A bad first impression: Warframe's main issues

[ACULonSeer]

EDIT: wow, this is now the biggest forum post I've ever made anywhere. I really appreciate that alot of you share my sentiments about warframe, and wish to see it improve rather than blindly defending every fault. I hope this thread grows big enough for the devs to see, because it could be what ends up finally making DE focus on what matters.

I made this to cover a few points i didnt mention in "the things i dislike about warframe" and to expand upon a few that i did. I think there are some glaring issues with how the game works, but most people ignore them because these issues mainly affect new players. However, what people dont realize is that new players, and their first impressions, are one of the most important assets aside from dedicated vets. Having a cult of vets content to play your game for years is great, but chances are DE gets most of their income from new players coming in. This means the early-game is extremely important, as people can misinterpret the game's dynamic and refuse to go further with it. 

I think im in a unique position to discuss an issue like this, because ive only started playing a few weeks ago but have already racked up 200+ hours. this means i still have the perspective of a new player, but the experience of someone who knows their way around. I have only made it to Pluto, however, so i might not address concerns with the late-game as i have not reached them yet. Now, lets talk about the glaring faults with the game:

The grind:

Yeah, you can mob me if you want, but i stand firm in my belief that at least SOME of the grind in the game is complete BS. Imo some of the biggest offenders are 

Certain stance mods (gunblades, hammers, gunsen)

Nitain extract

Focus Lenses 

Any weapon requiring >500 oxium

Orokin Reactors / Catalysts

Now i can ignore how annoying Nitain and oxium-based crafts are, but i REALLY would prefer if i got more hammer and gunblade stances as opposed to the 5000 machete, whip, and dual-dagger ones my inventory is filled with right now. Alot of weapons cant reach their full potential without stances, something especially true for gunblades (and apparently gunsen from what ive heard) so making some absurdly common while others are nonexistent without any clear reasoning is kind of an annoying approach. Regarding focus lenses, i havent really done anything with my operator yet so i cant go into more detail on those. What i have heard is that they were moved to plains bounties to force people into PoE, which if true is kind of an &#! move. My least favorite grind is for orokin catalysts and reactors because there IS NO GRIND for them. For a newer player, you either gotta pray for an alert that gives a blueprint for one or cough up 20 plat. These 2 items are ESSENTIAL for pushing guns beyond Uranus, so making them so rare is pretty disconcerting. 

Anyways, to someone new, hearing how difficult some of these items are to access is kind of off-putting. It makes them feel like theyll have to invest a ton of time before the game starts being fun. I have some suggestions on how to improve this:

-Diversify the stance drops from missions. make the aforementioned stances more common (at least available from more sources) and decrease the rates for machetes, dual-daggers, etc

-Make orokin reactors/catalysts drop from more sources (NOTE: Im not asking for them to be easily accessible, if they dropped from 30-wave defense or 45-minute survival that would at least be reasonable for a newer player)

-Seriously, stop locking essential items behind specific mission types. If someone hates sabotage but loves gunblades, they shouldnt have to slave through sabotage for a year to get a gunblade stance

 

The Learning Experience:

There isnt one. Honestly you look at the game's menus and interfaces, and there really isnt. The codex has some semblance of a tutorial, but you need a tutorial to know that the tutorials are in the codex! This game expects you to already have an instruction manual, or some kind of natural instinct of what to do and how stuff works. Some of the game's mechanics are unlike any other game ive played, so not telling people how they work is not acceptable. Oh, and if you dont think a lack of tutorials is a big deal, let me talk about my Mastery 8 Test experience:

Until M8 i had been using bullet-jump to go forwards occasionally, but i mostly relied on roll and doublejump for almost all my secondary movement. Know what? It worked perfectly this way, until i went into M8 and found a jump that double-jump was nowhere near being able to reach. I tried flying at it, using aim-glide, even rocket-jumping with Tonkor, but nothing got me anywhere near the next platform. For a system that locks you out for 24 hours if you fail, its pretty stressful to have NO IDEA what the game is actually asking you to do. I watched a video of a guy effortlessly flying up to the platform, which showed me that it WAS possible by simply jumping. Unfortunately, it took another 20 minutes and a rage-filled forum post before someone actually informed me that you could BULLET JUMP VERTICALLY. I never wouldve known otherwise because bullet-jump relies on you aiming with your camera! The game put me up against a wall with only one way to pass, and since what was asked seemed impossible, i almost quit right there. A stupid jump mechanic nearly made me give up. Give me a break DE, i care about this game so im going to ask you here and now STOP NEGLECTING DETAILED TUTORIALS ON ESSENTIAL MECHANICS. If youre gonna ask someone to bullet-jump vertically, dont assume theyll figure out how by accident. This lack of tutorials is probably the largest reason people dump your game after a week.

