Operation Arid Fear: A Review (Warning This Is Long)

[Agent_of_Change]

I wanted to take the chance to provide some feedback about this event and with the last phase more than a third completed with more than half the time left in the event I feel safe in laying down my thoughts now.

 

First off my disclaimer:  These are my thoughts, opinions and conclusions.   They may include the thoughts and opinions of my clan but I do not claim to speak for them at this time on this subject.  I am not trying to attack anyone or offend anyone, all  I am trying to do is to simply provide honest and complete feedback from my experiences.  I am a member of the DMH which is a shadow clan.

 

I am going to look at a handful of aspects of the event individually, then I will give my overview of what I think was done right and wrong, and finally a quick thought on how I would proceed.

 

THE ELEMENTS:

 

Grineer Colony as an Event reward: Just brilliant, the way it was handled was upfront and clearly communicated, to anyone who was paying any attention it could not have come as a surprise.  And as a motivational tool beyond par, I wouldn't try it every time but as a way to simultaneous tie people personally to an element of the game, get event participation, and tie new content to a growing narrative... I cannot fault you in this, it was probably the single best aspect of the event and i wouldn't mind seeing this kind of thing again.  However trying to do it too often would be ill advised.

 

Delayed announcement of personal rewards:  Also very well done.  Several of us anticipated something like this happening and were vindicated when it came, and to be honest laughing at the reaction of the people who thought they would do one and allow the rest of the community do it for them without losing anything.  Great motivational tool, well timed to pull people back to the event for the second phase, and quite frankly great rewards.  You have officially set a precedent that will keep the player base on its toes when it comes to these events.  Good job.

 

Alerts as a requirement of the event: I'm iffy on this but I liked the way it turned out.  You kept the alerts regular, and in areas that would generally be available to everyone even relatively new players.  The elements were reliably found, not too hard to get, and easy to calculate.  the timing of the events allowed DE to try and control the pace of the event by controlling at least the window of supply for the event items.  It seemed to work out well enough, and the variety of missions in the alerts at least broke up the grind a bit so I was happy with that. All in all I think this element served its purpose.

 

Void mission as the event mission:  This was a neat concept and the fact the mission was a multi-capture was kinda cool.  I do wish that there had been something new or interesting in the tileset or mission other than a weird filter.  Like the last event the actual points part of the even t was a repetitive speed run grind and that's where it falls down.  Granted it doesn't have to be a speed run grind but if you wanted to get in it for the challenge of getting your clan up the boards it has to be, but that is a different issue. Concept here was good, but without something to set it apart or be more than a speed run multi-capture in yet another corpus ship it became less and less fun over time. 

 

The other aspect of the Void mission is, and I'm speculating, that it implicitly requires people to use their friends lists and create full groups for the best results of their offers.  If I'm correct it is a clever way to kind of force the community/teamwork issue among those who aren't in clans.  If so I think it was a great thought but since I rarely lack for a full group in my clan I can't comment on how it worked only that I appreciate the effort if that was the intent.

 

The Scoring: This should have been much clearer.  We ran in four man groups that captured everyone and got anywhere from 3-5 points each and not everyone always got the same amount of points.  we got 4 points in 3 mans sometimes after capturing only 3 guys.  After running a serious of experiments we concluded that the only thing we knew for sure was that if you missed a scout you got less points but because the rest of the scoring seemed inconsistent even that is supposition.  I'd have prefered better communication about how the scoring worked.

 

Speed Running:  I'm an experience warframe player.  I speed run, I explore and I like doing both from time to time.  I'm just going to say this for the event, for a company that says they want to reduce speed running these events are custom tailored to only encourage it.  Adding defense missions to slow down the pace is a good move, however upping the number elevators and "buddy doors" is just annoying.  Early on we saw the alert missions turning into exterminates halfway through after we had blown by all the enemies, we thought this was a new an interesting way to curb rushing by making players at least kill stuff to avoid having to go back.  More to the point something needs to be cleared up here, either you are encouraging speed running in these events or we need to see some creative ways to slow players down.

