Even PC Gamer is salty. [PC Gamer Criticism of PoE for new players]

[Bluejay235]

As much as I am a fan of this game, it continues to have one of the worst new player experience of anything I have ever played. The game seems to ACTIVELY encourage you to make bad decisions and waste your time as a new player. The Plains is only the most recent example. The fact that Kuburows are presented to the player very early in the progression at a point where trying to make and own a Kurburow would break your character and distract you from needed upgrades is another example. The fact that you get dumped into the game after 6 short quests with no idea what to do is another. I can't remember exactly, but I don't even think mastery is explained at any point in the game. You kind of have to just figure that out for yourself?

In the company's defense the new system map and eliminating some of the missions that can't be soloed but are almost impossible to find groups for from the progression requirements helped... but the game is still very anti-newb.

[DeMonkey]

On 10/18/2017 at 4:13 AM, InDueTime-EN- said:

Maybe they(and everyone else) should have considered that DE made this to last till the next Landscape and not to be played for the next few weeks. They gave you enough to do so you don't skip out of warframe after completing everything and waiting for the next update.

You see though, if that is the case then that's really quite bad imo.

Imagine it's currently October 2018. PoE has been out for a year now, players who have until now been too noobish to really explore the content PoE has to offer are now faced with months upon months of grinding a separate economy of resources. This is on top of any grinding they have already done on the star chart.

Not only that though, but by this time there may already be 1 or 2 more open worlds. Are each of them going to be so grindy that they last till the next update with their own self contained economy? Given the time between major updates nowadays each open world will need to be lasting us about 6 months, what happens when that new player sees 3 open worlds to explore, but 18 months more of solid grinding?

I'm all for having something to actually do and that's the very reason I'm playing again, but if you make it require such a time investment it can become quite overwhelming, especially for newer players and people who have a life away from their computer.

Edited October 19, 2017 by DeMonkey

[DatDarkOne]

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Let's put this fallacious pseudo-argument to rest.

It wasn't an argument at all.  My statement was a real question brought about from noticing various comments by BCM over a much longer period of time than this little topic.  

He was nice enough to answer it honestly and I both thank and respect him for that.  

[Sentinel-14]

3 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

if you make it require such a time investment it can become quite overwhelming, especially for newer players and people who have a life away from their computer.

This is a problem I think every developer runs into. When you've been in the game for so long and have gone through so much of the content (as a dev) it's easy to fall into the trap of making things only for veteran players, that will tide them over till the next release. It's the question of "How do we keep the players happy/busy?" That question only considers existing players, not any new ones that might come along. I'm not saying any dev, at any company, would do that on purpose, but it's an easy thing to do. And it does have the unintended consequence of putting new players further and further behind.

It's really a no-win situation. If you develop a persistent world, where new players are immediately on the same page as veterans, then the new players basically miss out on all the older content that built up to "the present." Not to mention trying to balance new players with weak gear against well-geared veterans. If you have a linear progression, new players have to grind through all the old content before they can reach the newest stuff. That's how Warframe is now, and it's not a bad thing if the grind is reasonable, but if the grind is reasonable then the veterans will blitz it in short order and be bored again while the newbies are playing catch-up. Destiny got a bad rep for that. If you make it long and grindy enough to keep the vets busy, the newbies will have little hope of completing it and catching up.

There is no way to make a game that works for everyone. Someone's going to get shafted somehow. The wise thing, from a business perspective, is to make content that can be completed before the next content release, but make it of sufficient quality that players will enjoy replaying it. This allows new players time to catch up, while still giving vets something enjoyable to do.

Plains seems to have been built with a little too much bias toward Veteran players, but the counter there is that you don't HAVE to do Plains. Not yet, anyway. If Sacrifice requires anything you can only get from Plains (like Amps), then the issue will have to be addressed to make it a bit less grindy and more newb-friendly.

[IggySnow]

Yeah my big problem with PoE is that is almost 100% disconnected from the main game.

You grind cetus rep to get cetus items that you use in the plains, then the items you get in the plains are used to make more cetus items.

What happens when I get all the items I want from cetus? there will be 0 reasons to go back to cetus or the plains

[DiabolusUrsus]

8 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

It wasn't an argument at all.  My statement was a real question brought about from noticing various comments by BCM over a much longer period of time than this little topic.  

He was nice enough to answer it honestly and I both thank and respect him for that.  

