I finished my 3rd week of (Elite) Deep Archimedea a day or so ago and I really enjoyed them all. I'm MR22 for small background context, and I think it's really fun and engaging, much more than I was expecting really. And so I was wondering and thinking about why I liked them so much and wanted to jot some thoughts down.
First, my experience:
I did all runs in public matchmaking, each week doing at least 2 runs (more if I had failed and need to retry). 1 normal one to gauge how I am at lvl 200-300. Then when I felt confident, the elite one. I think I did this cuz runs can be relatively short, like 30m or so, and it was fun enough that I'd do 2 runs, 1 on both difficulties.
For the first week, I used Atlas, Boltor (Telos Boltor), Talons, and Obex (Prisma Obex). I didn't really use the Boltor much actually, so it was basically the Prisma Obex that carried me the entire way through. The only time I used my Boltor was for dealing with flying enemies, but everything else was the Obex. I already had an Atlas that I decently use, and so didn't have to change much. So this week, it was me mainly realizing that I really only need 1 good weapon in the loadout. The rest was just filler basically, and that if I had a S#&$ty draw, I could just sacrifice 3 points to just use a weapon that can carry me while still getting all the main rewards at 34 points. I didn't need to do it this week though, so I managed to get all 37 pts with my Obex carrying me (and of course with the squad).
The 2nd week, I think, was when I realized just how much I ended up enjoying Deep Archimedea. For this week, my WF selection was Ash, Frost, and Citrine. I don't own Citrine and didn't feel like grinding her within the week. And I haven't played Ash or Frost in so long. They were both very out of date, both unforma'ed and having like a R1 common arcane from the eidolon hunts still attached. And for weapons, I ended up choosing Sybaris (Sybaris Prime), Afuris (Dex Furis), and Hate (no incarnon). I decided to bring Frost back up, and I think this was when I really got engaged in Deep Archimedea. I was playing and gearing a Warframe that I never really played before. And not just gearing a Frost and the weapons up to a bare minimum or something. But like ACTUALLY gearing Frost and Sybaris Prime and Dex Furis up, enough to handle lvl 250-400 content. That meant really getting involved in his abilities and augments and figuring out a build that I can use for that content along with the equipment.
And that was... an experience really. A really good one. It was an experience that I haven't really felt in Warframe. Because basically in almost every single other mission, I usually just choose amongst my top 5 Warframes or builds or whatever I just felt like playing and bringing them there. There was no real other place in Warframe that encouraged me to build a Warframe and weapon up that I haven't already considered building up. The only other "randomness" in Warframe are the bonuses from Archon Hunts and Arbitrations, which I basically ignore cuz "why would I need to bring that Warframe when I can just bring my couple of tried-and-true builds?", and Duviri, which doesn't really allow for an opportunity to build anything because the randomness changes in like an hour. If I didn't like the selection, I'd just wait an hour or 2. Or I'd bring something S#&$ty anyways using default mods since the Decrees can just offset them. For DA though, it lasts a week, and I think this week cadence is very important because it actually allows time to process and prepare. This is the only experience I've have in Warframe that consistently gave this feeling across these past 3 weeks. I've prepared for things before, like Archon Hunts and stuff. But usually, I'd get a build going and there you go that's it, job done for forever. This randomness with a whole week to gear up felt surprising and refreshing even, to just look at a selection of weapons and really think about how I can make it work when I normally wouldn't consider them. That's fun.
In that week 2, I settled on a build that I really like with Frost, using 3 of his augments (ice wave, passive dmg to frozen, and overguard). There was an energy drain mission and I have failed a regular run due to the lack of energy, so I adjusted with better energy efficiency and brought Zenurik to help (it really helped). I ended up really liking this Frost build and honestly might keep using it (and have used it in a few missions after outside of DA). Dex Furis was a surprise too since I didn't realize just how good/fun of a primer it was able to be as a support. I didn't use Hate too much and focused on the guns instead. I tried to get Sybaris to work, but I was unable to due to the modifiers (more on that later), so this was also the week I decided I will ignore the Primary weapon selection and bring my Miter incarnon instead. And I beat it with 34 pts to get all the important rewards, along with the feeling that I would totally bring my Frost and Dex Furis to other content now cuz I genuinely enjoyed what I ended up crafting.
