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The popular online game known as Warframe, an experience where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and pilot futuristic vehicles, has launched a significant update. The Vallis Undermind exemplifies the distinctive charm that has come to define Warframe in recent years.

The new content, made available this week, 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 complicated, expansive 12-year-old MMO is accessible for 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 fundamental yet complex systems: the mod system.

In Warframe, modifications are enhancements that can be equipped on your warframe or arsenal to boost their performance. These can be simple (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the incredibly intricate. Dedicated players often craft hour-long videos about idealized builds that use powerful mods in combination to create devastating effects.

“I think a lot of people were maybe getting into the early game, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” said a lead narrative designer. “I think it was really important, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Hey, modding is cool. I want to try more of this.’”

Teamwork in Action

“The Teacher” was created through a partnership between the core team, 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.

Many of the external team were already fans of the game, but some were newcomers, according to a lead designer. It was this outside perspective 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 introduced players to modding. But the team observed these weren't effective for all.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions where the game highlights it saying equip the modification,” 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" focuses on different aspects. 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.

“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 goals of “The Teacher” is to show how mods can create elemental damage types; in this case, a magnetic effect that depletes protective barriers.

“Adjustments to the armament to be a burst-fire weapon, because it shows off the proc rate more,” the designer said. “However, the goal isn't to say to people, 'oh yeah, actually on a base level mod, you only got a few percentage chance to trigger a special damage type.' So how do you tutorialize that without changing it?”

Veterans will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and understand how it works, 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 narrative lead. “However, this oversight meant that we never really told people how to use mods.”

Months of Effort

“There’s so much that goes into just making a seemingly straightforward quest that — honestly — you can blast through in about 15 minutes,” said the designer. “Yet it represents extensive development 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 love Teshin,” he said. “He embodies everything my younger self found awesome.”

An Evolving Onboarding Process

In the 12 years since its release, 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 much later. And others, like modding, that increase in depth 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 reduced repetitive play 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.