Finally Addressing the Modding Gap: The Game's New Quest Rights a Wrong

The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, an experience where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has unveiled a major update. The Vallis Undermind exemplifies the unique whimsy that has become synonymous with Warframe in the past few seasons.

This expansion, released on Wednesday, brings in a fungus-inspired character that performs a unique animation, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. But it’s also going back to basics, with a new mission aimed at making sure this complicated, expansive long-running online game is understandable by new players.

Introducing "The Teacher"

Titled “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: modding.

In Warframe, mods are augments that can be added to your character or your weapons to improve their stats. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the devastatingly complex. Content creators often craft hour-long videos about idealized builds that use synergistic enhancements to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” said a key developer. “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 handled the story elements, and an external team, who designed the mission, 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 removes the player's powers and melee weapons, and compels them to use the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.

Several developers were already fans of the game, but others had never played before, 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 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 fill the display with damage values. But "The Teacher" isn’t really about that. Veteran users 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 doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and little subtle things in the background 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 elemental damage types; in this case, Magnetic damage that eats chunks out of enemy shields.

“Adjustments to the armament to be a rapid-fire gun, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” the designer said. “But you don’t want to explicitly tell players, 'with a basic modification, you only got a few percentage chance to trigger a special damage type.' So how do you tutorialize that without changing it?”

Veterans will naturally recognize these mechanics and understand how it works, but new players have to be taught to notice these details.

“This type of design work that we've had to worry about as much just because that hasn't been our focus,” said a narrative lead. “However, this oversight meant that we never really told people how to use mods.”

Months of Effort

“A tremendous amount of work is required for just making a really simple mission that — honestly — 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 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 12 years since its release, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own new user introduction. There are many intricate mechanics that players can ignore initially — and won’t even have access to until much later. And others, like modding, that increase in depth depending on your level of engagement. An update earlier this year 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 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 — even if they miss the menu prompts.