IPS, Armor Scaling, and the only way to combat it

Grineer could make a KILLING selling their armor to the Corpus. The way its able to absorb ANY non-slash/corrosive damage at lvl 40+ is breathtaking to say the least. On the plains i fired Mesa's regulators (i believe with a max intensify on) at a lvl 40 Nox, and only got him down to half health with its ENTIRE DURATION. These are the same regulators that are often regarded as insanely OP due to turning trash mobs to dust with the click of a button, and they turned into marshmallow guns thanks to grineer armor scaling. Damage-resistance this absurd is the REAL reason slash is so OP. its not the damage output, its that there is NO ALTERNATIVE to the damage output. I dont love impact weapons, i love my guns DESPITE them being impact-focused. For puncture weapons, i can barely even do that. The nonexistent logic of puncture, and grineer armor scaling, makes modding weapons monotonous and META-focused which is a travesty for a system so in-depth. If you are gonna nerf slash, and in your infinite logic im almost certain you will, please also tone down Grineer armor. Its getting to the point where every enemy is becoming a Destiny boss, with about as many redeeming qualities. 

Most Important (imo) Platinum

I wanna preface this by saying Warframe's microtransaction is a work of art, but any positive things i have to say about it are immediately buried under the terrible first-impression it gives new players. I was enticed into playing this game because it was free-to-play, only to find out 6 hours in that new warframe and weapon slots are locked behind a paywall. Defend this all you want, slots are one of the most important items in the entire game, and the only way to get them is with platinum so this IS A PAYWALL. Youre lucky the game made such a good impression on me that i was willing to tolerate spending money (in fact, im having trouble NOT spending money on it D: ) but for some other people who hit the warframe cap earlier than i do it could come across as a betrayal. There are 2 ways you can fix this, an easy way and a hard way:

Hard- Remove the cap on slots entirely

"Medium"- Increase the starting max warframe slots to 5, and add 2 additional starting slots for each weapon type

Easy- A tooltip that shows what you should spend your starting platinum on, perhaps even an interface that allows you to allocate platinum to weapon or warframe slots

 

Make no mistake, im not a veteran. I dont know every single aspect of this game, but i do know what drives new players off because i experienced everything mentioned here firsthand. Somehow i didnt give up, and im glad i did, but i want to make this list so other people dont make the same mistake i nearly did. I love this game more than anything else ive ever played. It tops ROBLOX, Minecraft, Destiny, and every other game i played when i was younger. Ive never felt a game was truly deserving of my money until i came here. The last thing i want is for Warframe to become a cult-classic because of stupid easily-fixable things like these. 

Edited December 30, 2017 by ACULonSeer

[MillbrookWest]

As i understand, the slots are due to server constraints - ie. database size.

This was probably a significant issue in the beginning, and probably still does pose issues, but as i understand it was a measure to slow you down, rather than lock you out - which is probably why slots are among the cheapest items in the game.

However, DE have toyed with the idea of the slots in the past - primarily when they got rid of plat for revives, but i think it's safe to say nothing really stuck.

This is why one of the most repeated pieces of advice for new players is to spend their starting plat on slots rather than anything else - it gives players a bit more growing room. I think the best way would be to incorporate additional slots into MR - however, as you pointed out, Warframe's tutorial is bare bones and this may give new players the idea that MR = more slots....

[ACULonSeer]

1 minute ago, MillbrookWest said:

As i understand, the slots are due to server constraints - ie. database size.

This was probably a significant issue in the beginning, and probably still does pose issues, but as i understand it was a measure to slow you down, rather than lock you out - which is probably why slots are among the cheapest items in the game.

However, DE have toyed with the idea of the slots in the past - primarily when they got rid of plat for revives, but i think it's safe to say nothing really stuck.

This is why one of the most repeated pieces of advice for new players is to spend their starting plat on slots rather than anything else - it gives players a bit more growing room. I think the best way would be to incorporate additional slots into MR - however, as you pointed out, Warframe's tutorial is bare bones and this may give new players the idea that MR = more slots....

Maybe slots should just be rare drops like catalysts or nitain. They could drop from Nightmare Alerts or something. I would love more excuses to do nightmares, theyre actually quite fun if they arent interception XD

I used my starting plat on the Arca Shoulder Guards because the concept of having limited slots didnt even occur to me. Looking at the interface, nothing indicates how many slots you have "open" so i didnt even consider it being a problem.

