We Need Endgame And A Challenge - What Do We Expect For Warframe's Future?

[stacey69]

When the creative genius of the company says "End game keeps me awake at night" you know you have a serious problem. End game is the fun part of making your game. Its where you and your team can unleash all the ideas you have on your experienced gamer's. No holds barred. They want a challenge and something to make them go " o0o that's wicked". You just throw it at them. If it's wrong they will come here and help you balance it. Early game and end game are more important than middle game. You start bad and people will leave. If the middle game is repetitive and boring, people will let it pass just to reach an excellent end game.

 

Why is end game so important? Quite simple. "All shall pass this way in time"

 

Only maybe 10% or less are high level Warframe players or experienced gamer's. Most rank 30 players play in the middle of the game and farm. These players have no reason not to do this. Hence you need end game to drag them kicking and screaming in to the future. New players will see what lies ahead and aspire to be high level and challenge a good end game.

 

End game also gives you options. You can take the end game product and use a calculator to down scale the fights and then remake them for early game and mid game. Making the overall game much better and more balanced.

 

Why do we not have end game? Quite simple. Digital Extremes do not now how to do this. This is why we have constant fleshing out of the middle game and tweaking of the start of the game but with no real quality tutorial. If you have good quality end game as i said you just use a calculator and balance again for early and mid game. You spend less time tweaking and polishing stuff you shouldn't need to be working on and then focus on adding content like lore and tile sets to expand the game into something very special.

 

DE listen to the wrong gamer's. They see most of their game being played at a certain level and make new content for that level. This is wrong. This creates stagnation. People need a reason to play. When you'r in the middle of your addiction to a game you just want to play. You do not care about what is ahead or even bother about the odd bug. The problem is when this feeling wears out. You then start to become an experienced player within the game and start to notice the subtleties of the game and realize "There is no game and no reason to play"

 

DE need to focus on end game, polishing and content very soon. Fan boys will always protect, no matter how bad something is. Experienced gamer's who just love a game and want to be challenged by it will give criticism and expect something to be done about it. Warframe is full of fan boys at the moment. Simple reason is, there is an unbalance in the game and now the community. This is how fan boys are created. You either listen to people and have to be careful who you listen to or just make the game the way you see fit and take the chance that your vision was better than everyone else's.

 

End game is more important than everything bar the tutorial stage and first few hours playing the game. I would like to see a change in direction from DE. Everyone would benefit. As i said. All shall pass this way in time. 

[UGotNinjaTrolled]

@stacey69

 

I wish I had more upvotes to vote up your post to infinity.

Agreed on every point.

[Erusa]

End game, the climax of our story, the end, where nothing else follows other than quitting the game or helping others get there. (maybe a gigantic stage which is actually the whole boss itself, an Omnicron sort of boss, something, anything.)

What DE needs to do, develop faster. People are quitting because they're getting impatient, DE is trying to address issues and create content at the same time. Unless DE has a team of 40 or so developers, I won't be surprised if they're spread thinly at the moment. Their story writers might not even exist, I for one is interested on what is in the "Outer Rails" of the "Solar Network System", but I also understand that the said content is probably months to years away from being fully realized.

Corpus is just a mercantile union, Grineer is the real threat as they want to control the galaxy, and Tenno are...unknown....The Corpus can't be making money with just two factions at war yes? One of the factions being only "recently" returning to whatever war there is. The Corpus is probably transacting with other races or factions outside the solar system, there is where our End-game is.

And it's probably lightyears away from where we woke up. (distance, no pun intended)

 

For all we know DE has this in plan, it's written in their Scrum, and we are just in Scrum 9.5.2. Maybe their end is at around 40 or whatever.

This upcoming live stream, do me a favor (it's 2AM in our time, there is no way I am awake for that), someone here ask "Where does DE see Warframe in, 5 years from now?".

And ask them, "When do you plan to give us a map that goes beyond Pluto? A map, a tileset, a new faction maybe, that may give us the reason to keep playing?" and depending on their answer, either demand they shell out their end-game content faster, or continue, as a commu, trying to make one.

[userbeneficiary]

...well... 

i cant read all this wall of text, im sure there are great ideas here but i prefer play the game insted...

...if you want more challange just take off your mods from frames and weapons.

the endgame is WARFARM!

[Eisvogel]

...well... 

i cant read all this wall of text, im sure there are great ideas here but i prefer play the game insted...

...if you want more challange just take off your mods from frames and weapons.

the endgame is WARFARM!

 

Let's go punch enemies in the face, because the game fails to provide any kind of challenge or end-game content and good mechanics..... let's do the punishing ourselves instead of letting the game do it :/

 

It doesn't work that way, and it doesn't make it neither fun nor challenging.

