Voltage

You're completely misrepresenting my point. A completionist will absolutely need a longer time to finish something, often several times more than your average person. That's not something I have concerns for. My point was that in order to progress Archon Shards in any capacity, whether it be casually, or without skipping a beat like myself, you're still strangled in your acquisition in a way that doesn't give the player any possibility to "catch up" in missed weeks or put in some more effort to make more progress. This isn't a healthy type of game progression. It's the same reason I don't like seasons in games as their form of content. Umbra Forma is a false equivalence because of the opportunity cost of modding. Umbra Mods are powerful yes, but their usage in a build is dependent on the competing mods of the build. You can Umbra Forma every Warframe if you want, but you'll not only be limiting your builds on those Warframes, but likely making worse overall Forma settings. Archon Shards are a free opportunity cost. There is literally no downside to using a Shard. Archon Shards influence modding choices, but any modding choice has no impact on the restriction of Shards slotted. For this, there is absolutely no reason not to slot 5 Tauforged Shards if you have them available. The fact you feel you "got me" with my statement on Umbra Mods being a different discussion entirely means you really lack the understanding of how builds work and why an Archon Shard is extremely powerful because it's a different slot entirely. It doesn't compete with Arcanes or Mods. My point still stands that Archon Shards deserve a more fair acquisition so that even if progress is slow, the player still feels like they have agency over how they're earning power past a measly weekly login reward check. Players who start now are an entire year behind everyone else with no recourse whatsoever to catch up. It's unhealthy to keep it this way. If I wanted to be a selfish and entitled player, I would be in your camp asking for things to remain the same, because I know I'll be active every week and I'll always have the maximum number of Archon Shards in my inventory compared to anyone else. However, this is simply not the case. I would like the system to receive changes that actually allows everyone, no matter what speed or frequency they play Warframe, to be given the same opportunity and progression that they can farm themselves in any amount, whether that be 30 minute sessions or multiple hours. It is up to DE how long they want content to stretch, and again, I don't mind if it takes me a long time in my position, but it shouldn't be a hot take to ask for that progress to be up to me, not a server timer.

The problem for you is that everyone else isn't the type of player that sits at a lower mastery rank intentionally and never cares to complete the games items. This is the end of the road of gear progression, and they're already accessible. Casual participation can still earn Shards reasonably alongside an improvement for those of us who enjoy grinding, even if for a long time, to earn these items. It's cool if you're in that boat, but it hardly applies to everyone. My feedback with Archon Shards has always been a compromise of where we are now and a way to progress our inventory into Tauforged. Like I said previously, it took me close to a year to reach 5 Tauforged Amber Shards for one singular Warframe. If I had to combine Shards, it would have been atleast 18 months. That't the worst type of progression, worse than Daily Login rewards. I wouldn't mind if it takes 2 or 3 years to complete my inventory, but the fact of the matter is that it goes so slow that new Warframes add more grind before you even finish a previous Warframe. The Bile and Config lock situation makes this even more annoying. Umbra Forma is not equivalent as it's only needed in extremely small amounts. It's also an item that is identical between all players, unlike Archon Shards from Hunts. I think the "black and white fact" here is that you're unable to grasp the concept of playing the game outside of mediocrity. I'd bet that most players saying "this current system is fine" are also players who use a very small portion of the available Warframes and barely Forma'd the rest, if they even own them.

I think DE should just refine the clan system and remove Alliances. They've literally had no content or point in close to a decade now.

If you have 6 hours a day or 30 minutes a week, you still make the exact same progress with Shards as of now. The only way you don't earn Shards is if you're actually inactive in the game. I have no idea why players can only view this topic in the extremes of "I get unlimited Tau" or "I have severe time-gating". There's a middle ground, and that's where most feedback leads to. The current way Shards are earned is equally unreasonable to asking for every Shard to be Tauforged and quickly earned.

It was worse before, but the way it is now is still a bad deal. This is a real problem that people don't seem to care about. If I take $100 from you and give $20 back, I still took $80 from you. This kind of "we amended a bad idea with a poor solution so it's good now" mentality has happened with Regal Aya, Heirlooms, and it happened with Shards once already. It's been pointed out time and time again in discussions. This is tolerable in the current state, but adding 3 more shard types is just adding to a terrible foundation of a system. It's not about entitlement to have something immediately, it's about having agency over your progress and a reasonable acquisition. Archon Shards are not earned in a way that represents a healthy way to earn an item, they're functionally a login reward. Even worse: everyone gets the same rewards with the same maximum progress, and said progress is purely a reflection of your account age, nothing more. That's flawed, it's broken, and it's been discussed since we first got them. The "pity" system DE added made no correction to the rotting foundation Archon Shards stand on, and this planned expansion of the volume of Shards just shows why that system they added accomplished nothing of value for long-term health within Shards and using them. There's nothing wrong with adding more Shard types if players could farm them at their own pace. Unfortunately though, we're still stuck with a scheduled mission that provides no way for a player to farm them. Sacrificing your scarce inventory to try and "catch up" in luck is also a poor solution. The fundamental problem is that nobody can "farm" for Archon Shards, it's just a measure of whether you login once a week.

