The Temporary Future of Warframe Trials

[WolfTitan]

There is 15 days left until DE's proposed date for ending raids. We know of the effects on many groups and small communities of raiders: they've already disbanded. The largest community, WFRSB, is on the brink of collapse.

While it's easy to get upset and toss in the towel, there are vocal people still left. We're going call it out as loud as possible that DE is losing touch with long-time players, and this move will be the last straw for many. I know because, unlike DE whose ears are becoming more tone-deaf, I've heard and I've listened. Don't trash your long-time players. Keep the raids.

[Jarcu]

I did basic LOR in response to this, having never tried it for years for fear of it's difficulty, having assumed the enemies would be ludicrous. In the end I have to say I see no reason to remove basic LOR, that didn't seem buggy enough to warrant it's removal. Apart from some wonky door sensors on phase 1 the whole thing worked just fine.

 

Reviewing what JV takes.....I could see why that one could go. It looks like a stressful management nightmare. It's like trying to stave off poisoning death, while hoping your teammates don't mess up, while on a time limit, while trying to navigate this...

  

[--C--Notorious]

12 hours ago, Key said:

Cool but is not about platinum, I not agree with people who think we all are against this because the cost of arcanes, I personally dont care, I still have a lot of energize but Im not rushing to play and sell them just because of this lol. (Im not fighting you)

You're missing out on the joke.

 

[Sakarraa]

On 2/11/2018 at 10:07 PM, trst said:

The difference between Trials and Dark Sectors is that DS needed to be worked into an entirely different concept. The click race to PvP/pseudo-PvP to tax-fueled drama couldn't return. Where Trials do need to be rebuilt they can reuse most of what has been made for them, plus the entire concept is still sound.

 

The PvP aspect of Dark Sectors was also replaced by Conclave where Eidolons aren't a proper replacement for Trials.

 

If people remain vocal enough about DE actively working on Trials then it's less likely to take several years. But maybe I'm being too hopeful.

Regardless Trials are a sorry mess right now and between the constant frustration from the community regarding them and how bad it looks for DE; they can't remain as they are.

I agree that the trials could use a refresh hence said in the dev stream that the upkeep of trials is a bit high. While don't think Eidolons nor the new DS system will be a viable replacement for trials they'll have to suffice for the time being. I hope the best for trials but, whats done is done raid communities have already accepted this fact all we can do now is hope for the best.

[SilentMobius]

13 hours ago, traybong111 said:

Trials were bleeding DE money in the most literal sense. Trials created Arcanes market that moved a lot of plat/revenue and even with that DE couldn't justify the cost of maintaining them.

Removing Trials is a strictly financial decision, not a philosophical one.

This is not necessarily true.

I've seen a number of profitable products dumped simply because there is no one on the development team that wants to touch them any more. Sometimes the goodwill and mental health of your developers (especially in a tight-knit creative project) is more important than a blip in possible revenue (and plat moving is only a vague indicator of revenue)

It could well be that the only people capable of maintaining the trials simply don't want to, and I wouldn't blame them.

[VanLyrr]

First of all the way they worked was fine.. they really don't need a rework as much as a refactoring of the code. Trials have a somewhat steep learning curve. So it's basically git gud, and not everyone wants to go through that. I don't expect any game to have a mainstream following for hardcore content. So saying not enough players play the content is a reason to take it down, nah. Doesn't fly with me. 

Quote

Sorties and Eidolon Hunting, can get the job done better than Trials themselves about dealing with different kinds of challenges and you don't even need 8 players to do it, in fact people even say that the Eidolon Hunting are the new Trials.

Sorties are just starchart missions at higher level with a nightmare modifier on it. Hardly a challenge or something new to learn, it's just a gear check. Yes, Eidolons you can learn, but it's such a trivial thing compared to a three-stage mission with a clear beginning, middle, and end, that saying they do better than trials at posing a challenge is just laughable.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

19 minutes ago, VanLyrr said:

Yes, Eidolons you can learn, but it's such a trivial thing compared to a three-stage mission with a clear beginning, middle, and end, that saying they do better than trials at posing a challenge is just laughable.