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

You are confusing an "ending" and the game's final closure, with what we are discussing here..... => end-game content and challenge, something to make the gameplay more interesting and give the path we travel as Tenno a sense of accomplishment and direction, as well as give players something to do and something to look forward at the end of the road. None of that exists at the moment, that's why the only thing to do after unlocking the missions is farm for the sake of farming.

 

I guess you didn't took the time to read the OP, since i clearly stated this for anyone who might get confused with the topic or wasn't experienced with games in general... i will quote it again for you:

 

-snip-

 

Keep one thing in mind since some people tend to get confused about this, "endgame content" is not equal to "ending" or closure. I love the fact that WF is pretty open to keep making additions to the game and insert new features. We don't need a game ending or to wrap it up, we need end-game content and more challenges..... basically, more things to do and more variation when we finish the planets.

 

 

-snip-

 

 

That should cover it.

 

 

You also talk about developing faster, new "content" and new planets and items. This is NOT what we want nor what we are discussing, it's QUITE FAR from the point. I don't DE to keep focusing on releasing more meaningless weapons, items or tile-sets and senseless dots (missions). Look at Phobos... i already stopped going there after getting the weapons (don't even get me started on the "new" "dual" boss), i got bored of it and even the resources dropped there are pretty bad.... no reason to bother even farming there. No that's not it at all, we want something to do... we want something to challenge ourselves and to give us a reason to play and for the lower players to look forward to.

The game is soft-released in open beta, it's expected to have bugs and that's ok...... but having no end game? nothing to do other than farming? That's inexcusable. And it has a lot of potential, if all of us spend this much time thinking of ideas and discussing them... is because we really care about this game and think it can do great, but it needs to start steering in the right direction.... and for the last big updates, it has been doing the complete opposite of that.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Eisvogel

[Erusa]

On Endgame:

 

of course it isn't. It's about as equivalent to killing the Holy Stone Keeper this being an Online Game. (hence the Omnicron level boss, I'm not expecting you to kill, it's just there, but it's not supposed to be killable)

 

This being a soft release but on Beta, I'm expecting people to be more concerned about bugs and be worried less about the higher level content, so again, I'll have to raise that question to DE and you guys will have to hear the answer.

So while I'm working on upgrading one of the apps I'm managing, I'll go find out how to put this question out for livestream (before it's too late)

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

Probably the reason we are more worried and pressing about this rather than bugs, is because this is more important and should have been addressed before releasing the game as beta (as opposed to alpha = unfinished game/features missing, incomplete or fully lacking). And still, what you mentioned (more tiles/meaningless content/extra items) isn't neither endgame content nor bugs fixing, which are the two things DE should put their complete focus on at this point.

 

Anyhow, nice to see another fellow developer out there :D. To put questions, i think it's enough to go to the livestream thread and put your question there.... and hope that they pick it to answer in the livestream

[Erusa]

Probably the reason we are more worried and pressing about this rather than bugs, is because this is more important and should have been addressed before releasing the game as beta (as opposed to alpha = unfinished game/features missing, incomplete or fully lacking). And still, what you mentioned (more tiles/meaningless content/extra items) isn't neither endgame content nor bugs fixing, which are the two things DE should put their complete focus on at this point.

 

Anyhow, nice to see another fellow developer out there :D. To put questions, i think it's enough to go to the livestream thread and put your question there.... and hope that they pick it to answer in the livestream

I put it, and they should answer it.

I think it's a critical question to see how they're handling things. I'm happy with the game as is, but that's me with under 100hours on my belt, and hardly 1hr a weekday to play (weekends are an on and off thing).

That's why unlike all of you on this thread, I'm not oversaturated with the gameplay and such. That and I've played so many other online games that are worse of grindy and feels a lot more tedious than this one...There's not even a choice between efficiency and style without cashing in!...

Here I can choose play stylishly, rushing and jumping on each enemy, rushing to find more enemies to kill, slide killing, wall attacking, dodging, trying to kill bosses with a melee attack....It's a lot more interesting than all the other games I've been in.

But of course, that's me, and in the end I end up enjoying more of the game than those who got used to the WoW schematic of doing everything efficiently, hence why I've been pointing out player problems more than the game's problems, which, hopefully, will be fixed in time.

However if this game reaches a whole year and most of the bosses haven't changed, Infested is still attracted to some Cryopod they shouldn't care about, and there's no challenging tilesets at 150+...Then we'll need to revisit this thread.

