Making Conclave More Appealing

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

Conclave, as a game type, I would argue is the least played game type in Warframe right now (especially Lunaro). Its a serious issue when out of as many as roughly 56,315 active players (according to SteamCharts as of the time of righting this post), you regularly encounter the same double digit number of individuals every time you enter a match. For the sake of argument, lets estimate that around 50 people actively play Conclave (based on my personal experience of trying to find matches in the North American region). This would mean that, based on the numbers provided earlier, that less than 1% of the active playerbase of Warframe play Conclave in general. You can see this unfold as well when trying to find a match in any of the game modes other than Annihilation. As previously stated, once in a blue moon you may encounter Lunaro players but dont count on it. Even with Annihilation there are times where its flat out dead without a single lobby to be found.

I think there are a number of reasons for this.

Warframe is a PVE game primarily and Conclave does not appeal to the majority. Normally this would be fine and expected, but Conclave has such a small active player base compared to the main game that there is a clear disconnect between Conclave players and PVE players. This creates problems with people trying to get into Conclave, especially long time players of the main game. Conclave players have a reason to play PVE content (aka to get new weapons and frames to be used in Conclave) whereas PVE players dont have a reason to play Conclave. Conclave feels too disconnected from the rest of the game. I do realize however that its difficult to make the two types of play overlap without these methods coming off as forced.

This leads to a number of smaller, connected issues as a result. The majority of the relatively small number of people that currently play Conclave are already quite good at the varying game modes. Because Conclave is focused on skill, the entire point is to improve ones skills. However, this proves to be very difficult when the majority of the time you are playing Conclave, you are running into seasoned veterans of the game mode that curb stomp you into next week. This makes it very frustrating and very difficult for new comers to Conclave to improve, resulting in the prevention of Conclave's community growing due to newcomers getting frustrated with the difficulty.

This ties into another problem. Whenever you ARE able to find a match in Conclave, matchmaking isn't very good. You are matched with people that are in the same level of the Conclave syndicate as you rather than matching you based on your performance or what have you. This is especially true at Typhoon rank, where the pool of Conclave players becomes even further diluted than before.The Conclave syndicate has no bearing on one's skill and a new matchmaking system is in order. Its merely a representation about time spent in the mode. In my case, until recently, I got to Typhoon rank by using x4 Affinity weekends. Obviously that doesn't make me skilled.

Another problem with Conclave, or rather the community that does exist around it, is toxicity. Considering this is a PVP game mode this isn't too surprising, but the toxicity in Conclave is directly detrimental to its growth. More experienced players often ridicule and troll less skilled players, causing these newer/less PVP experienced players to be further pushed away from the game mode when stacked with other issues. Speaking from experience, it isn't fun encountering the same people repeatedly when trying to get your daily standing in as they insult you and your playstyle/lack of experience. This isn't LoL guys. And for the record, this complaint isn't to whine about people having less than favorable attitudes online towards me specifically, but in the general sense that it harms the possibility of Conclave getting more active players to lessen these existing problems.

There are various other things I think are issues as well with the gameplay itself of Conclave. For example, none of the Conclave game modes provide a fruitful amount of standing other than Annihilation, which contributes to the issue of having a lack of players in Conclave as a whole. If anyone is playing, it will be in Annihilation and I blame this on the poor Affinity gain of the other modes. There are also issues of getting stuck on surfaces when trying to vault over an edge of a platform or wall, where rather than pulling yourself up you end up stuck in the wall jump animation. I also think making Conclave more appealing to PVE players with a larger variety of rewards would be nice. Some of the mods exclusive to Conclave would be nice in PVE.

Final thing of note is as follows: For the Conclave players reading this, whether you agree with my points or not, the point is that in order to see more attention given to Conclave by the developers, it first needs to get more attention from other players. I don't hate Conclave, in fact I love the idea of PVP in Warframe, but it needs to grow as both a game mode and a community. I think we can all agree on that.

Reminder that DE are in talks of temporarily removing Trials from the game due to lack of a playerbase and they removed Dark Sectors long ago. The same could very well happen to Conclave if things don't change for the better.

Edited February 10, 2018 by DawnoftheWhiteFury

[Heckzu]

Please avoid posting long rants on the forums. Despite the post title being "Making Conclave More Appealing," you do not directly offer any suggestions in your post as to how to make Conclave more appealing. 

 

Matchmaking is a Catch-22: DE can't match players by skill because there aren't enough players, and one of the main reasons there aren't enough players is because there's no skill based matchmaking. In order to implement skill based matchmaking, DE would have to take a huge gamble in trying to incentivize the majority of players to play Conclave.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

Its played by a small percentage of the userbase and PvP doesn't appear to be the direction the devs want the game to go... Hmmm where have I heard that before?

Next on the chopping block is my bet before a conclave rework.

 

[Kayll]

2 hours ago, Heckzu said:

Matchmaking is a Catch-22: DE can't match players by skill because there aren't enough players, and one of the main reasons there aren't enough players is because there's no skill based matchmaking. In order to implement skill based matchmaking, DE would have to take a huge gamble in trying to incentivize the majority of players to play Conclave.

