Questioning the longevity of the game

[-CG-ImMrBloo]

2 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Outside of the old void towers, when has DE ever rewarded players more for staying long term in a mission (read: to the point of facing level 100+ enemies) when it wasn't an event? This is the issue I see, why are people expecting DE to reward them for staying long term when they have not reinforced that action with reward for doing so or encouraged players to do so? The enemy scaling is specifically designed to force players out of the mission, you WILL be made to leave, by choice or force, unless you are utilizing an incredibly specific broken cheese system which would still fail if someone slips up. The devs have even made comments towards this that shows they don't intend players to go long term in missions (again, read: level 100+) because they dont want that to be the must-do method to play the game and get the most out of it. It doesn't mesh with new players who cant keep up or casual players which, as mentioned above by Bobtm, make up most of the game's playerbase.

I would think of the contrary actually. The events that have come in the past two months have proven based on the rewards of 'your best score in a single mission' means they intend you to go end game. The fact that enemies scale is also indicative for end game play. End game play has always been a huge driving force for MANY players. Many of which left the game when the void changed the first time. The reality is it's not possible to hold a clan or alliance in a game filled with casual players. You need hardcore players to make a clan function. Clans are focused on for events, competitions, updates, and more especially with the upcoming updates. I do understand that the idea of end game is frightening to new players especially early on. But the idea of easy content for late game players is just as frightening. my suggestion isn't to abandon one or the other(like it currently is). But it's to since the systems are placed in there atm. Give incentive for players to continue playing. Clans/Alliance communities make up over 75% of the game. They're running by non casual players who have to invest their time into the games. If they all fizzled and burned out casual players wouldn't have friends to play with, people to learn from, place to purchase research, new event stuff and more. The only logical choice is not 'dw de focus on the new and casual players it's for the best' because oneday soon those casuals will be here at our place and the cycle will continue. I'm saying add a layer to the game that already has support systems so everyone wins. New and old, longterm and short term players alike. And in regards to one of the things bob said; stopping all stuff isn't what I meant. I meant in the sense add a layer so everyone wins. 

[(PSN)xRockinVaruka]

I'll have my moment and say that DE even misses the most simplest of things. (and probably some other rants as well about other things)

- A resource bank system. There is a credit bank system and I absolutely cannot see why there isn't a resource bank, now that we are years into the game development. 
- A way to further merge the Archwing System. I'm not a "fan" of Archwing; yet, as content, it should be implemented down at a deeper level instead of these singular missions on different planets. 
- Rewards scaling with mission difficulty: I have asked myself this back in the early Warframe days. The rotations are the same past rotation C. It doesn't scale, so why do I need to continue this further when I can restart? Of course, this should be somehow implemented in a way where it cannot be abused somehow, some way.
- New content is great, but I believe strengthening the foundations and older content of Warframe will lengthen its longevity. 
- Trials are good, but lackluster. I won't do a direct comparison with Warframe and Destiny, but Destiny rewards its players with their Raids... Weapons, Armor Sets, Cosmetics. If I see someone who has a badass armor set from a Raid, it makes me want to do that raid. A weapon? (COUGH Gjallarhorn COUGH) It feels rewarding. Right now, Warframe Trials only give Arcane Enhancements, which then they will be translated into personal usage or trading. Nightmare Trials reward nightmare mods... but we can get those mods on nightmare missions. 
- Digital content value plummeting while store value remains: As mentioned by another person in this thread, Prime equipment values have plummeted ever since Relics. Ash Prime is worth 40p now when I could see him being worth 80p-90p for the set. Now, you have to work harder to get the platinum you would have gotten before the void change to get stuff from the market, let alone profit for some power farmers for platinum. 
- Some things I have noticed is that the grind got longer. Look at Vauban Prime. 7000 Oxium?! I barely got that within a couple of weeks, with three days of that with boosters. Not to mention Nitain. The costs are just going up and up and up. Just look at the older primes. It's like pennies for their costs! DE is finding more and more ways to build the grind wall higher and higher. Octavia? Lock one piece in an Exterminate Cache, one in an RNG tileset that may not spawn after plentiful of attempts, and another as a Rotation C reward on ODS. (Hell, it's not even tradable. Nostalgia to Endless Tower Missions and the joy of getting that Volt Prime piece at Rotation C of a survival). 