+1

Or the claims that they are not just as repetitive.  Get lures, charge lures, tenno-shield blast, meta-shoot, repeat.  

 

[Ham_Grenabe]

4 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

+1

Or the claims that they are not just as repetitive.  Get lures, charge lures, tenno-shield blast, meta-shoot, repeat.  

 

Yeah. I did a Gantulyst in a pub group yesterday, and we ran out of time (pub groups, it happens) but afterwards I thought, "I...think I'll just stick with Teralysts. I'm already far enough along in the Quills to build and gild, and don't really have any urgency to go further. Besides, the Gantulyst is just a Teralyst fight, but longer."

I mean, more power to the folks who are chasing arcanes and whatnot, but I just can't get that excited about it. :shrug:

[Kitessencial]

I do not agree with this. The removal of game content should never be the solution. Move the arcanes to the new Eidolons, but keep trials. It's the only piece of endgame warframe has and one of the only situations where cooperation is actually required. It's a nice change of peace from the "shoot and run" gameplay.

[B3tler]

Team play in WF is no more. All missions can go solo faster than with random players, and LoR for 11 min and JV for 17 min never work

[NightmareT12]

You might have seen the following post on Reddit by Val. For those who have not (and for max visibility), the WRSB have made a survey form to help gather feedback about current Trial overall experience as well as feedback for future implemntation of them. These will be handed to Digital Extremes later today. Whether or not (like me :P) you have had much experience in Trials so far, any feedback is always welcome to help make Warframe a better game than it already is.

To fill the General survey, go here: https://goo.gl/forms/J8EDxev11HET3mTh1

Also it might be of your interest that the WRSB is preparing a big, farewell event for Trials. Read more info over at their discord channel here: https://discord.gg/wfrsb

Quick FAQ by @Venn2

Quote

 

I can clarify and answer some of these questions. I'm one of the original founders of RSB and will be participating in the town hall.

1.) Is this legit?

Yes, in fact DE were the ones to approach us and ask for more input from the community, so they're the de-facto organizers of the chat.

2.) Why is the guest list not public?

For multiple reasons - there was no time or reason to organize a public selection process, so we just selected a number of people on our own. Also, publicizing the list would cause lots of unnecessary drama regarding our choices, which there is no time to address anyhow. What I can say though, is that everyone in the group is among the most active participants in the raiding community. These guys have worked with new players, been there from the very start, participated actively in the community and are well aware of the various issues concerning raids from day one until now. We'll also be using the survey to make sure the community agrees with what we have to say, and to support our statements.

3.) Will the discussion be public?

No, the discussion will be held behind closed doors. Afterwards, the detail to which we publicize it will be largely left up to DE. What I can say for certain is that we will share what we planned to discuss, what was discussed, and the results of the survey shortly after the chat.

4.) What to expect

You know the drill: don't expect an ETA on new raids, or any details regarding them. This is primarily for us to relay information to them, not the other way around. As I already said, I'll ask DE about how much they're ok with us sharing on their part.

5.) Will every single one of my concerns be addressed?

No, it will not. We are constrained by time and DE are busy people, as such we will focus on what we consider the most important topics, and ones we can contribute to the most.

In conclusion, this is a rather short, semi-informal chat that doesn't dictate how, when or if new raids will be designed, so don't stress too much. Each of us could go on for hours about these topics, so 30 minutes only allows us to cover so much ground. We'll post more info here and on RSB after we finish talking to DE.

Thanks for your time :)

[SSI_EVIDENCE]

EDIT: The summary and transcript of the meeting (as well as raid statistics and data, along with graphs) is posted by myself a few posts down.

