Big publishers ‘eject too soon’ from live service titles, says Warframe boss. “It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away”
Big publishers ‘eject too soon’ from live service titles, says Warframe boss | VGC
Not only that, live service titles are absolutely tone deaf when it comes to respecting the effort of their players.
It doesn't stop Steve from being right with his statement, though, but his understanding of what a live service game's monetization model should be has shown to be two or three parallel universes ahead of what the "triple A" projects usually do.
Hell, paying real money can only skip you through the first dozens of hours of the tutorial. After that, paying effectively only allows you to get cosmetic options.
I remember when Warframe had Pay For Revives. Not sure if that was Steve.
But many things in Warframe are much more player friendly these days.
There's an interesting interview by NoClip which shows the early development phases of Warframe. They were stumbling their way around many new mechanics that come with a live service game.
They don't mention the daily revive system, but it's clear that in the game's progressive transformation from "tactical shooter" to "horde shooter", that system had to go. I don't remember if there were many complains about the system back then, though.
Love the guy, but he also misses over that warframe has monetizion that beats the pants off of all of the others.
Hey, at least it's not P2W... right?
You can buy weapons and prime frames, so I guess it depends on your definition of "win" but I'd argue that yes, technically it does. The larger issue of WF however are the layers of FOMO they have that turn the entire game into a job / chore that you have to attend daily, which is ultimately why I left it, even though the core gameplay itself is definitely fun. Frankly why I probably won't play their other game either because it is almost certainly going to follow the same live service formula as WF.
It arguably isn't anymore, although it looks like it is. Yes, you can buy prime frames and weapons, but can't buy the mods or arcanes directly from the game to outfit them. Even then, prime weapons on their own are not the best in the game by a long shot, and a prime warframe does not guarantee it being "meta".
The weapons that are the best are locked behind story quests, and even once you unlock one of those vendors, only one of them that you can buy with platinum is any good.
They were considering adding a destiny style story skip, but when they asked for feedback it was so negative they immediately relented.
It helps that it's not really pvp focused or competetively co-op.
Live service gaming is having a bad time? Damn that's crazy.
goes back to ROM hacked Armored Core 3
The end state of all live service games is to be thrown away.
Thing is, that's how a lot of people treat games. They play them for a few days when they come out to extract the novelty of the new experience. They get annoyed that it isn't as novel or new as when they were kids and experiencing it for the first time. Then they buy a new game. Rinse and repeat.
Games as a service just take advantage of that by promising that experience but in one convenient package: We'll change the game every now and then to keep you interested instead of satisfied.
If a game is done well, it'll stick with you. I've replayed Psychonauts so many times over the years, and I just finished another playthrough tonight.
All that means is that in pursuit of being one of the astoundingly few games that, even with updates, will keep people playing for years, they designed a game that won't be around in a few decades for you to revisit.
Warframe has always been Barbie for mech weeboos. 🤌🏽
No, it's animal crossing for metal gear rising fans. No, seriously. The core gameplay loop is farming for items to fill out your mastery index so that you can increase your mastery rank. Animal Crossing is basically slowly collecting items to fill out your Nook catalog. They're basically the same. Warframe even has fishing!
My space dolls are very pretty, i'm not even gonna try to argue against it
This is a bit frustrating to hear from him considering this is exactly what he did with Wayfinders when he became CEO.
Wow, just looked into it cuz I hadn't heard about that. And yeah, it looks like that's exactly what he did a month after becoming CEO. In fact it looks like they closed the entire publishing side of the company and possibly laid those employees off. Super disappointed to hear that from the studio behind such a beloved game
I used to work at DE. Still in the industry so I'm staying anonymous.
My buddy and I were just hearing more bad news out of DE and found ourselves looking online to see if anyone's pieced together what's happening behind the scenes. Yours is the first comment we've seen. Made this account to thank you. You're spot on.