I'll give DE credit where it's due and give them props on new frames and the periodically new quests.

*Was thinking about an idea about endless fissures, just popped into my head. -- As the rotations get higher, the chance to get a better reward from your relic should increase by a small amount. The same should go with void traces. Higher rotation = more void traces (Though this may already be set by the booster rewards?) 

[GottoGure]

Well there have a lot comment about this but for me as conclave player (do weekly challenge) it's hard to find people to play with

sometime it wait too long to find people to fight and about PVE thing i still see old relay was destroy i still have hope DE will give some operation like recover relay (aka build new one) still Steve have plan to add new stuff on his steam but i don't know when this going add into game

and my daily basic just do sortie,finish syndicate then go back to Skyrim _(:3jz)_

[StabbyTentacles]

On 5/14/2017 at 2:52 AM, ImMrBloo said:

-Content released
The content being released in the game. in my opinion, is also a huge issue. I've seen multiple warframe and weapons being released but the challenge of the ai not growing nor the reward growing. Like this new Priest frame(dev stream 92 you can see the video of it, it looks cool) you can chain enemies, received headshots, and get additional bonuses. What's the point of ccing the enemy, just to shoot them in the head to kill them when I can shoot them anywhere and insta kill them on average missions. The warframe itself is nice, and I'm sure I'll have fun for the couple hours I forma him and put him away with the others that will never be needed. I don't know how to put this but I feel like instead of introducing new content we should be focusing on the content we currently have, optimizing it, and making it good for the beginning of the game at MR1 to late game MR23 and have it not get so old. I don't know about you guys but I lead a successful clan and I find myself struggling to come up with new and innovate ideas to keep my clanmates entertained. I believe this shouldn't entirely be my job. I'm at the point where I need to private message DE Rebecca and ask for permission for some of the clan systems I'm running because I need to create everything. I feel like I'm both the q&a tester and a content creator when all I should be doing is leading a clan. I get some of those things are part of the job but it shoudn't be entirely on me. The game should be supporting all clans. I shouldn't have to create a million and one in clan things to keep members entertained in the game and not have them drift off to other games. There should be content in this game that keeps people wanting to play for the fun of the game, and for the challenge of the game. 

-Content in the game to keep people around
We all knew this was going to be in this post but the new relic system to me is a classic example of what's right/wrong with this game. On the side that's right I love the idea you can increase the drop chance and choose a drop from other peoples rewards if you had bad luck. On the other hand compared to the Void the idea of spending 1 T4 Defence/Survival key and going for 60+ minutes was rewarding because of the drops and rarity of the key because you had to go earn the key through regular missions. Nowadays all you need to do is join a public team with whatever relic you want and leech off of others for rewards in a 2 minute mission and spam repeat them. This type of system doesn't have a difficulty nor does it have a longetivity feel to it. I could do it at most for 3 hours and even then afterwards I don't want to do it again because it's boring as it's the same mission over and over and over for 2 minutes at a time. That's not really fun at all. The rewards are nice but again on the bad side since prime items left the void they've all dropped in platinum by over 50-60% of their former values because the rewards that once took 20 minutes to have 1 opportunity to get now can be done every 2 minutes with 4 opportunities to get on an increased chance. 

Content is the real answer.

Coming @ this from a high level player's perspective...

Waiting for months for new: weapons, warframes, primes... ect DE's current 'focus' on story over gameplay. Giving us a new tileset The Kuva Fortress, with no real reason to go there... movement, combat... enemies, all remaining, a little buggy...

There are no easy answers here, DE releases a small dribble of content for business reasons; less work, for greater reward. (No insult intended, simply stating facts.) 