@sly_squashI had this same concern, but realized I can just do them next week as recovered acts since these are always weeklies. Also, some of your examples can be done by piggy-backing with others, given that the Nightwave task looks for mission completion, not rewards earned. Some players like to earn maximum rank for the season (like myself). It is a valid concern.

Basically this. It's a much needed feature, but realistically I don't ever see it being added.

Daily standing limits make sense when the resources you gather that transfer into that reputation can pretty easily be farmed into the millions (or even tens of millions in some cases) of standing. Nights of Naberus and Plague Star are good examples of what happens when you allow syndicate standing to essentially be uncapped. I know it's really easy for us players to want to remove that gate, and I would like it to be re-evaluated as well. Maybe not removing the cap, but reworking it to offer a much larger cap for players who are of high mastery rank and completion of the syndicate (like we have seen with Focus over the years). The one place I think DE should just remove the cap outright is with the Ventkids, given the nature of what they are offering compared to other syndicates. Plains of Eidolon may have released in 2017, but plenty of players still have much to earn from the syndicates there, especially Quill Onkko. It's the same with the original 6 syndicates, Cephalon Simaris, Fortuna, Necralisk, and the Zariman. It's honestly just a small hurdle when you initially get into these modes. Once you are a bit of the way through these factions, you'll be ignoring that cap given you already have most of the rewards. That build up isn't a very big deal if I'm being honest.

I feel like fundamentally you're looking to play a game that isn't Warframe. This game in nature for as long as I have been playing (atleast 8 years) is fighting large groups of rather trash mobs, but the reward and enjoyment is all the loot, power, and options you farm to alter the way you approach content. Warframe has never had a deep and rich experience with enemy encounters. My original comments here aren't asking to try and make Warframe enemies complex, but merely consider introducing changes and additions within content to reward players with their knowledge when they raise the power ceiling. You can accomplish this through objectives added or content like Operations where the player needs to collaborate with others and create synergies within the mission. You're fine to dislike grinding for a long time through the power levels and reward tiers of the game's gear, but that is basically the entire point of the game... You mention another game adding something that allows your player to tackle a specific objective (chicken and player height), but Warframe also does exactly that. Just recently in Plague Star, players have been using Magnetize to target any head that is open on the Hemocyte, or Savior Decoy to teleport them across the entire map. In Spy and Rescue, Wormhole, The Rift, Invisibility, Switch Teleport, Smoke Shadow, Metronome, and Prowl are all options to complete the mission with severely more ease. The challenging part of Warframe's gameplay resides in the Arsenal. You're often never in a situation where the enemy, boss, or objective is hard or challenging to finish. All those obstacles are within the arsenal. It's up to you as a player to build-craft around the situation. Learning mechanics and overcoming them through modding is where Warframe rewards you for knowing about what you're playing the most. Kuva Liches and Sisters of Parvos are not hard VIPs to kill, but there is strategy and considerations to be made within the Parazon mods and which weapons you bring to kill them based on their resistances and weaknesses. What Warframe has been struggling with for years now is allowing the continuation of players approaching new content the exact same, and the only alteration in the content added is the time-gating for rewards. Players aren't forced outside their comfort zone, and it creates the very mentality you present where you find it boring when you're expected to optimize your gear for specific content which may be different between different missions.

When I mean "challenge", it's not to add difficulty or make it hard, it forces the player to progress their power to clear the mission. You're describing it like most players do who think they should never really be improving gear and somehow get adequate completion of anything they add. That's why Steel Path has now failed. When Steel Path released, it rewarded those who actually progress their gear and should have encouraged people not there yet to improve theirs. What happened is people complained that it didn't serve their mediocre builds, and DE added more powercreep in the form of Galvanized Mods and Arcanes. Now years later, Steel Path is really no different than the normal star chart if you know how to build, Archons included. The fact you feel like you need to use meta equipment to do Archons tells me that you're not in a position to really handle that content as it is. "Bullet Sponge" is such a bad angle in any discussion. Every enemy in the game is a sponge if you want to boil it down, some just don't hold as much damage as others. There's nothing wrong with an enemy that doesn't immediately die in the blink of an eye. If you feel like an Archon is a massive sponge that takes 15 to 20 minutes to kill, that's because your builds are bad, not because of the Archon.

