An Actual Fix To Void Parts/bp Drop Rates. Please Read. Tl;dr Inside.

[DomoSapien]

Didn't know if this should go in Level Feedback or Weapon Feedback so I'm putting it here.

 

DE, so far, you've received complaints about people getting too many Latron Prime Stocks or Reaper Grips. You also applied a hotfix in an attempt to patch this. Unfortunately, there's a wee bit more depth to the problem than just that.

 

It's the fact that you GUARANTEE an item EVERY single Void mission. With the keys being cheap and people being able to consistently buy them, you're having thousands of runs of the Void per day and each Void Run guarantee's an item.

So, in the nature of Reaper Blades, Latron Barrels/Receiver's, Reaper Prime BP's all being a low percentage of drop, you're receiving notifications of a mass influx of Latron Stocks and Reaper Grips. You can lower their commonality as much as you like but the percentage will never actually drop as long as you give the player an item reward EVERY time they complete a Void mission.

 

Here's my solution: Create a flat rarity rate for all the Item Rewards available in the Void and instead of altering their rarity of selection as a Mission Reward, how about just alter their rarity as a reward in general. This will create another piece to the success of the content of prior patches; Boss Fights. While there is no Boss Fight's in the Void, disabling the ability to get an item EVERY TIME you complete a mission will create the sense of that common formula we're all used to already.

 

Here's what's happening right now: People are wearing your BRAND NEW TILE SET AND CONTENT into the floor because of how much they're playing. They're grinding specifically for the parts and BP's... understandable. But what you're doing right now is creating an infinite loop of players getting overbearing amounts of lesser parts because the other important parts have such a low drop rate and you give the player a reward for EVERY completion. You're nullifying the impact of your fresh content right now.

 

Yesterday, on my 3rd ever Void Run, I received the Reaper Prime BP: My Support ticket screenshot:

https://digitalextremes.zendesk.com/attachments/token/b7y4fw3ik18twvw/?name=Lost+Reaper+Prime+Blueprint.png

 

That's gone now due to the bug. Unfortunately, it's probably not going to be reimbursed to me or anyone else who had received them and lost them to a bug. But what that's leaving players to do is just grind the living Hell out of your new content and tile set. Over the last 24 hours, I've seen an increase of threads saying Warframe is dull. It very much isn't dull, but right now, because a player is receiving positive feedback from Void missions in the form of Item Rewards for EVERY completion, it's slowly tiring out your content for THEM and their VIEW of the freshness of your content.

 

I got to admit, DE; The Void doesn't really mean much to me anymore at this point. The rewards feel unimportant because they're just being tossed out. Sure, the VITAL parts aren't being tossed out, but when you're giving players 12 sets worth of Latron Prime BP's and it's parts minus the Receiver/Barrel, the new content very quickly loses it's flair.

 

I'm trying to be fair with this topic both to you as a growing company and to my community of which I love. It's great getting rewards for completing missions and though I'm sure I'll get flak for this (IE: OMFG! DON'T CONVINCE DE TO REDUCE REWARD CHANCES!!!!), you need to limit the chance of even getting an item reward in the first place. As I said earlier, just make all the items have an equal opportunity of being granted as an Item Reward. Make it low (of course), but make it even because in all honesty, there is really NO reason that the barrel or receiver should be anymore "rare" or "important" than the stock or the BP. It just literally makes no sense. Warframe BP pieces from bosses all have a relatively even pick chance but it's the DROP RATE chance that keeps us coming back and feeling like we're actually working for something. Giving us all these Latron Prime Stocks and BP's as well as all these Reaper Grips are doing absolutely nothing for us except dangling a carrot in front of our faces saying, "Haha... bet you'll NEVER get the last piece...".

