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Simple Idea for Improving Arbitration Drones


FrostyNovaPrime
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As someone who has done roughly 20-25 runs of Arbitrations over the weekend, I must say I enjoy the mode for its challenge and overall time sink.

That being said, there is one thing that I would change (besides fixing the obviously broken spawns for survival and defense).

The. Stupid. Arbiters' Drone.

They were meant to give us an added challenge regarding the enemies, which they do. However, that challenge is done in a very simplistic, annoying, and overall poor way. The drones are the size of sentinels, move like ospreys, actively run away from you to hide behind walls/large enemies, and makes those shielded enemies immune to everything. All on top of only being vulnerable to weapon damage themselves.

These drones are the sole reason as to why I feel forced to use a weapon like the Arca Plasmor or Zenistar, forgoing any intriguing weapon buffs, so I can easily and effectively take out the drone. At the same time, the very presence of the drones makes it 10x harder for ability-focused Warframes like Excalibur, Titania, Saryn, Mesa, Octavia, etc. from doing their job and surviving at the same time.

I can think of 2 ways to improve the drones while still keeping the challenge they provide: Either separate the effects into variations of drones, or just make the drones larger and easier to locate/hit.

I think adding different variations that when all present serve the same purpose as the current single drone would be the better option. This would reduce the hindrance the current version employs, while at the same time increasing the variation by having to react to the drone type and reducing the monotonous feeling found within most endless missions.

Basically, the 3 current effects (weapon/ability/cc immunity) would be split into different types of drones featuring different shield effect colors, including an added bonus of another drone with a new effect.

Red Drones provide immunity to weapon damage and status effects, but are vulnerable to abilities and cc.

Blue Drones provide immunity to ability damage and increased cc resistance, but weak to weapons and still capable of being cc'd.

Yellow Drones are cc immune and take reduced damage from all damage, but not entirely immune.

(NEW) Green Drones grant shielded enemies a 99% health and/or shield regen/sec, which can only be taken out by burst damage.

 

What do you guys think about the drones and what would you change about them?

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With the exception of Green drones (which seem like a bad idea since oneshots are difficult to achieve in many cases thanks to armour), having more drones that individually do less would make things more interesting. Right now, they're irritating to deal with but only effect a relatively small area as only a few spawn at a time, making them fluctuate between not doing anything and being a complete nuisance. Having them also be larger would be appreciated, since it's a pain for melee players to hit them.

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If they're getting these types of reactions, then I'd say they're doing their job right and they're doing it well.

Honestly, giving them colors with different effects only saturates their effect. Essentially, out of the 4 drones you mentioned, 3 of them can be invalidated to hell by just locking down the entire area with CC. Meanwhile, the reason why the current drones are only vulnerable to weapons is simply because every player is capable of having weapons unlike Warframe abilities where certain Warframes would be put in a particularly frustrating position if you were to start including things that are immune to weapon damage. 

It would just remove a lot of the challenge by isolating it into a very small group of the drones that discourages the common meta. A good example to think about is, how would the Drones force a squad of 4 Limbo players to actually play the game in an Interception mission.

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