 

The challenge level:  well this is a can of worms but I'm going to put it simply, there is not a single member of my clan about half of which are truly casual players that could not have done anything required in this event with barely leveled gear.  At one point some of my clan took unleveled warframes just to see if it was a challenge... it wasn't.  I understand that difficulty is a sticky wicket but too easy is just as bad if not worse than too hard to many players.  The Fomorian event did a spread of difficulty and that at least allowed people to be challenged, they couldn't sleep through every mission the event had to offer.  I think that a good hard look at finding a way to keep a good difficulty spread throughout the event is important and in that this event failed badly.

 

A Phased Event:  On paper a fantastic idea.  As a way to build interest and anticipation really useful tool.  We saw a taste of this in the Fomorian event... and yet it failed really badly here.  In the Fomorian event yes all the ships were basically the same but at least difficulty varied there.  Here when we moved into phase two it took us 4 runs to actually notice any kind of difference and it certainly didn't make it any harder or more interesting.  Basically we said " Huh. new blue crewman and the scouts are slightly harder to kill...*shrug* that's it?"  So into the 2nd phase the event became a samey rush grind event 2nd verse same as the first and interest began to flag.  we held out hope that the third phase would give us something interesting but now more of the same and that is why it was such a bad idea.  If it's all going to be the same don't arbitrarily break it up into 3 progress bars, it doesn't fool anyone.  If you are going to make a distinction up the difficult or change something.  Change the mission, change level, change the tileset, change something... it's the only way to not disillusion or frustrate people.

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE GRINDY:

 

My positive impressions of the event are simple.  I recognize a good use of rewards, timing, and gasme structure to try and motivate and engage the community.  To encourage teamwork and use of the social tools. The void missions as a tool for encouraging social play gets my applause if it was in fact the goal.  Unlocking the 'next level' through a narrative linked event I love it. We (the DMH)also really enjoyed the variety of missions for the cipher and data units.  All in all I think this event pushed alot of event elements in the right direction, aspects are really improving and as always keeping the community on its toes is great in my opinion.

 

Now for the bad, I was set until this morning to call this hands down a universal improvement on all the last events.  Sure it had its issues, the grindyness, the forced speed runs to compete on any level, the lack of any kind of challenge at any point but it was still doing ok in my book.  When the second phase came around and was literally more of the same with barely any perceptible change, interest started to seriously  flag.  DMH who had been in the top 10 Shadow clans since the early hours of the events (as high as #1 for a brief while) almost as one started to lose interest at that point, "really, more of the same again...." so we ground out more and then pretty much decided "screw it" it stopped being fun or any kind of worth it.  No challenge, what we had looked forward to had been nothing, everyone playing had at least their 100 points, and we decided we'd just hold out for phase three and maybe it would get interesting again.  Phase three... more of the same, and we are done.  With that one major problem that is a culmination of repetitive speed runs beyond our tolerance and lack of any variation or challenge at any level for 3 repeated equally long segments broken up for no reason we hung up our hats to play other games or do something in warframe that was actually fun, and this event fails to reach its promise that even we thought it had. 

 

So for my final thoughts, I do not regret participating in the event or the effort I personally put forth.  I think there were a number of things done right that show promise and creative thinking and 1 glaring failure that was a combination of many factors that dragged that promise back down towards earth like a lead weight on a balloon.  Had the event been shorter... Success, had the phases had noticeable and interesting changes... probable success, had there been a greater challenge... probably success.  The community was not going to fail this, I'd have bet everything I own on that and you would have been stupid to bet against me, but at some point fun needs to be considered and when veteran players (who aren't always complaining about how the game is broken) are willing to just throw in the towel because the event isn't fun anymore well that makes me need to say something.  The only other thing I would comment on is, don't make the community wait on the reward until your scheduled end of the event, if we collectively slogged through the longest samey grind way ahead of schedule don't make us wait for the reward.  We like this game and many of us only did as much as we did for the new content so please acknowledge that.

 

Please take this in the spirit was offered and keep up the good work DE.  I look forward to seeing what is to come in the future and how you as a content provider learn from the lessons from this and past events.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Agent_of_Change

[Kohira]

Tl;dr : he liked almost everything, except the lack of difficulty. And it seems that he was slightly bothered by the repetitive grind.

[Althix]

i like multi targets on a map.

so full team get divided in two on map to achieve mission objective. i really like this. i was expecting this for operation Sling-Stone but... no.

