About the development direction and management of Warframe

[Brynslustafir]

On a recent episode of the Super Best Friendcast, a guest speaker named Plague of Gripes mentioned that Warframes updates could and should be smash hits, but that the devs almost always get something wrong that stunts the players enjoyment, or renders the new content virtually worthless. Basically, stuff gets screwed up that honestly shouldn't ever be screwed up. I understood what he meant when I first heard it, but the timing on this is just too perfect. This is exactly the sort of stuff he's talking about. Did no one do a test run to see if the Kuva was going to the right resource pool? Why was a new resource pool created for the new Kuva when the old one was already there? 

For another example, The Gradivus dilemma.

Not only was the 100 runs requirement an insane decision that just BEGGED players to burn out and give up on the game, but the mission rewards were initially deliberately slanted in favor of the Grineer to, "Give the Grineer more momentum at the start of the event". Did no one involved in development point out the fact that this would basically guarantee the Grineer would win, leaving all Corpus supporters frustrated not only at their loss, but at DE's decision to blatantly rig the competition, thus eliminating the appeal of player choice that the whole event was supposed to be driven by? A golden opportunity wasted by poor planning, in my honest opinion. 

For a slightly more recent example, How about the Zanuka Hunter not dropping Detron parts as promised for the first week or 2 that it was out, and DE just not noticing despite everyone reporting the bug on the forums every 10 seconds? By the way, this just added to the frustration of those who wanted the Detron as a reward for the Gradivus Dilemma, but got stuck with the Grineer offerings anyway. 

Hate to be a spoilsport, but seriously, why is it that nearly every big change in a mainline update is accompanied by a simple but devastating error or poor decision? Even the first introduction of Rivens and Kuva was IMMEDIATELY accompanied by strongly worded player feedback summing up to 'WHY IS THE KUVA SIPHON SO HARD TO FIND AND WHY IS THE RIVEN ROLLING COST SO HUGE?!?!?!?!?!'. These were both design decisions that anyone should have been able to point out as a VERY probable source of player frustration. And I do mean ANYONE. It's absolutely mind-boggling that either of these decisions stuck around long enough to make it into the public build. 

I want these updates and changes to be great, but it feels like 85% of the time there's some obvious slip up that just begs for players to be mad about it. 

In this case, the ire is piling on top of player frustrations over DE not implementing any form of kuva reward scaling into the missions. 

I just want the Updates to be good.

TL;DR: Warframe needs better development management. Too many bewilderingly obvious mistakes make it through to the public build, and if relatively popular podcasters are talking about it, it's safe to say that it hurts the games overall Image. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface
Elaboration

[Pie_mastyr]

Most of the content we get is broken on day one. That is the nature of this game. DE have improved over the years in regards to hitting a happy medium with its playerbase but their philosophy has always been to try to get us the content as quickly as possible. But we always get there in the end (though sometimes it takes nearly half a decade... ahem... commanders) and honestly I prefer it this way.

[Valiant]

Some stuff released has been poor and part of me thinks there should be a closed test phase to a select few (but enough) maybe just to identify some of these glaring issues early on.

I don't mind issues and mistakes. What I do mind is when there is a rather obvious issue, there's numerous feedback threads/posts about it but it takes too long to be effectively addressed. Should be acting on the feedback in a timely manner while it's coming in hot.

Edited March 28, 2018 by Valiant

[Brynslustafir]

Just now, Pie_mastyr said:

Most of the content we get is broken on day one. That is the nature of this game. DE have improved over the years in regards to hitting a happy medium with its playerbase but their philosophy has always been to try to get us the content as quickly as possible. But we always get there in the end (though sometimes it takes nearly half a decade... ahem... commanders) and honestly I prefer it this way.

I would agree, except that if a piece of content is so broken as to be literally unusable, I'd rather have nothing. 

[Pie_mastyr]

 

Just now, Plasmaface said:

I would agree, except that if a piece of content is so broken as to be literally unusable, I'd rather have nothing. 

they literally fixed the kuva thing while you were complaining about it

[Brynslustafir]

1 minute ago, Valiant said:

What I do mind is when there is a rather obvious issue, there's numerous feedback threads/posts about it but it takes too long to be effectively addressed. Should be acting on the feedback in a timely manner while it's coming in hot.

Precisely my point on the issue of the Zanuka Hunter not dropping Detron parts, and DE taking a metaphorical eternity to notice. 

[Brynslustafir]

1 minute ago, Pie_mastyr said:

 

they literally fixed the kuva thing while you were complaining about it

After, actually. Check the times. I got this thread up first. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Pie_mastyr]

you are still complaining about it are you not?

[Brynslustafir]

2 minutes ago, Pie_mastyr said:

you are still complaining about it are you not?

And you're stretching an unrelated point farther than it can stand. 

