[Bounty "Hidden Caches" truely hidden - INSIDE OBJECTS/UNDERGROUND]

This just screwed me again TODAY, in 2021.  Between Primed Animal Instinct and just *listening* for them I have zero difficulty finding caches on surface locations (even in most caves) within the bonus timer, but beneath the mountain base (Mount Nang?) with the multilevel cave system I found 2 caches the normal way with bonus minutes to spare, and then burnt out the entire mission timer circling the yellow ring at every possible elevation as it shrank until it disappeared.  At no point did anything show up on radar and eventually I failed the bounty for not finding something that by every indication was simply not there.

I suppose it's not impossible that just *one* cache was aboveground on one of the mountain's flanks, but srsly wtf.

Unlike others I really like this bounty stage, but only when it works.

[COMING SOON: Devstream #140!]

18 hours ago, Kuez said:

^dunno what that is but

I Am Once Again Asking You To PLEASE
STOP
HOBBLING
BEAM
WEAPONS.
>>>Include Ruinous Extension and Sinister Reach within the family of Exilus Mods Where They Belong just like their shotgun and projectile counterparts already are.<<<

This discrimination is utterly arbitrary and unnecessary by all of your own stated criteria.  As a player who loves soloing deliberately and tactically (almost like a "space ninja", even?) just as much as squad speedrunning in a rolling wave of spastic/reflexive carnage, I've already happily spent the various resources to have this slot activated and filled with Fatal Acceleration on every one of my shotguns for the less-braindead/frantic playstyle that extra range makes feasible, regardless of mission type.

I want the choice to use my beam/continuous weapons in the same variety of ways, but you are choking out your own diversity by excluding their equivalent mods so arbitrarily.
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Also I don't know exactly how you implemented this new stagger mechanic but it seems to be laid on too thick, and bleeding over into other contexts.  Since last update suddenly Skorpions' and Ancients' whip attacks have the range and precision of sniper rifles (but somehow better projectile speed), dropping me from halfway across the tile and huge differences in elevation?  And then they don't even pull me straight to them but now in some arbitrary/inexplicable S-curve path which just belabors the process, WTF is that?  Can that get tuned back to something vaguely reasonable and intuitive?

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...and with all these meatier mechanics being debated here's just a couple zero-impact long-term thoughts I'd like to introduce for more leisurely consideration:
1) make your own buff effects invisible/transparent when aiming:  It's infuriating to try to fish or mine effectively with a full armor stack from Health Conversion orbiting incessantly through your reticle and blocking the critical details which determine success or failure, and I realized yesterday that I can barely find/see scanner trails to Synthesis Targets through Nova's Null Star particles.  If these sort of effects could just... fade temporarily as an automatic side-effect of aiming, that would be huge QOL for a number of activities.

2) Long-term vanity, but I Have A Dream (from which I will never awake) that someday we can earn/buy/craft/whatever/however persistent weapon racks as Orbiter decorations where currently-owned Arsenal items can be displayed as we have customized them.  I might never actually use my Skana, Heat Sword, or Ether Sword in-mission ever again, but I'm still fond/grateful enough of all of them to feel they deserve permanent resting places on my wall...  What's for anybody Not To Like about a new cosmetic Grind Target/plat purchase AND another reason to increase inventory slots?  Every classic Ninja Lair has a Wall Of Weapons, why not ours?

[(PC) Melee Phase 2: STATS Feedback]

To put it bluntly, while I agree that pre-update weapon stats needed something, it doesn't look to me like their recent individual changes have resulted in any more-credible state of "balance" amongst them so much as a wildly-different distribution of lopsided.  I hope devs don't mean to crudely grind the mathematical effectiveness of all melee weapons closer to flat:  We have enough strong individual preferences for style, feel, and looks that we don't need that to use a variety of them.  There's also an aspect of balance which needs to consider capability vs cost:  A significantly-harder weapon to craft/obtain should ultimately be more powerful...

I'll also confess that I haven't had time to review all patch notes and weapons but a couple examples with ones I own and often use are immediately glaring.

Positive:  Thank you for exposing more relevant stats (such as follow-through) in the wiki and Arsenal UI.
Thank you for buffing so many early-game weapons to be viable through the whole star chart, even if you may have overdone it in certain cases.
Thank you for adding physical damage to elemental weapon variants (Dark Split-sword, Cerata, et al).  A melee which doesn't even inflict impact is implausible, to say the least.  For specialty weapons which do native toxin or radiation damage certain tradeoffs are reasonable, but should never negate a weapon's physical-objectness and corresponding I/P/S from that itself.