 

overall S#&$storm about delayed info about rewards is amusing even now.

 

also as a rusher i made like 40 keys total in less than two hours. those keys i used in the clan, for people who didn't make 100 points in first few hours of the event.

 

overall feelings are positive. well... except for new mods.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Althix

[Son_Of_BDEC]

Tl;dr : he liked almost everything, except the lack of difficulty. And it seems that he was slightly bothered by the repetitive grind.

I'm sorry, did you really read the entire thing? He didn't say that at all, as you would have seen if you read past the first sentence of each one. 

Also, being a member of DMH, I agree with this whole-heartedly, it was decent, but I hit 100 points and burned out majorly. Hoping the Grineer settlement is going to be worth it, though the Miter may do that alone.

[Agent_of_Change]

I'm sorry, did you really read the entire thing? He didn't say that at all, as you would have seen if you read past the first sentence of each one. 

 

 

What he said, I do believe i offered several criticisms and suggestions.

[icosta27]

I wanted to take the chance to provide some feedback about this event and with the last phase more than a third completed with more than half the time left in the event I feel safe in laying down my thoughts now.

 

First off my disclaimer:  These are my thoughts, opinions and conclusions.   They may include the thoughts and opinions of my clan but I do not claim to speak for them at this time on this subject.  I am not trying to attack anyone or offend anyone, all  I am trying to do is to simply provide honest and complete feedback from my experiences.  I am a member of the DMH which is a shadow clan.

 

I am going to look at a handful of aspects of the event individually, then I will give my overview of what I think was done right and wrong, and finally a quick thought on how I would proceed.

 

THE ELEMENTS:

 

Grineer Colony as an Event reward: Just brilliant, the way it was handled was upfront and clearly communicated, to anyone who was paying any attention it could not have come as a surprise.  And as a motivational tool beyond par, I wouldn't try it every time but as a way to simultaneous tie people personally to an element of the game, get event participation, and tie new content to a growing narrative... I cannot fault you in this, it was probably the single best aspect of the event and i wouldn't mind seeing this kind of thing again.  However trying to do it too often would be ill advised.

 

Delayed announcement of personal rewards:  Also very well done.  Several of us anticipated something like this happening and were vindicated when it came, and to be honest laughing at the reaction of the people who thought they would do one and allow the rest of the community do it for them without losing anything.  Great motivational tool, well timed to pull people back to the event for the second phase, and quite frankly great rewards.  You have officially set a precedent that will keep the player base on its toes when it comes to these events.  Good job.

 

Alerts as a requirement of the event: I'm iffy on this but I liked the way it turned out.  You kept the alerts regular, and in areas that would generally be available to everyone even relatively new players.  The elements were reliably found, not too hard to get, and easy to calculate.  the timing of the events allowed DE to try and control the pace of the event by controlling at least the window of supply for the event items.  It seemed to work out well enough, and the variety of missions in the alerts at least broke up the grind a bit so I was happy with that. All in all I think this element served its purpose.

 

Void mission as the event mission:  This was a neat concept and the fact the mission was a multi-capture was kinda cool.  I do wish that there had been something new or interesting in the tileset or mission other than a weird filter.  Like the last event the actual points part of the even t was a repetitive speed run grind and that's where it falls down.  Granted it doesn't have to be a speed run grind but if you wanted to get in it for the challenge of getting your clan up the boards it has to be, but that is a different issue. Concept here was good, but without something to set it apart or be more than a speed run multi-capture in yet another corpus ship it became less and less fun over time. 

 

The other aspect of the Void mission is, and I'm speculating, that it implicitly requires people to use their friends lists and create full groups for the best results of their offers.  If I'm correct it is a clever way to kind of force the community/teamwork issue among those who aren't in clans.  If so I think it was a great thought but since I rarely lack for a full group in my clan I can't comment on how it worked only that I appreciate the effort if that was the intent.

 

The Scoring: This should have been much clearer.  We ran in four man groups that captured everyone and got anywhere from 3-5 points each and not everyone always got the same amount of points.  we got 4 points in 3 mans sometimes after capturing only 3 guys.  After running a serious of experiments we concluded that the only thing we knew for sure was that if you missed a scout you got less points but because the rest of the scoring seemed inconsistent even that is supposition.  I'd have prefered better communication about how the scoring worked.

