My Thoughts: Warframe Devstream #122

They did it. The devs gave players a roadmap on what to expect for 2019. They listened to players. Woot!

Let me start of by saying: this devstream is one of my favorite ones. Why? Players finally got a roadmap! Yes, we have yet to see how Digital Extremes will stay on track time-wise with the release schedule but it’s excellent they are doing what other gaming companies do: give their players an idea what to expect for content releases. Let’s do this!

Warframes

Two of the three new Warframes coming soon.

There are three frames coming soon. Wisp and Hildryn are shown in a screenshot. We saw Hildryn in a little more detail, minus her abilities, in a short demo. She’s looking awesome. Both of the new frames shown are female. They intend to release and rework frames on an improved release schedule.

Changing Content Releases

Steve acknowledged they spent a lot of time last year working on a demo for TennoCon. They were not going to do that this year. To change this, for 2019 they are working on the following:

Deck 12: Exploiter: this is an event that will be happening on Vallis (Venus) containing a boss and more lore (Steve said a “lore bomb”).

Gas City: Amalgams

Gas City – Amalgams: There is a new game mode, rewards, game wrinkles, structures, enemy types, and there are things to learn there (more lore).

Wolf of Saturn

Wolf of Saturn: Redoing how alerts and challenges work. This event will last for an unspecified time. For the weeks it is live, there will be challenges unlocking, a new villain will be introduced. There will be an animated comic in the game to explain/show the new lore. It takes systems that are in place and blends them together.

New War

The New War: The big cinematic quest for 2019. Steve said it is the most important cinematic quest in a long time. Steve said, “Lotus’ Mom’s [ship] is even bigger”.

Warframe Empyrean (Railjack)

Warframe Empyrean: Railjack. Set for summer, the goal is for it to be for all locations on the map, not just Venus. A new way to play Warframe. The image shows a new enemy ship. The capital ships are being redone along with the new fighter classes for all the factions in Warframe.

New fighter ships

Planes of Duviri: Set for the fall, a new faction that ties in with lore within Warframe.

Planes of Duviri

They also talked about ongoing reworks:

  • Melee rework will be released in phases.
  • Difficulty rework: Wolf of Saturn will have some of this. The rework is an ongoing progress.
  • Redoing the new player experience: they are adding Easter eggs for veteran players while making the new player experience more fun and easier to follow.
New player experience

I suggest looking at the devstream so you can see a demo of the new warframe Hildryn and see them talking about the upcoming changes yourself.

My Thoughts:

I’m pleased to see Digital Extremes has been listening to the player community, all sides, all arguments. I’ve mentioned before that I have a realistic view of what Warframe is: the game has a lot to do but it is not complete. It doesn’t have an end game. It is up for debate on what “content” for the game is. I’ve said that I don’t feel inclined to rush to complete everything because I don’t want to bump into the “I have nothing to do” blues. I also don’t feel the point in my toon gaining all this power – for what? I’ve been slowly pacing my play time and enjoying the game. I login every day but I don’t play everyday.

Game developers have a problem they didn’t use to have. Now, an overwhelming amount of people are playing games every day for 8-10 hours a day as a job. While that is great marketing for a gaming company the problem is these people will run out of things to do in a game much quicker than in the past. I can tell you from experience that games that have been around much longer have veteran players that have nothing to do because they completed the content when it first game out.

DE seems to be attempting to fix the problem to the best of their ability. Redoing the new player experience might help increase player retention. Adding more lore in-game will feed those (like me) that love lore, giving the player the opportunity to learn new things about the game world and what is going on within it. The new game modes, especially with difficulty reworks, will make the game content in itself more interesting to a wider audience. I wish there were difficulty sliders on missions so veteran players could crank up the difficulty to make things more challenging for them (and receive enticing rewards for more difficult challenges).

In the end, I like what I am seeing. As I said previously, it is going to take time to fix the content issues in the game. Spreading out releases will help greatly. Vets will chew through this content quickly, let’s not play games about this. They will and they will be back complaining. This happens in most games because the typical game wasn’t made to be played the amount of time they are playing it.

Try having a conversation like this with Activision/Blizzard or EA and you’ll immediately know how good Warframe players have it.

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