It’s no secret that Warframe‘s community and its closeness with the devs are a key ingredient to its success. Still, a recent lightning-fast hotfix about an infuriating Warframe boss and mechanic has further highlighted just how crucial this kind of player-dev relationship is, especially in keeping the game successful.
For those who are out of the loop, Warframe‘s Elite Deep Archimedea endgame content has started with a controversial week, all thanks to a broken endgame boss that took 45 to 60 minutes to defeat. Many high-level players were quitting left and right as this kind of prolonged encounter is usually only acceptable in Monster Hunter. As usual, complaints were pouring in en masse.
Thankfully, the feedback has not fallen on deaf ears since a fix to the 45-minute boss fight has already been implemented (with more to follow). The news came from Warframe Creative Director Rebecca Ford personally, who even joined players in testing out these changes and also informed them of the fix itself. Now, the Elite Deep Archimedea boss for this week has been replaced with an Extermination mission while the devs adjust things.
It’s not often you see the game’s actual lead or director taking part in the fix themselves– actually, most live-service games don’t even have this kind of interaction. That’s why the tweet and the announcement from Ford have been widely celebrated by the Warframe community, especially given the developers’ accountability and responsiveness.
The fix is still on server-side at the moment while the developers work in the background to rebalance the troublesome Warframe boss. That’s also why Ford had to partake in some server-side gameplay with actual players, likely to see if the temporary hotfix was implemented properly.
Rare in Live-Service Games, Common in Warframe
As for developer transparency and interaction with players, the Warframe community is not entirely unfamiliar with this kind of friendliness. Apart from the fortnightly devstreams, many Warframe developers themselves walk around in-game and even play with random players.
It’s just that you don’t really see this kind of love for the game from such a high executive position as a director– even teaming up with random players and chatting with them, nonetheless. I’d argue that it’s this kind of gaming spirit that has kept Warframe a stellar example of how video game developers should listen to and treat their players, as the result is a bustling and loyal community that keeps coming back.
