Reward Quality vs Quantity: Why Nightwave is so Detrimental to New Players

[Simca1640]

I started playing 2 weeks ago; this is my first Warframe account on any system. Friends finally wore me down to try it, and so far, I've been loving it.

However, the recent replacement of Alerts with Nightwave has me extremely wary. I've skimmed through the dozen different threads on the front page of the forums here, but none of them seem to accurately express both the problem I am experiencing as a new player looking at the Nightwave system's rewards and the feelings I have around that issue. I want to specify that when I talk about the rewards of the Nightwave system that I'm largely talking only about the accumulation of Wolf Creds through ranks and the spending of Wolf Creds in the Nightwave store.

I like collecting things. When I play Warframe, I want to have all the helmets, all the skins (free ones anyway), all the warframes, all the weapons, all the mods, etc. Obviously, that's not realistic or even possible due to time-limited stuff, but it makes collecting things a goal for me as a player regardless. I'm sure this is not a unique thing for me in particular. Everyone likes collecting things, and in Warframe, more things means more options for how you can play this fun game. It's great to have options. As a new player coming into a game like Warframe, I want to be able to collect things quickly. They don't always have to be important things (I don't require the game to dump vaulted or limited items in my lap on every mission completion or even at all), but I have to be able to feel like if I put enough dedication into Warframe over a medium period of time that I can 'catch up' (at least in some areas). This is where Nightwave fails; it restricts the growth of new players' collections far too heavily.

Let me back up. I play a lot of Hearthstone, and I think that a trading card analogy can help here to explain why this new system is so detrimental to new players. The Alert system is like getting a pack of 5 cards. Most of the time, the majority of those cards will be mediocre or bad. For new players, though, even mediocre cards can have great uses (because they don't have access to the best cards). Additionally, all cards are useful to have at least 2 copies of for the collection aspect and the sake of having future options. For veterans, those cards will very often all be things they already had and will be instantly dismissed. The Nightwave system is like forcing players to trade in a pack of 5 cards for 1 card from a specific list of cards that rotates weekly. The options are mostly quite good, but the problem is that you've just cut the quantity of rewards down to 20% of what they used to be.

Alright, let's go back to Warframe terms again. For a veteran, this type of tradeoff is fantastic. Instead of getting almost nothing from Alerts on average, now you're getting useful things like Catalysts and Reactors on a weekly basis. The limited resource Nitrain can now be bought en masse without you having to stay up at weird hours waiting for an alert. You've been missing one lousy helmet for 6 years and with these pools of items, you have a much better chance of actually seeing it, especially if they rotate on a cycle that ensures everything gets a turn in the store! Nightwave is great for letting you fill in small remaining gaps in your already large collection like this.

For a new player, this is devastating. Instead of getting half a dozen different items or more per day from rewards that improve your game in many different ways (you can simultaneously get a helmet, a mod, credits, and resources all from just a few alerts), you have to devote a substantially greater amount of time away from your core task of unlocking the star chart in order to receive -wildly- less quantity of rewards. When I was playing the last 2 weeks, I was really excited by how quickly I was acquiring things in so many different areas at once. I was picking up new helmet blueprints (got over 10 of these in 2 weeks), new weapon blueprints (got at least 6 of these from alerts), new frame component blueprints (got 2 out of 3 for Vauban), resources that I needed for building those components (argon crystals and nitrain extracts), and loads of credits which I -desperately- needed (you don't get anywhere near enough of these while clearing the chart to even keep up with how much Endo you get - Alerts helped bridge that gap). Nightwave has severely dampened that excitement.

I'm lucky that the Alert system gave me a head start I suppose. Looking at the Wolf Cred prices right now while I sit here with my 0 Wolf Creds, the Alert system was so good to me that it feels like cheating in comparison to this. The items I got in 2 weeks would have taken several months to get via Nightwave, so I seriously don't know how you could start building a collection now as a new player. That's not even considering that they can't even complete several of the objectives on the Nightwave board, including all of the most valuable ones! They get maybe 50 Wolf Creds a week, assuming they're lucky and the objectives are completable for them. That allows them to buy ONE helmet blueprint, TWO aura mods, or ONE weapon blueprint (and none of these weapons are even that good from my limited understanding - they're meant as introduction weapons... yet are priced at ridiculous values). That's insane!