For week 3 (this week), I settled on Yareli, Rubico (Rubico Prime), Akbolto (Akbolto Prime), and regular Tekko. I ignored both Rubico and Tekko and focused on Akbolto with Yareli with Merulina Guardian (not the new augment but totally could've tried it this week) since I actually like keeping Yareli on Merulina. Getting Akbolto to work though was interesting. There was also the modifiers. 75% reduced Duration, energy leeches, Mirror Defense, and final mission being Disruption to kill the Necramechs. I tried normal 1 run with Yareli and some build I already had with Akbolto. It didn't work out. I was energy starved, duration was cut, and Akbolto couldn't really kill. And then that's where this week's fun came from. Dealing with those modifiers and getting Akbolto ready to dmg Necramechs. I ended up with a build specific to this week. Max efficiency Yareli (R5 Fleeting Expertise + Boreal's Hatred with Primed Flow and R1 Arcane Energize) and decent other stats. And I built her for Overguard via Auger set, with Akbolto using Cascadia Overcharge (+300% crit on overshields), with Unairu for armor strip cuz Akbolto desperately needed that. Radiation + Cold Akbolto to handle Necramechs better. And it was good enough. Duration was cut short, but I was able to spam bubbles and her 4th to keep enemies locked enough in Mirror Defense. Akbolto felt like it did good enough against the Necramechs. And I beat this week with 37 pts. Also with only 3 players this time in Elite DA. Someone left right before stage 2 started, but us 3 managed it. Side note: I will be using only automatic trigger or melee weapons for the next few days. I can't rapid click anymore for a moment.
So, for how I think about the mode, modifiers, and the rewards:
Ignoring the loadout randomness, most of the modifiers and mission types feel fun so far. I usually don't like Mirror Defense. The Mirror Defense here honestly felt very well paced. It was frantic, something I don't normally feel. 3 waves was just enough that it was frantic, but still have that feeling of "hold out just a bit longer" to beat the stage. I do have some issues that I'll get to though. Assassination was a little bullet spongey. But I don't think I have an issue with that at the moment compared to some other things and it actually showed a challenge of attrition, which I don't think is in itself bad if well paced enough since that tests a build stretched across time. And I think it was well paced enough. Maybe a bit on the longer end, but still fine enough. The rewards are good. I really like that there's only 50 vosfor at 37 points, but all the main items are achievable at 34. That tiny bit of incentive is what gets me to try for 37, but not feel bad if I have to drop to 34 or even lower if I have to.
But that also brings about a weird design thought to me: to unlock Elite Deep Archimedea, we need 25 pts. This means that we'd have to do the normal mode and get everything. But like what I mentioned above in my experience, part of the experience of Elite Deep Archimedea is acknowledging that we don't need everything. We can drop 1 thing but still get max main rewards. This to me feels weird. It gives a false sense of "you have to do everything," only to realize that once we did do everything and unlock Elite Deep Archimedea, we no longer have to do everything. It definitely gave me this false sense of expectations, and once I realized max rewards for Deep Archimedea is 34 and not 37, it made me feel a lot better about the randomness. I think we should drop that 25pts to 24pts. It's more accurate on what is expected of the players. I think it can be argued that normal DA is easier and so it should be incentivized that players should be able to do it all, yes. But I still think this creates a disconnect and false sense of expectations, and that might be alleviated by keeping it consistent with Elite: that the max main rewards (unlocking Elite) can still be achieved by dropping 1 item for normal DA. And if there's a clearer 1-time reward for 37 pts (and/or even 27 pts actually), that'd be incentive enough. But I don't think unlocking Elite should be that incentive.
