Waframe, DE and the problem with rewards.

[Anthraxicus]

DE doesn't quite get how to reward players for actually playing the game. Not only it seems to be a long standing issue, but it became incredibly evident with Fortuna part II. It is clear that the devs paid absolutely no attention at how to rewards players for taking down the flagship of the new update, the Profit Taker. The reward table for the "bounty" is nothing but a bunch of randomly selected rewards which are either useless or halts your progress entirely based on chance alone. As the actual boss drops? It is so pathetic that DE had to do some adjustments at the last minute to make it feel less pathetic, but pathetic neverthless: the addition of bonds and credits.

Looking the reward table of the bounty itself: 
- Gyromag, Atmos and Repeller systems. These are resources required to build weapons and to rank up with Vox Solaris. Not only I couldn't get the Atmos systems to drop for a few days, there is also the problem with daily standing limit, making progress even slower based entirely on luck. These are resource that should be on the loot table of enemies. You are supposed to go out there, play the game, use your weapons, use your abilities, kill enemies and hope they drop. Having these a single occurance reward for a bounty forces you to try to watch cutscenes and dialogues to try and complete the quickest bounty over and over again. Not only this kills the purpose of playing the game, it also kill the purpose of having boosters. Why buy drop chance and resource boosters if they don't affect the things you need the most? 

- Toroids: Now, this is something which having a booster helps. The problem is that having this on the reward table not only decreases your chance of getting something useful, it is also redundant and makes you wanna kill yourself when you get them, after you've the farmed hundreds of them the proper way.

- Relics: Again. You know they put these there because they've ran out of ideas. 

- New mods: Most of these are for pure curiosity. Most aren't even worth wasting a slot on them. Pets are worthless currently, dying too often and not providing any significant improvement. The archguns mods, as with eidolons before, will eventually drop only to make killing the Profit Taker a little bit faster, cuz nobody will seriously use these weapons if they are not forced to, as we haven't til this point.

The problem with rewards extends to other game modes for as long as anyone can remember. The devs simply don't care about incentivizing players to push as far as they can. If you wanna farm Kuva survival, you are better off leaving at 20 minutes than going for 1 hour, 2 hours. The amount of Kuva you get decreases with time, instead of increasing. It is just counter-intuitive. Only recently they've finally realized that rotations AABCA system is dumb, but, aside from Arbritation, they didn't do anything to any of the modes and I sincerely don't think they will ever do anything to correct this. They should learn a thing or two here from Diablo. In that game, if you push further and further, not only comes the excitement of dealing with tougher enemies, you also have an incresingly better chance of getting new and better equipment, and every once in a while comes the excitement of having that unique marker of an Ancient Unique drop. We have none of these here.

As for the new big boss battles, it would also be nice to have some stuff like in Diablo. Blueprints for stronger versions of existent themed weapons. For example, killing the Profit-Taker could have a chance, even if minimal, to drop a blueprint for Nef Anyo's own personal Exergis, with better stats (kinda like Prime Corpus weapons) or, why not, unique features. Or even "unique" augments for abilities, that can be fundamentally change how you play your favorite Warframe, that can only be obtained through these battles. Having things like 6x Toroids when you kill the boss is so pathetic, practically a slap on the face, that kills the hype of the whole thing. 

So, that is my 2 cents on the issue.

[--F--NerevarCM]

2 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

As for the new big boss battles, it would also be nice to have some stuff like in Diablo. Blueprints for stronger versions of existent themed weapons. For example, killing the Profit-Taker could have a chance, even if minimal, to drop a blueprint for Nef Anyo's own personal Exergis, with better stats (kinda like Prime Corpus weapons) or, why not, unique features. Or even "unique" augments for abilities, that can be fundamentally change how you play your favorite Warframe, that can only be obtained through these battles

And this is my problem with the community definition of rewards.

For the community, rewards needs to be MORE POWER! If isn't more power, then its a useless reward. Powercreep is a huge problem in this game, right now there's NOTHING hard in this game. Players are so OP that DE needs to add cheap enemies to counter the players. Adding weapons with better stats will only make things worse.

Thats why DE doesn't do it. Its not a simple thing to fix "Hey, just put a bunch of weapons with better stats as rewards and its done"

The only way to make this balanced is making these weapons sidegrades from already existing weapons. However like I said, people don't like sidegrades, they only want more power.

[Hypernaut1]

People forget to play to have fun. 

[Anthraxicus]

9 minutes ago, -SDM-NerevarCM said:

And this is my problem with the community definition of rewards.