Pretty much.
I can already imagine PvE only players flipping their lid if something nice was introduced into Conclave only, sometimes I feel like better results would be had if DE just put their foot down.

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

15 hours ago, Heckzu said:

Please avoid posting long rants on the forums. Despite the post title being "Making Conclave More Appealing," you do not directly offer any suggestions in your post as to how to make Conclave more appealing.

This isn't a rant. I suggested rebalancing Conclave syndicate/Affinity gains from the other game modes outside of Annihilation to make them worth playing from a farming perspective (considering thats a core aspect of the main game) because the other game modes are almost consistently dead, providing more worthwhile rewards for PvE players including making more of the Conclave mods usable in PvE to attempt to provide more incentive without making it come off as forced, and more. I know its a long post but please read the actual post before calling it a rant and dismissing it. It's lengthy for a reason.
 

As for the "taking a huge gamble" argument, considering Warframe in of itself was a huge gamble from the beginning, perhaps that is in order.

Edited February 10, 2018 by DawnoftheWhiteFury

[Stormdragon]

17 hours ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Conclave, as a game type, I would argue is the least played game type in Warframe right now (especially Lunaro). Its a serious issue when out of as many as roughly 56,315 active players (according to SteamCharts as of the time of righting this post), you regularly encounter the same double digit number of individuals every time you enter a match.

Believe it or not, timezones are a thing, so if you keep playing at the same time of the day, chances are you'll most likely going to keep finding the same people.

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For the sake of argument, lets estimate that around 50 people actively play Conclave (based on my personal experience of trying to find matches in the North American region).

"Personal experience" = confirmation bias. It's just like of I said that actually everyone enjoys pvp using my friend list as a proof. You're also clearly recognizing that it comes only to 1/6 of the available regions to play. You also conveniently say nothing about the 2 matchmaking options (RC On/Off) splitting the community even further, and that many players refuse to leave RC simply because they fear the players out of it and prefer to bully the newbies.

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This would mean that, based on the numbers provided earlier, that less than 1% of the active playerbase of Warframe play Conclave in general. You can see this unfold as well when trying to find a match in any of the game modes other than Annihilation. As previously stated, once in a blue moon you may encounter Lunaro players but dont count on it. Even with Annihilation there are times where its flat out dead without a single lobby to be found.

You fail to address that there's no way to tell how many matches are running without a spot available in them being the reason why you're being put in an empty lobby. I personally play TDM more often than annihilation and rarely have ever had big issues finding matches for it.

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I think there are a number of reasons for this.

Warframe is a PVE game primarily and Conclave does not appeal to the majority.

Warframe is a PvE game where people progress is measured in numbers, not skill. A big part of the warframe community, as you can see on many other posts, is all about having infinite power, being able to kill entire hordes lf enemies with the smallest effort possible. Put anything that threatens that power fantasy and it's immediately hated, have you ever asked yourself why are Combas, Scrambus, Nullifier units, Energy Leeches, etc. so hated? The same applies to conclave since players are put on even grounds, the power fantasy is ditched in order to create balance in the power of different players and make it more enjoyable for everyone (I'm sure that most players would love having the ability to, for example, petrify another player for over 10 seconds to kill them easily, but would straight up hate being the petrified player) making a mixture of mechanical skills and knowledge of the game mechanics the main way to overcome your enemy. 

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Normally this would be fine and expected, but Conclave has such a small active player base compared to the main game that there is a clear disconnect between Conclave players and PVE players. This creates problems with people trying to get into Conclave, especially long time players of the main game. Conclave players have a reason to play PVE content (aka to get new weapons and frames to be used in Conclave) whereas PVE players dont have a reason to play Conclave. Conclave feels too disconnected from the rest of the game. I do realize however that its difficult to make the two types of play overlap without these methods coming off as forced.

And believe it or not, there's many pvp players who see pve as a mind numbing activity and would love having a way to get frames and weapons without it or straight up buy the gear with platinum (or money in the case of Primed gear). This also a reason why most of the players who come to warframe willing to focus on its pvp scene are being pushed away shortly after realizing that the progress possible without doing PvE is really limited, becoming an issue for both, old mainly pve players and new pvp focused players alike.

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This leads to a number of smaller, connected issues as a result. The majority of the relatively small number of people that currently play Conclave are already quite good at the varying game modes. Because Conclave is focused on skill, the entire point is to improve ones skills. However, this proves to be very difficult when the majority of the time you are playing Conclave, you are running into seasoned veterans of the game mode that curb stomp you into next week.This makes it very frustrating and very difficult for new comers to Conclave to improve, resulting in the prevention of Conclave's community growing due to newcomers getting frustrated with the difficulty.

Tbh, this part shows an issue with the mentality of a big part of the community. As someone who has been doing sports such as rugby and basketball for over 12 years, facing better teams or players and being defeated by them teaches way more than winning matches against other less skilled ones. Being defeated should make people set goals to themselves, work to reach them, only then victory becomes a true joy and shows that you're doing things the right way; whereas always being the winner show that yo're doing fine, but removes that window for self improvement until someone else finally beats you.