My mistake then, and I apologize. In most cases these sorts of comments are made to be snide or facetious, and aren't an earnest question. If that wasn't your intent, I've got no quarrel with you.

Edited October 19, 2017 by DiabolusUrsus
Word choice

[MirageKnight]

2 minutes ago, Sentinel-14 said:

Plains seems to have been built with a little too much bias toward Veteran players, but the counter there is that you don't HAVE to do Plains. Not yet, anyway. If Sacrifice requires anything you can only get from Plains (like Amps), then the issue will have to be addressed to make it a bit less grindy and more newb-friendly.

Don't...give...DE...ideas...

Given the grindy nature of PoE, I dread thinking about what they'll wind up doing with Sacrifice / obtaining Umbra.

[Sentinel-14]

5 minutes ago, MirageKnight said:

Don't...give...DE...ideas...

Given the grindy nature of PoE, I dread thinking about what they'll wind up doing with Sacrifice / obtaining Umbra.

Well, start grinding for Excalibur now then. Some are speculating you might need it as a component to craft Excal Umbra, and given DE already requires base weapons for crafting some of the upgraded versions (Nikana required for Dragon Nikana, for example), it's not impossible they'd go that route.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Sentinel-14

[Hypernaut1]

2 minutes ago, HerpDerpy said:

Yeah my big problem with PoE is that is almost 100% disconnected from the main game.

You grind cetus rep to get cetus items that you use in the plains, then the items you get in the plains are used to make more cetus items.

What happens when I get all the items I want from cetus? there will be 0 reasons to go back to cetus or the plains

I kind of feel that's a problem, but the entire game is about  grinding to grind.

I thought about what exactly they could do to  make the rewards crossover more, and there is not much more I could come up with that makes sense. Plains buff our operators and gives is a few new mode. Both can be used anywhere else in game.

[MirageKnight]

21 minutes ago, Sentinel-14 said:

Well, start grinding for Excalibur now then. Some are speculating you might need it as a component to craft Excal Umbra, and given DE already requires base weapons for crafting some of the upgraded versions (Nikana required for Dragon Nikana, for example), it's not impossible they'd go that route.

Actually...I wouldn't mind this at all. Honestly.

I don't really use my old Excal much these days and it does make sense.

[SapphicPirate7]

He makes a decent point in the article. The economy is almost entirely separate from the rest of the game and honestly doesn't hold much for the new player. The Plains are made for the veteran players who are at the end game and seems to just have the new player parts tacked on.

That being said, this is a whole new direction entirely. It's basically a new beginning for this crazy amazing game. DE will undoubtedly take this type of criticism and fix it before the next landscape comes out.

I used to complain all the time about Warframe even as fun as it is. First I complained that the lighting and graphics were poor compared to other games, within a month it was changed. Then I complained about the lack of fluid movement, and again they made a change almost instantly after I made the complaint. Eventually I complained saying it was too restricted for what I felt the game could be. And then the Plains come out which addressed that complaint. The moral of this story is that DE learns fast and is constantly working to give us a better experience. (Or maybe they are just able to read my mind and really want to make me happy. I'm betting on the latter currently.) For the past four years they have been constantly updating and working on making the game better. I'd wager that the economy won't be an issue soon and that the landscapes will flow into the rest of the game a lot smoother too.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Gabenight7
Fixing some typos

[SapphicPirate7]

Whoops bad internet, didn't mean to spam a freaking essay on Warframe and DE

Edited October 19, 2017 by Gabenight7

[SapphicPirate7]

Again sorry for the essay spam

Edited October 19, 2017 by Gabenight7

[Sentinel-14]

1 minute ago, Gabenight7 said:

The moral of this story is that DE learns fast and is constantly working to give us a better experience. For the past four years they have been constantly updating and working on makign the game better.

This is why so many players here love DE and have faith in them. They listen to player feedback, communicate directly and regularly, and are always pushing to make the game better. Many studios could learn a thing or ten from DE.

[Rakosta_Kai]

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

While I agree that PA is absurdly priced, to be fair you just buy it and get exactly what it says on the tin.

The loot boxes we were talking about specifically are the type where you MUST pay premium currency for a CHANCE at the one thing you want mixed in with a bunch of other rewards that don't interest you... Or in the most obnoxious cases mixed in with garbage. It'd be like making players pay 10 plat to run a bounty mission.

This right here....

This is what I meant by loot boxes and is the thing that scares me most of all in any game tbh.