For the modifiers that I can remember:
Reduced Duration: more fun than I thought. I thought it'd be annoying. But that got me to play max efficiency Yareli and that was fun as hell. And that's the important thing I think: creating a situation where we actually change our builds to accommodate.
Energy Leech Luminous: interesting enough. It's fine
No Gear Wheel: I like this not for what it does, but just the fact that it exists. Because week 2 had this, which made me remember for week 3 I can use it. In that Mirror defense with Yareli, I spammed this Gear Wheel with specters and such. At some point we had a mirror defense objective with 1000 hp left. To that Arctic Moa Specter with the ice bubble near our defense objective: "Did you save us? Would we have lost without you?" I don't know but it's a good feeling to genuinely use specters in a non-meme-ing way.
But then this gets us to what I think are rougher modifiers:
All enemies have overguard: I don't think this modifier is actually bad. But I do think it presents a more rooted issue with enemies and overguard. This simply exposes that issue. And that issue being that it feels like there's not enough options to deal with this other than just "bring better bullets." I feel like this was also the reason why I couldn't use my Sybaris. I couldn't keep up with the overguard, and I couldn't CC with Frost. This is especially shown with the next modifier:
Eximus enemies join the boss in Assassination: This was where my Sybaris from week 2 broke. I thought I got a decent enough build. It was able to beat enemies at that level. But with all the eximus spawning and with overguard, my Sybaris could not keep up and I didn't feel like I was really able to do much else. I had to change to a better weapon.
I just think we need more ways to deal with Overguard. Right now there's not too much options other than being able to kill them fast enough. With armor: Defense Strip. Shields: magnetic or toxin. Hp: Viral/Gas/Heat/percent-based-attacks. With thick Necramechs: Cold to slow, Radiation for dmg. With overguard... I don't know. Just more damage. This is a bigger topic I think, but it makes these 2 modifiers much rougher than I feel like they should be given the random weapons. If there was some other way to help, then I feel like these modifiers won't be too bad. But right now, I don't fully know of a good way to "adjust" to it. Maybe just choosing more weapons-focused frames? Maybe.
Then a rougher mode:
Mirror Defense. I mentioned I like this despite not really liking it in other spots. It's true. It's frantic actually. That's actually more unique than I thought now that I think about it (void cascade being another one I think). But this one is also rough. On one hand, I like that it's much more frantic. We're really trying to keep the objective from dying with our non-dedicated loadouts. And that made it fun. But on the other hand, I think it's too easy to lose at the moment.
I was gonna mention stuff like this, but I just saw that TODAY there was an update and that did exactly what I was going to suggest (yay). Increase the healing from collecting those floating things. And nerfing those Hollow Veins. Sounds good on paper. Will need to see how it works in practice. Also to note just to make it explicit: I'm a bit against raising the health of the objective and glad it wasn't done. I think the "frantic"-ness inherit with a timed defense from higher lvl enemies should be kept by making players heal the objective rather than feeling like it's safe.
And then an important topic: the weekly cadence of this mode. I honestly feel like this is the reason why I like this mode so much. It's a lot of planning and prepping and gearing. But the mode itself can maybe be like 30-40m depending on the run so it's more like a final test without a real fail condition (other than just not doing it). More time prepping than the actual test. And that's how I treated it. On reset, I look at the loadout and just start theorycrafting how I can make it work. Then maybe start experimenting in other missions. In the 2nd week with Frost, I thought about and prepped for it across like 4-5 days (not actively, but more like, "I wonder" every so often). I finished that run on Friday I think and liked what I ended up with a lot. If this weekly cadence was shorter, or if the run itself took longer, then I feel like I actually wouldn't enjoy it too much. But now I have the time to think, prep, and reflect on it. And that's really fun. This is a massive difference to Duviri, the other "random" mode where I feel like I have to run it so much that I feel like I kinda just stopped caring about the randomness of it all. I do still have some fun times with Duviri still. Sometimes. But point is that I think this weekly cadence actually works very well with DA.