[Thrymm]

The lack of decent tutorial is the biggest beef I see people having, and I agree with it completely.  After four years and so much polishing, it really is unacceptable that a person can still find nuggets of wisdom.....at the Wiki website or reddit, but virtually never in-game.  The need to consult an outside source, or wander more or less blindly, never really goes away.

This also includes items such as reactors/catalysts/slots.  When a player starts, they will be given a small amount of platinum, and to optimize their play experience, in my opinion, it is absolutely imperative that they use this platinum on slots but this is not mentioned.  Doing so can give a person a few weeks, perhaps months, of ability to play before they decide to pay money for anything.  A good tutorial should heavily implore the new player to do this.  In addition to this, a good tutorial will also implore a player to not place reactors and catalysts on weapons and frames they don't plan to use for any real period of time, instead saving them for items that the player intends to use a great deal because you can rack up a huge bill way too fast if you don't.

It should also mention to you that the craptastic trade system exists and, apparently, will forever be craptastic.  You can use it to get those slots and potatoes, but it's never going to stop being cumbersome and annoying to use because doing so would hurt platinum sales(I probably have 10k plat worth of mods and parts laying around and never use it because even my real life job sucks less than Warframe trading).  Just the same, a person should be aware that it exists and is there if you're determined to not spend real money, but can be a slow way to get platinum so it's wise to save those reactors/catalysts until you know you want to use them.

And yes, it really is a paywall if you've even the slightest tendency to hoard things, or just generally like alot of stuff.  Spending just a couple of bucks on this game enhances the experience a great deal, and being willing to spend a couple every month or so enhances it even more.  The ability to obtain nearly everything for free is great, and just a few dollars actually makes the free content even better(because you stop worrying about slots, mostly), but yes, you are absolutely right that you'll either pay real money to place yourself there or sit in the trade hub and not play the game.

[Trichouette]

il y a 22 minutes, ACULonSeer a dit :

The grind:

I can't agree with all this, but yes, the grind IS insane.

Focus lenses are ok, greater/eidolons one are definitely not. Oxium farming spots shouldn't have been nerfed, and nitain should have a crafting blueprint (as I suggested back then, using fieldron/mutagen/detonite/argon in order to craft nitain would be nice).

However reactors and catalysts aren't meant to be farmed, it's fine the way it is. They aren't expensive and you don't need that many.

il y a 41 minutes, ACULonSeer a dit :

The Learning Experience:

We keep telling them that having to rely on the wiki all the time is not ok. It's not something new.

il y a 42 minutes, ACULonSeer a dit :

IPS, Armor Scaling, and the only way to combat it

Armor scaling is insane and part of what's killing any IPS rework suggestion DE could make, they've yet to understand that...

They don't get that the players are using status as a mean to deal more damage, and that slash/corrosive/viral/gas & toxin are the only procs doing that.

il y a 45 minutes, ACULonSeer a dit :

Most Important (imo) Platinum

Here I can't agree with you...

Plats aren't really a pay wall since you can trade them. However, players should have more default slot (at least on warframes, 2 is ridiculous) and it should be explained to new players that there is a limit and they can trade for plats.

 

And the market prices really should be changed, the price for weapons is ridiculously high.

il y a 10 minutes, MillbrookWest a dit :

As i understand, the slots are due to server constraints - ie. database size.

That was the explanation for riven slots, not warframe / weapons slot.

I doubt it's an issue for weapons & frames.

[ACULonSeer]

8 minutes ago, Thrymm said:

The lack of decent tutorial is the biggest beef I see people having, and I agree with it completely.  After four years and so much polishing, it really is unacceptable that a person can still find nuggets of wisdom.....at the Wiki website or reddit, but virtually never in-game.  The need to consult an outside source, or wander more or less blindly, never really goes away.

This also includes items such as reactors/catalysts/slots.  When a player starts, they will be given a small amount of platinum, and to optimize their play experience, in my opinion, it is absolutely imperative that they use this platinum on slots but this is not mentioned.  Doing so can give a person a few weeks, perhaps months, of ability to play before they decide to pay money for anything.  A good tutorial should heavily implore the new player to do this.  In addition to this, a good tutorial will also implore a player to not place reactors and catalysts on weapons and frames they don't plan to use for any real period of time, instead saving them for items that the player intends to use a great deal because you can rack up a huge bill way too fast if you don't.

It should also mention to you that the craptastic trade system exists and, apparently, will forever be craptastic.  You can use it to get those slots and potatoes, but it's never going to stop being cumbersome and annoying to use because doing so would hurt platinum sales(I probably have 10k plat worth of mods and parts laying around and never use it because even my real life job sucks less than Warframe trading).  Just the same, a person should be aware that it exists and is there if you're determined to not spend real money, but can be a slow way to get platinum so it's wise to save those reactors/catalysts until you know you want to use them.