Negative:  I must however object to trivializing the elemental damage these same abovementioned weapons are constructed specifically for:  Radiation now seems little more than an afterthought to the Dark Split-sword, only marginally stronger than its weakest physical damage type rather than its defining feature when in the dual-sword stance (which is the only way I and many others found it useable and fun).  Prior to this update the native radiation damage used to scale comparably with mod-introduced elements simply by maxing a vanilla [Pressure Point].  At rank 30 without a catalyst I finally had simple and intuitive builds which did roughly-equal (and consistently gratifying) amounts of radiation & corrosive or radiation & magnetic damage at the same time:  This was precisely the point of going to all the trouble and expense of crafting it as soon as I could barely reach the necessary resources.
I find it questionable enough that the Dark Split-sword's physical damage types are almost fully halved when out of Heavy Blade configuration, but can see a plausible rationale for... some degree of that in consideration of attack speed.  In contrast it is definitely indefensible to do even worse (i.e. divide by 3) to native elemental damage:  Innate radiation is innate whether you're swinging it with one hand or two.  Radiation is now the Heavy Blade's highest damage type of all (100 base), but nearly the lowest (32) as dual blades?  Where does that 68 disappear to when you separate your hands?

Takeaway:  AFAICT everybody hates/nobody uses the Dark Split-sword as a single Heavy Blade, and the only functional feature which ever kept its dual-blade stance in heavy mission rotation past max rank (as distinct from/competitive with Dual Keres) was the native radiation keeping pace with modded elementals (solely via Pressure Point) for dual-secondary-element builds otherwise impossible with just mods.
Feel free to tune physical damage stats as a function of stance and speed, but we earned every point of that Heavy Blade's base radiation regardless of stance.
...if not while building/ranking the prerequisite Dual Skanas then definitely while doing invasions and derelict runs to farm mutagen masses (at a level of noobhood when they still felt notably scary).  In comparison to the Dual Keres' direct build whose single exotic material is a single mission's grab of argon crystal, it should be obvious enough that a straight elemental upgrade is/was justified by the Dark Split-sword's relative cost and complexity.  Without the proportional radiation it used to have as dual blades, a fun favorite (for some of us) which was well worth the multi-stage quest to build is currently nerfed into overly-costly, redundant irrelevance.
 

Meanwhile the Nikana family straight-up doubles in base damage (no complaints there; I installed this game to use a Nikana, but... wow) and the Ether Sword is buffed by OVER 4X?  As thrilled as I am to now safely bring that forced AoE radiation proc out past Ceres--I never sold mine--let's not forget that (new MR7 gate be damned) the Ether Sword is trivially-buildable AT MERCURY.  And now (if references are correct) it has stronger total base damage than:  Dragon Nikana, Broken War, Galatine, just to list a few significantly-more-demanding blades to craft or acquire.  I see these changes made and appreciate the intent, but in pursuit of balance I don't think you've gotten notably "warmer".  Please tell us you have multiple passes planned for this melee-balancing process.
 

I also agree with above objections such as daggers having more follow-through than heavy weapons (SRSLY what was made to retain high damage through multiple bodies if not a Heavy Blade?  also Nikanas by historical precedent) and the sudden non-exaltation of Exalteds:  As excited as I am to fully trick out my new Valkyr Prime, now the biggest practical reason to use her Hysteria Claws over any other moderately well-modded physical melee is merely their health regeneration (which of course can also be modded for).  I haven't played Excalibro since the update, but now that I glance at the arsenal it's clear his Exalted Blade damage (previously a worst-case problem solver) has also been hugely gutted.  "Ult" is not very ultimate now.  Let's PLEASE keep looking at this.
 

[Reload Speed Mods in Exilus Slots]

Exactly.  If total mod capacity hasn't changed, then neither has "balance".  Players are still spending the same total drain in whichever way feels best to them for their own playstyle, and the additional slot (if only it were useful for more than shotguns) just allows them to configure it in finer detail.

Like, how is this even a debate?  The adapter blueprint costs 3X the syndicate standing of some arguably game-changing augment mods, to say nothing of its nontrivial material requirements for construction, but God Forbid all those resources should yield a marginal increase in effectiveness as a side-effect of making a weapon predominantly more comfortable and dependable to use... as a weapon.

[Good Sword of Clem]

OK now that's a new transcription of that phrase I'd never considered before, but I like it...

[How Can We Fix Nukers?]

You seem to be deliberately missing the point that often nukes nuking with others supporting or just cleaning up loot can be precisely the cooperative playstyle most or all of a squad is satisfied with.  Co-op itself can be expressed in multiple disparate playstyles and squad structures (sometimes within successive waves of the same mission):  Who are you to micromanage precisely what forms it can/cannot take for every squad and every player?

Let players form/join sympathetic clans to develop their own preferred squad tactics.
Let them be specific about LF squadmates in recruit chat.

Let them friend randoms of comparable ability they enjoyed playing with for future missions.