And the difficulty honestly feels really good to me. It's hard, especially when the loadout can't just easily cut through that content. But it still feels doable. It felt doable with my Sybaris Prime and Dex Furis (until all the overguard and eximus arrived), it felt doable with my Akbolto Prime after I decked it out in conjunction to Yareli. And Atlas and Prisma Obex... well I love my Atlas and Prisma Obex so I really didn't change my playstyle much here (didn't really use landslide other than for invulnerability though. did spam his 3 and 4 and uuhhh heh, his Wall to take aggro. I learned that his wall can block Necramech Demolitionysts pathing and they won't go around it. That was funny). I think this is a good balance.
For how I feel about the random loadout of the mode:
I actually really enjoy it. It's fun to bring things that I haven't considered using. And important thing is that it's not forced, like in my week 2 Frost, I basically just used the Miter and somewhat bypassed all that, while still having the Dex Furis geared up cuz it's part of the build. I basically admit that I can only get 34 pts. But that's okay cuz that's the amount for the max main rewards. I've seen a bit on how this can be frustrating, but I honestly don't know a solution to that. People say that it should choose based on what equipment someone has. But then what if that person deletes every equipment they have unless it can handle lvl 250-400 content and have now become too scared to get new equipment for fear it'll skew this randomness? That sounds like it'd be worse. Maybe it can skew a bit towards items that users have mastered. But this brings up the same issue: fear of getting "bad" weapons that will alter this, and that's not good. Part of it is using weapons we'd normally not use. A way that disables choosing similar weapons for x time? Doesn't feel like it'd help. People have a couple of weapons they'd fallback to anyways, and this will just let players rotate between those weapons they already use. So I don't know.
But I do feel like the randomness is necessary. The week to think about how you'll do it with those restrictions is necessary. The week to gear those equipment based on those restrictions is necessary. And this depends on full randomness to not create a situation that'll just skew towards what someone'll already use. If it was up to me and my decisions, I'd never use Frost. This mode is what got me to use Frost. And genuinely gear him up. Not just on a basic level, but one where he can go on higher level missions. And I like him now. Dex Furis and Akbolto too, funny enough. Never gave them much attention. Now? I'd totally use them again elsewhere.
But this does mean that I geared them up. That requires Forma. I'm at a position where I have some plat to spare so I don't mind it. I can understand if people don't have that plat and don't want to gear things up that they don't want to gear. Because that'd use resource they're trying to save. Which means the underlying issue in this case is the Forma and weapon slot scarcity for those people. To help fix that, maybe there needs to be another method for getting Forma and other stuff to help gear with? For those people feeling like they're sacrificing Forma or Potatoes each week, I feel like the rewards for those sacrifices needs to be worth it. But we can also then argue that they don't actually need to do that and just bring the best weapons they can and not get the full rewards if they don't feel it's worth it. Spending 2 search pulses and getting 20pts is already more worth it than using those 2 search pulses in netracells. And you only need 1 weapon to carry you, so bringing filler will still get 31 points for 4 rewards. So, it can then be argued that this is an acceptable compromise, and we'd trust those players to make those decisions, and that if they want those rewards, they'd have to judge if it's worth it. The rewards are not unique, and netracells are still an alternative. Of course, that means depending on the user, and that is probably not something to design an experience around. So, I don't know the best solution. But I do feel that to make the most out of this mode in terms of the heights a player can feel, randomness must be kept. Or if another form of randomness is used, it cannot depend on an individual as an input.
So yea, ended up thinking and typing a lot. I just felt a desire to cuz yea this mode was/is quite an experience. It's got me excited through 3 weeks so far, and I'm still excited for the 4th. That's quite something for a game mode. Props to DE here, thanks!