[Fundance]

the key to endgame in warframe lies with the dojos. Since this is strictly a PVE game, they aren't going to be able to go the usual MMO route and tout PVP (a potentially endless endgame because competition is an infinately dynamic activity) as the endgame. Instead they have to find a way to keep players doing end game level quests. Why seek the best rewards in a PVE game? It's not like you will get the advantage over human opponents by obtaining end-game rewards, and nobody is going to want to do endgame bosses and missions without some kind of useful reward.

Basically, I can see a greater emphasis on inter-dojo competition rather than direct PVP. Leaderboards, titles, rankings, honorifics - basically give players a way to compete with others without needing to directly engage in PVP. And it needs to be something that's constantly moving.

The current event system, as hated as it might be, seems like a good start. They just need to work on making events less repetitive and more fun, so that when they come up players will want to jump on their strongest warframes and participate in order to bring new glory to their clan.

If you can't have competition, then go for co-operation.

[r3dzer0]

Probably the reason we are more worried and pressing about this rather than bugs, is because this is more important and should have been addressed before releasing the game as beta (as opposed to alpha = unfinished game/features missing, incomplete or fully lacking). And still, what you mentioned (more tiles/meaningless content/extra items) isn't neither endgame content nor bugs fixing, which are the two things DE should put their complete focus on at this point.

 

Anyhow, nice to see another fellow developer out there :D. To put questions, i think it's enough to go to the livestream thread and put your question there.... and hope that they pick it to answer in the livestream

Da-ding

      

 Endgame isn't the end all answer for this, but its a good place to put your lore into(the reason that you should immerse yourself) and then obviously you can backtrack your lore correspondingly.

 

 Granted they have fixed quite a few bugs, i don't seem to fall through the map nearly as often as when i first started, but after i've gotten my warframes and really the weapons that i want, there's nothing to do but endless boredom defense and nightmare missions.  all other things are obsolete. 

Seeing as how Vor seems to be a rather large part in the beginning of the story how about he be the endgame, but we tweak his &#! hardcore like.  Obviously he's seeking to kill all new tenno, so reawakened Tenno are required to save their popsicle bretheren from his cloned clutches.  Mission set like Notionphils cells idea where you have to board his ship, release the frozen tenno that they've found defending them, find out more about the grineer's plans in the process( drop the lore bomb yo!) and culminate in the defeat of Vor before detonating the reactor( or vice-a-versa for urgency sake)  that would be able to reprocess some of the existing characters that we have and create a better endgame than what we have at the moment.  Heck he could even know that we're coming and have legions of Grineer of all types that with a better ai work in unison to try to thwart our attempts.  Would be interesting to see a grineer medic to be paired with shield lancers and elite lancers.

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

Added your entry to OP :D

While it's not a suggestion to the thread, i thought it was very interesting to read and pointed out a lot of things carefully and thoroughly detailed as well as explained.... all related to the topic at hand. I'll think of something to call it and make a new entry list of this type.....

 

Thank you for taking the time to write it and share it with us

Edited August 14, 2013 by Eisvogel

[alocrius]

The problem with meaningful endgame content is that if it ever comes it is a very, very, very long way off. Having watched all the livestreams its apparent DE just don't have a clear vision of Warframes "metagame". DE have hunkered down into releasing formulaic content updates and any innovation seems to be unlikely. The total lack of direction of the game used to frustrate me, due to the huge potential of the ip, but its more fun to accept the game on its own terms. Update 9 surprised us all and now we know DE can complete an actual workload when they want to but do they have the will power and imagination to give Warframe the endgame it deserves? I hope so, but I won't be holding my breath. The last tileset was an ugly step backwards and not worth doing. No wonder it was an "event prize" instead of a proper update. I love the game but DE need a fire lit under their arses.

Edited August 14, 2013 by alocrius

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

 

I agree on the "event prize" and how it just suddenly popped up after reaching the goal, finishing the "Last Stand".

Though for Update 9, it was a critical failure... at least in my opinion, it was a really really bad update... one of the most problematic ones and very poorly tested/optimized.

They really need to stop thinking about rushing things to release and get more items+++++ to the players, and give us an actual game-play to enjoy and challenge ourselves with what we already have

[Deckers]

Alot of good points

[Duralumin]

The only thing I can think of for an end-game is a 4 v 4 TDM PvP mode where people use level 0 weapons and level 30 Warframes with no other mods other than maxed Redirection and Vitality.

 

Right now the game is nothing but grind. Yet I still play daily and I don't know why.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Duralumin

[alocrius]

Yes, update 9 is part of a long series of continuing failures to update gameplay, but my point was that you could tell for once that DE had actually been working.  It was the first indication of any effort extended to improve the game at all, after all of their monetization scheme updates.  It was advertised as a nuts and bolts update though and delivered some minor improvements.  DE seem to be successful enough to be able to ignore the most important aspects of the game.  Thats the way the cookie crumbles I guess. 

