my.. post level...

I'm usually up to the same. Watching me some DotA and perusing the threads here while I wait for magic to happen. Sometimes I play some GuildWars2 for a bit.

[Blatantfool]

I'm fine with DE not giving out orikin blueprints, but I don't like how they're currently unicorn status. There needs to be a tangible goal for free players to work toward.

How bout giving players orikin blueprints ever time they reach a new mastery level? Or every 10,000 kills?

That Mastery level thing. I guess that is plausible.

Make the player choose either a Reactor or Catalyst BP whenever they finish their test each Mastery rank up.

I'm actually on board with that. That is a neat suggestion.

However I still think the extremely erratic Alerts would still need fixing despite that. I mean technically they'd need fixing even if they weren't linked to the Orokin items at all. They DO drop pretty desirable things. Plenty of people are going to want a Plasma or Heat Sword or what have you.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[Talea]

Honestly i believe that the plat and credits system atm is fine...

It is a F2P game but they do have to make money somehow and they give u 2 WF slots and 6 Inv slots and 50 plat to start off with, that is enough to start someone off... if u want more, pay $5 and get more... this game is a business after all...

Hence i think that the slots are fine the way they are, ATM those slots and speeding up BP are probably where they get most of their money form. (Yes i know the Orokin items also get them alot of money)

But I think that most poeple are not really annoyed because they are limited by the Reactors and the Catalyst, i think they are annoyed at the fact that they can only get them by a stoke of luck, they can't work towards it and most times they pop up when they are at work/school/sleeping.

So i suggest that u remove the "?" Alerts all together.(which i think u guys are doing already)

Make a New Currency, and make every Alert give u 1 point in the new currency and put a new tab in the market and add all the current "Alerts with ?" rewards in it.

So u have to buy the Alert Rewards using the new currency from the New tab in the market place instead of waiting for an alert with a ? to pop up

U can make the Orokin Items cost 100points or something like that, that means u need to do 100 alerts for 1 Reactor BP or 1 Catalyst BP. This means that U can keep the alerts and make poeple actually do them, the orokin items(which are still rare to get and i'm sure alot of poeple will buy them using plat instead of doing 100 alerts) and keep most of your fanbase happy.

Because if u make the orokin BP cost credits it will either have to be something SUPER high or it won't be rare enough for poeple to spend plat on

especially with Xini, Viver and Gnathos which give u 10+ mods aka 50k+ every run...

From what i've seen to do 100 alerts it will take 3-4 days to do them, then 1 day to make it. and people will have something to farm/to play the game for after all u can only farm mods for so long before every Warframe u have is geared... and u can't make new warframes with every update.

This is just the Feedback of a Rank 6 player with over 160 hours of playing. I Hope the devs are still reading this page.

[Blatantfool]

It doesn't have to be ultra hard to get considering the asking price is only 1$ in Platinum. You aren't taking food off their plate by making the least expensive thing you could buy obtainable consistantly.

Honestly I think it'd be reasonable if the system was worked into a position where a player could consistantly obtain a single Orokin item once each Week. This is, of course, assuming he is putting good time in and actually trying to get the item ASAP. So this guy would be clocking pretty decent gametime each day.

Done right the Good/Dedicated players get them rapidly enough to not need to pay and the rest get them at a pace based on their activity in the game. Players who don't spend much time on the game will take longer to get them but the rate would be set up that eventually they'd get one. It could take a while but they'd get there chipping away at it.

[Fenrisulfr]

Honestly, I think orokins prices should be increased in the shop. So that them actually represent some item that you want to take if you don't want to work for them, but you actually have to think twice before spending money on it.

Now, current system is old, whether some of you like to acknowledge it or not. Doing missions and hoping you'd get item you want is something that begun to become old back in 2008.

Finest example of rising above it is Guild Wars 2. In their diaries before the release, they mentioned about the loot system, and we've seen it how it was done after the release.

You do not gain random items from doing instances there as rewards. What you do get is some kind of tokens for special shops where there is clearly defined price.

Also, when you do some specific instance for first time that day, you would get certain number of tokens, and completing the instance any number of times after that would give you only half tokens of starting number. This way, they actually closed the gap between hardcore and soft players a bit, and still kept everyone happy.

My suggestion for Warframe? Steal the system.

Like Stravinsky said, "Good musicians borrow, great musicians steal"

Same could be applied in here. There is no shame in doing so. The system works... In fact, that what was done there is the best and most enjoyable system I've ever encountered in my relatively vast MMO experience.