3 hours ago, myself and 9 other representatives had a closed text-chat meeting with [DE] Taylor and [DE] Megan regarding the future implementation of raids/trials. All of the results from the above survey will be shared with them. A transcript and summary of the meeting is currently in being made, and I'll make another post on this thread once it's up. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact Venn2, Pegasy, or myself about it! Discord usernames: vaminos (Venn2)#9720, Pegasy#0001, and Lord Of Erebus#6969. 

 

Furthermore, Zopney and others are organizing a big raiding event on WFRSB: A Farewell to Trials. This event will include a variety of raids. We will be streaming and encouraging participation in this from the community. We would love to hear and see you partake in this event with us, so let us know what date and time works best for you! (We will have events such as speedrunning tournaments, challenge raids, teaching raids/buses, etc.) If you have any questions or things to note regarding this, please feel free to contact Zopney, SSI_LordOfErebus, or --Q--Snakeman. Discord usernames: zopney#2035, Lord Of Erebus#6969, and Sigh166#6969.

A Farewell to Trials - Event survey

If you'd like to spread the message around, please do.

Here's the post if you just want to copy paste it:

 

Hello everyone! Two Things:

1) **On February 13th at 1PM ET, 10 representatives will be having a closed 30 minute long text chat with DE staff regarding the future implementation of raids/trials.** In order to gather feedback on this matter from the general community, Warframe Raid School Bus staff (along with the help of a few community members) have created a survey. We would greatly appreciate if you fill out ASAP. The results of this survey will be directly shared with DE staff during the meeting. Unfortunately, we have a very short notice and schedule to meet in which to prepare everything for this. Hence, the short notice for this announcement. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please feel free to contact @vaminos (Venn2)#9720, @Pegasy#0001, or @Lord Of Erebus#6969. **There is limited time until the meeting, so we recommend filling out the survey before the meeting if you want your concerns heard at the time.**

2) **@zopney#2035 and others are organizing a big raiding event on WFRSB: A Farewell to Trials.** This event will include a variety of raids. We will be streaming and encouraging participation in this from the community. We would love to hear and see you partake in this event with us, so let us know what date and time works best for you! (We will have events such as speedrunning tournaments, challenge raids, teaching raids/buses, etc.) If you have any questions or things to note regarding this, please feel free to contact @zopney#2035, @Lord Of Erebus#6969, or @Sigh166#6969.

**End-note: **
We do have detailed statistics of activity in raids. However, this information will be made public at a later date as there are still some more statistics that we wish to add before publicizing it. 

**Raids/Trials General Survey:** https://goo.gl/forms/J8EDxev11HET3mTh1
**A Farewell to Trials - Event survey:** https://goo.gl/forms/fZYihvcvOB3wQSXf2

If you'd like to spread this message around, please do.

And for elsewhere, a copy paste: 

 

 

Hello everyone! Two Things:

1) On February 13th at 1PM ET, 10 representatives will be having a closed 30 minute long text chat with DE staff regarding the future implementation of raids/trials. In order to gather feedback on this matter from the general community, Warframe Raid School Bus staff (along with the help of a few community members) have created a survey. We would greatly appreciate if you fill out ASAP. The results of this survey will be directly shared with DE staff during the meeting. Unfortunately, we have a very short notice and schedule to meet in which to prepare everything for this. Hence, the short notice for this announcement. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please feel free to contact @Venn2, @Pegasy, or @Catnip (SSI_LordOfErebus). There is limited time until the meeting, so we recommend filling out the survey before the meeting if you want your concerns heard at the time.

2) @zopney and others are organizing a big raiding event on WFRSB: A Farewell to Trials. This event will include a variety of raids. We will be streaming and encouraging participation in this from the community. We would love to hear and see you partake in this event with us, so let us know what date and time works best for you! (We will have events such as speedrunning tournaments, challenge raids, teaching raids/buses, etc.) If you have any questions or things to note regarding this, please feel free to contact @zopney, @Catnip (SSI_LordOfErebus), or @VENN2 KILLED RAID(--Q--SnakeMan).