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This ties into another problem. Whenever you ARE able to find a match in Conclave, matchmaking isn't very good. You are matched with people that are in the same level of the Conclave syndicate as you rather than matching you based on your performance or what have you. This is especially true at Typhoon rank, where the pool of Conclave players becomes even further diluted than before.The Conclave syndicate has no bearing on one's skill and a new matchmaking system is in order. Its merely a representation about time spent in the mode. In my case, until recently, I got to Typhoon rank by using x4 Affinity weekends. Obviously that doesn't make me skilled.

There's no actual matchmaking other than "players in the same region, queued for the same mode, same RC status... put them together!" The only "skill based" separation is RC On/Off, which doesn't even work as an actual measure of skill since there's no forced graduation out of it and can be disabled by players even before their first match. 

You also raise a good point here since the main reason why people exploits the matchmaking to cheese daily and weekly tasks without ever actually playing pvp or get toxic when they start asking others to let themselves be killed (instead of putting effort on doing it themselves) is because many pve players see conclave as "just another syndicate to grind for rewards" (aka "player mentality" once again). Explaining why a match/server browser is the next logic step to follow in order to improve the conclave experience.

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Another problem with Conclave, or rather the community that does exist around it, is toxicity. Considering this is a PVP game mode this isn't too surprising, but the toxicity in Conclave is directly detrimental to its growth. More experienced players often ridicule and troll less skilled players, causing these newer/less PVP experienced players to be further pushed away from the game mode when stacked with other issues. Speaking from experience, it isn't fun encountering the same people repeatedly when trying to get your daily standing in as they insult you and your playstyle/lack of experience. This isn't LoL guys. And for the record, this complaint isn't to whine about people having less than favorable attitudes online towards me specifically, but in the general sense that it harms the possibility of Conclave getting more active players to lessen these existing problems.

The main sources of toxicity I've found while playing are :

- PvE players self entitled to get some kills and the challenges done just for being there without putting any actual effort in the game.

- Players exploiting bugged or imbalanced gear being defeated anyways by skilled players.

- Players being defeated by others in general.

And there's a lot of players who jump in a match and play silently despite the outcome of the match.

On the other hand, I usually see skilled and experienced players getting out of their way mid match to give advice to those struggling in the match or asking for it. Saying that pvp is toxic is nothing but a blanket statement. 

We also have tools to ignore and get rid of toxic people, i know of some cases of extremely toxic players who have been permanently banned from the in game chat because of their attitude.

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There are various other things I think are issues as well with the gameplay itself of Conclave. For example, none of the Conclave game modes provide a fruitful amount of standing other than Annihilation, which contributes to the issue of having a lack of players in Conclave as a whole. If anyone is playing, it will be in Annihilation and I blame this on the poor Affinity gain of the other modes.

The affinity gain is directly affected by your involvment and performance in the match (more kills/cephalon caps/oro denied to the other team = more standing). Fun enough, the reason why the end of match standing gain was cut is the same farming mentality of pve players, many of them would jump into a match only to hide in a corner or find ways to bypass the afk detection and leave with a decent affinity gain, which was too much to be obtained by not even playing.

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There are also issues of getting stuck on surfaces when trying to vault over an edge of a platform or wall, where rather than pulling yourself up you end up stuck in the wall jump animation.

Totally agree with this, I would also like to add that foliage on the earth map should be nerfed since there's many players who struggle with it. Some things look neat but can be detrimental to the player experience.

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I also think making Conclave more appealing to PVE players with a larger variety of rewards would be nice. Some of the mods exclusive to Conclave would be nice in PVE.

I'm a big supporter of this idea, I'd love being able to use "rumbled" in pve to make atlas' 4 have some interactivity; or mods like skull shots and brainstorm to increase ammo economu of vipers and grakatas, for example.

Quote

Final thing of note is as follows: For the Conclave players reading this, whether you agree with my points or not, the point is that in order to see more attention given to Conclave by the developers, it first needs to get more attention from other players. I don't hate Conclave, in fact I love the idea of PVP in Warframe, but it needs to grow as both a game mode and a community. I think we can all agree on that.

Tbh, conclave has a lot of potential tied to a unique gameplay, reason why I'd love to see it at least not getting undeserved hate from the biggest part of the community that could simply choose to ignore it if they want to. I guess that's asking too much for some members of the warframe community.

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Reminder that DE are in talks of temporarily removing Trials from the game due to lack of a playerbase and they removed Dark Sectors long ago. The same could very well happen to Conclave if things don't change for the better.

The reason why trials are being temporarily removed is that the effort required to fix them and keep them like that is too much when compared to the people playing them, not just their popularity.

14 hours ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

Its played by a small percentage of the userbase and PvP doesn't appear to be the direction the devs want the game to go... Hmmm where have I heard that before?

Next on the chopping block is my bet before a conclave rework.