And yes, it really is a paywall if you've even the slightest tendency to hoard things, or just generally like alot of stuff.  Spending just a couple of bucks on this game enhances the experience a great deal, and being willing to spend a couple every month or so enhances it even more.  The ability to obtain nearly everything for free is great, and just a few dollars actually makes the free content even better(because you stop worrying about slots, mostly), but yes, you are absolutely right that you'll either pay real money to place yourself there or sit in the trade hub and not play the game.

What do you think about my comments on the grind aspect? thats the section i was the least sure of accuracy-wise so i wanna know if i covered everything accurately.

[Mousarchy]

ya. I do aggre on the stance grind (you know after what 5 years of gameplay? how old is this game now?.) I JUST got my first crushing ruin to drop...ever...and im...DREADFULLY addicted to this game...
but didnt DE also mention something about fixing the whole "stance system" in the future? I figured they were gonna go out and remove the whole stance grind thing...IDK someone please update me on this or tell me im wrong.

[Mewvg2]

5 hours ago, ACULonSeer said:

I was enticed into playing this game because it was free-to-play, only to find out 6 hours in that new warframe and weapon slots are locked behind a paywall. Defend this all you want, slots are one of the most important items in the entire game, and the only way to get them is with platinum so this IS A PAYWALL.

This is the main stumbling block to getting some of my friends to play. They love it, run into that wall and quit because they see the game nickle and diming them for having more stuff. Honestly this should've been removed with the revive rework, both of those things just punish new players.

[Gandergear]

Ive got a buttload of time on the game so heres my attempt to share what answers are available to you, point by point.

 

The Grind

Most of your problems can be addressed by just using the fantastic wiki the game community has made http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/WARFRAME_Wiki itll tell you where to and what drops mods you want.

Nitain spawns like clockwork every 4.5 hrs, unfortunately the alert only lasts for like 30m. But once you recognize the pattern you can be prepared for it. You can also get it from caches, but theyre so rare its not worth it.

POE bounties really arent that bad, you can get a sizable collection in no time at all, and it used to be you could only get them from sorties, so the availbility of them is higher than ever.

Yah no I got nothing to help with oxium grinding besides go to Io on jupiter and bring a nekros if you can.

Tatos are basically a plat sink in the game and unfortunately you really do have to start earning plat to be able to stabely get them when you need them.

The learning experience

Only point I dont agree with is saying you have to wait 24hrs to do the test, I mean youre correct, but visit cephalon simaris at any relay and go up the spiral staircase, there you can practice your upcoming test as many times as you want.

Armor

Your issue is that the Nox is super damage resistant in general, to kill him shoot his head case till it breaks, then shoot his face more. The nox was added to slow down grineer xp grinds using abilities, think of him like a nullifier or ancient disruptor.

Plat

The problem is the game never introduces players into how to make plat, you gotta take advantage of the trade chat and even 3rd party sites like warframe.market that keep listings for you. You can avoid coughing up dough if you sell a prime set for 100p, or sell some of the acolyte mods from this weeks event. Ive managed to put 0 dollars into the game and have made it thru to the end. My advice for early plat is join a clan, buy the dragon key bps, and do vault runs, selling mods like blind rage and fleeting expertise while simultaneously getting top tier mods for yourself in the process. Later on selling arcanes from raids can also be lucrative with rare ones like arcane energize regularly selling for 400p each.

 

Also i wrote this on my phone god bls

Edited December 26, 2017 by Gandergear
I spel gud

[ACULonSeer]

I'm glad to see nobody is blindly defending the game's shortcomings like they would on destiny. Makes me think there will eventually be a solution 

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

It always bugs me how almost nobody mentions the operating costs of keeping an account active. Sure , it's free to play, but if you do the math, if you stick around for the long run, that's alot of plat sink that are pretty much essentials you can't really avoid paying for, and new sinks keep getting added.

--------------------------------------

Waframe Slots : 34*20 = 680 Plat to be able to play all characters.

Reactors = 20p Each, pretty much mandatory on everything you want to use, you probably won't get enough for all your frames, sentinels, kavats, archwings, even if you play for years with a phone app notifying you everytime one comes up on alerts/invasions. Probably another good 650ish plat for the average user.

Exilus = Another 20p, not mandatory, but once again, you'll never get enough from alerts to put on all the frames. Definitvely a couple hundred of plat of exiluses to be bought over the years.