 

In all honesty, you're kind of punishing your players for YOU giving them other pieces(Latron Stock/Reaper Grip) more often than some pieces(Latron Barrel/Reaper Blade). Again, broken record here; as I said earlier, there's just literally no point in making some pieces of a weapon overbearingly more rare than other pieces. It just makes no sense. Go with the formula that we all fell in love with before; giving us that meaningful grind on Themisto or Psamanthe to get those Warframe pieces! That's what we fell in love with; the occasional grind and anticipation without feeling like we're quitters by stopping one grind to do another. What's egging players on in the Void right now and wearing your FRESH content EXTREMELY thin is you granting them a reward everytime and just teasing them with overbearing amounts of duplicates. It makes the player want to keep playing it even if they're bored. They know 100% for sure they'll get an Item Reward at the end, they just pray to the RNG God's that it's a piece they actually want instead of getting frustrated from getting the same thing COOOOOOONSSSSSSSISTENTLY!

 

Love you, DE. I just really needed to provide a CLEAR picture for you guys because the "rarity" hotfixes you guys are pumping out for Void are literally 100% useless because players will get an item at the end of the mission anyway, you're just trying to make it harder to get 1 or 2 of them without really any motive than to say, "This is hard to get.... it means it's rare..."; not when everyone and their Mom's are doing it 24/7 throughout the day. It's very monotonous and damaging.

 

TL;DR: Change the Void Item Rewards to "Chance at a reward" instead of "Chance at a specific reward". Your beautiful and hard-worked-on content is being overlooked in favor of frustrating Item Grinds.

Edited May 25, 2013 by 8BitRager

[KhanCipher]

or the simple fix of "if you have X item in your inventory, you can't get that item from the void anymore till you use X item"

[Quetzhal]

I agree, to a certain extent. Players need to feel rewarded in some way or the other for completing a Void mission - whether the mission has better drops, rarer mods, etc. The Void maps are incredibly well designed, and introduce a variety of new mechanics to both exploration and combat (traps, player-triggered hidden rooms). This is a very good thing. To be honest, I feel it should be much more available to the vast majority of players because of how good it is. This sort of thing is the stuff that could potentially keep people playing for months.

Anyway, that's a bit off point. You're right in that the fun of this map is getting very much overlooked in favour of not getting the items you want. I'd honestly suggest a token system as some have suggested for Alerts - sort of a special currency, maybe research fragments of some sort that can be used to obtain whatever item you want. Then have some special and rare cosmetic drops that only drop once in a while from the Void missions, as a sort of additional reward. Give people a reason to keep playing Void missions, keep feeling rewarded for them, and most importantly, focus on having fun in the map instead of on the end reward.

It may help if additional research fragments / tokens are hidden around the map, to encourage exploration and avoid rushing.

I don't quite like the idea of only giving rewards some of the time, as completing a Void mission won't feel as rewarding to players.

 

or the simple fix of "if you have X item in your inventory, you can't get that item from the void anymore till you use X item"

That would make it far too easy to get everything, and then people would stop playing Void missions.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Quetzhal

[LunarWind]

Quetzhal, why would people stop playing void missions if they got all of the rewards from it?

It's amazing content, and I for one would continue playing it far after I got the rewards.

It's just fun, the levels and enemies are fun.

Sure, some people would quit, the ones who refuse to play for anything but rewards and progression, but there's a equal host of players which would continue enjoying the Void tiles simply because they're new and have fun mechanics.

 

On topic: One way to MASSIVELY increase the appeal of the void would be to add every crafting materials to the drop list.

Make it so anything from Ferrite to Alloy plates and everything between has a drop chance from enemies, lockers, and storage containers in the Void.

 

TL:DR Increase Void replayability by adding every resource drop to the Void at the drop rate of normal levels.

[DomoSapien]

I don't quite like the idea of only giving rewards some of the time, as completing a Void mission won't feel as rewarding to players.

 

 

The Void missions would still be plenty rewarding even without the Item Rewards every stage. Tier 3 missions have a BASE reward credit value of 70k. The level sucks up ammunition and rewards good precision. That's a lot of incentive because no where else do you get money like that.

