[PC] C̶̹̃h̴̊̍̐͜i̶͓̩͛̽m̸̨̈́͘e̴̤̒ŕ̸͉͋̕å̸̙̭͕: Update 23.10 - Arbitrations: Lethal Alerts Feedback Megathread

[--END--Rikutatis]

3 hours ago, mikakor said:

Si, where are these "big" change they were planning? Arbitration are still a boring hell. Rotations of 10 minutes rather than 5 feels just bloody horrible. The excavators needing 2 to be done, AND making them lasting longer isn't fun, nor difficult. It makes it boring. Very very boring. I am not dying because I get out played, but because I'm so bored I'm starting to take intentional risks to see how fast I die. Please, fix this. Ho, and the spawn rate of personal life support, too. It's awful. Make the mode quicker!!!

Seems like they are sweeping the whole thing under the Fortuna rug if you ask me. 

I just wanted an official response to let us know if the extremely slow scaling of enemy levels in Arbitrations is working as intended or a bug of some sort. But no dev comments on that either. 

[mikakor]

3 hours ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

Seems like they are sweeping the whole thing under the Fortuna rug if you ask me. 

I just wanted an official response to let us know if the extremely slow scaling of enemy levels in Arbitrations is working as intended or a bug of some sort. But no dev comments on that either. 

honestly, i don't care that "much" about the scalling, but how the mode feels... it's... it's just...  i want to go to that mode. i really do. but i'm scared of it because of how boring it is. 1 reward every TEN minutes isn't worth the damn time. it shold have been every 5 minutes, with more powerful enemies. but right now, it's just so slow and boring my mind is becoming numb... for a lot of mode.

[mikakor]

just a little bump to make sure DE doesn't forget that these arbitration are horrible, and that they still need to be changed to be faster. ( especially this double time requirement, double everything... double boringness. )

[lolmetimbers]

Did my first few games of arbitration yesterday and wow what a massive disappointment. This is not an end game mode for veterans.

1. Rewards aren't attractive enough to keep running them especially for vets who have all mods maxed out already. Kuva/Cosmetics need to be chucked in with better rewards in rotation C. Unique Arcanes/Primed mods could even be in at very low drop rates. This game mode is basically a slower but more consistent endo farm. If vitus essence had more desirable items it would keep people playing.

2. Slow scaling and slow mission time - Starting at a low 60 (lol) and slowly scaling over time. Slow af mission time since it has been doubled just makes it a chore. It should start high and ramp up high by 30min, with balanced rewards every 5min. Any team going longer will have a good challenge on their hands.

3. Artificial difficulty drones - simply bad game design. facepalm

Another forgotten gamemode that needs a proper rework.

[Slimspadey101]

• Start enemies out at 80 and scale the enemies' level faster. At least as fast as in the fastest star chart missions. That's it. This change alone would make the game mode much better.
• I still have mods to level up and new mods will come in the future so for me the endo rewards are totally fine. Vitus Essence has potential and I hope it gets utilized more in the near future.
• Longer rotations are acceptable because I'm planning on staying for awhile anyway, and I'm not going to Arbitration for an efficient farm necessarily.
• I just want to have fun with it. The fun happens when I see the enemy levels going up consistently and I feel the pressure to keep fighting and be on my toes because soon there is going to be a real risk of dying or failing the mission.
• I'm warming up to the drones. Combined with a weapon damage bonus I can sometimes take a weapon in with punch-through mods without losing anything and that's pretty cool. It might be 'artificial' difficulty or whatever people are saying but personally I'm okay with it. Popping them drones and watching them explode is satisfying.
• Player behavior is in a good place in these missions. Most of the time people are throwing out their specters and just generally going all out in preparation for a challenge. The problem is that that challenge just doesn't arrive in a timely manner. This goes back to the first point ^ We need higher level enemies and fast.

[Klokwerkaos]

How to fix arbitration to be enjoyable and sustainable content:

1) Keep most things as they are.  You guys did a great job in most spots but missed the mark on a few very important areas, notably, making it sustainable and challenging to higher tier players.

2) Start enemies at rank 80, include scaling normally as per mot.  The lack of challenge here for legit vets is incredibly disturbing since this was billed as a way to satisfy vets.  Nerfing arbitrations after they came out to cater to new players was precisely a slap in the face to the vets.

3) Put in a monthly rotation cosmetic that can be earned for 100 vitus.  It is only available that month and is released 6 months later to the general public for plat purchase.

