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The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, an experience where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and drive a motorcycle in the year 1999, has launched a significant update. This latest expansion highlights the unique whimsy that has come to define Warframe in the past few seasons.

This expansion, made available this week, adds 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 geared at making sure this complex, vast 12-year-old MMO is understandable by new players.

The Arrival of "The Teacher"

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

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements 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 produce extensive guides about optimized loadouts that use synergistic enhancements to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” explained a lead narrative designer. “We believed it was crucial, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Wow, modding is interesting. I'd like to experiment further.’”

A Collaborative Effort

“The Teacher” was developed in a collaboration between the original developers, who handled the story elements, and a supporting studio, 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 close-combat arms, and compels them to use the mod system to effectively show its potential.

Several developers were longtime players, but some were newcomers, according to a lead 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 all points of confusion,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials introduced players to modding. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

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

Closing an Important Loop

Warframe’s mods allow players to create stupidly powerful synergies 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.

“There’s lots of little tweaks and little subtle things in the background there to just demonstrate the possibilities rather than tell you,” 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 rapid-fire gun, because it shows off the proc rate more,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to explicitly tell players, 'with a basic modification, you only got a few percentage chance to trigger a special damage type.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Experienced players will naturally recognize these mechanics and understand how it works, but new players have to be taught to pay attention to these things.

“It’s not a kind of game development 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 really simple mission that — frankly — 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 love Teshin,” he said. “He embodies everything my younger self found awesome.”

An Evolving Onboarding Process

In the decade-plus since launch, Warframe has been in a consistent battle with its own new user introduction. There are lots of complex systems that players can ignore initially — and won’t even have access to until hours into the game. And others, like modding, that scale in complexity depending on how much time you want to invest. An update earlier this year 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 doesn’t stay locked in 2013. Beginners can find their way — regardless of overlooking tutorials.