TinFoilMkIV
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Posts posted by TinFoilMkIV
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While there's plenty of legitimate reasons for why this should or shouldn't be necessary, in the current state of the game a system like this could be a nice addition.
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While I do agree there's an issue with some missions and methods being leagues better than others at rep/affinity gain, I personally think the affinity to rep system itself is allright. Wouldn't hurt to make some tweaks to it but as it stands it's not terrible. In my opinion what we really need is more methods to gain rep. Affinity conversion should be the basic method but we need more than that.
With Syndicates being new and quite seeming a basic system that's still a work in progress, now is the time for us the players to come together and let DE know where we want to go with this. For anyone willing to do some reading there's a pretty good thread with discussion on syndicate suggestions and such over here https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/340692-refining-the-syndicate-system/
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I don't think it's that big a rush, as long as syndicates make noticeable progress in a good direction and don't suddenly get sidelined for new projects they should be okay. Ultimately in the future there's going to be plenty of players who will essentially have access to all their syndicate goodies on demand so I don't think that's as big a problem as some might think, especially since I fully expect that our current mod selection and such are just the beginning.
Also sure its only a few players ideas among many, but DE does read through these sections a lot more than it seems, and the more we talk about it the more likely they are to see it. Now is the time for this kinda discussion while syndicates are just getting started. It will only be too late if we wait till they already get far enough in to not want to entirely rework syndicates or other big projects take over the development time.
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Yea more expansion on syndicate missions/quests to make them feel like they actually have some relationship to the actual syndicate other than the fact that some dude other than lotus told you to go do it.
Also for people saying that this is just the begging, this is true, but this is also why this is the best time for us to let DE know what we wan't from the syndicates.
P.S. if you can handle large walls of text I'd recommend checking this thread https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/340692-refining-the-syndicate-system/
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Which, in my opinion, shouldn't be the case at all.
Seriously, it's kinda sad how little actual in game impact they have.
It would definitely be cool to see some syndicate themed obstacle courses or otherwise individual challenge areas and such
Also for anyone who can handle their walls-o-text I'd recommend checking this thread out https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/340692-refining-the-syndicate-system/
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I agree syndicates fall pretty short in quite a few areas, and although I know they will be adding to and changing them going forwards that's exactly why now is the time for us to let DE know what kinda things we want from them.
Also for anyone willing to brave quite a few walls of text, this thread https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/340692-refining-the-syndicate-system/ has some pretty good discussion on some syndicate ideas.
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As far as for the basis of slower reputation gain with maxed gear, there was a thread a little ways back (sorry, I can't remember the title) where people had run tests with fully ranked vs. unranked gear. The reputation gain was distinctly higher for the unranked (to start) gear, to the order of at least 2-300 points higher. Unless this has been recently hotfixed, my own experiences align with this information. 40-50 rep on completion of a normal mission with maxed equipment (I don't grind specifically for reputation) and upwards of 100 when using two weapons not fully ranked. I haven't kept a super-watchful eye on these values, though, so perhaps that has been patched out in one of the hotfixes or something.
As for weapons, I'm looking at faction-favored weapons as a way to draw out the use of less immediately popular reasons. Like giving people a reason to dust off their relics if they happen to have them. Things like Cronus, Strun, Ether Sword, Hek, etc. Weapons like the Boltor Prime that see the majority of a player's use should not get the special treatment right off the bat. Eventually, but not to start.
Interesting, sounds like there's some affinity gains that don't get calculated if a weapon is maxed out. In that regards I'd say it more hits upper mid level players more than just generally "experienced players", as you reach a point where eventually you can handle content that hands out rather ludicrous amounts or affinity compared to normal play. Which is one of my basic issues with a purely affinity to rep conversion, as you either ignore it while it slowly builds up or go play the few areas that make everything else look like a joke for affinity gains.
Also absolutely agree with weapons. High performance weapons don't really need any shiny new bonuses at least not for a while, especially when currently these bonuses are essentially long term players only.
Honestly I'd like to see some mid tier rewards from factions, all their rewards really seem to aim towards players who have probably done everything and could have any weapon/gear they want at this point. I mean T4 keys and large restores are one of the lowest faction rewards. Something along the lines of less specialized mods but not completely general like our current mods.