For the community, rewards needs to be MORE POWER! If isn't more power, then its a useless reward. Powercreep is a huge problem in this game, right now there's NOTHING hard in this game. Players are so OP that DE needs to add cheap enemies to counter the players. Adding weapons with better stats will only make things worse.

Thats why DE doesn't do it. Its not a simple thing to fix "Hey, just put a bunch of weapons with better stats as rewards and its done"

The only way to make this balanced is making these weapons sidegrades from already existing weapons. However like I said, people don't like sidegrades, they only want more power.

Then you've failed to understand the whole thing, which is quite amazing (unless you think getting 3 Toroid is exciting and good). That one example I mentioned. And that is one of the things you couldn't understand. The other being the part of pushing further, fighting tougher enemies. When you just go do one rotation, you don't need better weapons. You don't even need weapons.
Powercreep is a concept that doesn't apply to this game, unless, of course, you are the type of guy described above.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Anthraxicus

[DeMonkey]

32 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

Powercreep is a concept that doesn't apply to this game

Every day we stray further from god the baseline that new players start at.

For every new bit of powerful content we get, that's another hurdle that must be gotten over to reach the top. We're already looking at months of investment and learning for new players to reliably reach levels equal to current "vets", and the more we give "vets" the longer it takes for new players to catch up.

No one wants to play a game where they're told "hey, you can get this really cool thing, but you'll need to spend the next year grinding your socks off to reach a level where you can then grind this".

Edited December 23, 2018 by DeMonkey

[trst]

Having rewards that add more power to our arsenals have several problems.

Powercreep being the most obvious one; every time DE adds a new end-game mode (which players have always been asking for) we're either able to trivialize it due to some previous form of powercreep or DE allows us to powercreep past it thus leading back to square one of having no end-game content.

Too many players play solely for rewards; "meaningful" rewards won't fix this, instead players will get the reward(s) they want and never look back at the mode.

And complaints regarding every possible barrier of entry; people are and have been complaining about the "grind walls" behind the Orb fights. Suddenly prerequisite requirements to play new content is a bad thing (shocking considering literally every single piece of content we have has prerequisites). Adding "power" behind these just fuels these pointless fires even more.

 

Also as for endless modes; DE does not want players pushing themselves in endless modes. Even if I'm misremembering their stance on endless they still should not incentivize "endless" endless modes.

Incentivizing players to stay as long as possible in a mission without early scaling caps or it being designed in a way that "forces" players out of the mission (like E/SO's impossibly scaling Efficiency) is bad for player health. Scaling rewards in vanilla endless modes would give players a reason to (and to some people it would "force" them to) do multi-hour long missions which is also a problem due to old powercreep that allows us to kill infinity scaling enemies already. As well as creating a situation where players who can't (or refuse to) do missions this long now feel burnt by not being able to get said rewards.

 

Now I'm not at all saying that rewards don't need any changes but rather that it is not a simple issue to "fix" in a way that won't inevitably create far more problems down the line.

[N2h2]

Because you actually think somthing more powerfull is required?

Just use wisely what we already have. Saryn, volt, octavia, all by themselves can rach mor than 3h in mot alone without strong difficulty if you know what you are doing. OFC you have to stay away from those fancy one shot weapon that everybody use in hydron... thoses are mostly good just at one shoting everything below lvl100 and then do nothing.

For reward? what are you expecting? Supersayan weapon that blow the entire solar system... then there will be the second and 3rd orb... what will remain? nothing.
Maybe befor telling orb fight is not rewording, wait for them to full release it...

[CatInTuxedo]

Best reward would be Nooblshowtek's unban

[Anthraxicus]

10 minutes ago, N2h2 said:

Because you actually think somthing more powerfull is required?

Just use wisely what we already have. Saryn, volt, octavia, all by themselves can rach mor than 3h in mot alone without strong difficulty if you know what you are doing. OFC you have to stay away from those fancy one shot weapon that everybody use in hydron... thoses are mostly good just at one shoting everything below lvl100 and then do nothing.

For reward? what are you expecting? Supersayan weapon that blow the entire solar system... then there will be the second and 3rd orb... what will remain? nothing.

I don't know what you people understand when I say better stats. I am actually thinking of some tweaks in some stats OR unique features, as I mentioned before, but here you are, thinking I said triple the damage, ramp up crit chance by 200%, AoE in every weapon. It is just absurd. 

 

Then comes the second problem

 

Quote

Maybe befor telling orb fight is not rewording, wait for them to full release it...