I finished my 3rd week of (Elite) Deep Archimedea a day or so ago and I really enjoyed them all. I'm MR22 for small background context, and I think it's really fun and engaging, much more than I was expecting really. And so I was wondering and thinking about why I liked them so much and wanted to jot some thoughts down. First, my experience: I did all runs in public matchmaking, each week doing at least 2 runs (more if I had failed and need to retry). 1 normal one to gauge how I am at lvl 200-300. Then when I felt confident, the elite one. I think I did this cuz runs can be relatively short, like 30m or so, and it was fun enough that I'd do 2 runs, 1 on both difficulties. For the first week, I used Atlas, Boltor (Telos Boltor), Talons, and Obex (Prisma Obex). I didn't really use the Boltor much actually, so it was basically the Prisma Obex that carried me the entire way through. The only time I used my Boltor was for dealing with flying enemies, but everything else was the Obex. I already had an Atlas that I decently use, and so didn't have to change much. So this week, it was me mainly realizing that I really only need 1 good weapon in the loadout. The rest was just filler basically, and that if I had a S#&$ty draw, I could just sacrifice 3 points to just use a weapon that can carry me while still getting all the main rewards at 34 points. I didn't need to do it this week though, so I managed to get all 37 pts with my Obex carrying me (and of course with the squad). The 2nd week, I think, was when I realized just how much I ended up enjoying Deep Archimedea. For this week, my WF selection was Ash, Frost, and Citrine. I don't own Citrine and didn't feel like grinding her within the week. And I haven't played Ash or Frost in so long. They were both very out of date, both unforma'ed and having like a R1 common arcane from the eidolon hunts still attached. And for weapons, I ended up choosing Sybaris (Sybaris Prime), Afuris (Dex Furis), and Hate (no incarnon). I decided to bring Frost back up, and I think this was when I really got engaged in Deep Archimedea. I was playing and gearing a Warframe that I never really played before. And not just gearing a Frost and the weapons up to a bare minimum or something. But like ACTUALLY gearing Frost and Sybaris Prime and Dex Furis up, enough to handle lvl 250-400 content. That meant really getting involved in his abilities and augments and figuring out a build that I can use for that content along with the equipment. And that was... an experience really. A really good one. It was an experience that I haven't really felt in Warframe. Because basically in almost every single other mission, I usually just choose amongst my top 5 Warframes or builds or whatever I just felt like playing and bringing them there. There was no real other place in Warframe that encouraged me to build a Warframe and weapon up that I haven't already considered building up. The only other "randomness" in Warframe are the bonuses from Archon Hunts and Arbitrations, which I basically ignore cuz "why would I need to bring that Warframe when I can just bring my couple of tried-and-true builds?", and Duviri, which doesn't really allow for an opportunity to build anything because the randomness changes in like an hour. If I didn't like the selection, I'd just wait an hour or 2. Or I'd bring something S#&$ty anyways using default mods since the Decrees can just offset them. For DA though, it lasts a week, and I think this week cadence is very important because it actually allows time to process and prepare. This is the only experience I've have in Warframe that consistently gave this feeling across these past 3 weeks. I've prepared for things before, like Archon Hunts and stuff. But usually, I'd get a build going and there you go that's it, job done for forever. This randomness with a whole week to gear up felt surprising and refreshing even, to just look at a selection of weapons and really think about how I can make it work when I normally wouldn't consider them. That's fun. In that week 2, I settled on a build that I really like with Frost, using 3 of his augments (ice wave, passive dmg to frozen, and overguard). There was an energy drain mission and I have failed a regular run due to the lack of energy, so I adjusted with better energy efficiency and brought Zenurik to help (it really helped). I ended up really liking this Frost build and honestly might keep using it (and have used it in a few missions after outside of DA). Dex Furis was a surprise too since I didn't realize just how good/fun of a primer it was able to be as a support. I didn't use Hate too much and focused on the guns