#as someone who burned out they're very clearly addressing pain points and aiming for game design that's friendly to players

[theaceofskulls]

I need it to be known that awhile back, I burned out on Warframe hard.

I cycle through live games like it a lot and usually I take a bit of time off and come back to them regularly, but there was just a lot of stuff right before I quit that slowly wore away one me.

It started with Railjack, a gamemode I was really looking forward to feeling like a clunky reset that was entirely an uphill grind before I could get to any of the fun parts and continued with the battlepass like systems that eventually saw the release of Glassmaker coming out alongside its third open world, Deimos.

Deimos felt bad, and the current season which would regularly spawn in enemies into the mode while you were trying to work on things made it worse. and it was yet another content island with a very confusing design to me with enemies with too large threat radiuses and several elite enemies with confusing damage resistances.

I felt behind on everything and feeling less and less like I was enjoying the rewards I was getting, but there was one big update that I was waiting for: New War.

When that dropped and it felt like it focused on a dev's pet project while downplaying the things I was looking forward to and then dropped an endgame mode that was on top of all the other ones I'd yet to fully master, I hit my burnout without knowing it and held on lightly until Angels of the Zariman, another endgame mode where the rewards appeared to be all for decorating an apartment with a confusing new faction system and yet another "we got to a part of the game I really wanted to see and this is it?!" moment.

I left the game entirely for two years, only occasionally checking in. When it was announced that Steve would be stepping down to focus on Soulframe, I couldn't even properly get excited at that despite snagging a beta key. Hearing Rebecca take the helm had me interested, as well as seeing the 1999 stuff interested me but I couldn't drum up the excitement I used to have.

Earlier this year after the latest round of 1999 previews, I was interested enough to see if my burnout had worn off and while it did, I don't credit that for why I've stuck with it again. There's been a legitimate change in direction to the game while I've been away, and while a few of the grinds I've missed have the telltale signs of why I burned out, going through the content since then, especially with the major overhaul to the UI and damage system has made this whole game work for me.

I stated in a previous post that 1999 also manages to successfully leverage its story quest into its grind correctly and after a few days of doing the actual grind, I don't just stand by that statement, I feel this is an absolutely amazing teachable design by comparing the older content that caused me to burn out (to be fair, 1999 isn't perfect and I have some stress points)

The story quest doesn't just leave on a "now that's over, go grind out content to get your rewards" it emotionally charges you with "this grind works towards emotions that we've played with in the story" and also does a good job of throwing rewards your way very early and very often. I noticed this same pattern with the Whisper in the Walls content when I got to it, but it's clear that this has taken further lessons.

The fact that the story content has an epilogue that I managed to get unlocked within three days of playing with it, which didn't end the grind nor my reasons for wanting to continue, really goes a long way as well. Compared to New War which launched without its epilogue and required weeks to see it through (and even then, it would be two mainline updates before Duviri which had almost half of what I consider to be the complimenting material to New War), Angels of the Zariman which immediately petered off its story, Duviri which felt like the grind was completely separate from the story, and Heart of Deimos where the story wrapup was entirely contained by the faction grind (and the correct way to actually do that faction grind was actually counter intuitive as I'd learn later), it's clearly such a learning moment.

The fact that engaging with the faction is done in more than just missions (but the missions themselves having the NPCs in them helping you) is also such a huge change to the way the game felt. I'm engaging with this update because I want more and more, not just chasing the gameplay rewards (which often felt out of reach if I didn't manage to cross that threshold to endgame that felt out of reach).

I do think that a lot of lessons need to be applied backwards throughout the game but the things I've seen in the past couple updates it's gone through are incredibly promising. Whisper in the Walls providing catchup mechanic and alternate ways to obtain rewards from other annoying grinds was inspired, and I'm once again engaged with the game and looking forward to seeing where story threads go.