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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 creative flair that has come to define Warframe in the past few seasons.

The new content, released on Wednesday, adds a fungus-inspired character that does a little dance, 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.

Introducing "The Teacher"

Named “The Teacher,” this is the long-awaited quest that trains 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 enhance their abilities. They range from the straightforward (boosting power or shortening reload times) to the incredibly intricate. Content creators often produce extensive guides about idealized builds that use synergistic enhancements to create devastating effects.

“Many players likely started their journey, encountering mods without grasping their purpose,” explained a key developer. “We believed it was crucial, upon completing the mission, 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 an external team, who crafted the gameplay, which will appear early in the game.

In the quest, the player is tasked with obtaining a new segment for their spaceship, but they’re interrupted by a menacing, powerful warrior called Teshin, who takes away the player’s abilities and melee weapons, and compels them to use the mod system to effectively show its potential.

Several developers were longtime players, but others had never played before, 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 document extensively on all points of confusion,” the designer said. Early-game menu pop-ups presented the mod system. But the team noted that they didn’t work on everyone.

“Some people didn't see basic instructions where the game highlights it saying put the mod in the slot,” he said.

Addressing a Real Need

Warframe’s mods allow players to create stupidly powerful synergies 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 creating powerful and specific builds. But it became clear that “The Teacher” is filling a real and significant gap for early players — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“Numerous subtle adjustments and little subtle things in the background 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.

“We had to change the weapon to be a burst-fire weapon, because it better demonstrates the effect frequency,” 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 trigger a special damage type.' 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 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 that hasn't been our focus,” said a story developer. “But part of it not being our focus that players weren't properly taught the modding system.”

Significant Investment

“A tremendous amount of work is required for just making a seemingly straightforward quest that — frankly — you can complete quickly,” said the designer. “But it's months and months of work for loads of people.”

The designer was clearly enthusiastic over contributing to a beloved title — and to design content featuring a preferred figure.

“I'm a huge fan of 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 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 how much time you want to invest. 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. Beginners can find their way — even if they miss the menu prompts.