instead. I tried to get Sybaris to work, but I was unable to due to the modifiers (more on that later), so this was also the week I decided I will ignore the Primary weapon selection and bring my Miter incarnon instead. And I beat it with 34 pts to get all the important rewards, along with the feeling that I would totally bring my Frost and Dex Furis to other content now cuz I genuinely enjoyed what I ended up crafting. For week 3 (this week), I settled on Yareli, Rubico (Rubico Prime), Akbolto (Akbolto Prime), and regular Tekko. I ignored both Rubico and Tekko and focused on Akbolto with Yareli with Merulina Guardian (not the new augment but totally could've tried it this week) since I actually like keeping Yareli on Merulina. Getting Akbolto to work though was interesting. There was also the modifiers. 75% reduced Duration, energy leeches, Mirror Defense, and final mission being Disruption to kill the Necramechs. I tried normal 1 run with Yareli and some build I already had with Akbolto. It didn't work out. I was energy starved, duration was cut, and Akbolto couldn't really kill. And then that's where this week's fun came from. Dealing with those modifiers and getting Akbolto ready to dmg Necramechs. I ended up with a build specific to this week. Max efficiency Yareli (R5 Fleeting Expertise + Boreal's Hatred with Primed Flow and R1 Arcane Energize) and decent other stats. And I built her for Overguard via Auger set, with Akbolto using Cascadia Overcharge (+300% crit on overshields), with Unairu for armor strip cuz Akbolto desperately needed that. Radiation + Cold Akbolto to handle Necramechs better. And it was good enough. Duration was cut short, but I was able to spam bubbles and her 4th to keep enemies locked enough in Mirror Defense. Akbolto felt like it did good enough against the Necramechs. And I beat this week with 37 pts. Also with only 3 players this time in Elite DA. Someone left right before stage 2 started, but us 3 managed it. Side note: I will be using only automatic trigger or melee weapons for the next few days. I can't rapid click anymore for a moment. So, for how I think about the mode, modifiers, and the rewards: Ignoring the loadout randomness, most of the modifiers and mission types feel fun so far. I usually don't like Mirror Defense. The Mirror Defense here honestly felt very well paced. It was frantic, something I don't normally feel. 3 waves was just enough that it was frantic, but still have that feeling of "hold out just a bit longer" to beat the stage. I do have some issues that I'll get to though. Assassination was a little bullet spongey. But I don't think I have an issue with that at the moment compared to some other things and it actually showed a challenge of attrition, which I don't think is in itself bad if well paced enough since that tests a build stretched across time. And I think it was well paced enough. Maybe a bit on the longer end, but still fine enough. The rewards are good. I really like that there's only 50 vosfor at 37 points, but all the main items are achievable at 34. That tiny bit of incentive is what gets me to try for 37, but not feel bad if I have to drop to 34 or even lower if I have to. But that also brings about a weird design thought to me: to unlock Elite Deep Archimedea, we need 25 pts. This means that we'd have to do the normal mode and get everything. But like what I mentioned above in my experience, part of the experience of Elite Deep Archimedea is acknowledging that we don't need everything. We can drop 1 thing but still get max main rewards. This to me feels weird. It gives a false sense of "you have to do everything," only to realize that once we did do everything and unlock Elite Deep Archimedea, we no longer have to do everything. It definitely gave me this false sense of expectations, and once I realized max rewards for Deep Archimedea is 34 and not 37, it made me feel a lot better about the randomness. I think we should drop that 25pts to 24pts. It's more accurate on what is expected of the players. I think it can be argued that normal DA is easier and so it should be incentivized that players should be able to do it all, yes. But I still think this creates a disconnect and false sense of expectations, and that might be alleviated by keeping it consistent with Elite: that the max main rewards (unlocking Elite) can still be achieved by dropping 1 item for normal DA. And if there's a clearer 1-time reward for 37 pts (and/or even 27 pts actually), that'd be incentive enough. But I don't think unlocking Elite should be that incentive. For the modifiers that I can remember: Reduced Duration: more fun than I thought. I thought it'd