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@TinFoilMkIV and ArbitUHM: I like that thought about smaller passive bonuses to sigils. My argument for that benefit, or at least part of it, being a rep acceleration is simply that right now it's a huge rep sink for a decal that's honestly fairly hard to see even with the Alpha slider maxed. Providing a faster return on investment for, essentially, wearing sergeant's stripes instead of a hand-lettered T-shirt just makes sense to me. That said, providing other benefits on the sigils and tying that rep boost to rank or total purchases made would probably be even more fun and engaging, you're right.
Some quick ideas expanding on that...well, hey, here's another chance to give each faction some flavor. One Steel Meridian badge provides you with a once-a-minute shield restore (like that Sentinel mod whose name I can't recall), another builds up a meter every time you take damage and releases it as a shield when full, that sort of thing. Red Veil might cloak you when low on health, New Loka could provide healing or energy restoration, that sort of thing. I might make a more comprehensive list of my ideas later, but the more I think about this the more I'm enjoying the idea.
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agreed that it would certainly make sense that showing your dedication publicly would be seen as more favorable. Honestly I like the idea of the actual bonuses from the sigils that I've seen around including here, but I feel like these would be better suited for a new equipment slot rather than being tied to the sigil itself. Basically something like what the auras turned into but personal instead of for your whole team and not necessarily a warframe mod but some other not necessarily visible device you can bring to boost your abilities.
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Coming back to my brainstorm about end-of-mission taxes - call them "donations," since they're not technically mandatory - I think the idea could work, but it would be extra effort for DE and would probably burn players out even faster because they think they "have" to pour as much as possible into their syndicate. If I'd put it in from the beginning I'd probably have made the donation level required for the same multiplier go down with each rank (60% for a newbie gets the same reward as 10% for someone who's been helping so much they've been made a general), but honestly I think the rage about the perceived need to give up their credits and resources would outweigh any improvements to immersion.
Now, having a "donation box" where players could just make one-time contributions of credits or resources for a rep multiplier could be a lot better, but that runs into a lot of balance issues - how much do syndicates demand, how arbitrary are the numbers, and so on. Probably best to shelve this idea for now unless someone can figure out a way to overcome all of that.
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I was thinking more along the lines of you set your own tax rate, ie: 10% credits, 20%materials, 5% affinity, have those taxed gains be converted to rep, but the maximum percentages (possibly cap per category or capped by total percentage used across all) be determined by rank/sigil unlocks.
I think the donation box idea kinda overlaps too much with the sigil rep bonuses, altho maybe a donation box that grants time limited rep bonuses? Either way I agree that these would be less important but still nice features to have.
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But there are other things we could donate, definitely. TinFoil, I really liked that thread of yours from earlier and your comment about it above - the bit about there being special drops from lockers, excavators, end-of-mission results, or whatever else that could be turned in for either a chunk of rep or a multiplier with specific factions. In my reply I mentioned adding "mini-quests" to "assemble" more advanced rep drops, and I think we can take that one step further. Completing one of those items has a chance to trigger a new, special alert or sequence of alerts that let you act on whatever you just found. In fact, there could be a chance for both a single mission and a short series, just to keep things varied so it doesn't directly become a new grind. Sort of the equivalent of MMO quests starting from random item drops, really.
You also make a very good point about having some of those options be things tied to what the syndicates are actually doing, not just what they want. Giving the Steel Meridian lady her soldiers' dog tags could be a fairly powerful experience, and if handled well - again, there need to be several possible lines here, not just a single canned response - it would stay that way. That's just one example, building a little on one you mentioned yourself anyway. Not everything would have to be a quest, just an item and a little comment about it, but those little things go a remarkably long way.
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I've honestly always thought that not having any kind of special loot or anything in those really out of the way or hidden areas was such a waste of some really nice map design. Rare caches are a step in the right direction but they're way too uncommon and we need something in between "complete waste of time" and "chance at actually good stuff". That and giving syndicates more ways to work than just "wear our logo and go kill things".
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I don't really have much else to offer about the weapons and mods and such, though the list of semi-off-the-wall suggestions is fun to read and imagine in action. I'm just really not enough of a collector or minmaxer to put much thought into it in the first place, so now that we're in a position to come up with genuinely interesting mods I'm actually kind of stumped. Curious to see how the weapon mod meters work ("+1 Truth" and the like), though, because I think that's the same system I discussed for sigil enhancements at the top of this post.