What exactly do you think this is?

 

 

I mean...Eidolon fight has nothing unique. DE removed raids and moved its rewards to Eidolons. Do we need to wait for its full release as well? For how long? 5 years? 10 years?

Edited December 23, 2018 by Anthraxicus

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

1 hour ago, Anthraxicus said:

The problem with rewards extends to other game modes for as long as anyone can remember. The devs simply don't care about incentivizing players to push as far as they can.

WF is a FTP game. The stuff that drops from current content competes with buying the gear. It's the "price" to pay to play FTP games. Pay or grind.

No one likes that, but that's the FTP model. Either you pay with cash or pay with time.

But I'll say that a better thing they can do for current content is to drop items people can use for like companions surviving! Doing higher content and people bring in their Kavats and they spend so much time rezzing them (it's difficult to figure out if it's a frame who has died or a pet, too. Not running back to rez a pet and risk dying. How about a text message of "XYZ (Pet) has died" not a generic message, too?).

These instances/missions can drop loot that doesn't need to compete with current BUY THIS GEAR concept in FTPs, that are just as useful to players, too!

[SenorClipClop]

When you argue about the design of Warframe from the perspective of the rewards as you've done in the OP, you are excusing yourself from a discussion about game design. Instead, what you're really discussing is that the amount of dopamine hitting your system for completing the Skinner Box isn't satisfactory to you and you want more dopamine. Debating the gameplay, you're the scientist; arguing the reward, you're the mouse.

[Anthraxicus]

The rewards are part of the gameplay. Whether it is Kuva, Endo, Relics, Resouces, they are all part of the gameplay. Loot that affects the gameplay....well, you can guess the rest. I am talking about both, but you could only saw one minor part of the whole.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Anthraxicus

[(PSN)chubbslawson]

1 hour ago, DeMonkey said:

Every day we stray further from god the baseline that new players start at.

For every new bit of powerful content we get, that's another hurdle that must be gotten over to reach the top. We're already looking at months of investment and learning for new players to reliably reach levels equal to current "vets", and the more we give "vets" the longer it takes for new players to catch up.

No one wants to play a game where they're told "hey, you can get this really cool thing, but you'll need to spend the next year grinding your socks off to reach a level where you can then grind this".

Why not?  We all put the time in 

[(PSN)Zero_029]

Well the fact the Orbs are mean to be more approachable than Eidolons doesn't help them loot wise.

DE said from the get go that the Orbs are meant to be engaged by players earlier in the game & won't be as taxing to prep for as Eidolons were.

The adds seem to bring a fair amount of challenge but it seems like the Orbs being easier/quicker to kill than Eidolons means their loot needs to be a step down.

Eidolons require the entire player kit to bring down as well as serious investment in Spoiler Mode.

Orbs just require some Archwing investment & player skill/knowledge.

Yes. The Orbs do need better loot. But not everything needs to be extreme power creep.

[Betsill]

1 hour ago, Hypernaut1 said:

People forget to play to have fun. 

Because the game wants us to. Having "fun" and progression are contrary a lot of the time. Focus system makes you use certain warframes and weapons, crafting makes you play certain areas(specifically low lvl areas over and over), relics make you play certain missions over and over, etc. There are always multiple things you need to progress in this game because of how grindy it is. You can either do what you want, or you can do what you NEED to do to continue to progress. You can rarely do both at the same time.

[SenorClipClop]

9 minutes ago, Betsill said:

relics make you play certain missions over and over

This is a fair point. Anyone with an MR above 10ish can make builds on unranked stuff that trivialize Lith-level relic missions, and yet we typically need to play several of those missions for Prime parts. Please just let us, at the very least, matchmake some Lith Relic opening in a higher level of play as long as all squadmates consent to it.

13 minutes ago, Betsill said:

Focus system makes you use certain warframes and weapons

This, however, is nonsense. There's incentive to use certain setups in the name of optimizing, but optimizing Focus isn't necassary. There are many players who spent time complaining about how the level of optimization we're capable of "forced" them to run missions in ways that weren't fun, and they've long since maxed out all Focus schools and are bored.

In short, there are many things in Warframe that you can maximize, but that you don't at all need to.

[Betsill]

1 hour ago, DeMonkey said:

Every day we stray further from god the baseline that new players start at.

For every new bit of powerful content we get, that's another hurdle that must be gotten over to reach the top. We're already looking at months of investment and learning for new players to reliably reach levels equal to current "vets", and the more we give "vets" the longer it takes for new players to catch up.