be annoying. But that got me to play max efficiency Yareli and that was fun as hell. And that's the important thing I think: creating a situation where we actually change our builds to accommodate. Energy Leech Luminous: interesting enough. It's fine No Gear Wheel: I like this not for what it does, but just the fact that it exists. Because week 2 had this, which made me remember for week 3 I can use it. In that Mirror defense with Yareli, I spammed this Gear Wheel with specters and such. At some point we had a mirror defense objective with 1000 hp left. To that Arctic Moa Specter with the ice bubble near our defense objective: "Did you save us? Would we have lost without you?" I don't know but it's a good feeling to genuinely use specters in a non-meme-ing way. But then this gets us to what I think are rougher modifiers: All enemies have overguard: I don't think this modifier is actually bad. But I do think it presents a more rooted issue with enemies and overguard. This simply exposes that issue. And that issue being that it feels like there's not enough options to deal with this other than just "bring better bullets." I feel like this was also the reason why I couldn't use my Sybaris. I couldn't keep up with the overguard, and I couldn't CC with Frost. This is especially shown with the next modifier: Eximus enemies join the boss in Assassination: This was where my Sybaris from week 2 broke. I thought I got a decent enough build. It was able to beat enemies at that level. But with all the eximus spawning and with overguard, my Sybaris could not keep up and I didn't feel like I was really able to do much else. I had to change to a better weapon. I just think we need more ways to deal with Overguard. Right now there's not too much options other than being able to kill them fast enough. With armor: Defense Strip. Shields: magnetic or toxin. Hp: Viral/Gas/Heat/percent-based-attacks. With thick Necramechs: Cold to slow, Radiation for dmg. With overguard... I don't know. Just more damage. This is a bigger topic I think, but it makes these 2 modifiers much rougher than I feel like they should be given the random weapons. If there was some other way to help, then I feel like these modifiers won't be too bad. But right now, I don't fully know of a good way to "adjust" to it. Maybe just choosing more weapons-focused frames? Maybe. Then a rougher mode: Mirror Defense. I mentioned I like this despite not really liking it in other spots. It's true. It's frantic actually. That's actually more unique than I thought now that I think about it (void cascade being another one I think). But this one is also rough. On one hand, I like that it's much more frantic. We're really trying to keep the objective from dying with our non-dedicated loadouts. And that made it fun. But on the other hand, I think it's too easy to lose at the moment. I was gonna mention stuff like this, but I just saw that TODAY there was an update and that did exactly what I was going to suggest (yay). Increase the healing from collecting those floating things. And nerfing those Hollow Veins. Sounds good on paper. Will need to see how it works in practice. Also to note just to make it explicit: I'm a bit against raising the health of the objective and glad it wasn't done. I think the "frantic"-ness inherit with a timed defense from higher lvl enemies should be kept by making players heal the objective rather than feeling like it's safe. And then an important topic: the weekly cadence of this mode. I honestly feel like this is the reason why I like this mode so much. It's a lot of planning and prepping and gearing. But the mode itself can maybe be like 30-40m depending on the run so it's more like a final test without a real fail condition (other than just not doing it). More time prepping than the actual test. And that's how I treated it. On reset, I look at the loadout and just start theorycrafting how I can make it work. Then maybe start experimenting in other missions. In the 2nd week with Frost, I thought about and prepped for it across like 4-5 days (not actively, but more like, "I wonder" every so often). I finished that run on Friday I think and liked what I ended up with a lot. If this weekly cadence was shorter, or if the run itself took longer, then I feel like I actually wouldn't enjoy it too much. But now I have the time to think, prep, and reflect on it. And that's really fun. This is a massive difference to Duviri, the other "random" mode where I feel like I have to run it so much that I feel like I kinda just stopped caring about the randomness of it all. I do still have some fun times with Duviri still. Sometimes. But point is that