And I do agree that having mods that apply across an entire category would be not only interesting and useful but also very practical. It cuts down on the number of things DE has to come up with, makes some elements of balancing more clear-cut (like "what counts as a launcher?" a while back), and allows for "specialized" mods that can still work anywhere. A lot of possibilities from the idea, though it's come up in other contexts a lot of times before without much impact.
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I think that some of the more wacky or creative bonuses actually works in favor of non-min-maxers. Ultimately the most efficient build for a weapon is going to be the one that kills the most things the fastest or with the fewest shots. It's going to be all about core stats. Wierd abilities and effects can give players who don't strictly want to just put out big numbers options to do interesting things that still do enough to get the job done.
Adding a few bullets to your clips or shaving off 0.1 seconds reload time versus 30% damage isn't even a choice really. Of course that's more of a balance issue but even so, the choice between doing extreme, or just acceptable damage versus shooting somewhat longer or reloading faster isn't a terribly interesting choice and I KNOW that we can do better than that.
Also weapon clarity not only makes the game more easy to understand and look more finished, but gives us a lot more interesting options going forwards.
P.S. By the way does multi quoting you in parts like that give you multiple "you've been quoted" notices or just one per post? if it's spamming you I'll come up with something else.
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also some of the courses are rather neat and would be nice to be able to freely play around on ones we already passed instead of never seeing them again.
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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.
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To begin with, I think the primary flaw is that for an endgame-oriented idea, Syndicates are intrinsically unfriendly to experienced players. Reputation gain slows down when using maxed gear. ...
I'm curious as to what you're basing this on. As far as I have found it seems directly tied to raw affinity gains from all sources. It's certainly possible I'm missing something and I haven't run any kind of extensive testing, just wondering what lead you to this conclusion? Possibly related to the wierdness with partial loadouts granting differing ammounts of affinity before the hotfix?
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I don't think Sigils should offer anything beyond cosmetics and reputation bonuses. However, I want to see Sigils acquired in a more intuitive way. "I ground out the most faction missions" doesn't strike me as a substantial status symbol. DE teased achievement-specific Sigils, so I expect them to show up sometime in the future, but I'd prefer them sooner rather than later.
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agreed
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One thing I am definitely not a fan of is the "Favored Warframes" system. I don't think we need a Syndicate to shove the fact that Ash is more assassin-esque than Rhino in our faces. Favored weapons are okay; I like the idea of "Tools of the trade," so to speak, and it opens some nice opportunities for faction-specific weapon skins. Syndicates themselves should welcome all comers, though.
Yea I don't think it would be great to be pushed too strongly towards a certain frame or frames for a specific syndicate as they can often be the core of how a player likes to play. Same reason I don't think having specifically favored mission types for syndicates would be a good idea either. I do think weapons could work. I feel like there's enough room to do something along those lines with weapons without making players feel pigeonholed into things they don't enjoy.
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Gameplay and Story Integration
a) Favored Missions
I'm against the general idea of favored mission types at the moment. I'm not fond of the idea of feeling like I have to run a specific mission type or join a faction I may not prefer for an optimal syndicate experience.
I do think there could be room to indirectly favor mission types if we get some kind of syndicate related objects or events that can spawn that may be weighted towards specific mission types.
b) Sigils
As I've said before, rep bonuses for sigil unlocks is fine, but I'd go with a passive bonus granted to the faction in question on unlock of a sigil and not tied to the sigiil itself.
The tax idea has potential, could be we can make a sacrifice of various things we would gain in a mission between credits, affinity and resources with maximum value allowed to be sacrificed being limited by the level of sigils unlocked (again as above, tied to unlocks not the sigil itself).
c) Gameplay Options
Negative/untiered alerts are an interesting idea. Not really sure where I am with that one, could be neat but not sure they should be necessary with other additions.
Syndicate locations or even just recruiting stations in hubs would be awesome. Also kinda hoping we see a few of their more standard members and possibly in the future getting special units as their spectres/hit squads. Honestly their units could just be reskins with maybe even just some non-standard ability/weapon combos like how capture targets and wardens have some non-standard combinations.