Besides, I'm complaining primarily about the poor direction that leads to the mistakes, rather than the mistakes themselves. I prefer to eliminate issues at the source, rather than treat symptoms. If you really want to grasp at straws, I won't stop you. Just don't try to distract from the actual conversation. It's rude. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Urlan]

5 minutes ago, Pie_mastyr said:

 

they literally fixed the kuva thing while you were complaining about it

It corrected the kuva you now get yes, but not what you had in your inventory.

[(PSN)alexismartinez14]

It's a free to play game, what do you expect, a full course meal? DE always delivers, even if there is a slight delay, at least they listen to feedback and try to adjust their game for their players. 

[Pie_mastyr]

Alright I am gonna try to explain where I am coming from a bit better. So DE, being a relatively small company, has a limited amount of time they can put towards certain tasks. For the purposes of brevity I am going to generalize it to 3 categories; development, testing, bug fixing. DE has been able to progress the way they have by taking a lot of what would be going to testing and leaving it to the player base. In order to maintain a constant growth a certain amount of effort needs to be put into the development of new things so older players have something to do. Bugfixing (and general cleanup) are typically left to be done on large scale changes like all the 2.0s we got for a while. In this way bugfixing can be treated like new content and help to revitalize the game.

TLDR; DE has a development cycle that alternates between as much new content as possible and only fixing major issues, and going back over large systems when they are fully realized.

[Brynslustafir]

10 minutes ago, Pie_mastyr said:

Alright I am gonna try to explain where I am coming from a bit better. So DE, being a relatively small company, has a limited amount of time they can put towards certain tasks. For the purposes of brevity I am going to generalize it to 3 categories; development, testing, bug fixing. DE has been able to progress the way they have by taking a lot of what would be going to testing and leaving it to the player base. In order to maintain a constant growth a certain amount of effort needs to be put into the development of new things so older players have something to do. Bugfixing (and general cleanup) are typically left to be done on large scale changes like all the 2.0s we got for a while. In this way bugfixing can be treated like new content and help to revitalize the game.

TLDR; DE has a development cycle that alternates between as much new content as possible and only fixing major issues, and going back over large systems when they are fully realized.

Again, that doesn't explain or excuse releasing content in such a state that it is unusable. It hurts the game and it's players more for content to come out, be unusable and utterly broken, and be fixed later on than it does for the content to come out later, but actually function from the start.   A developer needs to have some standard testing for BASIC FUNCTIONALITY of new content. I'm not talking about player-side bugs that cause stuttering or crashes, I'm talking about not even checking to see if you bound a resource to the right resource pool. I'm talking about not noticing a weapon part acquisition bug for 2 weeks even though people are reporting it day in and day out. I'm talking about rigging a large-scale competition between players in favor of one side and somehow not being able to forsee the problems with that. I'm talking about the stuff that shouldn't happen in ANY size of developer. This has nothing to do with your small studio point. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Pie_mastyr]

13 minutes ago, Plasmaface said:

After, actually. Check the times. I got the thread up first. 

 

9 minutes ago, Plasmaface said:

And you're stretching an unrelated point farther than it can stand. 

Besides, I'm complaining primarily about the poor direction that leads to the mistakes, rather than the mistakes themselves. I prefer to eliminate issues at the source, rather than treat symptoms. If you really want to grasp at straws, I won't stop you. Just don't try to distract from the actual conversation. It's rude. 

Let's be civil here, I wasn't trying to attack you. I was just trying to point out that what seemed to be the initial reason for your post was solved. Obviously you were using it as an example to point out a trend and I get that. But don't call me rude for telling you that this:

18 minutes ago, Plasmaface said:

I would agree, except that if a piece of content is so broken as to be literally unusable, I'd rather have nothing. 

is still complaining about the issue that had been solved. Now once again I get the idea that you'd prefer it to come out perfect straight away, which makes sense. Ideally we all would. DE makes gets no benefit from having to spend time hotfixing things and neither do we. But this development cycle is a compromise that DE have come to that makes ideal progress in all areas.

[Brynslustafir]

4 minutes ago, Pie_mastyr said:

 

Let's be civil here, I wasn't trying to attack you. I was just trying to point out that what seemed to be the initial reason for your post was solved. Obviously you were using it as an example to point out a trend and I get that. But don't call me rude for telling you that this:

is still complaining about the issue that had been solved. Now once again I get the idea that you'd prefer it to come out perfect straight away, which makes sense. Ideally we all would. DE makes gets no benefit from having to spend time hotfixing things and neither do we. But this development cycle is a compromise that DE have come to that makes ideal progress in all areas.