No one wants to play a game where they're told "hey, you can get this really cool thing, but you'll need to spend the next year grinding your socks off to reach a level where you can then grind this".

I agree with your general point i think? Powercreep/lack of meaningful challenge is a big problem in this game IMO. However, getting to "vet" lvl is very easy and quick compared to pretty much any game I can think of(unless they go in completely blind and never research or ask for help). Warframes grind for power is pretty minimal with the only thing slowing you down at all is MR timers each day. You can get a mesa or limbo(prime or not) with a Hek at MR 4 and take on anything in the game with ease aside from eidolons(which you can do in just 2 more days if you can't just get carried). If you have a friend that's been playing for any amount of time then MR is the only thing keeping you from the highest power lvl possible on the first day you play. The true grind is for collecting more stuff, not necessarily better stuff.

[DeMonkey]

Just now, Betsill said:

I agree with your general point i think? Powercreep/lack of meaningful challenge is a big problem in this game IMO. However, getting to "vet" lvl is very easy and quick compared to pretty much any game I can think of(unless they go in completely blind and never research or ask for help). Warframes grind for power is pretty minimal with the only thing slowing you down at all is MR timers each day. You can get a mesa or limbo(prime or not) with a Hek at MR 4 and take on anything in the game with ease aside from eidolons(which you can do in just 2 more days if you can't just get carried). If you have a friend that's been playing for any amount of time then MR is the only thing keeping you from the highest power lvl possible on the first day you play. The true grind is for collecting more stuff, not necessarily better stuff.

You have to consider for example, Primed Mods, as they can provide a very significant bonus over the normal variant. Due to how Baro works you could be waiting months to a year for the one you want, or having to grind for platinum to purchase one.

Essentially yes, the game is incredibly easy due to how powerful we are, and cries for challenging content that test this powerful gear are near endless. So what happens when we get that challenging content that challenges these hyper powerful builds?

Imagine a new player then, how long it would take for someone to reach a point where they can reliably grind items to trade for plat, and then grind that plat to get the required Primed Mods, Arcanes for Warframes, Operators, Zaws. Then the endo and credits required to max it all. The grind to reach MR16 to get all the Rivens and the top tier Primes.

And you can't forget of course the syndicate grinding that has to be done in the meantime, and I'm definitely forgetting a few things.

Now, I'm personally totally okay with this as it is, because it gives content to work towards should challenging content ever be implemented. That's good, as long as it's implemented fairly.

I'm not okay with continuing to widen that gap between new players and "vets", and the length of time it takes to reach said content.

[Betsill]

3 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

This, however, is nonsense. There's incentive to use certain setups in the name of optimizing, but optimizing Focus isn't necassary. There are many players who spent time complaining about how the level of optimization we're capable of "forced" them to run missions in ways that weren't fun, and they've long since maxed out all Focus schools and are bored.

In short, there are many things in Warframe that you can maximize, but that you don't at all need to.

The bold is what i'm saying. Obviously nothing in the game is "necessary", but If you need focus you are NOT gonna get it from Nyx or trinity. Just like with grinding other unfun stuff like relics, the best option is just to grind out the cap and then do what you want after or passively do it by always choosing optimal frames and doing other stuff. I'm sure theirs one or two but I highly doubt there are more than a handful of people that are in any way disappointed to be done with the cancerous focus grind. I'm not even close to maxing out schools, but finishing zenuric energy tabs was a HUGE weight off my shoulders cause screw grinding for anymore of that nonsense.

[Anthraxicus]

8 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

You have to consider for example, Primed Mods, as they can provide a very significant bonus over the normal variant. Due to how Baro works you could be waiting months to a year for the one you want, or having to grind for platinum to purchase one.

Essentially yes, the game is incredibly easy due to how powerful we are, and cries for challenging content that test this powerful gear are near endless. So what happens when we get that challenging content that challenges these hyper powerful builds?

Imagine a new player then, how long it would take for someone to reach a point where they can reliably grind items to trade for plat, and then grind that plat to get the required Primed Mods, Arcanes for Warframes, Operators, Zaws. Then the endo and credits required to max it all. The grind to reach MR16 to get all the Rivens and the top tier Primes.

And you can't forget of course the syndicate grinding that has to be done in the meantime, and I'm definitely forgetting a few things.

Now, I'm personally totally okay with this as it is, because it gives content to work towards should challenging content ever be implemented. That's good, as long as it's implemented fairly.