End-note: 
We do have detailed statistics of activity in raids. However, this information will be made public at a later date as there are still some more statistics that we wish to add before publicizing it. 

Raids/Trials General Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/J8EDxev11HET3mTh1
A Farewell to Trials - Event survey: https://goo.gl/forms/fZYihvcvOB3wQSXf2

If you'd like to spread this message around, please do

 

[Sitchrea]

Wow. I guess we can't say DE doesn't care about their players. I've never heard of a company working this close with their players before. Props to DE for this, and props to my fellow raiders for acting so civil. This is how we make good change happen!

Also, just submitted my survey. Hope it helps! :)

[Spectre-8]

Reddit , right lol .

[SneakyErvin]

On 2018-02-09 at 7:53 PM, Omega1084 said:

I'm upset that DE is pushing away long-time players who gave the game the life it no longer deserves. I don't play Raids, I'm not interested in them, but they're breaking promises and going back on their word. Even if we put away the Raid argument this is just anti-consumerism and dishonesty.

Yes, the inaccurate numbers they pulled out, loaded to support their arguments and reasoning and have people defend them, if you actually listened and did the Math it wouldn't add up, the sample size and comparisons are not fair or even at all. Of course people play Raids less, because they can't be played more, because they have a daily hard cap, 1 run daily of each of the 3 Raids. If the RSB was able to do more than 3 daily raids they'd be doing them a lot more but that's not possible and that's why the numbers are skewed that way. To add to that, DE never advertised or pushed for people to do the Trials or properly taught anyone anything about them unlike the Plains or every other mission, of course people won't play them if they don't know that they exist. If normal missions were that way the numbers would be far different. I'm starting to think you're actively dancing around the points I'm making.

Either way, you yourself said it, it's its own content cloud separated from the game, they're taking them away to work on them, it doesn't make any sense to do that though. It doesn't affect the majority of the players right? They haven't been bugfixing them as often because they're much stabler now right? That means that they're not that big a drain on resources now, that means that they can just focus on other things. So the only reason that remains is that they want to push the Plains even harder. With how accessible and fun RSB is making Raids the far more boring Eidolons wouldn't pull enough people, that's the play here, not a lack of resources or manpower. 

You say the numbers are scewed and then you go and make up numbers and ideas that simply dont add up. The chocking part is that the raids are as impopular as they are given the concurrent number of player across 3(!) platforms. You can only speculate regarding how much use they would see if there was no cap. But it is the nature of raids in pretty much any online game to have a cap, either daily or weekly. That to me tells me that they simply arent worth the effort to keep around.

As I said, this isnt something that is special regarding WF and raids, it is like that in several other games out there that try to introduce raids in an environment where it isnt really wanted, needed or fits in. Raid attendance will usually end up being extremely low in those cases unless the developer pulls off a unique idea behind it. The 3% attendance that has been seen regarding WF raids has been seen elsewhere too. WF is sadly on the extra low side of attendance since they havent been able to go beyond those 3% even with only daily lock outs. Other games with impopular raiding get/got those percentages of attendance even with weekly lock outs. That means that WF raids are very impopular.

There are few games I've seen that have managed to produce popular raids outside of the classic trinity format, honestly only one comes to mind, GW2. The game had the uniqueness of placing raid encounters in the open world. Granted, not all of them were interesting, but many actually filled the shoes very well, like Grenth.

[-dicht.ThanksFrost-]

5 minutes ago, Spectre-8 said:

Reddit , right lol .

idk I read it, did you?

 

[Monsterwithin]

Submitted, thank you for making the survey.

[SneakyErvin]

16 minutes ago, Sitchrea said:

Wow. I guess we can't say DE doesn't care about their players. I've never heard of a company working this close with their players before. Props to DE for this, and props to my fellow raiders for acting so civil. This is how we make good change happen!

