🔗 Share this article

The popular online game known as Warframe, a title where you might encounter bizarre cosmic entities and pilot futuristic vehicles, has launched a major update. This latest expansion exemplifies the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in the past few seasons.

The new content, made available this week, adds a new mushroom-themed warframe that performs a unique animation, along with a brand-new biome to discover. But it’s also going back to basics, with another quest aimed at making sure this complex, vast 12-year-old MMO is accessible for new players.

The Arrival of "The Teacher"

Titled “The Teacher,” this is the highly anticipated mission that educates Warframe players on how to use one of the game's most basic — yet most intricate systems: modding.

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be equipped on your warframe or arsenal to boost their performance. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the devastatingly complex. Dedicated players often produce extensive guides about idealized builds that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“Many players likely started their journey, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” noted a lead narrative designer. “I think it was really important, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Wow, modding is interesting. I'd like to experiment further.’”

Teamwork in Action

“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the core team, who provided the narrative sauce, and a supporting studio, who crafted the gameplay, which will be introduced to new players.

In the quest, the player is tasked with obtaining a new segment for their spaceship, but they’re interrupted by a menacing, powerful warrior called Teshin, who removes the player's powers and melee weapons, and compels them to use the mod system to effectively show its potential.

Many of the external team were already fans of the game, but others had never played before, according to a principal games designer. It was this outside perspective that was essential.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Early-game menu pop-ups presented the mod system. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions where the game highlights it saying equip the modification,” he said.

Addressing a Real Need

Warframe’s mods allow players to create stupidly powerful synergies that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" isn’t really about that. There will be some long-time players who wish the quest was geared more towards their needs, like optimizing for endgame challenges. But it became clear that “The Teacher” is filling a real and significant gap for newcomers — and that executing this is quite complex.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and little subtle things in the background there to just sort of show you what it can do rather than explain it outright,” the designer said. For example, one of the mission's objectives is to show how mods can create powerful elemental status effects; in this case, Magnetic damage that eats chunks out of enemy shields.

“We had to change the weapon to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to say to people, 'oh yeah, actually on a base level mod, you only got a low probability to proc an elemental effect.' So how do you tutorialize that without changing it?”

Veterans will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and understand how it works, but beginners require instruction to pay attention to these things.

“This type of design work that we previously focused on just because that hasn't been our focus,” said a story developer. “However, this oversight meant that we never really told people how to use mods.”

Significant Investment

“There’s so much that goes into just making a really simple mission that — frankly — you can blast through in about 15 minutes,” said the designer. “But it's months and months of work for many team members.”

The designer was clearly enthusiastic over contributing to a beloved title — and to design content featuring a preferred figure.

“I love Teshin,” he said. “He's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

Streamlining the Beginning

In the 12 years since its release, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own new user introduction. There are lots of complex systems that players can ignore initially — and won't encounter until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on how much time you want to invest. An update earlier this year improved the introductory experience so that players could reach Warframe’s complex narrative arcs with less time on the grind up front.

With “The Teacher,” it’s clear that the developers are doubling down on a commitment to make sure Warframe’s initial hours doesn’t stay locked in 2013. New players can get their foot in the door — regardless of overlooking tutorials.