This is a feedback thread in a feedback subforum, so if you're willing to troll please move somewhere else.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Stormdragon

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

Believe it or not, timezones are a thing, so if you keep playing at the same time of the day, chances are you'll most likely going to keep finding the same people.

I have been playing at varying times of the day. I didn't bring up timezones for this reason. I play when I can to get my daily standing, whether it be morning, noon, or night. And consistently I run into the same players repeatedly regardless of this.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

"Personal experience" = confirmation bias. It's just like of I said that actually everyone enjoys pvp using my friend list as a proof. You're also clearly recognizing that it comes only to 1/6 of the available regions to play. You also conveniently say nothing about the 2 matchmaking options (RC On/Off) splitting the community even further, and that many players refuse to leave RC simply because they fear the players out of it and prefer to bully the newbies.

Then what other proof can be used other than direct numbers from DE themselves? Simply saying "biased" in response to my point doesn't derail it. Until we get more accurate data, personal experience is all we have to go off of. Your comparison is an inaccurate one, as you would be using your personal friends list as the basis where I am using public matches. The entire point of this post is using my personal experience as a basis as I have no concrete evidence such as statistics from DE. My experience could very well differ from others. And I pointed out that this is based on my experience over the last few weeks in yes one region, because obviously I have no way of knowing what the other regions are like without playing with them. I did however forget about the RC option however you are correct about that.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

You fail to address that there's no way to tell how many matches are running without a spot available in them being the reason why you're being put in an empty lobby. I personally play TDM more often than annihilation and rarely have ever had big issues finding matches for it.

This is a good point as well, however again based on my experience, I have quite a bit of difficulty finding a game match in any mode aside from Annihilation. This is especially true for Lunaro. This does bring up a good question as to why, unlike the main game, Conclave doesn't show a "number of active squads" or something in the varying game modes to give an idea of how active it is. That certainly would help with this topic.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

Warframe is a PvE game where people progress is measured in numbers, not skill. A big part of the warframe community, as you can see on many other posts, is all about having infinite power, being able to kill entire hordes lf enemies with the smallest effort possible. Put anything that threatens that power fantasy and it's immediately hated, have you ever asked yourself why are Combas, Scrambus, Nullifier units, Energy Leeches, etc. so hated? The same applies to conclave since players are put on even grounds, the power fantasy is ditched in order to create balance in the power of different players and make it more enjoyable for everyone (I'm sure that most players would love having the ability to, for example, petrify another player for over 10 seconds to kill them easily, but would straight up hate being the petrified player) making a mixture of mechanical skills and knowledge of the game mechanics the main way to overcome your enemy. 

I'm aware of this and address it in the OP. Conclave is highly skill oriented compared to the main game. There is nothing wrong with this of course, however the issue once again is the disconnection between PvE and PvP. I think what would help with this is a "Conclave" Training section in the codex or something to outline the differences between the game modes such as stats, Warframe mechanics, etc. I'm not saying it needs to appeal to everyone, but rather that it simply needs to be more appealing in general to the main audience somehow without being forced. The community has a problem with considering anything DE tries to do with Conclave in PvE as "forced."

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

And believe it or not, there's many pvp players who see pve as a mind numbing activity and would love having a way to get frames and weapons without it or straight up buy the gear with platinum (or money in the case of Primed gear). This also a reason why most of the players who come to warframe willing to focus on its pvp scene are being pushed away shortly after realizing that the progress possible without doing PvE is really limited, becoming an issue for both, old mainly pve players and new pvp focused players alike.

I agree with this honestly. I think Conclave players should have more access to PvE content without being forced through the grind. What I really like is how people in Conclave can outright buy Mag, Excalibur, and Volt with Conclave syndicate standing. I think this idea should be expanded upon more to include more Warframes and weapons as well. This could also create an incentive for PvE players to play Conclave as well. Don't like the grind for Harrow, Octavia, Nidus, what have you? Include them or their parts in Conclave. Something like that.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

Tbh, this part shows an issue with the mentality of a big part of the community. As someone who has been doing sports such as rugby and basketball for over 12 years, facing better teams or players and being defeated by them teaches way more than winning matches against other less skilled ones. Being defeated should make people set goals to themselves, work to reach them, only then victory becomes a true joy and shows that you're doing things the right way; whereas always being the winner show that yo're doing fine, but removes that window for self improvement until someone else finally beats you.

The point I was trying to make here isn't that people need to win more to improve. More that its much more of a learning experience to be able to stay alive long enough to learn enemy tactics and such rather than getting blown out of the water within seconds of spawning, which tends to happen when veteran Conclave players join a match consisting of more casual players. Theoretically it SHOULD be a learning experience, but rather than learning its more likely someone will get angry and quit when they don't stand a chance. If they actually stand a chance, even if they lose, they are more likely to learn and less likely to get angry.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

There's no actual matchmaking other than "players in the same region, queued for the same mode, same RC status... put them together!" The only "skill based" separation is RC On/Off, which doesn't even work as an actual measure of skill since there's no forced graduation out of it and can be disabled by players even before their first match. 