Everything about Anthem looks good that I've seen so far...But it's from a company that's entirely comfortable doing nonsense just like this in SWToR.

DE, while being entirely comfortable with charging the heck out of folks for stuff, doesn't do stuff like that and I can't see them ever starting. 

...It's just not their style. 

Personally, I don't mind paying an upcharge to get my typically terrible luck out of the equation.

[MirageKnight]

1 minute ago, Sentinel-14 said:

This is why so many players here love DE and have faith in them. They listen to player feedback, communicate directly and regularly, and are always pushing to make the game better. Many studios could learn a thing or ten from DE.

The flip side of the coin is that DE isn't quite as transparent as they used to be, some devs can be rather disconnected from the user experience, their reasoning behind some design decisions and changes are rather questionable, and they can be extremely and needlessly stubborn and inflexible on certain issues (see Hema research's Mutagen requirement, Braton Prime "buffs" after months of player requests, etc.).

I agree that DE is good at pushing out new ideas, gear and features and improving the core game to keep players engaged and interested, but they're lacking in terms of serious focus and cohesive long term goals. They also have a tendency to neglect old, existing systems and ignore / forget about long standing issues and bugs that players keep having to remind them about.

 

[Sentinel-14]

1 minute ago, MirageKnight said:

The flip side of the coin is that DE isn't quite as transparent as they used to be, some devs can be rather disconnected from the user experience, their reasoning behind some design decisions and changes are rather questionable, and they can be extremely and needlessly stubborn and inflexible on certain issues (see Hema research's Mutagen requirement, Braton Prime "buffs" after months of player requests, etc.).

I agree that DE is good at pushing out new ideas, gear and features and improving the core game to keep players engaged and interested, but they're lacking in terms of serious focus and cohesive long term goals. They also have a tendency to neglect old, existing systems and ignore / forget about long standing issues and bugs that players keep having to remind them about.

 

Oh I agree that they have a problem ignoring old stuff. It's been... what... 2 years now and the Lephantis raid is still buggy? And this layout with Plains... access granted early but it's not worth doing until late. Not to mention how The Second Dream more or less turned a good chunk of the lore on it's head. And issues with the background lore on Valkyr, Valkyr Gersemi and Valkyr Prime.

I guess I should have qualified my statement by saying I'm looking at DE and their dev efforts from the perspective of someone who has spent the last 3 years playing Destiny, and Bungie's utter lack of communication and response to player concerns. You either play the game their way, or you're doing it wrong. That's basically their attitude. Compared to that, DE are Saints.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

1 hour ago, Sentinel-14 said:

Well, start grinding for Excalibur now then. Some are speculating you might need it as a component to craft Excal Umbra, and given DE already requires base weapons for crafting some of the upgraded versions (Nikana required for Dragon Nikana, for example), it's not impossible they'd go that route.

I'm betting it's Prime Parts + an Umbra piece to ALTER it somehow.

That would INSTANTLY reinvigorate the Plat market on Primes and make Unvaulted Packs more valuable because players who already have the prime would use the second to create Umbra.

The sacrifice would GIFT us a premade Excal Umbra upon completion.  Then Founders wouldn't have to sacrifice their only Excal Prime and everyone else wouldn't simply miss out.

It utilizes existing systems and creates a new revenue stream.

Release Unvaulted packs for purchase every time an umbra variant becomes available.

It's what I would do.

Edited October 19, 2017 by (PS4)Silverback73

[Xaxma]

I guess all it takes for you guys to shut up about the rewards is of they added a 0 to the end of the credit rewards and endo rewards and call it day, eh?

[DiabolusUrsus]

47 minutes ago, Xaxma said:

I guess all it takes for you guys to shut up about the rewards is of they added a 0 to the end of the credit rewards and endo rewards and call it day, eh?

And took out the common mods. And gave a more even distribution of lenses. And actually added more of the new mods to the rotations.

Point is they're bad rewards relative to the amount of time and effort invested compared with literally any other missions in the game. Not ALL bad, but mostly.

[Eljureo]

It is a bit like that yes... Personally I enjoy plains... But that is on fully geared MR24... Meanwhile my step son brings his MR5 gear there and is in for a shocker, no operator yet, etc...

So we go fishing, awesome activity for a dad and a son... Do we get any worthwhile affinity doing that? No. How can he progress in warframe from MR5 without affinity?

Bounties while fun for me are almost to hard for him.

Took me 4 days to get all new weapons, he is still on 0. Just cannot get enough resources for that.