P.S. syndicate themed obstacle courses or otherwise individual challenge areas would be epic
d) Other *wall-o-text warning*
My big deal currently is that syndicates themselves offer little in terms of real gameplay. Basically we got some enemy type specters, and we have rare spawns of a full squad of eximi units. The mods and whatnot don't count in my book because they could be added anywhere and aren't an influence truly tied to the syndicate experience.
The first thing I feel we need to look at is Syndicate based activities. As of right now, the only thing special we can do gameplay wise related to syndicates is their daily reputation missions. Which are basically respawning 24 hour alerts that award reputation. They aren't anything new, although they do add some incentive to mix up mission types even just a little bit for players who might otherwise not. So faction rep missions are a good thing in my book but they are a tiny part of what we could, and in my opinion, should have.
The other problem that compounds with this is that the methods for gaining rep are uninteresting and offer nothing new and can even be viewed as having a negative impact on gameplay options. Currently my understanding is that rep gains are tied solely to affinity gains, which means that more affinity equates to more rep and less affinity to less rep. As the base of a rep system this isn't terrible, and gives easy and automatic scaling with the game. The problem is that this favors methods that are already miles beyond everything else for gaining pretty much anything worth gaining in missions. I am referring here to long term endless mission runs or otherwise high enemy density missions. Looking for rare mods? see above. Need to stockpile resources that aren't readily available from a boss? see above! Power levelling? endless missions away! Credits? sure why not, maybe not the optimal choice, but anyone at this point is probably not overly concerned with credits anyways
Don't get me wrong I'm okay with these methods being in play, but I'm not okay with them essentially being the answer to everything outside of blueprint/part hunting, and the rep system how I understand it doesn't seem to help at all here. The plus side I can say is that the affinity to rep system does to a degree discourage minimum contact speed runs.
Now what I'd like to see from syndicates is some alternative methods to gain rep that don't revolve entirely around obliterating entire armies as fast as possible. Having the option to go out and mass murder everything in sight for your syndicates approval (as well as all the other shiny material gains) is great, but we don't have an alternative at the moment. What about all the things these groups are doing without the assistance of the Tenno? surely these must at some point happen in areas we might pass through on our daily murder sprees.
Ideally we could see some event like spawns with possible ongoing conflict or just stumbling across active operations, and have the option of either working with or against them depending on where you stand. The problems I see with this are mainly mixed allegiance groups of Tenno, as well as technical complexity of building and coding a working and interesting scenario here. I'm not really expecting something like this anytime soon but it would be cool.
Something a bit more reasonable would be coming across evidence of such operations or conflicts without seeing them in progress. While it would bring a lot more life to the syndicates in game the big thing I'm going for here would be obtaining items related to these activities. Whether it be obtaining the ID of fallen syndicate operatives or finding hidden information or even objects of interest to the syndicates. These would essentially serve as exchangeable rep tokens, but would be donated to the syndicate of your choice with varying value depending on which syndicate or activity they relate to. These could also be multi part items with the ability to increase their value by either completing their intended purpose via things like sabotaging equipment or completing data collection.
I would see these objects as uncommon/rare spawns that would have only a very low, if any, chance of spawning in normal combat areas. After all, I would suspect these syndicates tend not to go head to head with the main factions in open combat if it can be helped. But instead these would lend value to the looter and explorer type players who like to find unusual and hidden locations while providing an alternative method of reputation gains. I mean for anyone who's put in time to find some of the really hidden rooms and such in some of the tile sets, there's some really freaking cool areas, but the payoff for finding or opening these areas is only slightly above non-existent.
A Tenno's Rewards
a) mods
While part of me wants everything to be super balanced in faction rewards, I know that won't happen and as long as things don't get way outta whack, having themed/patterned weapon selections for syndicates would be cool and is probably a better method than just throwing weapons into their collection while attempting to keep things even.
Pretty much agree on the frame to weapon augment comparison. It gives the impression that the weapon mods were either rushed, or not given anywhere near the time that was put into the frame augments. While the viability of many augments may be debatable they offer options that are simply not possible without them.