Also, just submitted my survey. Hope it helps! :)

Before David Brevik left Gazillion they used to work close to the players, heck they even hired a whole bunch of people fromt he community. Then David "Cant-keep-my-hands-away" Von Dohrmann took over as CEO and everything went to hell. 

[PrivateRiem]

Static difficulty for challenging veterans will never work, because there are too many factors that involve whether or not a player will find the content challenging or not.

If you put challenge at a difficulty X, there will always be players that will struggle forever to do it, and others that will go through it as easily as a hot knife through butter.

 

The only way to have a meaningful challenge is adaptive / scaling difficulty. We need Warframe's version of Left 4 Dead's AI director. (A series of algorithms that would mix up the difficulty, music and enemy spawns based on squad positions in the map, and their performance.)

If for example, we had a system that would take into account squad kill-speed (Averaged, along with a few other stats like damage dealt and damage taken for example), and we ask the game to scale the difficulty quickly until the time-to-kill drops significantly, and then keep it there, we solve three issues. 

One: We no longer need to wait 60 minutes in a survival mission to have a challenge.

Two: Fix the problem of too few spawns in some missions (Defense) making the mission a snoozefest as you're constantly waiting for enemies to spawn.

Three: Difficulty would scale far more appropriately for any type of player, be it new or old, making endless missions or even regular missions far more interesting and challenging.

Of course, this scaling would only go upward, not downward, and would always increase like it does now, but simply at a much slower rate once the "up-hill-battle" point has been reached.

 

Unless this is done, Raids, trials, dark sectors or Eidolons will never be proper challenges.

[SSI_EVIDENCE]

Raid statistics and data, along with graphs: https://trials.wf/stats/

Summary and transcript of the meeting which concluded 3 hours ago: 

 

[Isis_ChanTM]

Is there any possibility of raid arcanes not being forced onto the plains? I'm not going to play there because my gammode was removed.

[HeroOfTheWarframe]

Am 12.2.2018 um 20:54 schrieb Shichibukai88:

You ppl realize they are gonna reworkr them and bring them back at some point right? So, you enjoy an easy grind mechanic that offers no real challenge with minimal rewards - that are just as RNG as everything else in WF?

They are not gone just rework them they will probably do the same with them like they did with dark sector. This means they will have little to nearly nothing simular to the old raids. (the old dark sector was pvp the new one is basicly survival). And do you mean with that easy that the trials are easy?! I didn't play JV untill now, but I was trying to learn it so I can play it before its gone. And It took me nearly 4 hours to understand it but I still doesn't feel ready to head this raid! This just shows how unique it is and that it is hard. You can't compare it to anything else in warfarme. (and because DE compared them with the new eidolons I will do it anyways) For example I and one friend nearly beat the new eidolons the first time and we only "failed" because I played chroma basicly the first time so I didn't deal enough damage. Other player at the ts beat them first try (with a 4 man group). So DE shouldn't compare them with raids and say that they are a replacement. Not in difficulty and definitively not in communication.

Am 12.2.2018 um 21:54 schrieb Shichibukai88:

I can somewhat understand that, but the community isnt going away. 

The community (at least a big part) will be gone when raids return(if they ever return). You may ask you now why I say this, its simple: I think 2 things will happen:

1. The "Head" of a clan that was primarly interested in raids will search another game and a big part of the clan will follow because they played a long time toghether and when theire friendes leave they leave.
2. Some people will just leave warframe because of that because their only motivation to log in neraly every day was to start a raid with their clan. If to many of a clan do this, because the clan was primarly focused on raids the clan could fall apart completely.

And of corse after this there will be many people who will still play warframe because they enjoy the gameplay or something like this but after a few month/years they will leave (because you normaly don't play a game forever). 

And now maybe 5% of the old community is still there when DE release the new "raids"(if we then can still call them this) month or years later (I think they will take arround 1-2 years to make new ones).