1. The initial reason for my post is the podcast excerpt, and how it relates to my long-held feelings on the game.

2. Again, Not the main point of contention. Also again, NOT the true impetus of the threads creation. 

Once again, I'm focused on the factors that LEAD to the bad decisions. NOT the decisions themselves. NOT the Kuva bug, but the holes in the net that let the bug through. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Pie_mastyr]

5 minutes ago, Plasmaface said:

Again, that doesn't explain or excuse releasing content in such a state that it is unusable. It hurts the game and it's players more for content to come out, be unusable and utterly broken, and be fixed later on than it does for the content to come out later, but actually function from the start.   A developer needs to have some standard testing for BASIC FUNCTIONALITY of new content. I'm not talking about player-side bugs that cause stuttering or crashes, I'm talking about not even checking to see if you bound a resource to the right resource pool. I'm talking about not noticing a weapon part acquisition bug for 2 weeks even though people are reporting it day in and day out. I'm talking about rigging a large-scale competition between players in favor of one side and somehow not being able to forsee the problems with that. I'm talking about the stuff that shouldn't happen in ANY size of developer. This has nothing to do with your small studio point. 

All I can say to you is that if you aren't seeing the changes to DE's mentality toward events since their first try, maybe you should have given up years ago. Because it is clear without a shadow of doubt that mistakes like these are not only forgiveable but forgettable too. This thing you are making out to be some massive glaring issue is... not. To me anyways

[Pie_mastyr]

1 minute ago, Plasmaface said:

1. The initial reason for my post is the podcast excerpt, and how it relates to my long-held feelings on the game.

2. Again, Not the main point of contention. Also again, NOT the true impetus of the threads creation. 

I said that I understood that was trying to defend myself when you called me rude. I am honestly trying to have a good ol fashioned discussion with you and I just wanted to clear the air. I thought that was implied so I guess thats on me

 

[AlphaPHENIX]

57 minutes ago, Plasmaface said:

Warframes updates could and should be smash hits, but that the devs almost always get something wrong that stunts the players enjoyment

Plains of Crashalot

I will take my leave.

[Pie_mastyr]

Also I gotta dash, but the gist of anything I would say in reply to you is: No I don't think that X was/ is a big deal because it was dealt with and forgotten by the majority. Most of the mistakes come from when DE tries something new,  which I would rather take than them playing it safe and endlessly releasing new weapons and skins because it's easier to not mess up. DE wants to keep making this game, not just bank off it. But they have to do both.

[Brynslustafir]

5 minutes ago, Pie_mastyr said:

I said that I understood that was trying to defend myself when you called me rude. I am honestly trying to have a good ol fashioned discussion with you and I just wanted to clear the air. I thought that was implied so I guess thats on me

 

You're complaining about me complaining about something when I stopped complaining about it already(There's a tongue twister. Try to say it 5 times, as fast as possible), instead focusing on what allowed it to exist. 

I'm pointing that oversight out as a tangent, and becoming frustrated that it was not understood. 

Ultimately, core points were misunderstood on both sides. 

*Metaphorically shakes hands* 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Brynslustafir]

4 minutes ago, AlphaPHENIX said:

Plains of Crashalot

I will take my leave.

Ok, I forgot to mention Plains of Crashalot. (Partly because I was somehow almost immune to the 3 most common crash bugs)

Edited March 28, 2018 by Plasmaface

[Nitro747]

The worst thing about all of this is that Warframe is being designed to be a game where you have to cheese out and use cheap tactics in order to be efficient. Some examples:

Focus farming: you need to cheese out and go with Maiming Strike, Whips and Silence Banshee because its the only way to get decent ammounts of focus without spending 3 hours on it.

Eidolon Hunts/The old raids: only a few Warframes are actually useful on that, with pro squads requiring basically a set of 4 warframes (out of the dozen others) in order to succesfully get the 3 Hydrolyst Caps.

The new Endless Kuva: have to cheese it out with Nekros because Life Support, a Vauban or Frost to defend the squishy siphon, etc.

Vacuum: the designers simply don't want us to collect the loot that is all around the floor without any decent explanation while at the same time designing a game that forces us to collect every single bit of loot we get.

The list goes on and on...

 

[NinthAria]

Not that you don't have something resembling a point, but citing issues that came and went 4-5 years ago (Zanuka Hunter drops, Gradivus Dilemma) as your examples isn't giving your case a lot of weight. Also, re: The Gradivus Dilemma specifically, the intent was for the Grineer to start strong and have the Corpus make a comeback partway through--which they did, even if it wasn't enough to win the event. DE said on a devstream that they only planned those two parts, and had no plans for what the outcome was going to be; take that as you will.

For better or worse, these sorts of growing pains are part and parcel with a dev team that's relatively small and has to rely on players for a lot of its testing needs. Call me complacent, or perhaps dismissive (or both), but I hardly see the point in such broad sentiments as "Warframe needs better development management," or "This never should've happened to begin with"--at least, not without being able to provide something relevant to a solution.

[Xzorn]

Rather than picking at the examples themselves. Might focus on underline point of the examples.

DE has pretty much always had good ideas with bad execution and in 5 years they're still making the same mistakes.

Also, for a Dev team who relies on players to do a lot of their testing they tend to not listen to those players often and are reluctant to change anything based on feedback. Not Slow. Reluctant. They do nothing until it becomes blatant they made a wrong decision. Volt's Discharge, Commanders, Nullifiers, Bounties, Vacuum, Techs, ect.