Weapon Slots - 12p per two weapon slots. There's like 350+ weapons, granted some can be deleted as they are MR fodded /inferior versions, but still a big plat sink. Assuming most player will keep at least 200+ weapons, unless you really love building weapons for 24 hours using resources leveling them and deleting them afterwards.

Catalysts - Another 20p per weapon if you want to be able to use to their full potential. A couple alerts a months awarding these versus, like, 350 weapons, just do the math... It's impossible to have enough for all the weapons, and even if you're picky on which weapons you put them on, you'll probably resort to buying quite a few of these during your account's lifespan.

Forma - Slightly cheaper with the bundle nowadays, but the fact remains a new player needs alot of forma just to craft all the clantech stuff, and that's not even taking into account the fact countless frames weapons require 5-6 of these to reach full potential... Can only make a single one per day, everything from dogs to archwings use these. Even if you stockpile 350 bps by playing in the void all day, you'll only be able to craft one at a time per day, yet most vets can use 5-6 formas per day on multiple weapons.

Riven Slots - Expensive as hell, Rivens themselves are already expensive purchases to get the ones you want , but you'll need to pay for the slots to have a big collection of them. And since riven have huge mod costs, you'll need the formas to accomodate them... So you're often spending plat on the riven, on the slot, on the formas... Triple dipping of sorts.

Archwing Slots - Used to be free, but now monetized

Archweapon Slots - Used to be free, but now monetized

Operator Amp Slots - New feature, new monetisation.

--------------------------------------

Quick note:

The usual free to play defense argument is "you can trade for you plat" , so technically you don't have to "pay to progress"... But to me that's a fallacy, in the sense where someone somewhere bought that plat and is, in a sense, paying for your own progression. You're technically exchanging your time/experience playing the game and acquiring stuff with someone's currency, which he has purchases with real life money, in effect making him pay for your progression. Regardless of who paid for that warframe slot, someone did pay for it, in the end....

Again, I mostly like the system, and I'm not here to be overtly critical of the buisness model, which is mostly fair, but I just want to people to stop blindly calling it "free to play" and acting like there's not a gazillion systems put into place to guarantee DE will get a somewhat steady steam of plat being spent in the market. An account will never evolve beyond mr4-5 without spending platinum, since no slots means no mastery and no mastery means no progression.

It's free to play if you only want to use two or three frames and weapons, don't mind waiting for rare alerts and using unpotatoed stuff for months and don't mind staying a low mastery rank level player locked out of many weapons and features, but if you want to get deeper into warframe, someone will have to pay these operating costs. Might not be you,  you might manage to get people to trade you that plat, but someone's still paying for your progression.

Edited December 26, 2017 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[BlackCoMerc]

10 hours ago, Mewvg2 said:

This is the main stumbling block to getting some of my friends to play. They love it, run into that wall and quit because they see the game nickle and diming them for having more stuff. Honestly this should've been removed with the revive rework, both of those things just punish new players.

Two.of the teens in my family quit as soon as they hit the Warframe Slot cap. They immediately knew they would never be able to.have ay weapon or frame variety in the game without tons of money and they just uninstalled and moved on.

My first attempt to play I bounced hard off the game due.to lack of information. Had it not been.for the RPS guild, I would have bounced again the second time for the same reasons.

[OrionHisSon]

2 hours ago, ACULonSeer said:

I'm glad to see nobody is blindly defending the game's shortcomings like they would on destiny. Makes me think there will eventually be a solution 

1. Similar posts are flooding the forums, so veteran players and DE usually ignore them. It's just common knowledge by now.

2. It's 2017, so 5 mins in chat and/or on the official forum would produce all the answers you need. Every online game operates in a similar manner, so I don't know why everyone keeps treating warframe differently.

That being said, let's look at your post...

The grind - The three stances you pointed out are rare, because their weapons are.
a. Gunblade mods are fund in Lua spy missions, the Feyarch Specter after completing the Sacred Grove mission, and the Brood Mother who can't be desecrated due to a bug for 4 years.
b. Hammers have Shatter Storm but it takes a forma to have most of the hammers to use it without a penalty. Crushing Ruin showed up when Rathuum was released so everyone just wants that one.
c. For the fan stance, you just need to run around the whole of the PoE map and kill every Ghoul. You should get at least two.

A weapon can still be used to rank 30 without a stance mod. Pressure point, maybe Fury, and a status effect is all you need. Once you hit rank 30 for the first time, then decide if you want a stance mod and to place forma and a potato.

As previously stated, Nitain Extract alerts come up 4 times in a 24 hour period. The official Warframe Nexus app for your cell, will allow you to receive notifications when alerts appear among other things.