Also something I'd like to see in the future is weapon categories and families. Now I know it was required for melee 2.0 to happen, but melee weapons have weapon types, why do our guns not have this yet? We sort of have this, altho right now its "shotguns" and "rifles-that-are-really-anything-not-explicitly-a-shotgun" I'd like to see some middle tier syndicate rewards with more generalized but still limited mods, such as things that could be used on any 'braton variant', or things like heavy pistol mods. Heck we have Thunderbolt and Firestorm, we just need actual weapon categories to make these more clear and add more mods like that. Plus we get to clean up things like beam range mods being able to be placed on non-beam weapons
The more creative the better in my opinion
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.
b) syndicate rank ups
Rep resets I can live with if we get more methods for gaining said rep. I wouldn't complain if we get rep carryovers either. Free sigils? maybe, not sure on that one. Would be cool to get a title or something we can actually equip. Other sigil bonuses already discussed above.
Immersion and Investment
a) Yea more lines will definitely be better for syndicate dialogue, especially on the syndicate alerts. Not something immediately needed but in the long term is a requirement in my mind before syndicates can be called anything near complete. Also radio chatter for syndicates in the ship, sure I don't see why not, would be cool.
b) Definitely would like to see things happen in the area of story within the syndicate itself. A good starting point would be clips about why we're doing our daily alerts with some hints about potentially important individual goals or ongoing efforts. Doesn't have to be anything major but hints about things going on for us to speculate would be awesome, especially if we get any events or tactical alerts and such that expand on them in the future.
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I can confirm the Magistrar has the same issue currently
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Well I gotta say up front this deserves a much longer and detailed response than I have time for right now so I'll be sure to return and add more later on.
1-rewards
Agreed on mod types, this is really the kinda things I want to see as well.
As for rep values, I think I'm okay with the values and sacrificing our current rating to go to the next level. My problem is in the area of how we're able to gain our rep (more on this later). Of course I wouldn't be against carrying over rep either.
2-immersion and such
Very much yes.
3-gameplay
By far the weakest and least existent part of the current Syndicates.
Not sure on favored missions, perhaps they would have some additional syndicate objectives or items that have higher chances of being found/completeable in missions that lean towards a syndicats style? This is definitely an area I'll have to give more thought on.
I like the sigil bonuses, but I don't think they should be tied to the sigil itself. If we go that path we end up with the problem arcane helmets had, where everyone just uses "the best one" if they have access to it. I would prefer we get bonuses for unlocking a sigil that then applies to all sigils of that syndicate. Tax rate idea is interesting and one I'll have to come back to as well.
For the gameplay section there's a lot I'd like to say, but just for now something I thought of while reading this is perhaps in future scenarios based on major conflict between two or more Syndicates they could perhaps call for aid from neutral and allied syndicates, so we get participation from everyone without having to specificly ally yourself with an involved syndicate if your preffered one is not directly part of the conflict.
Something I think gets overlooked at the moment is our methods of gaining rep, altho certainly doesn't cover all options one I would find interesting personally is having syndicate based items that can be acquired in non-standard ways, such as hidden supply rooms and such. Right now our rep gaining activities go along the lines of "wear this sigil, now go do whatever it is you normally do" or "go out of your way occasionally to do heavy affinity farming" which ultimately ends up being the exact same activities we'd do for material/mod/affinity farming anyways so offers next to nothing new.
for more on that area I'm going to link something I wrote up a few days ago for now https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/337574-syndicates-feedback-and-thoughts/
And again I'll be back when I have more time to go through everything more.
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Well one argument against the bonus standing for sigils was that they create the effect the arcane helmets had where "I wear the one with the stats not the one I want". Which is a valid point in my opinion, which could be remedied by granting the bonus for unlocking the sigil and applying it to all sigils you own for that syndicate. Of course as above this would mean locking sigils to the account, which in my opinion should be the case whether or not they get any sort of effect.
For the resetting standings, I'm okay with how it works currently, I think the issue is that since it is also used as a currency within the syndicates it feels like more of a loss than other games where the rep counter resets per rank but only functions as a secondary exp meter. This could really go either way, personally I could live with it either way.
On sacrifices, I think they're mostly alright how they are, however I feel that the reactor/catalyst sacrifice should be at a higher level then it is, as they are technically more rare then prime parts, and players are likely to see them as the higher value item.
Personally I feel the area that is in most need of improvement is our methods of obtaining rep. As it stands currently the syndicate alerts are the only thing that affects our gameplay at all as far as increasing our rep, and that's only a matter of requiring us to play mission types we may not normally be doing.
