Syndicates: Feedback And Thoughts

[TinFoilMkIV]

So Syndicates were a great addition to the game in my opinon, however I feel that they are still quite lacking in really adding much beyond a longer term hunt for unusual mods to maximize a specific build or weapons.

 

I'll start off with their strongest points first. I really love the added lore aspect they bring in with some rather interesting groups which all have at least one aspect many players can get behind, and having their leaders/representatives here to share a bit of what they're about really makes them feel that much more like real groups in the Warframe universe. Unique syndicate sigils are also a nice way for players to show off their loyalty and dedication. And finally the way the system is currently set up should make it quite easy to expand upon their functionality and offerings in the future, which I greatly look forwards to.

 

That all being said, They've also fallen short in some very important areas.

 

My current biggest issue is that they offer very little in terms of actual gameplay impact. The death squads are a nice touch, but beyond that they don't seem to matter beyond a shop you slowly gain currency for by just doing whatever it was you were going to do anyways.

 

A point both for and against the reputation system is that currently it appears to be solely tied to affinity gains. This is good in a way as it scales decently with difficulty without making things overly complicated. It also decently discourages extreme rushing with minimal enemy interaction. However my issue is it heavily favors an already heavily favored gameplay style, which is just murder all the things in the fastest most efficient way possible. The current affinity and loot systems already favor high/overpowered gear (relative to the mission) and endless or high enemy density mission types, and the syndicate rep system only adds to this. The problem isn't necessarily that it favors a play style that's already heavily favored by several other game systems, but more that this is essentially the only option for individuals looking to make significant progress on their reputation.

 

The syndicate alerts are nice but they're mostly just more of the same. While they offer an extra bonus towards your reputation the missions themselves aren't anything special and don't significantly add to the game experience.

 

Currently I don't see a huge problem with the reputation amounts required vs gains, as I personally feel that the methods for gains should be expanded upon first and that the amount required will be less of an issue once they are.

 

 

What I would like to see from Syndicates going forwards:

 

First and foremost, more methods or factors towards reputation beyond purely affinity ratios. The affinity to rep rates are currently fine and I think they offer a good path to syndicate favor for those who really enjoy the high enemy density gameplay, however we need some additions for other types of play as well. The syndicate alerts are a step in this direction but its very limited at the moment.

 

One of the simpler (in my mind) additions that could be made would be daily/periodic/otherwise limited syndicate bonus challenges/objectives, something similar to our current mission bonus challenges but posed by syndicates on either a mission by mission basis or possibly several that carry over several missions with a limited amount available. Preferably these would reflect some of a syndicates ideals or for balance reasons perhaps just weighted towards favored challenge types.

 

faction based "resources" acquired from various in game activities. I use "resources" for lack of a better term at the moment but these would be more like special drops or items that would be acquired from different location or action types depending on the syndicate in question. For example in lockers one might find general corpus/grineer data storage that Cephalon Suda would be interested in acquiring, or you may stumble across information left behind by an operative from the Red veil in a hard to reach storage area or otherwise. These items would be of varying value to the different syndicates depending on which one it pertains to and you would turn them over by choice. Of course you would be required to be initiated with a syndicate to be able to turn in these items but would not require any affiliation to acquire them.

 

A faction would likely be most favorable of recoveries pertaining directly to their own interests and that of their enemies, and of course also appreciating materials pertaining to their allies which they would likely be turning over themselves but the donation would be to your primary faction. Ideally these faction items would be for the benefit of the explorer/looter player who can find these more often in the hidden storage areas or from other less standard actions that aren't strictly required for mission completion.

 

 

For the faction rewards themselves I expect to see some additions of more middle tier rewards. Of course I believe it should be obvious that we will get an expanded selection but the direction that takes is still up in the air as far as we the players know. I think it's fairly reasonable to say that faction rep offering should generally be geared towards mid and higher end play as newer players generally aren't going to be expected to gather the rep and whatever resources may or may not come into play, while they are still at the lower end of things. However I feel that the effects and costs are generally aimed almost exclusively at higher end or long term players, and with some of the seemingly lackluster effects and offering can cause to some degree a "why bother" effect, where the perceived payoff doesn't seem worth the effort required.

 

One thing that could help mitigate this is some easier to access but less specialized offerings. For example we have melee weapon classes, they aren't simply melee weapons period. Now this was required for melee 2.0 systems to function, but I see little reason why primaries and secondaries cannot receive more specific classifications, after all we do currently have a distinction between shotguns and "rifles-which-are-really-guns-that-are-not-very-explicitly-a-shotgun". I think this would allow factions to offer weapon class specific mods that are less specialized than their unique weapon mods and would be significantly lower on the requirement ladder to obtain, and wouldn't necessarily be unique to a faction, and may even go as far as to have this not be the only method of obtaining such mods, at least for some of them outside of alerts.

