Digital Extremes Updates Warframe’s “Follie’s Hunt” Game Mode After Backlash

Alongside the official Nintendo Switch 2 launch of Warframe, Digital Extremes recently shipped its “The Shadowgrapher” update with a new quest, Warframe, and game mode for all platforms. Almost immediately after the update went live, gamers were online griping about the difficulty of the new mission, Follie’s Hunt, with most complaints centering around the unkillable foe, and some even going so far as to say that the mission was impossible for most to complete. Now, having seen the feedback, Digital Extremes has shipped a hotfix with changes to Follie’s Hunt that aim to make it more approachable and less punishing. Digital Extremes explains that it interpreted much of the feedback as a design mismatch—Follie’s Hunt is a “deviation from regular Warframe gameplay…so understandably there may be some players who don’t align with its design,” reads the post announcing the upcoming changes, which will be implemented and iterated on in the coming weeks.

With the first Follie’s Hunt update, Digital Extremes has made the Follies hunting players less brutal by removing their invulnerability. Players seeking reprieve can now shoot Follie, and she will retreat momentarily if enough damage is dealt. Further, Follie’s Aura doesn’t do as much damage to players, and Inky Walls will no longer damage players or inflict knock-down, increasing survivability. Resources are also now easier to find and gather: Atramentum balloons are easier to see; there are fewer balloons to find, and the Atramentum reward per mission has been increased from 5 to 15. The patch notes also contain a slew of unrelated changes, and Digital Extremes has already said it will be monitoring player feedback to see what more needs to be done to make the gameplay fun.

The full response to the Follie’s Hunt feedback follows.

Hi Tenno,

It’s been just over 24 hours since The Shadowgrapher released, bringing a variety of changes, fixes, cosmetics and more! With that said, we’re here to talk about the new game mode introduced: Follie’s Hunt.

As players poked their heads back into Vesper Relay, we’ve heard a variety of feedback. Follie’s Hunt at its core is a deviation from regular Warframe gameplay — a strange, scary hunt in the ruins of a Relay—so understandably there may be some players who don’t align with its design. Our goal is to respect the original design intent of the game mode, while improving some of the pain points for players: complaints of gameplay elements that made it unfun, encouraged rage quitting, or felt overly punishing.

Hotfix #1 brought a blurb indicating we’re discussing feedback, and here’s our first step iterating on it. Below is our current list of planned changes, which we hope to implement in coming patches:

• Follie will no longer be invincible and can be forced to retreat briefly if her health bar is depleted.
• Also reduced Follie’s damaging aura by a third on Normal and Steel Path.
• Atramentum pickups will be shared squad-wide.
• Also improved visibility of Atramentum Balloons since they are a critical source of the resource.
• Note: Atramentum acquisition is one of the larger complaints due to the store costs. Those values were calculated with the understanding that players are destroying balloons and killing enemies (which both drop Atramentum). We’ll be closely monitoring acquisition rates after this change to see if more needs to be done.
• Overall lighting changes to improve visibility.
• Inky Walls will no longer damage players or cause knockdowns.
• The waypoints spawned from killing enemies will now direct to a Canvas if there are no active Canvases.

  Thank you all again for sharing your constructive feedback! We hope these changes will help Follie’s Hunt feel a little less overwhelming and give players options to counterplay as you slink through Vesper to complete Shadowgraphs. As always, we’ll be keeping an eye out for additional feedback as we continue to iterate.