Focus lenses were sortie-only rewards, but were added to PoE bounty rewards once the focus tree was expanded to include Eidolon lenses. They're easily obtainable, and selling the prime parts and BPs from void missions will give you more than enough plat to buy them. Whoever told you they were placed in PoE to force players there was filled of BS.

Oxium is crazy-easy to obtain. Run regular corpus missions with the alarm on or run corpus survival missions.

Again, not every warframe/weapon/companion/sentinel needs a reactor or catalyst. And, again, relic farming will have you swimming in plat. However, I do agree they need more accessibility in the game other than the "Gift of the Lotus" crap.

Oh, and they're not essential to open up your solar map. You can do it with the warframe and weapons you had picked when you first started .... Then again, I'm crazy, so maybe that's not a good point. Heh.

The learning experience -

You do realize, that finding things out on your own, is considered a "learning experience"? 

Similar to every online game out there, there's a quick start guide that can be found on the main website. It's found under the main tab labeled "GAME" : https://www.warframe.com/game/quickstart#select-lang

Though I do that Vor's Prize could do more in a way of a tutorial, there's just no excuse not to visit a game's main website. Even warframe support would have pointed out the quick start guide.

Armor Scaling -

*Looks down at her Boltor...* You heard of the puncture status, right? Even in the ingame market, the bolt set's description tells you it's the best way to take out the Grineer.

Corrosive loses it's punch once you hit rank 40, leaving you to move on to Radiation. Personally, I favor radiation on most of my weapons since it will destroy any opponent in the game.

Warframe abilities always target the torso to inflict damage. It's not surprising that Peacemaker only brought down a Nox to half health, since the torso is the most armored on a Grineer. Headshots, my pumpkin, just as in any other game with guns. 

The weakest point of a Nox, is his glass helmet. He doesn't like this fact either, as he will scream then charge you.

Obtaining Platinum -

May the RNGesus curse you, for using the term "paywall". 

Apart from the Prime Access, everything in warframe can be obtained ingame. You just have to be smart about it. Namely, doing void runs to crack open relics, then sell the prime parts or BPs you got. Just looking at trade chat would have showed you this.

In fact, I'll look you up on PC and throw random stuff at you. That way, you'll know how easy it is to obtain stuff in this game ... 




 

[ACULonSeer]

2 hours ago, GrazewoundZero said:

1. Similar posts are flooding the forums, so veteran players and DE usually ignore them. It's just common knowledge by now.

2. It's 2017, so 5 mins in chat and/or on the official forum would produce all the answers you need. Every online game operates in a similar manner, so I don't know why everyone keeps treating warframe differently.

That being said, let's look at your post...

The grind - The three stances you pointed out are rare, because their weapons are.
a. Gunblade mods are fund in Lua spy missions, the Feyarch Specter after completing the Sacred Grove mission, and the Brood Mother who can't be desecrated due to a bug for 4 years.
b. Hammers have Shatter Storm but it takes a forma to have most of the hammers to use it without a penalty. Crushing Ruin showed up when Rathuum was released so everyone just wants that one.
c. For the fan stance, you just need to run around the whole of the PoE map and kill every Ghoul. You should get at least two.

A weapon can still be used to rank 30 without a stance mod. Pressure point, maybe Fury, and a status effect is all you need. Once you hit rank 30 for the first time, then decide if you want a stance mod and to place forma and a potato.

As previously stated, Nitain Extract alerts come up 4 times in a 24 hour period. The official Warframe Nexus app for your cell, will allow you to receive notifications when alerts appear among other things.

Focus lenses were sortie-only rewards, but were added to PoE bounty rewards once the focus tree was expanded to include Eidolon lenses. They're easily obtainable, and selling the prime parts and BPs from void missions will give you more than enough plat to buy them. Whoever told you they were placed in PoE to force players there was filled of BS.

Oxium is crazy-easy to obtain. Run regular corpus missions with the alarm on or run corpus survival missions.

Again, not every warframe/weapon/companion/sentinel needs a reactor or catalyst. And, again, relic farming will have you swimming in plat. However, I do agree they need more accessibility in the game other than the "Gift of the Lotus" crap.

Oh, and they're not essential to open up your solar map. You can do it with the warframe and weapons you had picked when you first started .... Then again, I'm crazy, so maybe that's not a good point. Heh.

The learning experience -

You do realize, that finding things out on your own, is considered a "learning experience"? 