Credit gained on the plains is abysmal. Just worthless.

New players need affinity, endo, credits. Plains provide very little of those.

[InDueTime-EN-]

2 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Not only that though, but by this time there may already be 1 or 2 more open worlds. Are each of them going to be so grindy that they last till the next update with their own self contained economy?

Good point, the economy of cetus is different from the economy of the rest of the game. And considering the cetus only gives a variety of melee weapons, new players will need to play the other planets if they want to get new weapons. That isn't even considering the other grinds of the game. I guess I was looking in the point of view of someone who has gone through most of the content in warframe and is looking for something to do. 

They could solve this by slowly phasing out the main starchart and limit those to a few ship based tiles and put the drops in the planned procedural levels in cetus. But that would take extremely long to do as they need to cover all of the map. 

For me, this update is still great, but I can see your point as to how much it is for a lot of players to take on. It definitely is something they need to address and I'm sure they are already brainstorming ideas there. Specially coz this thread is almost always at the 1st page of the general discussion. Hopefully someone takes notice. Now we just need to give them ideas on how to fix it instead of just complaining about it. 

[InDueTime-EN-]

double post, sorry. 

Edited October 19, 2017 by InDueTime-EN-

[SapphicPirate7]

16 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Not saying it hasn't improved, and I don't think the actual content CREATORS are plotting anything, but I can't overlook that this update is a bundle of unprecedented high-pressure grind.

Warframe has always been grindy, sure, but never before have we seen completely isolated and ubiquitous resource requirements. By which I mean most of the new content requires entirely new resources (instead of some combination of old and new) and the new resources bleed into rehashes of existing content (instead of just the new stuff).

I'm not overlooking the sort of game Warframe is, but this update is of a distinctly different flavor than what we've had before. Your listed examples are all gameplay changes, not economic ones. I'd also rather believe that some company already established as scummy is responsible for these changes than believe that DE itself has changed in that regard.

Honestly with the way this update feels, it seems like they got the idea in the their minds and just ran away with it. Like a meeting room going crazy with people yelling "oh what if we add this too!!!!" and got so far into it they accidently forgot about how it would be integrated with the rest of the game. I don't doubt that they are starting to get a clue on that pretty much immediately. They already started making changes to the economy and have mentioned that it would be much more fluid as they work everything out for a long while.

Also fishing and mining is my favorite way of grinding right now. Much funner then just running a "everything dies ember" and strolling around half asleep.

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, Gabenight7 said:

Honestly with the way this update feels, it seems like they got the idea in the their minds and just ran away with it. Like a meeting room going crazy with people yelling "oh what if we add this too!!!!" and got so far into it they accidently forgot about how it would be integrated with the rest of the game. I don't doubt that they are starting to get a clue on that pretty much immediately. They already started making changes to the economy and have mentioned that it would be much more fluid as they work everything out for a long while.

Also fishing and mining is my favorite way of grinding right now. Much funner then just running a "everything dies ember" and strolling around half asleep.

We've certainly had updates that felt like they never got past the brainstorming phase of planning before; there's nothing new there. But what's new is managing to hit so far off-base on almost every single part of the update except the core concept (the open world bit) working nicely. DE has made lots of bad decisions, but they've always been relatively few next to the tons of other perfectly fine or good decisions shipping in each update batch. I find it difficult to believe that any update could be entirely this egregious by random chance.

I also agree that fishing and mining are fun. I'm all for more immersive resource acquisition, and have been for a long time now. The problems with fishing and mining are simple and few, but significant:

• The magnitude of the grind required, and
• The disparity between the actual grinding and the rest of the game.

It's fine to have activities that aren't combat-related. I would even go as far as to say that having those activities enriches the game world. But they can't be the only means of acquiring resources that have far-reaching implications for other parts of the game. If fishing/mining loot were self-contained to fishing/mining content and could be exchanged for normal resources, or if the resources available through fishing/mining were available elsewhere (not counting the plat market), they would be perfectly fine. But that's not the case.

The worst part about it is that all the biggest problems with PoE should have been extremely (we're talking like no-brainer here) easy to predict and almost as easy to prevent without compromising revenue generated by the update. DE has a lot of great talent and puts a tremendous amount of work into their updates. Even so, when a developer completely neglects to make any sort of pre-emptive effort to make monetized content more palatable to their players I can't see that as anything but laziness or disregard.

This heavy-handedness certainly isn't making me more willing or eager to throw money at them.