Warframe @dormi.zone PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES @lib.lgbt 8 mo. ago

Saya's Vigil is a bad quest

Saya's Vigil being required for Venus slows down the progression from singleplayer into being able to actually play with your friends who are excited to play with you and help you unlock planets
The quest is bugged for new players. When you return from your first bounty in the plains, it doesn't let you talk to Konzu until you reload Cetus
The quest is bugged for old players. The quest forces you to equip a codex scanner, and simaris scanners don't count. If you try to run the mission with just a simaris scanner anyway, it adds a codex scanner to your gear wheel automatically.
The quest contains spoilers. Sentients are a big deal! You're not supposed to know who the Orokin fought in the great war until you reach Uranus and complete Natah. Mentioning sentients that early is fucky. Why explain them to brand new players?
It doesn't help with progression. While the story is fine, and it has some touching moments, it doesn't help the player unlock anything except the codex scanner. It's a lot of time to sink into a pure story quest when the first thing a new player wants is to power up and get out of the Newframe zone of progression and into the good stuff.
It STILL doesn't help make the new player experience less confusing. Yeah, it explains codex scanners, but my friend still needed a lot of help to get it started.
It's too hard to start. You can only start it by doing a level 5-15 bounty in the plains. That's too hard for a brand new player who only just killed Vor!

To add some positivity and contrast to this post, I just played Call of the Tempestarii for the first time and it's SO GOOD. Ghost ship, space shanty, going Moby Dick on a ghost and a burial at sea. It's the perfect story centered Warframe quest.

9 comments

Bugs: Yeah, those should be fixed. Although, they are also kind of a proper introduction to Warframe...

Slows down progression: Eh, I think this IS progression. By the time you are finishing Earth, you should at least have high 10s, if not 20s, for your starting gear. And it is no longer mk-1 which helps a bit. That is enough to do a Tier 1 or 2 bounty. And now that we have the bus stop system, getting to the objectives is viable without an archwing launcher. More on this at the end

Spoilers: Are they really? Players won't know what an Orokin even is by this point. Hell, I was at Tennocon this year and it was fun to listen to how many people did not realize that "we" are Orokin or what the deal was with the 1999 teaser.

New Player Experience: This ties into progression, but I think it is good because it gives players an option and shows there is stuff to do when your mouse finger gets tired (fishing and mining. Nobody captures).

So about that progression. One of the things I HATED the most when I was going through the progression was shit like the Mote Amp. It is genuinely bad in every possible way. And the way you move past it is to build a real amp. Which CAN be obnoxiously grinded by running out at night and grabbing the fuckers who fly away and so forth. Or you can just do a few Eidolon hunts. And while you won't be the main damage dealer, you should be fine in a tier 1 pub so long as somebody is.

And that is what the bounty and quest teach you. Maybe you do star chart on solo to start out because you want to learn the game rather than spend the entire time jogging to the green extract while some obnoxious vet is whining that you aren't fast enough. But this teaches you that you do want to be ready to pub because it lets you do content you might not be geared up for. Because 5-15 bounty is hard for a solo player with poor modding at level 10-30. It is still trivial for a group of newbs. Or trivial for the MR25 player who is doing a Nightwave.

I don't think it is sufficient for it. But it is clear that DE is teaching people that the best way to get better at doing an activity is to actually do it. Rather than wait until you are "ready".

Also: I "love" how Duviri and now the heads up of a fast forward are bringing everyone out of the woodwork to get angry that new players might not have the exact same experience they did. Like, I think the paid skip is kind of scummy. But Reb was totally right to point out that most MMOs already do this either with a level skip token that comes with an expansion or just sunsetting content entirely. It needed a lot of work to provide MR progression but I still think the Duviri start was an awesome idea (reminiscent of Guild Wars 1 having a different start with a lot of the smaller expansions).
- They need to accelerate the new player start, way more than Duviri did. Getting through stuff needs to be like 4x faster (or skippable). There are so many stupid, grindy parts of the game like the mote amp, progression speed bumps that make things take longer for no reason.
  
  (I hate Saya's Vigil too though.)
  
  Agreed. Although I think the star chart/junction "fixes" will probably help with that. Get most of the side quests off the main path and steer people toward the path to The New War
  
  Was chatting with a friend and I still think Duviri was the answer.
  
  Circuit with more resource drops (so you can build the BPs) gets players frames. This is something available to everyone and most new frames come with a new resource or two at this point so there aren't too many concerns over "ruining" the game for anyone but the gatekeepers
  
  A new NPC who will allow you to "take out a loan" for the grindier stuff. Imagine getting your Railjack NOW but basically having the equivalent of a lich taxing all your missions for a week or two after while you pay it off. Would need some balancing (imagine getting an amp for zero wisps...), but uses existing mechanics. And you can obviously expect to have a plat rush for this.
  
  The Duviri start exits you out AFTER The New War with a limited subset of star chart nodes unlocked. This is more or less "fair" since everything up to that is very much The Operator's story and it is looking like Zariman and Whispers In The Wall and 1999 are "act 3" as it were. But starting Vor's Prize puts you on The Operator's path and culminates in The New War. And same main quest oriented Junction requirements to encourage players to do the main quest.
  
  Duviri allows you to get up to rank 20 on any frame/weapon whether you own it or not. This gives players a chance to generate MR but still requires us to grind and "own" an item for the full benefit. This also makes Duviri more "worth it" for existing players who aren't "ready" for Steel Path and Incarnons.
  
  Plat unlocks for starchart (but not junctions) if people really don't want to do Second Dream/New War.
  
  And, as we already have, plat unlocks for Necramechs, Archwings, Railjacks, and whatever else ends up being needed for main quest missions.
  
  And this more or less continues for the year 20 update or whatever. Either continue with the idea of Eternalism or do something with Hayden Tenno in 1999 (since I doubt The Man in the Wall is going to be the big bad for more than a few years). Obviously The Operator is a MUCH heftier "start" but it also already comes with some really nice rewards like (Broken) War, Paracelcis, and Naturak. Hell, add one or two more goodies as retroactive "Hey, thans for being a tenno for this past decade" to make people happy. Gotva Prime has already shown that DE know how to give some pretty insane stuff "for free".
  
  And Operator Path is pretty fast if you are not stopping to grind, doing the god awful Silver Grove bullshit.
About 2, are you sure that's still an issue? I did not encounter this during the two times I played the quest on the current patch. (both times fresh account)
- Yeah, we ran into that one the other day. Maybe not if they updated it in the last few days. But it was still very frustrating to my friend who already has frustration issues with Warframe. (These issues have been alleviated with the addition of crossfriends)

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