 

Also, think about how hard it is to find a key right now for people without plat and compare it to an example like me. I've run over 70 Void Missions now and have yet to collect all the parts for any of the items available so far; Reaper Prime, Latron Prime, and Frost Prime... With this current system in place, with all these bloody duplicates, imagine how frustrating that would be to someone who is already forced to be patient to wait for a key. And say in the period of a week, they only find 3 keys... and each time, they end up getting the same exact item. Where as a hardcore grinder with Plat could probably get the 3 items in the Void build within 2 weeks of grinding, someone without plat would require months to get all that stuff given their repeatitive chances already. Making everything have an EVEN chance of being chosen but reducing the chances of a reward would make it much more worth their time. it would feel like any Boss Battle. But it'd feel so much more epic because it's a place you can't visit often and instead of it being a Boss Fight, it's like an entire colony is out to kill you.

Edited May 25, 2013 by 8BitRager

[HellishWind]

i fking hate the void  i keep throwing money but  i aint getting anything back

[BETAOPTICS]

Can I get Void Key? 18 hours of farming defense missions and no reward as of yet. Things could be worse, they could be like mine are...

[DomoSapien]

BUMP

 

Would appreciate some more feedback.

[Quetzhal]

Also, think about how hard it is to find a key right now for people without plat and compare it to an example like me. I've run over 70 Void Missions now and have yet to collect all the parts for any of the items available so far; Reaper Prime, Latron Prime, and Frost Prime... With this current system in place, with all these bloody duplicates, imagine how frustrating that would be to someone who is already forced to be patient to wait for a key. And say in the period of a week, they only find 3 keys... and each time, they end up getting the same exact item. Where as a hardcore grinder with Plat could probably get the 3 items in the Void build within 2 weeks of grinding, someone without plat would require months to get all that stuff given their repeatitive chances already. Making everything have an EVEN chance of being chosen but reducing the chances of a reward would make it much more worth their time. it would feel like any Boss Battle. But it'd feel so much more epic because it's a place you can't visit often and instead of it being a Boss Fight, it's like an entire colony is out to kill you.

Was there perhaps a slight misunderstanding? I wasn't at all disagreeing with the concept of needing to make it easier to actually obtain a reward. The point of a token system is to reduce the RNG involved whilst maintaining the feeling of "winning" something with each run - to clarify, you'd earn let's say 3-8 tokens per run (still some RNG), then maybe have to use 150 tokens in order to piece together a blueprint for a part you want. You have a choice in what you're getting this time, as opposed to blindly running missions and hoping you'll get your part (as it is now). Your solution is as good, but you're trying to solve people getting frustrated with getting the same rewards over and over again - are you certain they won't get frustrated by not getting a reward over and over again?

You should, of course, keep a certain degree of RNG (possible rare cosmetic rewards, variance in the amount of tokens earned) to keep people excited about the rewards at the end, and to give people a reason to keep playing.

The one thing I dislike about a token system is that you have a set number of runs to complete before obtaining all the items (even with a variance in the number of tokens obtained, you would still have a set range of runs). You could argue that an average of 100 runs is the same thing as definitely needing 100 runs, but... eh. Feels different.

Alternatively, maybe make certain mods only available in the Void? Nothing stupidly important like multishot, just some fun mods similar to Thunderbolt.

 

Quetzhal, why would people stop playing void missions if they got all of the rewards from it?

It's amazing content, and I for one would continue playing it far after I got the rewards.

It's just fun, the levels and enemies are fun.

Sure, some people would quit, the ones who refuse to play for anything but rewards and progression, but there's a equal host of players which would continue enjoying the Void tiles simply because they're new and have fun mechanics.

I completely agree, but we both know for a fact that some people would feel like they "finished Warframe" after obtaining everything, which is a feeling we probably want to avoid. We need to encourage as many people to keep playing as possible, including progression/completionist types, so DE's profit can keep rolling.

70k is a lot. Credits aren't the same thing as progression in a game where the current content is largely just to collect everything, though.

[CanIbiteU]

no fix needed got latron and frost after 50 - 60 runs with the clan. and its just the second day after the patch

[HellishWind]

50-60 runs   thats 60 euro    :D

Edited May 26, 2013 by HellishWind

[TioPro]

Me and my clan spent like 50 runs and only drop : Latron Prime Stock and Reaper Handle, we have like 20 more each these two simple item.....