I'm aware. Again, I did forget about the RC option, but my suggestion is to add a better matchmaking system to replace the current one. Taking Kill to Death ratio into account for example. Adding more skill based categories to the matchmaking system I think would be beneficial. As another person here explained though, this is difficult to do with so few people playing.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

You also raise a good point here since the main reason why people exploits the matchmaking to cheese daily and weekly tasks without ever actually playing pvp or get toxic when they start asking others to let themselves be killed (instead of putting effort on doing it themselves) is because many pve players see conclave as "just another syndicate to grind for rewards" (aka "player mentality" once again). Explaining why a match/server browser is the next logic step to follow in order to improve the conclave experience.

The main sources of toxicity I've found while playing are :

- PvE players self entitled to get some kills and the challenges done just for being there without putting any actual effort in the game.

- Players exploiting bugged or imbalanced gear being defeated anyways by skilled players.

- Players being defeated by others in general.

And there's a lot of players who jump in a match and play silently despite the outcome of the match.

On the other hand, I usually see skilled and experienced players getting out of their way mid match to give advice to those struggling in the match or asking for it. Saying that pvp is toxic is nothing but a blanket statement. 

We also have tools to ignore and get rid of toxic people, i know of some cases of extremely toxic players who have been permanently banned from the in game chat because of their attitude.

Nowhere did I say PVP in general is a toxic experience. I said that toxicity in a PVP environment is to be expected, but that toxicity in Conclave directly harms its ability to grow as a game mode by pushing away players trying to get into it. The toxicity I see often are as follows:

- Skilled players insulting less experienced players based on their loadouts (especially if these players use powers rather than strictly relying on weapons) and calling these loadouts as "illegal."

- Toxicity towards players of higher MR not performing well in Conclave (when MR has no bearing on skill and neither does the Conclave syndicate)

As well as general toxicity as you described such as players being defeated in general, cheap tactics and rage that results, etc. I've never seen advice given during a match. Also Warframe's report system when it comes to toxic players is a whole other monster of a topic, but in short I think its a very poor system that is outdated and needs work as well.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

The affinity gain is directly affected by your involvment and performance in the match (more kills/cephalon caps/oro denied to the other team = more standing). Fun enough, the reason why the end of match standing gain was cut is the same farming mentality of pve players, many of them would jump into a match only to hide in a corner or find ways to bypass the afk detection and leave with a decent affinity gain, which was too much to be obtained by not even playing.

I'm aware that involvement is key, but again you get significantly more standing per match of Annihilation than you do in TA, Cephalon Capture, Lunaro, etc. regardless of level of involvement. I'm merely suggesting increasing the Affinity gain of the other modes to increase their popularity because as previously stated, the other modes aren't as popular and I have significant difficulty trying to find matches in them. I once again must bring up how dead Lunaro unfortunately is.

This also brings up a point I forgot to address in the OP, and thats how the Conclave syndicate standing seems to be restricted to public play only. Which is something I highly disagree with. The argument could be made that the reason is to prevent people from abusing weekly challenges and the like, but people already do this. It simply makes the task of doing so slightly more difficult. I would enjoy Conclave significantly more if I was able to play with my clan mates/friends while gaining standing in the process. It would be far less likely to cause rage and toxicity as well. Maybe lessening the amount of Conclave gained in non public matches by 25% would be a good trade off.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

Totally agree with this, I would also like to add that foliage on the earth map should be nerfed since there's many players who struggle with it. Some things look neat but can be detrimental to the player experience.

Oh lord yes. The Earth tileset really causes issues on lower end systems compared to the other Conclave maps and I think the detail needs to be toned down or optimized better to help prevent this.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

I'm a big supporter of this idea, I'd love being able to use "rumbled" in pve to make atlas' 4 have some interactivity; or mods like skull shots and brainstorm to increase ammo economu of vipers and grakatas, for example.

DE pls make Rumbled a PvE augment. Titanic Rumbler sucks.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

Tbh, conclave has a lot of potential tied to a unique gameplay, reason why I'd love to see it at least not getting undeserved hate from the biggest part of the community that could simply choose to ignore it if they want to. I guess that's asking too much for some members of the warframe community.

I think Conclave has a lot of potential to grow and improve with unique gameplay aspects to be more appealing to a general audience. And I think Conclave hatred is undeserved as well. There is certainly an issue with a mindset of entitlement. I want to see Conclave improve because I love Warframe, and Conclave being a part of it deserves more attention.

1 hour ago, Stormdragon said:

The reason why trials are being temporarily removed is that the effort required to fix them and keep them like that is too much when compared to the people playing them, not just their popularity.

I'm aware, I'm just saying popularity was a big reason. Lord knows Conclave could use some fixing and improvements. It would be nice to hear from DE as to how they feel about the current state of Conclave honestly.

Thank you for the discussion! This is exactly what I was looking for. :)

Edited February 10, 2018 by DawnoftheWhiteFury

[ArchPhaeton]

@DawnoftheWhiteFury I can tell you this feedback, with minimal differences, has been posted since the very beginning of Conclave, and a good chunk of it remains true.