Of corse many of the old raiders will notice the new raids (but not all)  and will try them but if they are worse or too different from the old raids they will leave again. And those player will have a high anticipation of the new raids, so it will be hard for DE to please them. And many of them will have found other games and they may will not "leave" those games and they will not give warframe a new chance.

 

But I don't think DE will keep the raids as they are. So my suggestion: Let the 3 raids be online untill a major bug appears that break the mission. A few people here said that LoR doesn't make so much buggs but  I don't know if thats true (I could imagine because its less unique than JV). So fix LoR untill the new raids are out. This would prevent the raid community from falling appart completly. So there would be an actuall community to welcome the new raids. AND let a little team (may even >1 man|this means a few developers which doen't do it full time)  work on the new raids so they can show little progress every month to keep the raid community happy. 

And then there are these arcanes... 1. I think that it is a bad thing to add them to the eidolons because eidolons are so much more easy in general. Arcanes were never nessesary to beat warframes content ( like 99% of the stuff because mk1 braton is enough^^ but thats another topic), they wre just a nice to have a little something on top of your gear. But you(DE) probably will not change your mind about it, so the alternative would be to add something else to raids maybe one or two cosmetics with a very low drop chance on top of the arcanes, so you got a reason to run the raids. And nothing that improves your chances of sucess for missions will be locked behind the raids. This will still be enough to lure new player in the raid communitys so they don't "die" out.

And finally if you (DE) consider to not kill the raids completely as you said then make advertisement for the raids in game because they need some. 

 

[Kaotyke]

Good, good. One of the biggest issues we had with the Trials, that were not bugs, was the lack of explanation.

While I dont condone hand holding that that point, there are new mechanics added so suddenly, in a setting were we cant just stop to explore and poke around.

Should they add dumbed down versions of those in normal missions, players will re-encounter that and go "Wait, I've seen this before", and will just find out its a more complicated version of what they saw before, but the base will be there.

The second one was the Key thing, while making an organized team is good, it limits so many... "Must be MR 20+", "Have you done this before? No? GTFO!", those got to the point you guys had to make the Raid School Bus.

I hope those dont take years to come back.

[(PSN)Keiji_Haku]

This is a lose lose situation, just remove em. I don' mean to be harsh but I am looking at all the possibilities and this seems to me to be the most optimal. Some part of the community is going to get upset regardless of what is done.

Before i say anything, this is not going to "kill the game" as a lot seem to believe. Judging from DE's words it seems only a fraction plays Trials. I'm sorry that those people won't have the trials to run but you do not make up the majority of the player base. Their are tons of players that don't touch raids, of course this is what I deduce from the devstream and this thread.

 

Lets see, lets start with not removing the trials. Ridiculous prices stay the same and eventually quality of the only 2 trials degrades from the Devs inability to keep up with bugs. This also will take away from other projects and updates that will be coming. You guys get to keep your raids but other content will eventually suffer or raids will eventually suffer.

If weeee don't remove them and we put arcanes on the Eidolons as well heres what we get. People complaining that others are getting stuff too easily (like Arcane Energize).They complain enough and things get nerfed (the arcanes or Eidolons) and then one of the two suffers, we still lose players regardeless of what happens.

If we remove them and put arcanes on the Eidolons, people will complain about easy mode for awesome rewards. Alright well we still lose people and we still get nerfs.

 

 

There is one bright side for the 3rd option as opposed to the other 2. Since devs won't have to maintain the trials they'll be able to freely beef them up. Tinker with them. If you give them feed back about changes now it might be a good time.

 

I'm no expert on gaming culture but I do like to think of myself as intuitive when it comes to this stuff. I like to look at all sides. You can take or leave this lump of crapformation but I just thought Id share my 2 cents

 

[NightmareT12]

7 hours ago, Kaotyke said:

I hope those dont take years to come back.

I've never done many Trials myself, in fact I tried them out twice, and it wasn't particularly fun. But I can'0t stress enough the idea that DE needs to understand we need them to be working on those at least by year's end, because we need more content for those of us who are already at an advanced point in the game.