 

Speed Running:  I'm an experience warframe player.  I speed run, I explore and I like doing both from time to time.  I'm just going to say this for the event, for a company that says they want to reduce speed running these events are custom tailored to only encourage it.  Adding defense missions to slow down the pace is a good move, however upping the number elevators and "buddy doors" is just annoying.  Early on we saw the alert missions turning into exterminates halfway through after we had blown by all the enemies, we thought this was a new an interesting way to curb rushing by making players at least kill stuff to avoid having to go back.  More to the point something needs to be cleared up here, either you are encouraging speed running in these events or we need to see some creative ways to slow players down.

 

The challenge level:  well this is a can of worms but I'm going to put it simply, there is not a single member of my clan about half of which are truly casual players that could not have done anything required in this event with barely leveled gear.  At one point some of my clan took unleveled warframes just to see if it was a challenge... it wasn't.  I understand that difficulty is a sticky wicket but too easy is just as bad if not worse than too hard to many players.  The Fomorian event did a spread of difficulty and that at least allowed people to be challenged, they couldn't sleep through every mission the event had to offer.  I think that a good hard look at finding a way to keep a good difficulty spread throughout the event is important and in that this event failed badly.

 

A Phased Event:  On paper a fantastic idea.  As a way to build interest and anticipation really useful tool.  We saw a taste of this in the Fomorian event... and yet it failed really badly here.  In the Fomorian event yes all the ships were basically the same but at least difficulty varied there.  Here when we moved into phase two it took us 4 runs to actually notice any kind of difference and it certainly didn't make it any harder or more interesting.  Basically we said " Huh. new blue crewman and the scouts are slightly harder to kill...*shrug* that's it?"  So into the 2nd phase the event became a samey rush grind event 2nd verse same as the first and interest began to flag.  we held out hope that the third phase would give us something interesting but now more of the same and that is why it was such a bad idea.  If it's all going to be the same don't arbitrarily break it up into 3 progress bars, it doesn't fool anyone.  If you are going to make a distinction up the difficult or change something.  Change the mission, change level, change the tileset, change something... it's the only way to not disillusion or frustrate people.

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE GRINDY:

 

My positive impressions of the event are simple.  I recognize a good use of rewards, timing, and gasme structure to try and motivate and engage the community.  To encourage teamwork and use of the social tools. The void missions as a tool for encouraging social play gets my applause if it was in fact the goal.  Unlocking the 'next level' through a narrative linked event I love it. We (the DMH)also really enjoyed the variety of missions for the cipher and data units.  All in all I think this event pushed alot of event elements in the right direction, aspects are really improving and as always keeping the community on its toes is great in my opinion.

 

Now for the bad, I was set until this morning to call this hands down a universal improvement on all the last events.  Sure it had its issues, the grindyness, the forced speed runs to compete on any level, the lack of any kind of challenge at any point but it was still doing ok in my book.  When the second phase came around and was literally more of the same with barely any perceptible change, interest started to seriously  flag.  DMH who had been in the top 10 Shadow clans since the early hours of the events (as high as #1 for a brief while) almost as one started to lose interest at that point, "really, more of the same again...." so we ground out more and then pretty much decided "screw it" it stopped being fun or any kind of worth it.  No challenge, what we had looked forward to had been nothing, everyone playing had at least their 100 points, and we decided we'd just hold out for phase three and maybe it would get interesting again.  Phase three... more of the same, and we are done.  With that one major problem that is a culmination of repetitive speed runs beyond our tolerance and lack of any variation or challenge at any level for 3 repeated equally long segments broken up for no reason we hung up our hats to play other games or do something in warframe that was actually fun, and this event fails to reach its promise that even we thought it had. 