This reward does not encourage power creep because it is cosmetic only and engages players to play arbitrations a certain amount each month if they like that particular cosmetic.  It is key that this be on a monthly rotation to keep it fresh, and that it be exclusive for "a little while" and then available to the general public for plat, this makes it so that these cosmetics (doesn't matter what it is, could be a syandana, helmet, weapon skin, whatever) are worth earning for the prestige of having them early and freely.  This also does promo work for you when you go to sell it later.  The most elite players run around wearing the new shiney cosmetic while the lower level players drool over it and want it, and buy it from the market when it's released six months later.  This allows regular fresh rewards and also gives you another revenue stream with built in marketing that satisfies the veterans to feel a little special for a little while, while not excluding newer players forever (cough, ignis wraith/dojo statues that reward affinity, cough).

If you have trouble staffing for this, consider adding this as an option for your tennogen department where artists can put small cosmetics into the game to reward players.  That might not cover every single one, but all you need is 12 per year.  I'm fairly certain you should be able to land at least 6 of these a year since it's good promotion if nothing else for the artist, particularly for those artists that are steadilly building a brand with wf, or newer artists that want to draw attention to their paid tennogen that might otherwise get lost in the mix as tennogen continues to grow. 

I would advise against using existing cosmetics though, because your end game players probably already have all the cosmetics in the game to date that they care about.  There could be a notable exception, such as perma pumpkin head, love arrow skin, etc.  I would think strongly though about the game aesthetic as this might encourage some TF2 syndrome.

This method also provides incentive for players who are just sitting at MR 16 without min/maxing their load outs to do so so that they can have the opportunity to earn these cosmetics easier.  It pushes the concept that there is something to look forward to, a non essential thing, but an incentive nonetheless where there was none before, which helps with player retention.

There may be some concern that some loss is there on sales if you give them away for free, but consider this a promotional release of these items as you'll always have new players coming in and they won't be able to go back and get the cosmetic for free, not to mention not everyone is a collector and some people might not be able to afford the 100 vitus essence every month due to time, and might have to think if they really want this one or maybe want to save for the next one.

4) Reintroduce rivens for sentinels as purchasable for 100 vitus essence.  

This is also not power creep as these rivens are already in game, only now accessible to players that weren't there at the time to get them without having to spend 1000s of plat for a minor buff.  Additionally this gives players a reason to play after they bought their monthly cosmetic if they want, or something to spend on if they didn't like it.  This keeps the mods rare so while it brings down the value, it doesn't bring it crashing down, but rather, makes it slightly more accessible and operates as a possible plat farm for endgame players, not a greatly efficient one, but if they enjoy the game mode it provides some incentive.

5) Add in riven transmuters for 50 vitus essence so they now have another way to be gained for those of us that are burned out on eidolons and could do to never revisit poe again since we have all of our arcanes already and don't need plat for anything other than being lazy and paying other people to roll rivens for us.

This still isn't the best way to get them as it's far more efficient to run eidolons for them, but it presents an option.

6) Trade 5 vitus essence for 1000 kuva.  This is not the most efficient way to get kuva, but it presents another alternative to keep players interested at end game level that is useful to endgame players.

7) add in a small possibility (say 15%) that each c rotation a modifier might spawn, could be whatever, no shields, magnetic, etc., and this could stack up to three times (ie three different modifiers).  This creates an added challenge for those that stay to test their metal past b rotation, and allows them to have crazy possibilities and create actual memorable stories and streams... "remember that one time bob had radiation, no shields and fire and still went another 40 minutes in arb with mag solo?  that was off the chain!"  That kind of thing creates the challenge and excitement people are looking for and gives them a place to actually use and push the limits of their builds and still challenges them because they never know what they will get.

8 ) add in a separate roll for a (say 20%) chance each c rotation a mini boss will spawn (ie g3, sarge, stalker, zanuka, etc, with appropriate scaling and accompanied by an arbiter hit squad of lancers and arbiter drone) somewhere on the map and this mini boss must be defeated before the next round can start.  The boss is marked on the map, but could be anywhere that has pathing, might be right on top of the player, across the map, etc., mini boss randomly gets a type of damage immunity as well.  This allows that players have to think harder about their load outs if they intend to stay past B rotation because they can't just run in with one kind of damage and rely on that.

9) add in 15 ducats to the drop rotation tables for rotation B and 30 for C.  Endo is nice but this isn't the best way to get endo.  This also wouldn't be the best way to get ducats either, but it would vary things up, and that's really key, the endo feels very boring because this isn't the best way to get statues or endo, but with more variety players will have more things to look forward to on the drop table.  There is a point where the drop variety can get too saturated, but I doubt one type of thing in would even approach that level of saturation.