As it is a bit of a long explanation I'll just link my thread where I wrote out in more detail what I feel is missing from the rep gathering system and what I'd like to see done with it. https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/337574-syndicates-feedback-and-thoughts/
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1. I personally feel the use of rep itself is alright, my issue is more with how restricted we are in how we obtain rep. The fact that it has essentially zero effect on how many people play the game and some may even feel forced into methods they enjoy less to obtain reasonable ammounts of rep. I think if we expand on how you actually obtain rep this should be much less of an issue.
2. I'm okay with the reactor/catalyst as a rank up requirement but I feel they should be at a higher rank than they currently are. The points about them being the only non-farmable requirement are valid however.
3. I think this is okay and that expanding a factions reward list can only be a good thing in the future. I believe the system is supposed to be about making a choice and sacrifice, that you won't reasonably be obtaining everything by yourself although it will technically be possible. While I'm not a huge fan of trading the way it currently plays out in game, I'm okay with the inter syndicate rewards trading, and hopefully shouldn't be too problematic once the system has been around long enough for players to have access to rewards on demand to make syndicate mod trading an actual thing.
1. I explained in another thread that Syndicate rating is only as hard as you make it. Today their was a post about someone who has already nearly maxed 2 of the syndicates. (he got 2 weapon augments from two different syndicates) So ya, in 2 weeks someone has gained that much rep.
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part of this is due to a bug that was allowing players to gain significantly more rep than was supposed to be gained per run. A good player with a reliable group can still farm some pretty solid rep numbers my real issue is that there are basically two nearly identical methods for this and everything else can't even compare. Those being super long term survival and defense runs to the really absurd levels because right now rep is tied entirely to affinity gains.
And because I honestly do not wan't to try and write all this out again I'm just going to link my own thread I wrote up earlier about this stuff.
https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/337574-syndicates-feedback-and-thoughts/
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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.
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Good idea and I like the terms tasks and causes.
I think the biggest weakness of the current rep system is that progression currently just about "kill all the things!" which is pretty much what we'd normally be doing regardless.
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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.
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Firstly, more non-combat scenarios. We thought something along the lines of more parkour courses, environment interaction, and puzzles. This would add many possible scenarios to the game. For example, a tenno lands at the entrance of an ancient temple on earth with the goal of retrieving an artficact. They have to figure out how to parkour their way through the temple, maybe having to explore it much less linearly to defeat a couple of mini-bosses to unlock the door to the main chamber. After this, they will be able to retrieve the artifact and maybe awaken some frozen guardians which they will have to defeat or run away from. I think having a bunch of variability and multiple objectives in one level will add a lot more depth to the game and will make it infinitely more interesting.
Secondly, adding multiple ways of completing an objective. For example, if a tenno is tasked with gathering intel from the corpus, it would be cool if they weren't locked into one scenario, but could achieve this in multiple ways, like finding the ship captain and interrogating him with the choice to kill or spare him, finding the ship's databank and hacking it (with some sort of puzzle) to retrieve the info, climbing stealthily through vents to overhear coversations, or even something else. I think this would greatly decrease the linear feel of the game and add more options even if you're doing the same mission type. It would also be cool if there were multiple objectives, some of which were optional, or objectives which influenced each other. In the past, there was a multiple objective system in warframe, but it wasn't much fun becuase after completing an objective, the lotus would tell you to do something else. there was no context and no sequence of events leading to the second objective. To make objective transfering effective, the player has to see a scenario play out during a mission and see the context of the objective change.
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Overall good ideas, I would love to see this sorta thing in game. For one we needs some of the really rare features like the hidden parkour vaults in the void to either be more common when searched for and/or have lesser versions of them in more tilesets. Maybe not quite the blatant deathtrap courses the vaults have but perhaps finding a damaged part of a ship and the course would be inside areas that aren't meant to have people attempting to navigate such as inside actual moving parts of the ship.
It would also be nice to have the old faction switch event back but using the invasion type transitions where the opposing faction shows up and eventually transitions into the attackers territory.
Lastly I though the gate crash event had an excellent secondary objective system, where it was entirely optional but handed out decent rewards to make exploring and clearing extra areas truly worth while. I'd like to see more things like the caches show up but not necessarily announced right off the bat, perhaps only being notified if you either did something special or wandered close enough to one of the secondary objectives. Also that's one of the big problems with the hidden rooms and such, there are some really cool areas around but they offer virtually nothing of any value whatsoever.