Let them abort whenever they aren't getting what they want from a given random squad whose equally-valid mission priorities are <GASP> different from their own.
Let them SOLO missions whose content they feel they aren't personally experiencing enough of.
Oh wait, every one of the above solutions* is already readily available and abundantly effective.
*to a problem which nukers are demonstrably Not the root of

For someone who decries "asserting a level of dominance that is just ousting other players from play" why is it your solution which requires crippling the sheer scale (and breadth of ludicrous potential) of the entire game itself while denying a significant player population their preferred "range and option of engagement" in certain specific contexts which can be easily avoided?
Do Tell Us More about how one person (or any minority faction, for that matter) should not have full sway over the entire playerbase in such matters...

[How Can We Fix Nukers?]

3 hours ago, Cubewano said:

edit: at most this is saying the experiences of one person should not be able to trump that of three others in a group

Agreed.  Do you still respect that principle when the 'one person' is the complainer and the other 3 (nuke and support/wingmen) are happy enough with their roles and rewards that synergy provides?  Especially considering that literally anybody can opt out of that situation at literally any time?

DE already created/coded this entire surreal universe for players to explore and experience however they (in all their vast player/power-level/playstyle variety) choose to, and all these variously-structured experiences are available FOR FREE:  That's more than enough from any developer.  Any player who doesn't use all the tools already available to curate their own particular preferred experience of it isn't being denied gameplay so much as they are refusing to play the whole game.

There's still a guaranteed way to experience all the content and be the primo-protagonist leaderboard-hero of any/every mission, and nukeframe builds aren't keeping anybody from it.  Maybe stop trying to ban one viable/valued playstyle of many just b/c some players (of indeterminate population) can't be bothered to decline it.

[How Can We Fix Nukers?]

🙄 
Are you getting all the drops and mission rewards?
Is affinity still being shared/your gear still levelling?
Have you tried exploring side rooms and marking rare resources for your squadmates?

Between clans, recruit chat, and friend lists DE gives you every possible resource to deliberately structure squads and roles within them however you like, yet here you are complaining that pub missions are the hilariously-random gameshow/sh1tshow that they inevitably must be.  Anytime I play other than solo or invite-only is when I choose to grind right now for a specific GOAL not some irrelevant kill-ranking ego-stroke, so a nuker on the squad is Christmas In July:  Hallelujah, Let's Get This Loot.

-the ridiculous extremes of effective power difference between players is a core part of what makes this game universe so epic and inspiring
-the single most satisfying perk of advancement I've yet found is eventually building/getting to play a relatively-OP/mission-critical role for random noob squadmates that others once did for me:  Circle Of Life, Virtuous Cycle, diversity of playstyles, etc etc.

When someone even further OP shows up I'm happy to let them lock it all down and start branching out looking for Ayatans, rare containers, and whatnot.  In a game which structurally requires you to play different frames, different gear, in correspondingly different styles in order to advance at all, complaining that you have to adapt on-the-fly to different roles within a rando squad is... precious, at best.

"But but but This Is A Cooperative Game [and somebody cooperated too well for my taste in this random mission]"?
It doesn't sound to me like nukers are the problem that needs fixing.

[Reload Speed Mods in Exilus Slots]

As currently and arbitrarily crippled, Weapon Exilus slots are the most misleading/underwhelming "feature" of this whole update.

Miss me with these reaching rationalizations for the slot's borderline uselessness:  Any additional slot, by its mere existence, will inevitably allow motivated players to forma/tune a weapon further to ultimately do more damage over some sufficiently-extended period of time
Because
Damage
Is
What
Weapons
Do
and "utility" is never not a factor in how long it takes them to.  Especially if we're discussing it in disingenuous terms like "damage per second" yet calculating THAT across countless reloads up to the duration of entire missions.

Fire rate and punchthrough mods boost DPS within the scale of seconds, within a single encounter, within a single magazine, which makes their DPS effect immediately/substantially-relevant enough to exclude from "utility" mods.  Reload speed/mag capacity not so much:  They definitely help but don't have nearly the same degree of impact.  The same can even be said (on a comparable step down) of Exilus max-ammo-capacity mods, as they decrease the time spent finding ammunition (/deploying restores from gear/letting your dog dig it up, as opposed to reloading) rather than firing it, hence an "increase in 'sustained' DPS" for anyone perverse enough to claim it across such an extended period.

There's no black-and-white damage/utility boundary to hallucinate:  In an affinity-grinding shooter/looter, EVERY weapon mod will ultimately be employed for some kind of (increasingly trivial) impact on "sustained"/average DPS, however directly or indirectly.  The only intuitive distinction to make is between those which boost damage directly/immediately vs indirectly/eventually b/c if you're going to be absolute about it the latter category is all of them.

Orrrrrrrr... one could simply recognize that mag extensions, reload speed, and range extension are the definition of utility.  Which is explicitly what exilus slots claim to offer.