The added rewards are not terribly efficient, nor should they be, but the challenging game content with added reward pool and allow for several levels of spending depending on how much players want to grind.  Plus there is no "need" to run the content.  Players can still purchase the cosmetics later, or buy the rivens from the marketplace.  Kuva and transmuters are available elsewhere but they are an option here.

These small changes would solve the two major issues of arbitration, being sustainable rewards and challenging content.  Newer players will cry for a while that they can't beat arbitrations... for now... but eventually two things will happen:  Either they will up their arsenal, or they innevitable power creep will drown the game and it will take a while for the devs to rebalance and catch up, just like any other time something broken gets introduced.

There is already 3000 hours of content for newbies.  Let us have this one thing, and in doing so you'll legit improve the game experience overall.  The newer players will eventually stop crying and eventually learn to play the game at that level, and if they don't, that's also not a problem, because none of the rewards are ever necessary or exclusive to this one game mode.

Even the amber star BP is unecessary to access all of the game's content, all that does is offer a small and inefficient bit of convenience.  Players can still get amber stars just lying on the ground.  As such the legit only reason to gripe about the difficulty level would be because you want to feel like your e peen is as big as the rest of the big dogs that can run hours in mot, when really it isn't, because they can access it just by clearing the star chart... whether or not they can succeed in it for 10 rotations, that's the question... plus they can still earn "some" vitus essence just by doing A rotation and ducking out before things get hairy, and as such they can still earn those rewards, albeit at a slower pace.

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2018 by Klokwerkaos

[(PSN)DWROWLA]

Arbitrations are the most unrewarding content in the game geared towards end game players.

So we can get pure endo, statues for indirect endo... , or 4 mods, with only 2 interesting ones. What about when we get all the mods? Well go spend your vitus essence for some cosmetic stuff thats not important. Nothing cool or interesting and no reason to participate in these alerts once you own everything. 

Some of the missions straight up suck. Survival is the worst. Its like theres no enemies spawning at all and you lose cause theres no enemies to kill. Im lucky if we can get to rotation C. The defection one also sucks. No one likes that mission and its a huge waste of time on top of the waste of time these alerts are to begin with.

In my opinion this needs so reworking to be what we want it to be, sort of a way to have bragging rights, push our playstyles to the limits, become better players when defenses and such mean nothing, hitting high rounds in this mode to unlock exclusive rewards based on rounds completed.

The mods are the only thing i care about in arbitrations but now i have them all and thus no reason to play this content. It needs more rewards in the rotation as well as rewards for finishing consecutive arbitrations in a row (ie 10 waves of defense, then 20, then 30, then 40, then 50). This incentivizes players to strategize to get further and further for a reward only obtained here, and only if you do well.

As for the rotation rewards i would add Kuva cause everyone wants Kuva. Then I would over time occassionally add event mods to the pool to incentivize gameplay in this mode that would get rotated out. This way when we get a mod its not a huge waste of time.

On top of this I would add rare resources as a 2-5% drop chance from any enemy killed in arbitrations. Ie Argon crystals, gallium, morphics, and so on.

With this everyone would do arbitrations as it would "always" be beneficial to do and worth your time, even if rotation rewards are bad, at least you get some rare resources. This does nothing for the players with a surplus of resources and credits to make anything though. Thats why having rewards for reaching higher amounts of completed arbitrations in a single game is important as well. If I could say complete 30 waves of defense in an arbitration to get a random weapon (primary, secondary, melee) that would be awesome. I would be encouraged to do it several times to get each one. If I then could get a cosmetic set or unique sentinel, or a new ship skin at random for 50 successful waves of defense in arbitration, I have a new goal and a reason to keep pushing further and finding a strategy to make that possible.

Then theres the shop for vitus essence. Its sparse and has nothing anyone really wants. This is an opportunity to create a new market with vitus essence. Weapons, mods, cosmetics, and so on can be added here for varying amounts of vitus. If I could buy a guaranteed random riven mod with vitus essence for 100 essence then theres still a goal even after obtaining all previous rewards.

To me elite alerts, ie arbitrations was meant to be a place all end game players would go, and want to be as much as possible outside of plains and fortuna reputation farming to make secondary weapons and zaws, and randomly farming prime parts if you dont own them all yet. Likewise theres a large subsect of the community who like to do endless missions for 1 to 3 hours at a time. This mode is made for them and myself but not rewarding enough to do. If you make it a mode we all want to be in, all the time, then it would be amazing and theres many ways to do it, and ways you can expand on it.

