🔗 Share this article

The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has unveiled a significant update. The Vallis Undermind showcases the creative flair that has become synonymous with Warframe in the past few seasons.

The new content, released on Wednesday, adds a new mushroom-themed warframe that performs a unique animation, along with a brand-new biome to discover. However, it also revisits core concepts, with a new mission designed to making sure this complex, vast 12-year-old MMO is understandable by new players.

The Arrival of "The Teacher"

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

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be added to your character or your weapons to boost their performance. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the incredibly intricate. Content creators often produce extensive guides about optimized loadouts that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“Many players likely started their journey, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” explained a key developer. “We believed it was crucial, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. 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 appear early in the game.

In the quest, the player is tasked with obtaining a component for their ship, 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.

Several developers were longtime players, but some were newcomers, according to a principal games designer. This fresh viewpoint that proved critical.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and go right play through the tutorial and document extensively on all points of confusion,” the designer said. Early-game menu pop-ups presented the mod system. But the team noted that they didn’t work on everyone.

“Certain players missed fundamental guidance where the game highlights it saying put the mod in the slot,” he said.

Filling a Significant Gap

Warframe’s mods allow players to create stupidly powerful synergies that fill the display with damage values. But "The Teacher" focuses on different aspects. Veteran users who desire more advanced content, like optimizing for endgame challenges. But it became clear that “The Teacher” is filling a real and significant gap for early players — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“Numerous subtle adjustments 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 goals of “The Teacher” 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 rapid-fire gun, 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 trigger a special damage type.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Experienced players will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and grasp their function, but beginners require instruction to notice these details.

“This type of design work that we've had to worry about as much just because our priorities lay elsewhere,” said a story developer. “But part of it not being our focus that players weren't properly taught the modding system.”

Significant Investment

“There’s so much that goes into just making a seemingly straightforward quest that — frankly — you can complete quickly,” said the designer. “But it's months and months of work for many team members.”

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 love Teshin,” he said. “He embodies everything my younger self found awesome.”

Improving the New Player Experience

In the 12 years since its release, Warframe has been in a ongoing struggle with its own new user introduction. There are lots of complex systems that players don’t need to worry about — and won’t even have access to until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on your level of engagement. A previous patch streamlined the early game 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 reinforcing their dedication to make sure Warframe’s initial hours evolves beyond its origins. Beginners can find their way — regardless of overlooking tutorials.