All of the comparisons I've seen trying to justify the benefits of Nightwing are focused on advancement in one part of the game at once, like "Nightwing is so much better because you can get X faster". They're mostly right. You can get specific items faster (sometimes wildly faster) and you don't have to be lucky or have no life to do it. However, the cost is just way too high. For veterans who already had most of the items in the game (whether that be frames, mods, helmets, resources, skins, or other things), the Wolf Cred part of the Nightwave system is a nice gain on average. For new players, replacing the Alert system with Wolf Cred is one of the single most harmful changes that could possibly be made.

I know this can't be intentional as there is no reason for DE to harm the new player experience so significantly. My best suggestion would be to radically reduce the prices of all aura mods, helmets, skins, blueprints, and basically every other item that is in the Wolf Cred store primarily for new players. I mean these items need like a 50% reduction minimum and that's likely still too high. Leave the Catalysts, Reactors, and other items that are essentially there to absorb the credits of veteran players at the original costs - fine. However, if you're going to limit the weekly selection of items to a crazy small subsection of the overall pool, then you need to allow new players to get most of the items in that small subsection every week. Maybe also offer a grab bag that gives you 10 items from the current pool at random for 50 Wolf Cred (probably also still too high) - anything to try to bridge the gap and help out the new player collection building experience. As it is now, new players would need years worth of Wolf Cred to get 90% of the items they wanted from it, something which would have only taken a couple months for Alerts.

Thanks for reading!

Edited March 1, 2019 by Simca1640
Corrected price of weapon blueprint, thought it was 20 but it is 50

[taiiat]

18 minutes ago, Simca1640 said:

For a new player, this is devastating. Instead of getting half a dozen different items or more per day from rewards that improve your game in many different ways (you can simultaneously get a helmet, a mod, credits, and resources all from just a few alerts), you have to devote a substantially greater amount of time away from your core task of unlocking the star chart in order to receive -wildly- less quantity of rewards. 

uhh, if you include the Cosmetic Helmets in this then maybe.... otherwise, not really....

for Statistical items - soooo Auras Potatoes and Nitain, basically - you're getting the same or more of the stuff that actually makes a difference to your Gameplay in the time period of a Nightwave Season (so seems to be a month or maybe two, after this first one which is extended from normal) than you would have previously.

 

if you reference Vauban and the random Weapon Blueprints on top of the Cosmetic Helmets then maybe it'll take longer to get all of those things. Devstream Alerts and Invasions aren't going anywhere though, so for those Gameplay affecting items, there is the opportunity for a lot more of that than before.
if this comes down to potentially taking longer to collect Cosmetics(or things to collect but never use), i don't really have any input on that as it doesn't impact nor concern me.

 

 

by the by, one does not need to complete all of the Nightwave tasks to get all of the Rank Rewards before the Season ends. since the values of the tasks are known, if one completes a bit more than 2/3 of them, you'll get all of the Rank Rewards from the Season.
the tasks are going to vary, not all of them are going to ask you to like, do Eidolon Hunting. this Week, the majority of the Weekly tasks were Kill some Enemies, play this Gamemode a bit, complete a Sortie, Et Cetera. really tight to do in half a Week for a newer Player probably, but that kind of stuff is quite doable in a Week.
i would admit, Nightwave is not Solo friendly for newer Players. but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited March 1, 2019 by taiiat

[(PSN)Nek_Food]

As a Vet of the game, I have to say I feel sorry for you. I think it perhaps Nightwave was good in paper but a bit badly executed, mostly the aspect of alerts related stuff (Auras, alt. helmets and rare resources) and how to get them (all of them). I offered a couple of ideas in my latest post in the Nightwave Series 1 thread. I hope they think this system over and make the necessary - for the new players mostly - changes. DE as Development team are listening to the players and I am optimistic they will do what it needs to be done. After all they are saying they are collecting feedback and will make some adjustments/changes. Nightwave is a small beta for the new system so its good for the players to put their thoughts and concerns for DE to read.

https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1064571-nightwave-series-1/page/21/?tab=comments#comment-10549718

[Genitive]

19 minutes ago, Simca1640 said:

For a new player, this is devastating. Instead of getting half a dozen different items or more per day from rewards that improve your game in many different ways (you can simultaneously get a helmet, a mod, credits, and resources all from just a few alerts), you have to devote a substantially greater amount of time away from your core task of unlocking the star chart in order to receive -wildly- less quantity of rewards. 