[--END--Rikutatis]

On 2018-11-25 at 2:34 AM, Slimspadey101 said:

• Start enemies out at 80 and scale the enemies' level faster. At least as fast as in the fastest star chart missions. That's it. This change alone would make the game mode much better.

I completely agree with everything you said, but the part quoted above is just extremely important. That alone would save the game mode for me and many of my friends as well. The whole point of vets asking for a challenge is that we want to load up the game and get that challenge straight out of the gate, Arbitrations right now are less challenging than endless Starchart nodes and that's pathetic really. What really frustrates me is that DE has completely refused to even comment on the matter. For all we know this could be an unintended effect of longer rotations screwing scaling and they couldn't care less. 

Personally, I think the drones are fine. I don't get it why people dislike them so much. It prevents ability spam to some degree and requires a modicum of situational awareness. Nothing wrong with that. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by --END--Rikutatis

[(PSN)teacup775]

On 2018-11-07 at 1:48 PM, darkemplar8 said:

I'd like to see mods that can be used by frames as a support or tank role.

Frame abilities cover that though.

 

 

[(PSN)teacup775]

3 hours ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

I don't get it why people dislike them so much.

They are slightly annoying when 4 or 5 ancient healers are wafting about, but the drone spawn is not that complicated. A couple void dashes to get behind the mob and at the drones makes it less work most of the time.

[(XBOX)Aquarii Ptosi]

So can we please reamove drone invinciblity to WF powers. In particular exaulted abilities? This one mechanic has genuinely ruined this game mode for me.

And 2ndly boons 

Can we get 3 warframes and 3 weapon boons? 

You guys have 30+ warframes and hundreds of weapons

One 1 warframe every hour and personally I keep getting ember and frames I generally dont use because I eont like them. I actually like non meta but I've seen atlas onces

Edited November 28, 2018 by (XB1)Aquarii Ptosi

[HerrtheGeek]

Thank you [DE] for placing your hands into the "End Game" bucket and trying to come up with something for us veterans. I love the concept of arbitrations, but feel that it could be expanded greatly;
 

• Enable and "Arbitration Mode" star chart wide. You don't even have to change drop or reward tables as us veteran players just want alot harder overall experiance. Instead offer us Mastery for completing each node again (200-300 each). MR is what most of us want anyways. It's why we have the aresonal we do when we get to the end.
• Enable "Arbitration Mode" quest replays. Again alot of us would absouletly love to play alot of the quests and feel as though it is a struggle to make it to the end. Where the feeling you get when you finish it is...Gosh that was hard.

Just a few ideas from a player that loves the game, loves the comminuty, and misses a challenge...

[Ikusias]

While I really dislike power nullification as a concept, especially when it gets massively widespread in a stage, precluding the use of nearly 9/10 of frames nd builds due to survivability issues, currently my main gripe with Arbitrations is the missions lenghtened duration and slowed enemy scaling.

In practice DE just diluted the grind more while making the game mode much less exciting to compensate for the ABCCCCC rotations: this way we'll usually never see the consecutive C rotations because most players get bored to death just to reach the end of the first B rotation...

[mikakor]

5 hours ago, Ikusias said:

while making the game mode much less exciting to compensate for the ABCCCCC rotations: this way we'll usually never see the consecutive C rotations because most players get bored to death just to reach the end of the first B rotation...

This is one of my main problem with the mode. Doubled the time, which feels horrible as hell.

[Grave.Knight]

I think this is one of those times DE forgets people have lives.

[CatboyPrincess]

Hi, I've been enjoying Arbitrations for the past few days ever since I returned to Warframe. I like the little twists that the mode brings -- namely, the Arbiter drones and 1-life no bleedout limit.

My issue with the mode is that it feels very slow. I feel very restricted to using a very narrow scope of loadouts to get anywhere in the mission and because I only have 1 try per hour.

Some possible fixes:

• Infinite tries per hour. This is a fun mode, so I want to be able to play it more than just once per hour!
• Remove death-on-bleedout. Keep 1-life. This way, I can be more flexible with my builds while still retaining a high risk of having only 1 life. Also, I'd be able to use my Kavat more :c poor thing...
• Start the enemies at a higher level. The mode does not feel uniquely challenging until after cycle 2. It takes too long to reach cycle 3 though. So, let the challenging enemy level range begin at cycle 2 rather at cycle 3 (at least!).

That's all I have for now. Thanks for reading~

Edited December 1, 2018 by Gwyndolin-chan

[mikakor]

Little surprise bump. Would be a shame if DE doesn't bring live these "changes" they had in mind for arbitration

( Hello double timer and double everything that needs to go. )