Game is super easy. Obtaining 95% of content is also pretty easy. There is no real cover system (aside from using Volt, Frost... warframes.) Meaning you'll need to play with these frames if you want to make any use of cover really, which is a pretty massive hole in game design imho. There needs to be a Loot 2.0, there needs to be more loot, and it needs to be special. Something that might: add ability like arcanes, or form a weapon/mod/warframe ability. What I'm saying is loot needs to have a potential, that needs to be farmed up, which when you look at the base game, is what warframe is at it's roots. (A little like Rivens.) (But without the grindy RNG.) (I mean a mechanic that allows a player who farms 3k Kuva can get a god tier Riven, while a player who farms 200k Kuva can get a fairly average result. I see that as a pretty significant flaw.)

Work in game should equal reward.

More random events would also help, broadening: the stalker, like Angst • Malice • Mania • Misery • Torment • Violence. Broadening the Gustag 3, Zenuka... Using the Ambulas idea of a ship spawning into a mission, having Grineer ships, deathsquads... Infested pathogen ships dropping in, with elite enemies and most importantly special loot.

Edited May 16, 2017 by StabbyTentacles

[PapaKrampus]

Jesus bloo how long did it take you to write this? In any case i agree benn playing for anly about two months and have already comleted more than half the damn content in the game( not counting wepons but i dont really have much of an incentive to get em mr14 got my tigris p aklex p war pretty much all i need got most of the frames too).

 

[Djego27]

On 13.5.2017 at 11:52 PM, ImMrBloo said:

I would think of the contrary actually. The events that have come in the past two months have proven based on the rewards of 'your best score in a single mission' means they intend you to go end game. The fact that enemies scale is also indicative for end game play. End game play has always been a huge driving force for MANY players. Many of which left the game when the void changed the first time. The reality is it's not possible to hold a clan or alliance in a game filled with casual players. You need hardcore players to make a clan function. Clans are focused on for events, competitions, updates, and more especially with the upcoming updates. I do understand that the idea of end game is frightening to new players especially early on. But the idea of easy content for late game players is just as frightening. my suggestion isn't to abandon one or the other(like it currently is). But it's to since the systems are placed in there atm. Give incentive for players to continue playing. Clans/Alliance communities make up over 75% of the game. They're running by non casual players who have to invest their time into the games. If they all fizzled and burned out casual players wouldn't have friends to play with, people to learn from, place to purchase research, new event stuff and more. The only logical choice is not 'dw de focus on the new and casual players it's for the best' because oneday soon those casuals will be here at our place and the cycle will continue. I'm saying add a layer to the game that already has support systems so everyone wins. New and old, longterm and short term players alike. And in regards to one of the things bob said; stopping all stuff isn't what I meant. I meant in the sense add a layer so everyone wins. 

While I do agree that the basic reward system does no longer give a huge incentive to stay longer in a mission is a problem I would have a issue with the self defined hardcore attitude. I seen plenty of people in my clan that did buy the most expensive prime access to show that to her friends and being gone in a month or two, most likely to the next game one of his friends started, leaving Warfame behind. This is nothing unusual, most likely the normal way of how people consume F2P games and probably where DE gets most of her revenue from(comparable with fast food where you have a very big roll over time at the tables and don't expect people to come back any day).

There are also examples of the opposite, like Wildstar, where according to steam numbers only 0.5% of the people that did install the game did finish a max level dungeon, 0.3% did defeat the first raid boss in one of it's 3 raids and only 5 guilds in the hole world did beat the last raid(the first in like 6 hours or so, the second a few hours later, mostly because of time zone issues) in the last 6 months. All this while it is quite comparable to the most played MMO in the market, but a barren wasteland, even compared to private WoW servers given that it was fairly overturned for the "hardcore" at launch. If you go into dungeons, pvp or the raids you will actually run in the same people or alts of them most of the time, this is how small the amount of the player base that you see in difficult content really is.

DE could and probably should change the reward systems, so that you for higher waves/times in survival get a buff towards the rarer item drop chance and could change endless fissure missions that you just keep your relict after you get shown your roll and just pass it, for the chance to get something more to your liking during the next roll, while adding AABC with some drop chance buffs for B and C.

