Warframe | Why Do New Players REALLY Quit?

Quick note: on the topic of good things they added for new players, the Dreamer's Bond aura helps to address the issue of early game energy and health generation and also gives players a free +14 capacity because it can be slotted into any aura polarity. HUGE addition that, while not helpful at my point in the game, really does make the experience of actually playing the game much better early on. Auto-install has also been updated in the past, and new players do receive plenty of mods from both Vor's Prize and Junctions, but my point still stands regarding both. Auto-install is an option that encourages laziness instead of learning the system and often throws whatever it can at the wall to fill out capacity. The starter mods are a step in the right direction, but if they were implemented as a tutorial that would be ideal.

The fact that your first warframe and weapons do not have a catalyst built in even after 11 years is a crime.

My boyfriend always thought it was a weird ass gatcha mobile game cus of the crafting times and able to skip the timer, which is sad cus I really wanted to introduce him to the game :(

Daily Standing limits are a HUGE problem for early game and endgame. They desperately need to either increase or straight up remove the limit. My biggest suggestion they should do is make Bounties not count towards the daily limit so that new players can grind free roams optimally and not worry about if the limit will make their effort meaningless.

You've hit the nail on the head. Things like Slots (and even Orokin Catalysts/Reactors) are money-makers that DE only needed when Warframe was in its VERY early days. It's only function today is inconveniencing veterans and warding off new players.

this just goes to show that reckless financial decisions improve one's enjoyment in a videogame

Gods, the slots issue is a huge one. I got a group of friends into the game since we were in the middle of a content drought for FFXIV and one of our four man team was legitimately about to quit because of slots, so my boyfriend and I bought him some weapon and frame slots, and now he's at Steel Path. If they just gave starting players more slots it would greatly increase retention on it's own.

The main problems all my friends had was slots costing platinum, the market not showing blueprints so they all thought it was pay to win, and veterans nuking the room for them making them basically just not play the game

1. Build times. Over the last two months, we could watch LegendaryDrops' new player experience. And he said roughly this to crafting timers: At first I hated them. I did not understand them. But as I progressed and pushed on, the foundry filled up and I had something to claim every day. This really proves your point: Getting variety more early increases the fun people have. Which means faster build times are likely good for the players as a whole. 2. Slots. Personally, I would love to have this removed even more than I want build times removed. I can swallow the bitter pill of waiting, but paying for my farmed new toy is... weird. Maybe make it so that I can have one thing of everything, but if I want a duplicate, like e.g. another Dante, I need to buy a slot. Then slots could also be rarer and more expensive, and I would consider it.

Slots being a reward for junctions is a great idea and would push people to A get quests unlocked B get slots for the frame they just farmed for C mastery gain D give them a clear line of where to go even just 1 frame slot and 2 weapon slots would be great

why is auto-installing ayatan stars only unlocked at mr10

A potential quit point I think is actually the multi player openness. Sure you can select to multi play or go solo and friend and invite exclusive. But the problem is getting into a game with all these vets and try hards. In early game you want to explore and expand your knowledge experience and a squad helps you stay alive, but getting an experienced player tends to cause mission completion too quickly leading to noob learning and not getting a chance to do and learn how to play

Crafting time, slot gates, and the story from events that introduced bosses to planets not being worked into the planet progression are the 3 things I feel working on would help. A lot.

One day my online friend, a guy I used to play Valorant with at that time, suggested we play something else – Warframe. I don't usually try new games, but somehow he convinced me, I installed it and went through the tutorial (awakening). We tried to squad up, but I had to go through Vor's price solo as well. At that time the guy had to go for the day. I kept progressing, but he didn't come the next day or the day after... As of today, we've never played or even talked since then, but I found a new passion and I've sunk thousands of hours in.

Its always confused me that new players only have two warframe slots. Its such an archaic thing to have in this constantly updated and improved game.

I think nothing is more telling about the crafting timer than me crafting 30+ Formas over an actual month because a Forma takes 23 hours to craft. Everytime I went to bed I brought up the app, claimed my Forma and started crafting another

I think a good balnce between "3 day crafting kills new player hype" and "DE needs to make money" could just be to make prime frames take 3 days and have base frames not take any time. If DE suddenly starts hemorrhaging money you could make it so the most recent frame released also has a 3 day craft time, which means all the current players who aren't at risk of quitting will probably be making their version with the 3 day crafting timer and will still sometimes want to rush or outright buy the frame to skip the wait, but for a new player, 98% of the frames they could try to make wouldn't be time locked in any way. This seems like the best way to specifically alleviate the new player problem while letting DE still make their money. Obviously as an older player I'd love it if they didn't have crafting times at all, but if DE IS going to keep them, I'd prefer they didn't harm this game's ability to intake new players.

i think another part of what stopped me from staying with the game had to be its lack of communication, most of the level scaling happens through mods that while you know you have to grind for, yet have no where in the game that would tell you where to aquire mods for what you have. leading to what feels like the ai constantly over powering you with no way to know how to improve other than google what mods you have access to thatmay even the playing field. like even with 200+ hours in the game i feel i struggle at enemies who are level 30-40 sometimes and it can get frustrating having to deal with them when i either dont know where to get the mods to improve my gameplay, or if i know where the mod is its locked behind somethign i havent unlocked yet or enemiues to high level for me to handle. also the second dream being where the story begins is kind of jaring as if it was earilier it would have felt like "oh this has always been a part of teh game" but it coming from no where makes it feel like "oh this feels sudden where did this come from?" which i think was part of why they made duviri a startign option as it gives players a glimpse of the story to let you know somethign is there oh wait this was supposed to be funny um- what the sigma???

I started playing Warframe around when Plains of Eidolons got released. I was playing many random free games mostly to kill time and to "challenge myself" trying to get the most out of free games without spending a single cent. I did not particularly care about crafting times as many, many other free games had crafting/waiting times. While I was crafting Rhino, not sure which, I was playing another free game until it asked me to wait in turn. What made me quit Warframe for the first time was the limited slots. I really felt like it was just another free game that wanted to make me pay for what I earned. I quit playing even before doing Natah. Honestly, I was so used to predatory free games that I did not even spend Endo on mods as I thought it would be another premium currency. Hell, I didn't even open the market for weapon/warframe blueprints because I thought it was yet another predatory system (I only leveled market weapons when I reached around MR 20). The reasons I came back was because a friend that was playing Warframe told me it was really, really good and to give it a chance. Honestly, for a free game, the gameplay is more than solid. I spent around 20€ buying my first plat on sale and now I don't regret it, but when I paid back then I was legit PISSED. I did not keep most of the weapons I leveled to max level because I sold them all for inventory space. Only weapons I kept were primes and "non-standard" ones like vandal/wraith/prisma weapons. I got so traumatized by limited slots that I STILL only bother with more slots and investing in weapons that are not "standard". I'm sure some will say you can trade prime parts for easy plat for slots, but honestly you can't ask new players to do that: - New players don't even know the price of prime parts, and no one should have to go through community sites to not get scammed. - When a new player got a prime part, they want to use it for themselves. It feels like the efforts I did to get a new weapons are thrown in the gutter because I have to trade it to someone else to get plat.

Wait they removed the duviri intro? Damn, thats, sad, but in a way not surprising