@Stormdragon So, you and 10 more people are good sports. That doesn't add up against the vast majority of negative experiences conclave may involve. Sure, losing now and then teaches you, but you don't learn anything getting perma stomped every time you try it out.

Conclave was, from day one, more of a fanservice - cod/pvp minded players cried it til DE implemented, but this being so divorced from the essence of the game (Being a futuristic organic cyber warrior with crazy power that obliterates hordes of bad guys?) it's difficult to see conclave becoming a mainstream/popular thing, and imo there's no real reason for it to be. If anyone comes to WF solely for pvp, they are terribly misdirected.

[Stormdragon]

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

I have been playing at varying times of the day. I didn't bring up timezones for this reason. I play when I can to get my daily standing, whether it be morning, noon, or night. And consistently I run into the same players repeatedly regardless of this.

I get you, and the main reason why may not see a huge rotation in players because some people doesn't care about the rewards and refuse to leave RC, or care only about the rewards and are playing in their own farming lobbies to remove the pvp aspect of conclave to get its rewards and leave.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Then what other proof can be used other than direct numbers from DE themselves? Simply saying "biased" in response to my point doesn't derail it. Until we get more accurate data, personal experience is all we have to go off of. Your comparison is an inaccurate one, as you would be using your personal friends list as the basis where I am using public matches. The entire point of this post is using my personal experience as a basis as I have no concrete evidence such as statistics from DE. My experience could very well differ from others. And I pointed out that this is based on my experience over the last few weeks in yes one region, because obviously I have no way of knowing what the other regions are like without playing with them.

Exactly, the only reason why i brought up my friends list is because everyone's personal experience is nothing but biased data. I could post a pic of it claiming "everyone is playing conclave", which could be true for that pic, while someone else could come and say "no one is playing it" with a picture of them sitting in an empty lobby.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

This is a good point as well, however again based on my experience, I have quite a bit of difficulty finding a game match in any mode aside from Annihilation. This is especially true for Lunaro. This does bring up a good question as to why, unlike the main game, Conclave doesn't show a "number of active squads" or something in the varying game modes to give an idea of how active it is. That certainly would help with this topic.

I think the reason comes mostly to it not being part of the starchart like it was back when conclave 1.0 was around while also being tied to the inability of seeing how many players are on each lobby and choose which one to join. 

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

I'm aware of this and address it in the OP. Conclave is highly skill oriented compared to the main game. There is nothing wrong with this of course, however the issue once again is the disconnection between PvE and PvP. I think what would help with this is a "Conclave" Training section in the codex or something to outline the differences between the game modes such as stats, Warframe mechanics, etc. I'm not saying it needs to appeal to everyone, but rather that it simply needs to be more appealing in general to the main audience somehow without being forced.

There's a lot of additions that could be done, however investing resources in things like a training ground is a risk given that pve doesn't require accuracy (even tough it helps a lot) and we can agree that a big part of the community doesn't care about anything that doesn't involve pve rewards nor about improving their mechanical skills. Would it be beneficial? Sure! But it would probably barely be used since people who cares tries to find out our ownways to practice and improve our skills even out of pvp matches.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

The community has a problem with considering anything DE tries to do with Conclave in PvE as "forced."

Yep, as pointed before, an issue with player mentality, not a flaw of the game mode. 

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

I agree with this honestly. I think Conclave players should have more access to PvE content without being forced through the grind. What I really like is how people in Conclave can outright buy Mag, Excalibur, and Volt with Conclave syndicate standing. I think this idea should be expanded upon more to include more Warframes and weapons as well. This could also create an incentive for PvE players to play Conclave as well. Don't like the grind for Harrow, Octavia, Nidus, what have you? Include them or their parts in Conclave. Something like that.

I support ideas like these, my only grief with them is how easily can the matchmaking be used to bypass the pvp part of the game to get its rewards. If something it would most likely end with more people playing public matches in dead zones instead of actually making the community grow.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

The point I was trying to make here isn't that people need to win more to improve. More that its much more of a learning experience to be able to stay alive long enough to learn enemy tactics and such rather than getting blown out of the water within seconds of spawning, which tends to happen when veteran Conclave players join a match consisting of more casual players. Theoretically it SHOULD be a learning experience, but rather than learning its more likely someone will get angry and quit when they don't stand a chance. If they actually stand a chance, even if they lose, they are more likely to learn and less likely to get angry.

That's the reason why RC was implemented, it's not an optimal solution, it has it's own flaws, but the intent is there despite it being a failure.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

I'm aware. Again, I did forget about the RC option, but my suggestion is to add a better matchmaking system to replace the current one. Taking Kill to Death ratio into account for example. Adding more skill based categories to the matchmaking system I think would be beneficial. As another person here explained though, this is difficult to do with so few people playing.

