[A Full Rework Of The Lato And Skana Weapon Families]

First of all, cash exclusive benefits in warframe were always meant to be cosmetic or convenience.

That's how Prime Access packs now offer exclusive armor, but everyone still can grind away at the weapons and frames.

It's also why Founder Primes were never the best weapons around; even on release they were purely bling.

 

Second: Founder gear is a special case, SUPER SPECIAL, since they were available ONCE, and will never be available again.

That means NORMAL rules and logic for how to manage them do not necessarily need to apply.

Founder Primes becoming skins dose not mean regular Primes have to become them too, nor vice-versa.

 

Third, and most important, making Founder Primes into skins applicable across all weapons within a category(Skana Prime can go on all longswords and machetes, Lato Prime can go on all handguns), achieves two incredibly important things.

INFINITE longevity: skins never become outdated, never require another balance pass, and never upset the balance for the regular/less fortunate player.

INFINITE utility: by becoming skins, Founder Primes can be applied to gear at all tiers(not very relevant considering the rank of most founders), and all stat distributions. There never will exist a problem of a Founder Prime being irrelevant due to gameplay mechanics, and the founders will be able to show off their status at all times, once again, never upseting the balance for the regular/less fortunate player.

 

All true. Founder items being turned into skins would also let founders apply them to applicable dual/akimbo weapons.

And we know for a fact DE can refund forma, so that's not even a valid counter-argument.

[New Pvp Mods Drop Rate]

So far I haven't even SMELLED a Hydraulic mod, or even Loose Chamber.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

Scindo Prime is the ultimate form of the Scindo. According to DE, it's perfect like that, and I shouldn't have to change it.

 

Does that include modding?

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

I want to use the Manticore Axe Skin on my Scindo Prime. I can't though.

 

And I say you should be able to, even if it doesn't come with the stat change.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

Is that Valkyr Prime? Nope, no gold.

 

I know that. But if you bought the skin and then earned or bought the eventual Valkyr Prime (Or whatever her name was before then), surely you'd want to be able to use that skin on her.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

And the Glaive shouldn't be able to use the Proto Skin. However, these are model skins from the first Tenno, Hayden. Technically, Excalibur is a skin of him. Anyway, that's more fan service for Dark sector than anything.

 

And the pre-Corpus Valkyr skin?

 

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Valkyr_Pre-Corpus_Skin

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

Swing speed for damage.

However, as I said, Primes are supposed to be the ultimate form of weaponry, which is why it cannot equip skins.

 

To use that logic, then, Excalibur Prime shouldn't be able to use the Proto-Excalibur skin.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

Which makes DE's hesitation to balance everything understandable.

 

I wouldn't mind some skins that changed our abilities, but I doubt anyone would get behind that.

 

We already have stat-altering skins for some melee weapons like the Brokk skin for the Fragor.

And I can imagine Valkyr's proto-skin would need some visual tweaking if it's meant to be her before Salad got his mitts on her.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

I sincerely wish Prisma never happened.

 

As far as I know, there is no supporting lore for the Prisma generation of weapons.  No one can say if they are or are not supposed to be better than Primes.  Uhg.  

 

Hence why I want everything to become skins for base items. That cuts out all the power creep we've been having from the endless number of variants cropping up.

[Ask A Cephalon, June 8]

How is it that we can use items of Grineer, Corpus and Infested origin to piece together ancient Orokin technology? Are we in fact jury-rigging crude rip-offs of real forma?

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

So, how is bringing Excal Prime into line with the other Primes pay to win?  When he was purchased, he wasn't the the best, and if he does get buffed, he still wont be.  He'd just be the same as his peers.

 

It's not that. It's that people have been arguing that Skana Prime should be brought up to the level of the Prisma Skana, something that isn't the peer of a prime, just because the Prisma Skana was more powerful. That argument can and will surface again if we get a Prisma Lato or Excalibur.

[A Full Rework Of The Lato And Skana Weapon Families]

nuh-uh

 

Have some evidence. Namely, parts of the EULA that we all agreed to by continuing to use DE's services and products.

 

BY DOWNLOADING THE GAME AND CLICKING THE "I AGREE" BUTTON OR USING THE GAME OR INSTALLING THE GAME CLIENT SOFTWARE (THE "SOFTWARE"), YOU AGREE THAT THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT IS ENFORCEABLE LIKE ANY WRITTEN CONTRACT SIGNED BY YOU.

 

Digital Extremes may change, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Software at any time. Digital Extremes may also impose limits on certain features or restrict your access to parts or all of the Software Product without notice or liability. You have no interest, monetary or otherwise, in any feature or content contained in the Software.

 

You acknowledge and agree that you have no interest, monetary or otherwise, in any feature or content contained in the Game. You further acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interest in your Account, and you acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to the Account are and shall forever be owned by and inure to the benefit of Digital Extremes.

 

Digital Extremes may update the Game remotely including without limitation the Game Client Software residing on the your machine, without your knowledge, and you hereby grant to Digital Extremes your consent to deploy and apply such patches, updates and modifications.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

I'm sorry this didn't make any sense to me.

 

When the Prisma Skana came out and the extra crit meant it could do more damage than the Skana Prime, some people wanted the Prime buffed to be equal or better than the Prisma.

 

It's power creep--later weapons in a game being more powerful than earlier ones, to the point where the earlier ones are just worse in every category than their counterparts.

 

Imagine if Baro brought us a Prisma Excalibur, and it turned out to have higher stats than the Excalibur Prime.