The "Devstream Steve" persona is definitely not the Steve devs know internally. Rebecca works overtime trying to keep him looking good to players (but I won't knock her cause she's just trying to keep the studio going). Probably the closest players ever got to seeing what he's actually like was when he tried to cancel a big devstream last minute, making Rebecca do it solo, then randomly crashed it and just fucked with her. Devstream 133 if you want to look it up (that entire day was weird let me tell ya)
Things took a sharp turn when Steve became CEO. It wasn’t just Wayfinder getting the axe. Longtime Warframe devs were let go too. Basically anyone Steve might’ve seen as a threat over the years. A lot of those folks used to shield the rest of us from the worst of it, so losing them hit hard. Morale dropped off a cliff.
Plenty of us chose to walk not long after. Hard to say how much of what’s happening now is Steve or Tencent but Steve’s always had a way of setting things up so there’s a scapegoat. I’ve watched good people (even ones I thought he liked) get thrown under the bus for him.
The layoffs weren’t even the end of the cuts. He got rid of bonuses for a while too. There was a rumor going around that Steve and some of the devstream guys still got theirs, but no idea if that’s actually true. I think the rest of the team just recently started getting (smaller) bonuses again. At least there’s that.
Biggest issue is just the fear. Not everyone was lucky enough to find another job they could flee to.
The whole industry’s a mess right now, and nobody wants to speak up because it could mean never getting hired again. I heard a journalist tried reaching out to ex-employees for a story about Wayfinder, but no one wanted to go on record. Can’t really blame them. I feel for the folks burning out over at DE trying to meet pre-layoff outputs and hoping they don’t become Steve's next target.
And all that is just scratching the surface. Damn this turned into a real rant.
Anyways thanks for caring and actually looking into things. Folks working on Warframe and Wayfinder both really need that right now.
Anthem was dead well before two years. They just straight up stopped updating it after like, 1 content patch.
Space Daddy knows best
That's a good thing if it brings the company down. Less garbage released.
Company proceeds to be purchased by microsoft
The whole concept should just die already.
Good
I used to hold the Warframe world record for fastest "100% achievements" at just over 1,600 hours (mind you, I wasn't rushing).
I stopped playing shortly after Deimos released (late 2020). Is it worth revisiting?
Well, yeah. If you like storymode, it gets good after Deimos. Pretty sure new locations like these came out in the meantime. There are some very surprising things too, so give it a whirl for sure.
I came back to the game half a year ago and I've been enjoying every update since. Seems like you enjoyed the game before, so I'd say it's definitely worth a try.
We have some really cool stuff coming up this year, too.
Well.. coming up 25 years ago.
The main quest is pretty good, at least! The New War came out and resolved, same with Duviri and the return of the Zariman. I'm currently pretty excited for the actual for real 1999 timewarp featuring John Excalibur himself.
As for gameplay, I think its been on an upward trend since deimos. New warframe grinds usually come with a pity currency if you just can't get a part to drop, and focus farming is a lot less of a pain.
Fellow 100%er (up to 0.7% of players now). Can't say I did it fast, as I didn't care until I ran out of things to do, but likely 2.5k hrs before I did it, now 4k hrs in and it is still a go-back-to game for quick 30min runarounds.
They've been having nothing but wins for a year or two. Games at the best point it's ever been imo! It's actually a game I recommend now, though the rough point is still frame/weapon slots.
Completely serious here: not only is Warframe the best free game I've probably ever played, but it's one of the best games I've ever played. It's honestly incredible how much love and hard work have gone into that game and I've never had to spend a penny to have hours and hours of enjoyment and if I hopped on today there would be TONS of content for me I've never even experienced yet. Warframe fucks, big time.
Yep! He didn't target Wayfinders specifically, just wanted to get out of publishing, but effectively left Wayfinders without any online infrastructure and took most/all the early access funding with them. I loved DE for how they manage WF, but that was not it. And it's even more sour now that's pretending like he didn't do it.
I mean, if it's PVE then yeah, it can works. Games like Fallout 76, ESO, Warframe, all can be played alone, while PVP multiplayer only games will suffer significantly if the playerbase drop below certain threshold.
Fo76 expansions are still coming every quarter, all free
I keep trying to get into this game but there is sooo much base building at the beginning... I just wanna play the fun stuff!
Also co-op mission progress makes no sense when playing in a group (only one person gets the progress?)
Free content is always great news tho!
I haven't played since 2021 and some BoS DLC came out. Wonder how hard it would be to get back into it.