K/D ratio is just a meaningless number that unlike popular belief, it doesn't measure skill since there are plenty of ways to artificially make it grow.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Nowhere did I say PVP in general is a toxic experience. I said that toxicity in a PVP environment is to be expected, but that toxicity in Conclave directly harms its ability to grow as a game mode by pushing away players trying to get into it. The toxicity I see often are as follows:

- Skilled players insulting less experienced players based on their loadouts (especially if these players use powers rather than strictly relying on weapons) and calling these loadouts as "illegal."

- Toxicity towards players of higher MR not performing well in Conclave (when MR has no bearing on skill and neither does the Conclave syndicate)

As well as general toxicity as you described such as players being defeated in general, cheap tactics and rage that results, etc. I've never seen advice given during a match. Also Warframe's report system when it comes to toxic players is a whole other monster of a topic, but in short I think its a very poor system that is outdated and needs work as well.

I'm yet to see good players trashing someone for struggling in a match, but I won't deny that it's still possible. However, toxic people will behave like that anywhere, no matter if it's in PvE, PvP or even in solo games. Add there that we can always mute toxic players from chat (even if the report function in game seems to do nothing, you can still take some screenshots and make a report through support if you think that someone is going too far) and every player can avoid the need to deal with toxicity.

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

I'm aware that involvement is key, but again you get significantly more standing per match of Annihilation than you do in TA, Cephalon Capture, Lunaro, etc. regardless of level of involvement. I'm merely suggesting increasing the Affinity gain of the other modes to increase their popularity because as previously stated, the other modes aren't as popular and I have significant difficulty trying to find matches in them.

I'm not sure about it since, based on what i know, many of the conclave players seem to avoid CTC because of how broken can some abilities be in an environment with static objectives. Lunaro can be fun, but is avoided for different reasons such as how annoying it is to play a sport game with a single ball that interacts with up to 6 players at the same time in a setup where client side event registration is the rule (i personally hated to pick up the lunaro, seeing my reticle to reflect that i got it, start moving towards the enemy goal only to see my reticle change back half a second later and see the lunaro in control of someone else; being knocked down by the lunaro right after checking it didn't help much). Can't talk about TDM since I actually like it

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

This also brings up a point I forgot to address in the OP, and thats how the Conclave syndicate standing seems to be restricted to public play only. Which is something I highly disagree with. The argument could be made that the reason is to prevent people from abusing weekly challenges and the like, but people already do this. It simply makes the task of doing so slightly more difficult. I would enjoy Conclave significantly more if I was able to play with my clan mates/friends while gaining standing in the process. It would be far less likely to cause rage and toxicity as well. Maybe lessening the amount of Conclave gained in non public matches by 25% would be a good trade off.

People getting affinity and farming for rewards in private lobbies is exactly why standing gain was removed from them, when the community is small, you can't afford to have such choices if you're willing to make it grow. People just moved to a different way to achieve the same, and even when DE has sent warnings to those doing it, players still prefer risking their accounts (and crying if they lose it as if it was DE's fault) instead of at least give the mode a try

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Oh lord yes. The Earth tileset really causes issues on lower end systems compared to the other Conclave maps and I think the detail needs to be toned down or optimized better to help prevent this.

DE pls make Rumbled a PvE augment. Titanic Rumbler sucks.

I think Conclave has a lot of potential to grow and improve with unique gameplay aspects to be more appealing to a general audience. And I think Conclave hatred is undeserved as well. There is certainly an issue with a mindset of entitlement. I want to see Conclave improve because I love Warframe, and Conclave being a part of it deserves more attention.

I'm aware, I'm just saying popularity was a big reason. Lord knows Conclave could use some fixing and improvements. It would be nice to hear from DE as to how they feel about the current state of Conclave honestly.

Glad to know we agree on these things. 

54 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Thank you for the discussion! This is exactly what I was looking for. :)

It's always nice to have a civil discussion about improving conclave that doesn't try to remove warframe core mechanics from it. Thank you!

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

1 hour ago, ArchPhaeton said:

@Stormdragon So, you and 10 more people are good sports. That doesn't add up against the vast majority of negative experiences conclave may involve. Sure, losing now and then teaches you, but you don't learn anything getting perma stomped every time you try it out.

I'm not even close to the top players, I'm still learning, I have good days where i do amazing even against those players who are better than me, just like there are others where i couldn't shoot back at a grineer even if I wanted to. The state of mind of a player affects performance a lot, so it's finally up to each one of us to choose between turning our losses into learning experiences or into something that discourages us from going on. I personally started before RC was a thing and fought against players like Seiguro, Pythadragon, Phasedragon, Witchydragon, Azarakidragon, -Livjatan, Squidd, Sky, SevenLetterKWord, Sneazle, etc. from my very first match despite it being the first online pvp game where i decide to stay and learn just because I liked it (everything elde was just friends, and i didn't do any good there either) and as you may imagine i got my butt handed to me over and over again, and still get it like that sometimes, yet here I am still playing after getting all of the possible rewards from Teshin just because i don't care if i win or lose, i enjoy fighting skilled players who adapt to my play style while trying to figure out what fits me best when trying to counter them, and have fun doing it even if still dying over and over again.