 

pay to win where a player purchases items with real world money in order to excel in any and all content, and said items are always available?

 

Pay to win doesn't require the items to always be available. "Pay to win" means you threw money at the screen and got the best stuff--which could include Founder items getting buffed every time there's something more powerful that comes out.

[A Full Rework Of The Lato And Skana Weapon Families]

But if Prime weapons get changed in stats, it means they are not the same weapons sold in the founders program.

This means they (whichever prime weapon has its stats changed) are no longer bound to the founders program by law.

They can be re-released. 

Either that or Prime weapon skins get released to the general public, while the actual prime weapons get their buffs.

 

The EULA states DE can do whatever they want with the service and products they allow us access to.

It's all about the SPIRIT of a contract versus the LETTER of a contract.

 

As an example, if DE were to remove all Excal Primes altogether, they could do that without founders having a leg to stand on--after all, they were given exclusive access to Excalibur Prime and nothing was said about how long that access would exist for.

 

That would be an example of obeying the LETTER of the contract. Obeying the SPIRIT would mean even if DE changed what Excal Prime was (to a skin, for example), if they kept it as restricted as it was before.

 

Also, the Founders were sold access to (for example) Excalibur Prime. Nothing ever said no part of it could ever be changed--if that were the case, then that would mean no PBR.

[New Unique Forma?]

Why would it have to be a special forma? Why not just another thing standard forma can do to give people more sinks for them?

[The Time Has Come To Tier Vault Rewards.]

I'm curious. Do people disagree with tiering the rewards in general, or just the way I mentioned?

Because I can't imagine many people would disagree with splitting the overloaded reward pool up.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

The problem is that if excal prime was buffed 2 years ago, there would have been more people who bought the founder's package simply because he was a better excalibur. As the founders often say to defend why Eprime should not be released again (just throwing this out there, I don't want excal P to return): They got what they payed for.

 

Now, if there's another, special excal that get's released with upgraded stats and the ability to gain energy from death orbs, then I'd be in favor of an excal p buff. I'm fine with the fact that founders have a leg up on mastery, but buffing excal prime would technically make it a pay to win situation.

 

I don't think founders should even have a leg-up on Mastery. I don't think anyone should.

If it's ever to matter in a more meaningful manner to the gameplay, then a player who joined yesterday should always be able to reach the exact same Mastery rank (given time) as someone who's been here since the start.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

It's not pay to win if the items are no longer available to purchase.  If you really want to reach, then it'd be paid to win two years ago.  And this is simply putting Excal Prime in line with the other Primes, not above. 

 

It will be pay to win if the arguments used now show up again the next time there's power creep--like if we end up with Prisma'ed Primes, for example--as that will mean the Founders get to ignore progression (by farming something) without needing to farm or buy Platinum.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

So, while we are at it, can someone explain to me how buffing Excal Prime to bring him in line with other primes would harm non-founders? 

 

As those items could only have been acquired through spending real-world money, there's become an expectation that they should always be competitive--and therefore, an expectation that whenever there's power creep, they should enjoy that creep as well. This affects the weapons more than Excalibur, to be fair, but if we started being able to earn Super-Prime Warframes (for want of a better term), there would be calls for Excal Prime to be buffed to that level.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

That is what I am trying to get you to understand.  Functioning systems (banking, games, etc) require consistency across similar things to work properly, be efficient, and possess the capability of balancing as far as intra-object interactions.  All of the primes (frames and weapons) should be the peers of each other, as that is logically consistent.  Yet, three prime warframes are closer to being the peer of his standard counterparts.

 

I believe parity should be achieved by making primes purely cosmetic in part because then PvP would be easier to balance, as there would be far fewer weapons and warframes to try and balance.

[Excalibur Prime Buff In Line With Other Primes]

If DE wanted them to just be skins, then lobby to have the other Primes passives removed.   Don't pop in here with your tasty popcorn and say Excal can't be buffed because he's supposed to be a skin and then not advocate for all Primes to be the same. 

 

That just reeks of I-can't-have-what-they-have-so-they-can't-have-nice-things

 

I can only speak for myself, but I've been calling for that for a LONG time for every single variant of everything (such as combining all the Latos and Boltos into skins and model changes for the base Lato weapon).

[The Time Has Come To Tier Vault Rewards.]

Such convincing counterpoints! How could I have been so blind?!

[The Time Has Come To Tier Vault Rewards.]

But I want to do it in a different manner to the suggestions I've seen previously--I want the tier to be dependent on what key opens the vault.

 

Bleeding and Decaying would be the lowest tier(s), obviously, because taking Rhino solves both those issues. The thrice-damned Hobbled key would probably be the highest tier.

[A Full Rework Of The Lato And Skana Weapon Families]

I think the Lato/Skana prime should be buffed up to par with the end game weapons right now, but their stats and everything should still be below them to promote people to get better weapons than them. 

 

We're only going to end up having this debate again when the power creep sets in.

 

"Founders invested money in this game at the beginning! Why aren't their Primes at least equal to these new Hyper-Primes?"

[A Full Rework Of The Lato And Skana Weapon Families]

Making founder's gear, in any way, available to everyone, is never going to happen, and it shouldn't. Founders are backers of a then unknown commodity. This game could have failed within the first year, and they would have lost that money. They deserve something for their good faith investment.

 

That's not what Naqel said at all. No part of "make the founders stuff into universal skins" translates to "give non-founders founder exclusives."