[2021] New Player Crafting Experiment

When it comes to reviewing our New Player Experience, there’s a lot of clear work to be done in terms of directing players to key story progression. However, when it comes to systems progression, we want to run some proper tests on what the true best way to teach a player the value of Crafting and Resources is.

We want to explore what happens when players are introduced to weapon crafting earlier on and how this impacts the new player experience, an exercise more commonly known as A/B testing. Our goal is to give players a suggestion on what next to pursue in Warframe after finishing their first Quest.

After completing the Vor’s Prize Quest, some new players will receive an Inbox message from Darvo that contains the Burston Blueprint along with one of three different Resources packages. For more experienced players, these small Resource bundles may not have an impact, but for new Tenno it may help them learn about the deeper crafting system in Warframe!

Overall there will be four possible outcomes for new players after completing Vor’s Prize for the first time:

1. Player completes Vor’s Prize and there is no new Inbox message.
2. Player completes Vor’s Prize and gets an Inbox message with the Burston Blueprint and all the required Resources to build it.
3. Player completes Vor’s Prize and gets an Inbox message with the Burston Blueprint and all required Resources to build it, except for Ferrite.
4. Player completes Vor’s Prize and gets an Inbox message with the Burston Blueprint and no Resource package.

We’ll closely monitor whether one of these four versions leads to a better play experience and understanding of the crafting system. This test will run for four weeks before the version that appears to provide the most positive New Player Experience becomes the standard for all new players.

Understandably you may be wondering why this post is necessary if we’re looking for genuine results from this experiment. Our goal here is to be transparent and not hide the fact that we’re trying some new things in an effort to better the New Player Experience.

16 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

@[DE]CoreyOnline Is this test for PC only, or also on consoles?

This will in fact be PC only, with the intention to have the most successful of these 4 variations be standardized across platforms shortly after the four week PC run!

7 minutes ago, kyori said:

39 minutes ago, [DE]CoreyOnline said:

Player completes Vor’s Prize and there is no new Inbox message.

May I ask what is the point if there is nothing for new tenno to gain?

As far as the experiment goes, it's a common practice to have one of the options be sort of be an untouched version for comparison's sake (No Darvo message is how things are now). There's always the possibility, however unlikely, that adding the new message is one too many things and actually causes new folks to leave earlier. So just a best practice! :) 

Hey Tenno! Great seeing all the new chatter on this thread. Just a quick message to let you know that we haven't forgotten about this and that we're analyzing how this experiment went now! We'll be sure to follow up with you via a "how'd it go" post once the dust has settled. Talk soon!  

Greetings Tenno, 

Thank you for sharing so many ideas and thoughts on how to improve early game elements for new Warframe players. 

If you recall the original title & post, this thread was intended as a quick & transparent heads-up about a small experiment we were running about a year and a half ago in February of 2021. This was not the be-all-end-all of our ongoing efforts to improve Warframe, but something we wanted to explain as it briefly resulted in four slightly different versions of the early game. 

This specific post was not intended as a call for suggestions on how to improve the early game, but has certainly taken on a life of its own, with many Tenno submitting interesting ideas. While we appreciate these, we’ll be closing this thread as it's been over a year since the New Player Crafting Experiment ended. 

We encourage you to redirect any ideas you have for the early game to our Feedback sub-forum; either ‘General’ or ‘Missions & Levels’ could be great homes for your suggestions. https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1219-feedback/

Thank you again for your ideas, and for your avid interest in making Warframe even better.