[Kanemitsu]

25 ****ing keys , 7 hours of farming.

 

8x grips

9x stocks 

1x Forma BP

3X Reaper Prime BP

2x Barrels

1x Latron Prime BP

 

350 plat for nothing.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Kanemitsu

[DomoSapien]

Bump

[FuzzySharky]

The Void is a great casino as it is standing right now, house always wins! The issue isn't what you get at the end as there is no trading and everyone is missing the Blade/Systems/Chassis as it is anyway so even if there was trade it would have been pointless!

 

No, what they should add is Tower Defense! With mobs harder than wave 10 on regular, then you'll have your difficulty and a deserved reward!

It's just a credit grind for those Dojos, at least a Forma drop once in a while would have been nice. 

[Aggh]

...

It's the fact that you GUARANTEE an item EVERY single Void mission. With the keys being cheap and people being able to consistently buy them, you're having thousands of runs of the Void per day and each Void Run guarantee's an item.

...

What, wut?  It's a dollar per run.  You are paying a dollar to play a video game for a couple minutes.  There are people that have put enough money to pay for a brand new retail game and haven't finished a single void run blue print.  For what you get, void keys are insanely over priced.

[Vitriolic_Crux]

Yeah no, I have a hard enough time getting keys as it is.

[DomoSapien]

What, wut?  It's a dollar per run.  You are paying a dollar to play a video game for a couple minutes.  There are people that have put enough money to pay for a brand new retail game and haven't finished a single void run blue print.  For what you get, void keys are insanely over priced.

THey still offer it as a free alternative. We're talking a pure of heart F2P player because that's what DE is riding on with Waframe; that this is a good F2P game. There are thousands of runs every day with people who found keys as well. The results are still the same. At the moment, the F2P players need to be pleased with what is provided and if there is a discrepency, it needs to be fixed. People who bought Plat? Of course they're going to complain because they're guranteed a reward everytime and they're just tired of it being the same one over and over again and wasting money.Not only am I making a point to DE that what they're doing is the beginning growth of Money-Grabbing, but I'm also pointing out with the statistics provided by thousands and thousands of PURCHASED Void runs everyday that not even the average player who waits on keys could enjoy this. It would take them months and months to even finish 1 item given how often duplicates drop and how rare keys are. And my point with the "Thousands of Runs" thing I pointed out... The support ticket department is flooded right now with complaints of too many items. Not even items lost; too many items.

[Braken]

That would make it far too easy to get everything, and then people would stop playing Void missions.

 

Not really. The Void missions reward the MOST credits per level at the moment, and, it seems you get a better chance at getting the new mods in the Void missions. There'd still be a point in playing them.

[Quetzhal]

Not really. The Void missions reward the MOST credits per level at the moment, and, it seems you get a better chance at getting the new mods in the Void missions. There'd still be a point in playing them.

If you make it so that you can only get items you don't already have, you'd have everything from the Void in twelve runs (or eleven, if you already have the Frost Prime blueprint). Very minimal effort involved. There should be a bit more effort to obtaining Prime items. I'm not saying you should have to do runs ten thousand times to get what you want, but I'd personally say getting everything in twelve runs is waaay too easy, especially if it's endgame.

Not saying it should be completely ridiculous, but getting a new item every four runs and then getting every prize it has in twelve is a bit much. This response is, of course, specifically for the "only get items you don't already have" suggestion.

I'd be okay with this if it was also combined with the Void not always giving you rewards, even if I still like the token system better. It's the so-called psychology of it to get players to keep playing - credits and mods are things you can get in the other maps, if at a lower rate. Special rewards for Void missions will keep collector-type folks playing Void missions.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Quetzhal

[ralwn]

up the forma drop rate instead

[_FORASTERO_]

split reward chance 

 

lv1 : reaper BP and its parts  

 

LV2 : latron prime and its parts

 

lv 3: frost prime BP and his parts

 

and balance a reward chance !! 

 

and make forma is drop in secret chamber !! not 100% atleast 30% or 50% is good then this rare