I also dislike how Nightmare missions work, since the no shield and 3x damage is a terrible one sided penalty, what is meaningless on some frames while it instantly kills most others. A better way would be keeping the shields and normal damage while adding lower ability damage/effect(like 90%) to warframe powers and disable 1-2 on a random basis, so players actually have for the most part shoot herself through the mission, like new players do it and have to play more careful, given that her 90%+ damage reduction, invisibility  or plain god mode might not work. It would also make penalties like vampire more meaningful, that kind of forces a aggressive play to stay alive. Combined with a like 10 minute lockout of that mission if you fail or abort it, to prevent people to just reroll the penalties till they are meaningless. 

As for endless play. I think it lost a lot over the years. I remember a time where 20 minutes was easy, 40 minutes was doable and 60 minutes was considered hard in survival, assuming you did not cheese your way through it with camping. I think that is a much better estimate of the attention span of most people and more the time frame that they actually want to stay in a mission before they want to do something else. However you can not really archive that if you give anybody weapons that still one hit kill the stuff at the 1h hour mark and compensate for that with enemies that also one shoot you, 3s CC immunity till the bubble is down like nullifiers that also one shot you and lots of other questionable mechanics. I for myself can not tell if the person that stays 100 or 150 waves in a defence is the better player or not, since it all comes down to pressing a button every few seconds or the mission fails while forcing people to remove all challenge, given that every shot to you is lethal, every shot to the defence target will fail the mission and overall it has little to do with a free to play shooter that actually has quite enjoyable shooter mechanics.

In general I believe DE is over stretching the goal of adding to much grind, for new and old players alike and could do some serious work with something they put in the game unintentional(like endless play) what can be even for casual players enjoyable, at least if you provide a fair level of challenge for everybody(not 0 challenge if you cheese it while expecting next to impossible challenge on the players that do not) and some reasons to sink her time into it.

On 14.5.2017 at 8:33 AM, MRmailman69 said:

Jesus bloo how long did it take you to write this? In any case i agree benn playing for anly about two months and have already comleted more than half the damn content in the game( not counting wepons but i dont really have much of an incentive to get em mr14 got my tigris p aklex p war pretty much all i need got most of the frames too).

 

This is also one of the big issues with the game today, you basically only realistic need 1-2 weapons for everything and then you are done, because that weapons are good at everything and we do not run into a situation where we would prefer something else in our daily play. While the opinion of players back when I started was more or less the same with Soma\Boltor prime, marlok and dakra prime there where a lot of interesting weapons that did specific things better and all this god tier weapons did actually struggle after the 40 minute mark more then weapons that where not even considered to be good, given that most people also did not go beyond the 40 minute mark and her benchmark was just the common L1 till L80 back then, while the top end damage weapons today also have status for some absurd reason tagged on to them as well to render all the interesting side tools that do not see that much use in general fairly pointless at places where they used to shine.

[Sar.K.Asmus]

I said that a year ago and the only response from the Devs was to release more Weapons and Warframes.

"We" don't need more weapons which do the same thing as already existing weapons. Better release a new skin for existing weapons then the same weapon with another skin. Just look at all the single swords and dual swords for example. There are 12 single swords and 13 dual swords. Why? Why aren't there just 3 or 4 of each type and the rest are skins?

If a "new" weapon is not unique then release a skin instead of a weapon that does nothing new.

EDIT:

Just release for each category:

• 1 Tenno weapon: IPS based that has either status or crits
• 1 Corpus weapon: Elemental based that has either status or crits
• 1 Grineer weapon: Either elemental based or IPS based
• 1 Prime version: The Tenno weapon that has staus and crits
• (1 Infested version)

DONE.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Sarcasm4Free

[YT_OldManTenno]

@ImMrBloo I'm glad I read this, because I was just about to make the same post. The difference is that I've only been playing since December. A friend I brought in and myself are both near 22, and feel that we've done pretty much everything there is to offer in two months. That doesn't feel right in a persistent online game that's very MMOish.

