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The popular online game known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has released a new update. This latest expansion highlights the unique whimsy that has become synonymous with Warframe in the past few seasons.

The new content, released on Wednesday, brings in a fungus-inspired character that does a little dance, along with a whole new explorable fungal area. However, it also revisits core concepts, with another quest designed to making sure this complex, vast long-running online game makes sense to new players.

Introducing "The Teacher"

Titled “The Teacher,” this is the highly anticipated mission that trains Warframe players on how to use one of the game's fundamental yet complex systems: modding.

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be added to your character or your weapons to improve their stats. They range from the straightforward (increase damage or speed up reload rate) to the devastatingly complex. Dedicated players often craft hour-long videos about idealized builds that use synergistic enhancements to create devastating effects.

“Many players likely started their journey, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” explained a key developer. “I think it was really important, upon completing the mission, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. I want to try more of this.’”

A Collaborative Effort

“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the core team, who handled the story elements, and a supporting studio, 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 forces them to engage with the mod system to handily demonstrate its power.

Many of the external team were longtime players, but some were newcomers, 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 have them experience the introduction and take prodigious notes on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials presented the mod system. But the team noted that they didn’t work on everyone.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions 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. There will be some long-time players who wish the quest was geared more towards their needs, like creating powerful and specific builds. But it became clear that “The Teacher” is filling a real and significant gap for early players — and that executing this is quite complex.

“Numerous subtle adjustments and background details there to just sort of show you what it can do rather than tell you,” 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.

“Adjustments to the armament to be a burst-fire weapon, because it shows off the proc rate more,” the designer said. “But you don’t want 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?”

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

“This type of design work that we've had to worry about as much 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 clearly enthusiastic 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's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

Streamlining the Beginning

In the decade-plus since launch, Warframe has been in a ongoing struggle with its own player onboarding process. 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 your level of engagement. 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 — even if they miss the menu prompts.