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The space ninja adventure known as Warframe, a title where you can feed yourself to a giant mouth and drive a motorcycle in the year 1999, has launched a new update. This latest expansion highlights the creative flair that has come to define Warframe in more recent times.

This expansion, released on Wednesday, adds a fungus-inspired character that performs a unique animation, along with a brand-new biome to discover. However, it also revisits core concepts, with another quest aimed at making sure this complicated, expansive long-running online game makes sense to 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 most basic — yet most intricate systems: the mod system.

In Warframe, mods are augments that can be added to your character or your weapons to boost their performance. They range from the straightforward (increase damage or speed up reload rate) to the devastatingly complex. Content creators often produce extensive guides about idealized builds that use powerful mods in combination to create overwhelming power.

“Many players likely started their journey, seeing mods, not really understanding it,” explained a lead narrative designer. “I think it was really important, at the end of the quest, for players to think, ‘Wow, modding is interesting. I want to try more of this.’”

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 removes the player's powers and close-combat arms, 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. This fresh viewpoint that was essential.

“The first thing we did was basically sit behind them and have them experience the introduction and document extensively on everywhere they fell out,” the designer said. Introductory tutorials introduced players to modding. But the team noted that they didn’t work on everyone.

“Certain players missed fundamental guidance where it's flashing on the screen saying put the mod in the slot,” he said.

Closing an Important Loop

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 desire more advanced content, like creating powerful and specific builds. But it became clear that the mission addresses a genuine oversight for early players — and that doing so isn’t as simple as it looks.

“There’s lots of little tweaks 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 powerful elemental status effects; 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 explicitly tell players, 'oh yeah, actually on a base level mod, you only got a low probability to proc an elemental effect.' How can you teach this mechanic effectively?”

Experienced players will instinctively look for that kind of weapon effect and grasp their function, but new players have to be taught to notice these details.

“This type of design work that we previously focused on just because our priorities lay elsewhere,” said a narrative lead. “But part of it not being our focus 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 — frankly — you can complete quickly,” said the designer. “But it's months and months of work 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'm a huge fan of Teshin,” he said. “He's my 8-year-old internal self's idea of what's cool.”

An Evolving Onboarding Process

In the 12 years since its release, 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 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 complex narrative arcs 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. New players can get their foot in the door — even if they miss the menu prompts.