The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and drive a motorcycle in the year 1999, has released a new update. This latest expansion highlights the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in more recent times.
The new content, made available this week, adds a fungus-inspired character that does a little dance, along with a brand-new biome to discover. But it’s also going back to basics, with a new mission designed to making sure this complex, vast long-running online game is understandable by new players.
A Quest Called "The Teacher"
Called “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, mods are augments that can be equipped on your warframe or arsenal to boost their performance. They range from the straightforward (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the incredibly intricate. Content creators often craft hour-long videos about optimized loadouts that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.
“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” explained a lead narrative designer. “I think it was really important, upon completing the mission, for players to think, ‘Wow, modding is interesting. I want to try more of this.’”
A Joint Development
“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the original developers, who provided the narrative sauce, and an external team, 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 takes away the player’s abilities and melee weapons, and forces them to engage with the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.
Many of the external team were longtime players, but others had never played before, according to a principal games designer. It was this outside perspective that proved critical.
“Our initial step involved observing new players and go right play through the tutorial and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials presented the mod system. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.
“Certain players missed fundamental guidance where it's flashing on the screen saying equip the modification,” he said.
Filling a Significant Gap
Warframe’s mods allow players to create incredibly strong combinations that turn the screen into a blitz of numbers. But "The Teacher" isn’t really about that. Veteran users who desire more advanced content, like optimizing for endgame challenges. But it became clear that the mission addresses a genuine oversight for newcomers — and that executing this is quite complex.
“There’s lots of little tweaks and background details there to just demonstrate the possibilities rather than explain it outright,” the designer said. For example, one of the goals of “The Teacher” is to show how mods can create powerful elemental status effects; in this case, a magnetic effect that depletes protective barriers.
“Adjustments to the armament to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to explicitly tell players, 'oh yeah, actually on a base level mod, you only got a few percentage chance to proc an elemental effect.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”
Experienced players will naturally recognize these mechanics and grasp their function, but beginners require instruction to pay attention to these things.
“This type of design work that we previously focused on just because our priorities lay elsewhere,” said a narrative lead. “However, this oversight meant that players weren't properly taught the modding system.”
A Labor of Love
“There’s so much that goes into just making a really simple mission that — honestly — you can blast through in about 15 minutes,” said the designer. “Yet it represents extensive development for loads of people.”
The designer was visibly glowing with excitement over being able to work on a game that he loves — and to craft a mission for one of his favorite characters.
“I'm a huge fan of Teshin,” he said. “He embodies everything my younger self found awesome.”
Streamlining the Beginning
In the decade-plus since launch, Warframe has been in a ongoing struggle with its own player onboarding process. There are many intricate mechanics that players don’t need to worry about — and won’t even have access to until much later. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on how much time you want to invest. A previous patch improved the introductory experience so that players could reach Warframe’s mind-bending plot developments 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 early game experience evolves beyond its origins. New players can get their foot in the door — regardless of overlooking tutorials.