 

Finally I would like to see some faction mods that offer a real functional difference. The frame powers do this fairly well, although their true value may be debatable, the offer opportunity for use that is simply not possible without them. Aside from the special faction effect, the bonuses are generally just some flavor of "+stat numbers". Now granted these mods are brand new and there's only so much that can be done on a deadline for a major update, however I would be disappointed if really interesting weapon effects ended up getting overlooked.

 

Two examples of more interesting current mods, the lifesteal addition for the Furis, and the exploding Bolto mod. While they don't have a huge effect on the mechanics of the weapons, they add some interesting effects that don't translate into raw damage but have potential value to players in a real viable combat scenario.

 

 

Some possibly crazy suggestions of the type of things I'd like to see in the future

warframe - create a decoy for 0.3 sec when performing a wall jump or a sliding jump (because why leave the interesting stuff to just weapons?)

 

daggers - able to perform a special attack on alerted enemies from behind (stealth attack without bonus damage but additional effect such as very high proc chance, possibly increased proc strength or possibility of multiple procs)

 

explosives - significantly decreased blast radius, releases small cluster bomb explosives from the initial blast.

 

snipers - headshots are guaranteed critical hits

 

heavy pistols - stacking damage bonus for every landed shot, increased bonus for a headshot, resets upon miss.

 

shotguns - kill with a critical hit applies status effects on the killed enemy to other enemies within a radius

 

assault rifle - increased reload speed with an empty clip

 

heavy melee - kill causes nearby enemies to take increased damage and have decreased attack speed for a short period of time

 

longsword - front parry/counter special attack becomes a wider range attack capable of hitting nearby enemies as well.

[Duch99pl]

when U15 launched I was suprised thse augument mods were for one weapon only, like that multishot for hek or fire rate for burston p, and not for a weapon group. then it would be much better.

[Dr3Y2on]

Dat mag mod is so fkn good... yeah man why Mirage did get such a nice mod an mag this.

 

Well anyways good post i agree,the thing is what i don't understand is,why we have just syndicates points to get and not Syndicates Rank and points i rly don't like it how it is now.

[TinFoilMkIV]

eh I like the possibilities of weapon specific mods but we could do with some middle ground as well. Also wouldn't hurt to get family mods like something that applies to all variants of the braton or such.

 

I'm okay with spending our rep points for the syndicate items but first we need more variety in how we earn our rep.

[Phaenur]

Oh, I definitely like that idea for faction-based reputation resources.  A lot of MMOs use consumable/sellable tokens for their rep-farms, but those are generic and tend to turn up as quest rewards and such.  These would reward exploration on each mission and make the faction feel a little more complete, like it actually has desires instead of just existing behind a couple of sentences of description.  It also gives us a way to interact with the Syndicates from the beginning instead of grinding out the first 5K through, well, grinding.

 

For that matter, you could even get creative with them.  Have some where you find a blueprint and have to assemble it with pieces awarded through missions - filling up a datamass for Suda with Spy information, giving Meridian an invasion timetable pieced together from Intercepted communications, and so on.  For that matter, let there be overlap between factions, so when you give a faction their preferred item you damage reputation with their rival - or maybe improve it with their ally.

 

A few ideas here - mostly just names, but I think it's fairly easy to imagine how these could be turned into mini-quests.  For reference's sake, Old Orokin drops in Void and Derelict missions and possibly on Earth, Corpus drops on Corpus tilesets (including Infested Corpus ships), and Grineer drops on Grineer tilesets (including Earth, maybe split if there are Orokin drops there too).

 

Ceph Suda: Old Orokin data archives, Corpus economic ledgers, Grineer genetics research papers

Arbiters of Hexis: Old Orokin cultural texts, Corpus solar rail operator's manuals, Grineer Dark Sector exploration logs

Steel Meridian: Old Orokin spacecraft schematics, Corpus records of employment, Grineer fleet timetables

 

I'm having a harder time coming up with brainstorm names for the other three syndicates' items, and of course each faction could certainly have even more items that provide a rep boost with one or more syndicates anyway.  For that matter, it makes sense that way - a handful of mini-quest assembly items and a nice assortment of simple loot locker drops.

[TinFoilMkIV]

I like that multi part item idea. We could even have these mini-quest items be able to be turned in while partially or fully incomplete for some value but have the value significantly increased if you complete it. Could even have things like equipment or information for a sabotage attempt and if it aligns with your syndicate you can find the object in question (perhaps an uncommon/rare syndicate related spawn itself?) and complete the intended operation and turn in the report for rep and such.

 

Much of it could of course just be data on syndicate operations, after all the recovery of missing or stored information would be of value to allied or rival syndicates as well as those it belongs to.

 

Of course the more detail and variety we get the better, but I'm okay with a basic version just to get this started.