[userbeneficiary]

Let's go punch enemies in the face, because the game fails to provide any kind of challenge or end-game content and good mechanics..... let's do the punishing ourselves instead of letting the game do it :/

 

It doesn't work that way, and it doesn't make it neither fun nor challenging.

 

lets go ... 

 

... i belive the game is challenging and the mechanics can and are allways beeing improved with every update, no need to rush.

i would like to see implemented in the game many good ideas here described, and we all agree to game has much more potential, some are questioning their faith, its normal... no problem.

 

Some concerns here are truely serius important and need to take priority over the topic points in my opinion:

 

the A.I. , chat and voice systems and the performance issues.

 

The endgame talk its not for me, at least by these means, i also belive the game has to evolve much more before we get that point, for now is warfarm and beta testing.

 

After reading this nice post let me just share some ideas i have, 

 

Boss fight, 2 raptors 3 jacals, 4 hienas... i would love to try solo that ...  in nightmare mode without mods, how is that for a challange?

 

Single player and co.op story mode DLC or something like that... i know this one has been talk about for long time, and i am saying this becouse i belive the best lore we can have is a single.player campain with co op mode. 

 

Also, it could be lots of fun if we had the Stalker mode, when you will play has a stalker and kill a tenno in a mission ...

 

Today is the livestream, lets see .

[MuhhhhKuh]

I prefer fixes over content first and lore.

Screw the endgame. For now.

It is partly OUR fault (including mine) that we progress too quickly.

I started on 30th May. Actively played since 1st June. now I am a few points shy of Mastery 9 and that's playing semi-casually (about 2 to 3 hours a day).

But we should fix the core aspect of the game first.

Armor scaling (which will fix the weapon issues nearly completely).

Enemy scaling and firepower cap.

Resistance.

Parkour mechanics.

Make block useful.

Drop system.

RNG limiter in a form of a token system.

Etc.

All this will have far more profound effects.

Then DE can make new content.

 

I also want to see new content and so on, but your right, there is many balancing and gameplay issues that should be fixed, but i believe that is not lost from DE, hope they dont lie in their livestreams :D

 

Also i think warframe is big enough now so that one team can fix old issues, and another team can add new content.

To work on both ends i think is the best way.

 

But everything needs time to be fixed or added, and if a player has nearly done everything in the game, new content is also finished fast :)

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

We really don't need more "content" at this point... look at what a failure Phobos was. We need them to start addressing the real issues, to start putting their focus on fixing the current gameplay, what we have right now and add the much needed mechanics and elements to provide a decent end-game to players and something do to and challenge ourselves with.

 

Let's see what they say today

[Eisvogel]

-snip-

 

I still have faith in them.

But i don't want some cheap self imposed challenges like what nightmare mode currently is, i want game mechanics and the actual gameplay to challenge me regardless of my mod build. We don't need cheap stat scaling, we need enemies to pose a thread, not just big as walking bullet sponges like everything else in the game.

That's the difference between a challenge, and just cheap punishing with the player breaking the given rules the game had set in the first place.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Eisvogel

[MuhhhhKuh]

We really don't need more "content" at this point... look at what a failure Phobos was. We need them to start addressing the real issues, to start putting their focus on fixing the current gameplay, what we have right now and add the much needed mechanics and elements to provide a decent end-game to players and something do to and challenge ourselves with.

 

Let's see what they say today

in what way you mean phobos was a failure?

[Enguzrad]

in what way you mean phobos was a failure?

I would also like to know. Phobos is not perfect and needs it's own boss but other than that it is still awsome planet.

[Rundas342]

TL:DR

 

Solo the entire solar system in solo mode.

Begin.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Rundas342

[Eisvogel]

TL:DR

 

Solo the entire solar system in solo mode.

Begin.

 

Been there, done that..... That's how i unlocked every planet and mission, except the higher defense waves... i can solo them now up to wave 5 and beyond... but at that point, i lacked the frames and gear to do the job. For every other mission, i soloed them... i liked to play at my own pace to find things and shortcuts, and there was also hardly anyone playing missions other than defense anyways... i also wasn't in any clan at that point (PugLand is a big no no).

And i didn't find it challenging at all, cheap sometimes.... like with hyena... i lacked firepower to beat such a massive bullet sponge regardless of my gaming skills, and i had no potatos. I was able to overcome that with ammo boxes, good ol' regular lato and a simple trick to be able to focus fire on hyena while not constantly on the line of fire.

 

Now..... How about doing something productive for the game and giving some actual feedback? =)

Self imposed challenges and punishing oneself will hardly fix the game or the people getting bored with nothing to do.