[.Zel]

1 hour ago, ArchPhaeton said:

Stormdragon So, you and 10 more people are good sports. That doesn't add up against the vast majority of negative experiences conclave may involve. Sure, losing now and then teaches you, but you don't learn anything getting perma stomped every time you try it out.

Conclave was, from day one, more of a fanservice - cod/pvp minded players cried it til DE implemented, but this being so divorced from the essence of the game (Being a futuristic organic cyber warrior with crazy power that obliterates hordes of bad guys?) it's difficult to see conclave becoming a mainstream/popular thing, and imo there's no real reason for it to be. If anyone comes to WF solely for pvp, they are terribly misdirected.

it doesn't take more than 4-5 months to get decent, it only requires effort. Conclave is way easier than most other PvP games. My first PvP Shooter was conclave, as you said, i too got stomped hard, used to get 3 kills and die 22 times, only took around 4 months for it to flip. If you're in it for the rewards only, then you can que up with friends and play for fun while getting rep. If you want to get a lot of kills, it will take effort and depending whether you have experience with other shooters or not it won't take much. 

I've seen people from other pvp titles come to wf just for conclave, barely after 2-3 weeks of play they start getting a lot of kills. It's not hard, it's not broken, it doesn't greatly lack balance, it's only viewed in a negative perspective.

[ArchPhaeton]

41 minutes ago, .Zel said:

it doesn't take more than 4-5 months to get decent, it only requires effort.

Thing is, we play games for fun, not to demonstrate anything, neither to others or ourselves. Most of us have no reason to submit ourselves to months of stomping just to start getting a chance of winning. Again, your statement confirms conclave being a niche thing mostly for extremely pvp-oriented individuals, even if it's not as bad as we perceive it.

And considering how hard people flipped over the heart noggle, it seems rather difficult to implement more conclave-only rewards.

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

@Stormdragon Wait, people get warnings on their account for something as minor as that? Thats... rather ridiculous.

[.Zel]

1 hour ago, ArchPhaeton said:

for extremely pvp-oriented individuals

That is true.

1 hour ago, ArchPhaeton said:

we play games for fun, not to demonstrate anything

I get that, it's easier to do so in other pvp games due to a proper mm and conclave lacks that.

1 hour ago, ArchPhaeton said:

And considering how hard people flipped over the heart noggle, it seems rather difficult to implement more conclave-only rewards.

That is the sad truth, altho it would be refreshing for regular conclavers to get new content to change things up, the wf community as a whole isn't fond of it and honestly i don't think anyone who likes conclave minds much since DE doesn't try that much to advertise conclave. It's sort of good as is, nothing great but nothing bad either.

Honestly the best solution would be to separate the game mode as its own, it would receive more exposure and it can have its own events/challenges for the pvp-oriented individuals without bothering the average warframe player or making them feel forced to do something they dislike. Plus it won't have to rely on PvE updates till it can ship its own patches and not have issues due to major pve changes.(rn certain weapons are broke in conclave due to the latest pve update)

[Stormdragon]

3 minutes ago, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

@Stormdragon Wait, people get warnings on their account for something as minor as that? Thats... rather ridiculous.

Yes, it happens (pic from reddit).

While some players may normalize this behavior, either because they dont care or are doing it; some other players feel it like a way of harassment, specially when those doing it start teaming up trying to make them quit (which is what usually happens) and the player on the receiving end is still learning and can't defend himself yet. This attitude is game disrupting and counterproductive for a healthy growth of the conclave community and hence should not be condoned. 

[DawnoftheWhiteFury]

14 minutes ago, Stormdragon said:

Yes, it happens (pic from reddit).

While some players may normalize this behavior, either because they dont care or are doing it; some other players feel it like a way of harassment, specially when those doing it start teaming up trying to make them quit (which is what usually happens) and the player on the receiving end is still learning and can't defend himself yet. This attitude is game disrupting and counterproductive for a healthy growth of the conclave community and hence should not be condoned. 

Harassment and exploiting a system DE put into place for farming purposes are two very different things. Again, this is why I think Warframe's reporting system is very outdated and needs work. Harassment is deserving of account restriction. Farming Conclave however shouldn't be. This actually makes me wish you could get Conclave standing outside of public matches all the more. This is getting off topic though I think

Edited February 11, 2018 by DawnoftheWhiteFury

[----Legacy----]

On 10/2/2018 at 9:08 PM, DawnoftheWhiteFury said:

Harassment and exploiting a system DE put into place for farming purposes are two very different things.

Those get mixed when people start to boost. It's exploiting because they are removing the pvp component of the pvp aspect of the game, playing it in an unintended way to get the rewards easily. It's harassing when players boosting use different means such as trash talking, cooperating with the enemy team (team modes) or with someone else (ffa) in an attempt to make other players leave the match and keep farming. It's disruptive to the nature of a pvp environment in the same way as if i jumped into a public MD mission in pve, pick the datamass and then refuse to use it in the objective creates a bad experience for the rest of my team.