I'm not okay with continuing to widen that gap between new players and "vets", and the length of time it takes to reach said content.

The thing you are missing here is that the loot dropped from these new bosses, and I specifically mentioned them, is that they are supposed to be accessible to new players as well, as per DE's statement. So, how exactly something that can very well drop for a new player widen the gap between vets and new players? And is this even a problem to begin with?
What is actually a problem is what DE had done with Eidolons. You basically hunt Eidolons to get the means to craft items.....to hunt Eidolons more efficiently. That is a problem. Getting a blueprint with slightly better or different stats, or with some unique features, of existent weapons is not something game breaking. It is just something to get people excited when they drop and have differentiation. 

Edited December 23, 2018 by Anthraxicus

[Betsill]

2 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

cries for challenging content that test this powerful gear are near endless. So what happens when we get that challenging content that challenges these hyper powerful builds?

Ok, I think I understand your previous comment and completely agree. I was talking about "vet" difficulty as the lvl to which you can easily steam roll this game. However, the power lvls possible go FAR beyond that and that's what you were talking about? Because in that case, yes. It takes a TON of grinding to get to/near the highest possible power lvls in this game. This is a big problem because getting to lvl to easily kill everything is arguably too easy, but getting to the highest lvls possible is beyond absurd IMO. I've been playing since 2013 and i'm not even close because both I don't see a value in it and I don't have that much time/have other stuff to do like getting all the gear.

[DeMonkey]

3 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

The thing you are missing here is that the loot dropped from this new bosses, and I specifically mentioned them, is that they are supposed to be accessible to new players as well, as per DE's statement. So, how exactly something that can very well drop for a new player widen the gap between vets and new players? And is this even a problem to begin with?

The thing you are missing, and this is really rather obvious, is that the boss isn't even remotely aimed at new players regardless of what DE say.

You need to have gotten Archwing gear, mods and ranks.

You need an Operator.

You need to be at the max rank with Fortuna, which if you aren't a high level player will take a very long time.

So, for the sake of an example, let's say you're a MR9 player. That's not even that new to be honest, but nonetheless.

The amount of standing required to reach max Fortuna rank is 240,000 iirc, which will take said MR9 player 24 days of consistently hitting the cap to reach. For a new player at actual new player Mastery Ranks, you're looking at over a month easily, by which point you won't be much of a new player anymore.

Orb Heists are not for new players.

[Anthraxicus]

2 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

The thing you are missing, and this is really rather obvious, is that the boss isn't even remotely aimed at new players regardless of what DE say.

You need to have gotten Archwing gear, mods and ranks.

You need an Operator.

You need to be at the max rank with Fortuna, which if you aren't a high level player will take a very long time.

So, for the sake of an example, let's say you're a MR9 player. That's not even that new to be honest, but nonetheless.

The amount of standing required to reach max Fortuna rank is 240,000 iirc, which will take said MR9 player 24 days of consistently hitting the cap to reach. For a new player at actual new player Mastery Ranks, you're looking at over a month easily, by which point you won't be much of a new player anymore.

Orb Heists are not for new players.

Actually, I didn't miss that point entirely. And is part of my criticism towards the new update.
It is partially implied here

Quote

The archguns mods, as with eidolons before, will eventually drop only to make killing the Profit Taker a little bit faster, cuz nobody will seriously use these weapons if they are not forced to, as we haven't til this point.

I do think it is dumb to force people into using arch guns to kill the Profit Taker, which will eventually reward them with better mods to kill Orb Mothers quicker, just like what happened with Eidolons. 

 

Also, I made several points. I don't understand why are you so caught up in a minor point given purely as example. I mean, some minor and irrelevant "power creep" in a PvE enviroment is so much more problematic than having useless rewards for new content or getting Vitality after 2 hours into Survival?

[DeMonkey]

2 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

I don't understand why are you so caught up in a minor point given purely as example

I'm not, re-read the bit I initially quoted. My response will make sense.

[Hammerhead_FireCaste]

On 2018-12-24 at 3:35 AM, SenorClipClop said:

When you argue about the design of Warframe from the perspective of the rewards as you've done in the OP, you are excusing yourself from a discussion about game design. Instead, what you're really discussing is that the amount of dopamine hitting your system for completing the Skinner Box isn't satisfactory to you and you want more dopamine. Debating the gameplay, you're the scientist; arguing the reward, you're the mouse.

"TENNO NEED MORE DOPAMINE! MORE SEROTONIN!"~Murdoch Murdoch~