My current issue is the last event. The boss fight was unique, but the reward was not there... literally and figuratively. 15 times I did Razorback, which means I had to craft 15 ciphers. Which meant that I had to do a lot of archwing that pretty much everyone does not like to do for the necessary material. Since each cipher also took 3500 polymer to make (seriously??), that also means I had to farm Assur multiple missions to load up on the polymer that just got wiped out of my inventory. 52,500 polymer in total.

52,500 polymer, hours spent in archwing AND farming, and for what? A Gorgon Wraith blueprint that never even dropped. Let's forget the fact that I ran out of ciphers and polymer to make them and I needed to get to bed, only to wake up and the event being gone (two day event?). Again, the highlight of doing this event was to get the Gorgon Wraith. A subpar weapon which no one will actually use. The only reason any of us were going for this weapon was to use it as MR fodder.

Should the whole purpose of doing any event that the developers spend a lot of time creating be to get an item just to have our MR move up a little bit and throw it away? And once you're higher than MR 16 (the highest Riven I've seen), is there any real incentive to get such a weapon since MR is basically meaningless once you reach a certain point?

I too love the game. I love the action, the style, the customization. But if another company came along and delivered a similar game that addressed the issues you stated, would I start playing that? I believe I would.

I like DE. I believe they have a lot of bright people, and they can make this game better. How?

• Stop wasting internal resources designing new things (weapons, warframes, etc.). Use those resources to help fix what is already there. People don't want to upgrade their car if it has issues as soon as you buy it. You have a good base product. Hone it, perfect it, and build from there.
• Place proper value on things within the game. The Cycron (not a good weapon) takes a lot to build, and is locked at MR 9. The Atterax (one of the best weapons in the game) is cheap to make, and is only MR 2. This says DE places the value of the Cycron a lot higher than the Atterax, the community says very differently. A Kia should never outperform a Ferrari in every possible test, AND be a lot less expensive. Learn what people are using, and adjust the costs accordingly. A Cycron is useless to someone who has completed all the content, but may be worth checking out to a new player if it's worth purchasing.
• Make bad weapons build into something better. The Lesion is the poster child of how to do this right. Again, one of the best weapons in the game and it's only MR 7. If someone smart who just started this game targeted this weapon as their goal, they would be happy knowing they made one of the best weapon choices. The progression felt when they see their Bo go from good, to better with the Tipedo, to best with the Lesion. They would also, however, be very disappointed finding out that the Lesion is the exception to the rule. I'm baffled as to why the Vipers, Latos, every ether weapon, etc. of the warframe universe don't follow this example. I personally hate the idea of MR fodder. The community knows that weapons like these are not here for more choices. F or D class weapons don't have to upgrade to A class weapons, but at least upgrade to a C class weapon that someone might choose for certain situations (and thereby have to purchase more inventory slots!).
• With value and better items being addressed in points 2 and 3, the fourth is rewarding. Aside from the event issue I started this post with, let's talk about raids. To me, raids should be the highest risk/highest reward system in the game. As it stands, it is not. And it's disturbing to hear that only 1.5% of people actually do them. The reason they don't do them is because the reward isn't worth it. Arcanes are ok, but I don't miss them when I'm not using them (actually, I never really notice). If Mutalist Alad V was not a map requirement, I imagine that a good percentage of the player base would still do it for the reward (Mesa, an A class warframe) because it has high value. If say Octavia parts dropped from raids, you would've see a huge surge in raid numbers. High value reward for a higher risk. As it stands, this good frame is farmed from what people are having to do every damn day... The point is to truly reward someone for doing a harder task by giving them something they will actually value.
• If there's not going to be new content soon, make another tier of the existing content that offers greater reward. If a "hardcore" version of the star chart was released that started at say level 30-40 on earth and had better/more reward chances (MR locked at like 18), I bet my job people would play that.

Warframe is fun, but lately I find myself logging on only to log off shortly afterwards because there is nothing to do. As it stands now, these "events" are not cutting the mustard.