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I haven't actually used the referral system so I don't know personally but you might try the help section of the forums as the people that hang out over there might be more knowledgeable, and you can also always take it to support.
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Prodman tribute stance? heck yes. Machete type weapons need some love anyways.
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also as said above once you get going a bit and have some items worth trading players can trade platinum so you can work towards any color schemes you really want as well as the holiday specials.
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Yeah and that is the lame excuse game developers give cause its beta etc. etc.so they can do what they want, they are earning profits from a beta game and they couldn't care less is that your point ?
Given that is the reality still its is also part of reality that people affected had to raise their voice and concern, that is why we have this forum so we don't just sit around and accept things as they are and besides what I am asking is consideration if they need to implement the new system to better the game then go what we are asking is that they do give a kind consideration and the right compensation for people affected by the change.
what your doing is trying to shut us up, that is hypocritical of you cause when its your concern being affected I am sure you will raise your concerns too. i am not a forum guy I just want us to be heard. If you don't invest forma for your frame then good for you but we do so we have our concern about this.
Well for starters their current compensation plan seems pretty fair to me, I wasn't saying they should do nothing but more from the point of view of what they're already planning....
What about my existing Ability Mods?
All existing Ability Mods won’t be rendered useless - they will be converted into Fusion Cores. Stay tuned for more information on the specifics of this conversion.
What if I Forma’d/Polarized the 2 slots being removed?
Any Forma spent on Polarizing these 2 slots will be reimbursed.
What if I Forma’d/Polarized the 2 Ability slots that are staying?
If you Polarized these slots, the Polarization choice will stay. If you did not Polarize these slots, they will have a default unassigned Polarity.
I'm not telling anyone to shut up, but there really isn't any way for anyone to properly be compensated for large amounts of time spent on a game. We can't rewind time so the time you spent isn't coming back and even if they gave you the equivalent of what you had under a new system there are still legitimate arguments to be had about how it really isn't the same for the work put in.
Also while beta isn't and shouldn't be a get out of jail free card, it is a disclaimer that radical changes can be expected at times, and this honestly isn't even that huge of a change compared to some I've seen. Full release games often times get major patches with more drastic changes.
Also I'd like to point out that more standard games when they get expansions with level cap raises or new gear that makes everything that used to be top tier obsolete are basically erasing all your progress even though you keep what you had. In this case you're losing a few things you had before but are getting transitioned into a new system with roughly the equivalent of what you had before with some reimbursement for some features that are straight up lost.
EDIT: in theory if you had at least one ability slot still using the ability polarity the most you should have to re-forma should be once, assuming the system DE uses is able to optimize the retained polarities, worst case scenario would be twice per frame, which sure isn't gonna be fun for many players but it shouldn't be too bad and we'll all live. Until we get more clarification on how the slots are picked or saved or whatever tho any debates on that topic are mostly speculation.
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You don't get the point do you ? Thing is yeah you got that time to waste before this change will apply but what about after ? you are going to do the same thing because they decided to change it all of a sudden that is the case here kiddo. Those days and months that passed playing the game wont come back. Hell circumstances change specially when your an adult and you have responsibilities you know that a day that gone by wont come back and they will force you to redo it again without compensation ?
Just imagine you graduated failed board exams and you are forced to attend refresher courses ain't that gonna &!$$ed you only difference here that might have been caused by your own doing here they will force us because of the change they will apply.
For one the game is still in beta and changes should be expected, and said changes may potentially make previous top tier min maxed builds/styles/whatevers completely obsolete. Heck major content patches frequently do this in full release games when anything significant changes.
No one likes to feel like they've wasted a ton of time but that's reality, most games are essentially giant timesinks with almost no real return value beyond your own amusement.
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So it seems the new UI update removed the pause option when accessing menus in solo only mode. This is a real pain as having to do anything in the menus while solo can lead to death since there's no one to watch your back if you need to make setting changes or whatnot in a mission. Also this was one of the nicest features for Solo play in my opinion, as it allowed for play at your own pace and to stop if something were to come up in real life to interrupt your mission, which honestly is one of the biggest reasons I play solo, when I either cannot access a reliable connection for multiplayer or expect to deal with interruptions.
While not an essential feature, I personally think it was a good thing and certainly will miss it if it does not return.
Suggestion: I Think It's Time For Handicaps
in General
Posted
what about them?