Similar to every online game out there, there's a quick start guide that can be found on the main website. It's found under the main tab labeled "GAME" : https://www.warframe.com/game/quickstart#select-lang

Though I do that Vor's Prize could do more in a way of a tutorial, there's just no excuse not to visit a game's main website. Even warframe support would have pointed out the quick start guide.

Armor Scaling -

*Looks down at her Boltor...* You heard of the puncture status, right? Even in the ingame market, the bolt set's description tells you it's the best way to take out the Grineer.

Corrosive loses it's punch once you hit rank 40, leaving you to move on to Radiation. Personally, I favor radiation on most of my weapons since it will destroy any opponent in the game.

Warframe abilities always target the torso to inflict damage. It's not surprising that Peacemaker only brought down a Nox to half health, since the torso is the most armored on a Grineer. Headshots, my pumpkin, just as in any other game with guns. 

The weakest point of a Nox, is his glass helmet. He doesn't like this fact either, as he will scream then charge you.

Obtaining Platinum -

May the RNGesus curse you, for using the term "paywall". 

Apart from the Prime Access, everything in warframe can be obtained ingame. You just have to be smart about it. Namely, doing void runs to crack open relics, then sell the prime parts or BPs you got. Just looking at trade chat would have showed you this.

In fact, I'll look you up on PC and throw random stuff at you. That way, you'll know how easy it is to obtain stuff in this game ... 




 

I dont really feel like a few of these counterpoints are valid, especially regarding the paywalls and learning experience. The game is insanely complex but tells you virtually nothing. Thats not good game design, and it doesnt teach people anything either imo. And as far as the paywalls, im going to keep calling them paywalls despite my love for this game. I mean its what they are, cant really deny it. 

[MillbrookWest]

19 hours ago, Trichouette said:

That was the explanation for riven slots, not warframe / weapons slot.

I doubt it's an issue for weapons & frames.

The server is referenced quite regularly for a number of things, not just rivens. Rivens were brought up due to their limits, where it was said that they are worth several mods on your profile combined.

One new slot = new frame on profile, new 'A', 'B', 'C' mod loudouts with the potential full mod arrangements in each, new unique customisations (helmet, colour, armour sets, skin etc.). 

The only thing stored locally is the our gear wheel.

[Mewvg2]

11 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

The game is insanely complex but tells you virtually nothing. Thats not good game design, and it doesnt teach people anything either imo.

There's a reason why I take the time as a veteran player to take new players I've brought into the game a crash course on the mechanics and important stuff. The game does a terrible job at giving players information, if the wiki didn't exist a good portion of the playerbase would be left in the dark.

It's also painfully easy to screw up stuff that is expensive to fix early on, for example picking a syndicate to support at MR 3 when you have no idea how the rep system works. That tends to require multiple expensive items (gold/blue taters, forma, large amounts of credits) to fix when they finally realize they just pissed off one of the factions they wanted to support later.

Warframe's new user experience got a lot better with Vor's Prize, but it has a TON of work that needs to be done on it. Sadly I think DE is far too busy creating even more systems they won't bother explaining to spend the months it will take to fix this problem.

[ACULonSeer]

1 minute ago, Mewvg2 said:

There's a reason why I take the time as a veteran player to take new players I've brought into the game a crash course on the mechanics and important stuff. The game does a terrible job at giving players information, if the wiki didn't exist a good portion of the playerbase would be left in the dark.

It's also painfully easy to screw up stuff that is expensive to fix early on, for example picking a syndicate to support at MR 3 when you have no idea how the rep system works. That tends to require multiple expensive items (gold/blue taters, forma, large amounts of credits) to fix when they finally realize they just pissed off one of the factions they wanted to support later.

Warframe's new user experience got a lot better with Vor's Prize, but it has a TON of work that needs to be done on it. Sadly I think DE is far too busy creating even more systems they won't bother explaining to spend the months it will take to fix this problem.

Will it even take months? I dont know game design, but how hard would it be to have a few popups with lengthy paragraphs of information on the mechanics?

[Mewvg2]

Just now, ACULonSeer said:

Will it even take months? I dont know game design, but how hard would it be to have a few popups with lengthy paragraphs of information on the mechanics?

Text is a bandaid and tutorials require a lot more work than it seems like they should. There's also the issue of where to put them (both physically and how far into gameplay), because obviously the information hidden away in the codex doesn't help the newbies who don't know the codex even exists.

There's also the sheer amount of overlapping systems to explain. Four years of systems tacked on top of other systems.

[KirukaChan]

Given the crazy amount of gear this game now has to offer, I would definitely support the notion of having players start with a couple extra Warframe slots, and maybe 4 extra slots for weapons. There's a LOT to mess around with in terms of options.