That's not necessarily what OP could be asking. The post is vague and comments like yours rightfully spring up, but I do think DE should consider creating situations where the power ceiling that has just been raised gets challenged in some way when that ceiling is raised. That's easier said than done, but let's be honest, it's pretty rare that we see enemies added or changed that really change how we approach missions or test our loadouts a little more. We have bits and pieces like Necramechs in Iso Vaults, or these new Murmur enemies coming, but those are always watered down later to lower the barrier to entry for new players who DE feels need an accelerated experience to catch up to everyone else. It does question the treadmill of new gear if you're farming like 200 duplicates of new Melee Arcanes and reapply Forma for an Exilus mod when you're still just mostly one-shotting the same lower level trash mobs that you always do.

Exactly. It's important to raise these concerns so that if DE sees the discussions, they can extract key points that are to be considered. There's only two ways DE can see these topics (provided that they are voicing real problems and concerns): "We have these issues acknowledged and taken care of, but players just don't know about that yet." "Ah crap we totally forgot 💀." It's only those two options. Considering the following, this is why I made this thread: This is how I feel as well. The system isn't getting turned on its head to be reworked from the ground up, which is a major mistake. Archon Shards as a system are only being extended. I have quite a strong feeling that what we are getting is more additions rather than changes, and Archon Shards are fundamentally broken in their design and highly problematic with their long-standing FOMO acquisition.

We already have that, and it's called Roar. A universal separate damage multiplier from base damage in the form of a mod is unnecessary. There has to be some inconvenience and setup to properly apply all these multipliers. Removing all that just waters down builds even more than they are already.

The fact they really didn't elaborate on that goes to show that it's not a big enough change to really make a difference. It's likely just an extra 1 shard per week to take the total from 2 to 3. There's also several other factors that players have been pointing out as a problem such as the Bile cost, config lock, etc. We've also coincidentally gotten no Dev Workshop on these changes. It's in DE's court to increase expectations, but it's very justified to have concerns with relation to the lack of improvement Shards was really given at all.

I'll gift you a Forma bundle if you're correct :).

Likely just raising the 2 per week to 3 per week. I doubt DE would undermine the entire Veilbreaker update with a system that lets you farm much more often. There's several questions and concerns they didn't even touch on when talking about this expansion, and it just feels like a missed opportunity to revisit the bile cost to removing shards, the rate at which shards are earned, the "locked into all configs" situation with stats, and revisiting or even removing Tauforged to make the whole system more streamlined between all players.

I'm sure DE will release a full list of exceptions at some point. There are so many one-off situations with items like DE mentioning the Nvidia Braton skin. No player should get an advantage over others with their merge, it should just be a unification of their playtime. Double dipping items with a restricted acquisition is possible, but unlikely to slip by. I mean even if DE didn't think about it, I'll be mentioning this often in my comments on the subject to hopefully raise awareness of that loophole, similar to the one you just posted here.

I'm sure there is going to be a list of things not merged or just rules regarding all these. Arcane Helmets, Founder items, Archon Shards, Riven Mods, inventory slots, etc etc. Surprised?

Good, then they will finally be forced to properly address how they function. Hiding behind Riven Mods and Progenitor bonuses doesn't improve the situation, it's just kicking the ball further down the road.

There are several asterisks and exceptions with various things to the point where this feels more like a permanent version of the one-time migrations we've seen in the past and not a universal cross-save/cross-play system. Nintendo Switch players cannot trade their Platinum with other platforms, TennoGen is locked per platform, Founders gear is locked to PC, etc. I would like to see a full list of every exception in an organized fashion to really see how "universal" this is.

Yep. I think it's really hard to offer account merging without permitting someone to "farm" and then double dip on an account. Granted, farming most items could just be done with a main account anyways, but hopefully DE looks into things such as Starter Platinum, Archon Shards, Incarnon Adapters, and similar items where they are meant to be one-time or time-gated, not double dipped on.

Let's hope they consider this with items such as Archon Shards as well.

I share this concern but I've kind of given up. Warframe's endgame is the same as some other games in just having server reset task loops to keep up with between major updates.

Starting with Founders is actually the smartest move, because the oldest accounts are the most problematic and complicated in terms of items owned and such. A player starting in 2020 would only have an account with access to things that all platforms have already (besides small exceptions like Arcane Helmets or some select TennoGen). Founders on the other hand are more likely to have weird event items from early years of the game, their Founder gear, etc.

Really reinforcing the entire concept of "Don't touch this system for X amount of time first" with this one. The people most utilizing the system they are expanding being punished the most is the most DE thing ever.