 

So for my final thoughts, I do not regret participating in the event or the effort I personally put forth.  I think there were a number of things done right that show promise and creative thinking and 1 glaring failure that was a combination of many factors that dragged that promise back down towards earth like a lead weight on a balloon.  Had the event been shorter... Success, had the phases had noticeable and interesting changes... probable success, had there been a greater challenge... probably success.  The community was not going to fail this, I'd have bet everything I own on that and you would have been stupid to bet against me, but at some point fun needs to be considered and when veteran players (who aren't always complaining about how the game is broken) are willing to just throw in the towel because the event isn't fun anymore well that makes me need to say something.  The only other thing I would comment on is, don't make the community wait on the reward until your scheduled end of the event, if we collectively slogged through the longest samey grind way ahead of schedule don't make us wait for the reward.  We like this game and many of us only did as much as we did for the new content so please acknowledge that.

 

Please take this in the spirit was offered and keep up the good work DE.  I look forward to seeing what is to come in the future and how you as a content provider learn from the lessons from this and past events.

 

 

 

 

I applaud someone who actually gives viable feedback based on a new implementation to the game. This is beta. I feel too many people have forgotten that. Yes there were many bugs and issues in which were/are quite annoying but DE will fix no doubt. But on the bright side of things, I agree completely with this post and DE def moving in the right direction with making these weekend alerts more rewarding, fun, and manageable. +1

Edited August 12, 2013 by icosta27

[Althix]

"this is beta". "this is my playstyle".

 

you know when you use those words too often they begin to lose their original meaning and even worse, they begin to have a new one.

[InsomniacOvrLrd]

Delayed announcement of personal rewards:  

 

You have officially set a precedent that will keep the player base on its toes when it comes to these events.  Good job.

 

Yeah! I love being misled and being told half truths by a company i gave money to.

Oh wait, no. No i don't.

 

IF you announce an event, and then announce its scope and goals, changing them in the middle of it is outstandingly awful to do.  I simply don't understand why people will speak out about how much they ENJOY being jerked around. What's with you people?

[Liminal]

My feelings exactly.
I played with 3 teammates most of the time. I'm not a fan of speedrunning but we had to do it. After we all got to 100 points over two days I have to admit I'm burnt-out; I just can't find the will to play Warframe for a while (probably a day, I won't pretend I'm that burnt-out!).

I don't think this would have been fun to me if I hadn't played with my friends, so I'm not sure the event was actually enjoyable for pugs.

[Althix]

Yeah! I love being misled and being told half truths by a company i gave money to.

Oh wait, no. No i don't.

 

IF you announce an event, and then announce its scope and goals, changing them in the middle of it is outstandingly awful to do.  I simply don't understand why people will speak out about how much they ENJOY being jerked around. What's with you people?

what? mission parametres changed. you are military, you understand... oh wait. no you are not.

 

so basically you did a one run and that is enough for you? heh.

 

players who have some coordination and constant full group or even members of one clan made those 100 points in the first two hours on the event. and thoughts about hidden reward were circulating inside gaming community from very beginning.

 

But even if there were no reward i find it rather poor excuse for not to take participation in community event.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Althix

[Agent_of_Change]

what? mission parametres changed. you are military, you understand... oh wait. no you are not.

 

so basically you did a one run and that is enough for you? heh.

 

players who have some coordination and constant full group or even members of one clan made those 100 points in the first two hours on the event. and thoughts about hidden reward were circulating inside gaming community from very beginning.

 

But even if there were no reward i find it rather poor excuse for not to take participation in community event.

 As if it wasn't clear already i whole heartedly agree.

 

the original reward for this event was a pretty big chunk of content released now and not later, for people that like the game that's a big incentive, and more than that it's a communal reward we work together and we succeed or fail together.  Now we all knew there would be personal rewards at some point and (in my clan at least) most people who were working for the true end goal glanced at their score when the new rewards were announced and went "woo hoo I'm already getting it all".  

 

As a tool to encourage a sense of community, a feeling of communal stakes and communal success the focus has to be on the communal reward. If you anticipate the personal reward is coming then you run the missions and are in good stead later because you have worked towards two goals early.  If you don't you are left rushing to catch up.  If no personal reward is announced you have no reason to be upset if there is none by the end, If one is announced late it is a bonus for those that chose to participate not a punishment for those who would rather leech on the community effort.

 

We should also look at the strategic element of boosting event participation right at a moment when it may start to wane by announcing a new incentive, which was really well handled in this event as the event kinda desperately needed boost.