[OrionHisSon]

4 hours ago, ACULonSeer said:

I dont really feel like a few of these counterpoints are valid, especially regarding the paywalls and learning experience. The game is insanely complex but tells you virtually nothing. Thats not good game design, and it doesnt teach people anything either imo. And as far as the paywalls, im going to keep calling them paywalls despite my love for this game. I mean its what they are, cant really deny it. 

"Paywall - an arrangement whereby access is restricted to users who have paid to subscribe."

I can deny it, as nothing in the market is restricted by a sub. An hour of farming void missions, will make you a nice profit. A nice profit will net you all the slots you need.

[Mewvg2]

Just now, GrazewoundZero said:

"Paywall - an arrangement whereby access is restricted to users who have paid to subscribe."

I can deny it, as nothing in the market is restricted by a sub. An hour of farming void missions, will make you a nice profit. A nice profit will net you all the slots you need.

No matter what you call it, the fact remains that it requires new players to do a lot of work just to get something as simple as more space for their weapons. The strength of Warframe is the variety, the more you restrict new players the less likely they are to stick around to see all the cool stuff DE has worked so hard on.

[ACULonSeer]

8 minutes ago, GrazewoundZero said:

"Paywall - an arrangement whereby access is restricted to users who have paid to subscribe."

I can deny it, as nothing in the market is restricted by a sub. An hour of farming void missions, will make you a nice profit. A nice profit will net you all the slots you need.

I think youre forgetting this post is about new players and their first impressions of these systems. Trading for plat within the first few hours? That seems like a ton of hoops to jump through for 3 frames, dude. And thats assuming new players even KNOW you can trade for plat, which they probably dont because the game even after all these years puts less thought into instructions than Destiny does in endgame content. You show off all these fancy frames and cool abilities, then give noobs only 2 slots and expect them to be satisfied enough to play through the rest of the game until they have enough rare mods to trade for plat? Paywall.

[Gandergear]

13 minutes ago, ACULonSeer said:

I think youre forgetting this post is about new players and their first impressions of these systems. Trading for plat within the first few hours? That seems like a ton of hoops to jump through for 3 frames, dude. And thats assuming new players even KNOW you can trade for plat, which they probably dont because the game even after all these years puts less thought into instructions than Destiny does in endgame content. You show off all these fancy frames and cool abilities, then give noobs only 2 slots and expect them to be satisfied enough to play through the rest of the game until they have enough rare mods to trade for plat? Paywall.

The two solutions for this problem however is

1. Tell players to take advantage of region chat to ask questions

2. Have new players ask questions to their friends

Both these are what are taught in highschool, the only way to not know something is to never ask someone who might know. People on the whole want to help you, and even if they sound condescending 99% of their advice comes from what they think is the right place.

Also it takes 4 days to make a frame, you're not gonna build a frame in your first few hours of play.

Edited December 27, 2017 by Gandergear
What I wrote originally made no sense

[ACULonSeer]

1 minute ago, Gandergear said:

The two solutions for this problem however is

1. Tell players to take advantage of region chat to ask questions

2. Have new players ask questions to their friends

Both these are what are taught in school, the only way to not know something is to never ask someone who might. People want to help you, and even if they sound condescending 99% of their advice comes from what they think is the right place.

I didnt come into this game with any friends. I had no idea talking to people would be the only semblance of a tutorial id ever get. Know what i used my starting plat on? Arca shoulder guards, because i didnt think id be slapped in the face with a slot limit the next day. There is no clear indication anywhere that a slot limit even EXISTS until you waste your starting plat and get hit with the warning message. Thats infuriating as hell in a game that already doesnt explain F*all about anything.

[Gandergear]

2 hours ago, ACULonSeer said:

I didnt come into this game with any friends. I had no idea talking to people would be the only semblance of a tutorial id ever get. Know what i used my starting plat on? Arca shoulder guards, because i didnt think id be slapped in the face with a slot limit the next day. There is no clear indication anywhere that a slot limit even EXISTS until you waste your starting plat and get hit with the warning message. Thats infuriating as hell in a game that already doesnt explain F*all about anything.

But like one of the frequent questions I answer from new players when I use region chat is "What do I spend my starting plat on?" I agree that the tutorials wanting having played through it recently myself, but Im not convinced the game attempts to conceal the fact youhave access to a chat channel full of people that are capable of answering questions if a player takes a methodical approach. I knew what I was getting into when I first started, I used all my plat to rush things, and was stuck with an excal and valkyr until I sold the excal to get a new frame, and then started making plat. You dont have to keep everything you get, and anything you get rid of early on you can build again later.