I think this weekly cadence actually works very well with DA. And the difficulty honestly feels really good to me. It's hard, especially when the loadout can't just easily cut through that content. But it still feels doable. It felt doable with my Sybaris Prime and Dex Furis (until all the overguard and eximus arrived), it felt doable with my Akbolto Prime after I decked it out in conjunction to Yareli. And Atlas and Prisma Obex... well I love my Atlas and Prisma Obex so I really didn't change my playstyle much here (didn't really use landslide other than for invulnerability though. did spam his 3 and 4 and uuhhh heh, his Wall to take aggro. I learned that his wall can block Necramech Demolitionysts pathing and they won't go around it. That was funny). I think this is a good balance. For how I feel about the random loadout of the mode: I actually really enjoy it. It's fun to bring things that I haven't considered using. And important thing is that it's not forced, like in my week 2 Frost, I basically just used the Miter and somewhat bypassed all that, while still having the Dex Furis geared up cuz it's part of the build. I basically admit that I can only get 34 pts. But that's okay cuz that's the amount for the max main rewards. I've seen a bit on how this can be frustrating, but I honestly don't know a solution to that. People say that it should choose based on what equipment someone has. But then what if that person deletes every equipment they have unless it can handle lvl 250-400 content and have now become too scared to get new equipment for fear it'll skew this randomness? That sounds like it'd be worse. Maybe it can skew a bit towards items that users have mastered. But this brings up the same issue: fear of getting "bad" weapons that will alter this, and that's not good. Part of it is using weapons we'd normally not use. A way that disables choosing similar weapons for x time? Doesn't feel like it'd help. People have a couple of weapons they'd fallback to anyways, and this will just let players rotate between those weapons they already use. So I don't know. But I do feel like the randomness is necessary. The week to think about how you'll do it with those restrictions is necessary. The week to gear those equipment based on those restrictions is necessary. And this depends on full randomness to not create a situation that'll just skew towards what someone'll already use. If it was up to me and my decisions, I'd never use Frost. This mode is what got me to use Frost. And genuinely gear him up. Not just on a basic level, but one where he can go on higher level missions. And I like him now. Dex Furis and Akbolto too, funny enough. Never gave them much attention. Now? I'd totally use them again elsewhere. But this does mean that I geared them up. That requires Forma. I'm at a position where I have some plat to spare so I don't mind it. I can understand if people don't have that plat and don't want to gear things up that they don't want to gear. Because that'd use resource they're trying to save. Which means the underlying issue in this case is the Forma and weapon slot scarcity for those people. To help fix that, maybe there needs to be another method for getting Forma and other stuff to help gear with? For those people feeling like they're sacrificing Forma or Potatoes each week, I feel like the rewards for those sacrifices needs to be worth it. But we can also then argue that they don't actually need to do that and just bring the best weapons they can and not get the full rewards if they don't feel it's worth it. Spending 2 search pulses and getting 20pts is already more worth it than using those 2 search pulses in netracells. And you only need 1 weapon to carry you, so bringing filler will still get 31 points for 4 rewards. So, it can then be argued that this is an acceptable compromise, and we'd trust those players to make those decisions, and that if they want those rewards, they'd have to judge if it's worth it. The rewards are not unique, and netracells are still an alternative. Of course, that means depending on the user, and that is probably not something to design an experience around. So, I don't know the best solution. But I do feel that to make the most out of this mode in terms of the heights a player can feel, randomness must be kept. Or if another form of randomness is used, it cannot depend on an individual as an input. So yea, ended up thinking and typing a lot. I just felt a desire to cuz yea this mode was/is quite an experience. It's got me excited through 3 weeks so far, and I'm still excited for the 4th. That's quite something for a game mode. Props to DE here, thanks!