TL;DR

Random loot is bad. Hard, long work with definite goal is good.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Fenrisulfr

[Talea]

Guild wars wasn't the first to do that, That system has been in DC Universe Online for quite a long time...

[Fenrisulfr]

Well aware of that. I took Gw2 as example because I believe they made the most out of it, while others with similar system had some other things that overshadowed it.

DCUO just lacked a lot of content, in my own opinion. Plus, the typical Sony online policy of limiting pretty much everything. Hell,they'd limit how much you breathe if they could.

[Gotes]

doesnt all players get 50 platinum? and catalyst/reactor doesnt cost 20 platinum each? i think it's okay the way it is know, since they gave you the necesary resource to upgrade. But if you want 2 warframes fully upgraded i think it is your problem.

And for the Dota 2, many people hate it because of the gameplay , but that gameplay is inteded for smoothnes . ( Off topic , Nyx is also a name for a dota 2 hero ) :D . As the game is it by now, i find it very entartaining and love this style of gameplay . The DE staff is doing a great work .

[_ZAR_]

True i think the items needed like reaktors and blueprints etc. should be not totally random droped. I like the idea of not make a difference in what u can get with or without pay! Without u should know how long it will take until u get there!

[Twistank]

All right guys let me tell you how it works.

I am coming from massive community playing couple of others, a bit more famous MMOs. I had a chance to play closed beta of the primary game my community plays right now and during that time we had a couple of months of great fun testing new features and giving feedback about tweaking of the existing features and here I must add, with some reasonable limitations in the sphere of premium (pay for) content. We were getting the equivalent of ~10 platinum every 2 days so we can familiarize ourselves with the premium content.

After the game went into open beta and game currency went out on the market, me and my friends decided to support the awesome developers and almost all of us, and here I am talking about 80+ people bought game currency/item packages ranging from 20-30$ to the biggest package of 140$. And boy am I happy to say I got my bang for the buck because after extensive testing and brainstorming with my buddies, we knew exactly what of the premium content we wanted to get the edge over others.

Here I will cut it short and tell you how it happaned. We heard about Warframe, one guy found us a bunch of keys and we were like, OK this looks nice, lets give it a shot. Great fun for a couple of days, at one point 6 rooms on TS filled with squads and then it happened. Some of us who went a bit far into the game discovered that game requires money to be played properly, and you dont even have the chance to see how it is to play it properly?! And there it died, so right now out of ~30 people from my community that were playing this, only 3 of us left.

You can rationalize it as much as you like, but here is the fact: This game demands money in order to be played properly.

Basically your pseudo F2P model is to give 50% of integral game features for free and the other half for quite a price, and sorry but that is not F2P model at all.

I know you will catch some forum badge wanabees, fps noobs that don't turn off the blur etc but they way you set up the obstacles on the RP part of this game, and even now obvious lack of end game content, you will never get as massive as you would like.

Why? Because people quit when they see the way you set it all up and I am seeing it happen right now. Problem with game pace? Fix it. Make non premium access slower, not impossible. Problem with fake closed beta? Open it, don't lie to people. Or you maybe just want ot get as much money as you can for a short time and then close the shop? I will check back on this game and see what happens but the sad part is that you just lost a whole community because of greedy perfomance here.

[Ced23Ric]

I'll quote myself here, because I think it's valid again.

I would prefer it a lot more if DE would do a couple of things.

• Equalize Platinum and real world money. US$10 = 100 Platinum. Odd conversions are carnie tricks for value obscursion and really grey area stuff. Shady, almost. It's certainly not consumer friendly to distort his perception of what he is paying when he spends the currency.
  

• Deal differently with slots. Unlocking slots with rank ups would be an idea, bypassable with cash. Also, stop it with odd payments for Revives and Weapon Slots. That is another carnie conning trick to sell more tickets. Don't do this because you see others do it. It's not smart business unless you like to label your customers suckers.
  

• Do away with the supercharge concept entirely or make the progress for F2Pers more realistic. Have them collect bits every mission, and after X missions (say, 50), they automatically get a Reactor/Catalyst. Cash bypasses for convenience. But having them hunt a carrot they have a hard time reaching is vicious.
  

• Get the cash shop cleaned up. Avatar packs need to be updated, Omni Ammo needs to go (no one buys it, metrics should back that up), helmets for Frost/Nyx/Excalibur are missing. Also, skins/texture packs. Broaden the colour palette - US$5 for a limited selection of pastel isn't cool.
  

The thing is, a happy customer spends more

Click the to see the entire post if you care.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Ced23Ric