But you will unlock rewards anyway while progressing through the star chart. That's the point of this system.

People ignore the fact that tasks are easy and can be completed organically while doing other things. On top of that you get free equipment slots, forma bundles, and catalysts, which should be much more important for new players than alt helmets anyway.

There is also no risk that you will miss an alert and have to wait who knows for how long for the next one. I took me over a year to get Vauban.

[Nez-Kal]

General Consensus:
"No, as a New Player you can't Currently get a helmet or Cosmetic or Alert only Weapon Blueprint as easily as before."

BUT

"When you do gain the Creds to get a helmet or blueprint you can actually CHOOSE it rather than wait for the entire stock to RNG roll into the Alerts (don't ever sleep if you wanna hope to catch it), and now as a New Player you also have a pathway towards acquiring previously Plat Store/Trade only items that greatly effect ones game-play such as Warframe and Weapon Slots, as well as a greater and easier chance of acquiring Potatoes as well."

 

I see the ups and downs of this system, and trust me, I feel ye, but understand for all the negatives you might be struggling with there are a crap-ton more positives towards your over-all game-play experience here.

[Simca1640]

50 minutes ago, Genitive said:

But you will unlock rewards anyway while progressing through the star chart. That's the point of this system.

People ignore the fact that tasks are easy and can be completed organically while doing other things. On top of that you get free equipment slots, forma bundles, and catalysts, which should be much more important for new players than alt helmets anyway.

There is also no risk that you will miss an alert and have to wait who knows for how long for the next one. I took me over a year to get Vauban.

There is literally no other way to obtain the alert-only items besides the Wolf Cred store, though, so a new player is looking at a multi-year grind to get a decent collection of items compared to what used to take a couple months of casually doing a handful of alerts a day. Also, you don't socket ayatans, kill eidolons, do invasions, bounties in the plains, do sanctuary onslaught, or do sorties while progressing through the star chart. There's only like 5 acts that can be organically completed right now. Adding them all up, it's just barely over a rank worth of points.

When new players are going on Week 3 without even having gotten their first Aura mod, are people still going to be defending this as fair and a vast improvement?

You guys just don't seem to realize how heavily gated Wolf Creds are and how ungated Alerts were. You only needed planet access for Alerts, and even that was only if you didn't have a friend I think. For a decent rate of accumulating Wolf Creds, you need almost the entire game open to you and you need to be doing activities across the entire game.

[AvatarX76]

I'm a patient gamer... for the old alerts system, I set my alert notifications and if something i wanted came up at the right time, i do quick mission and grab the reward. Sure, nitain and mutalist alad v beacons were a pain but that's way behind me. I eventually got everything on offer, i was simply patient.

So far with Saturn 6, i've ran 8 boring cetus bounties, 9 boring invasions, grinded arbitrations for a couple of hours (since i slotted my last 8 ayatans the morning before saturn 6 dropped), sleep walked through some more sancturay onslaught for eximus kills and had to change my play schedule to wait til some clan mates were on so i could do the sortie with friends act. Oh and i had to deal with the randomness of pub tridolons as i grew bored of those long ago and am too rusty to join the pro sqauds. All of this for 50 wolf cred and some glyphs so far? Does this sound like a good balance of reward vs effort?

[ShortCat]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

for Statistical items - soooo Auras Potatoes and Nitain, basically - you're getting the same or more of the stuff that actually makes a difference to your Gameplay in the time period of a Nightwave Season (so seems to be a month or maybe two, after this first one which is extended from normal) than you would have previously. 

This is not the case though. A new player won't be able to finish enough tasks to get to the Wolf Creddits node this week. And if we look further, after Tier 6 gaps between Wolf Creddits nodes require 40k standing a week, while one week offers 43k worth in standing.

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

if you reference Vauban and the random Weapon Blueprints on top of the Cosmetic Helmets then maybe it'll take longer to get all of those things. Devstream Alerts and Invasions aren't going anywhere though, so for those Gameplay affecting items, there is the opportunity for a lot more of that than before.
if this comes down to potentially taking longer to collect Cosmetics(or things to collect but never use), i don't really have any input on that as it doesn't impact nor concern me.

Did you take a look at the pricing? One weapon BP costs 50 Wolf Creddits, same for a helmet. 50 is the most you can get in 1 week. 300 over the period of 10 weeks! And the most valuable itmes in the loot pool, potatoes, go for 75, what do you think people will aim for? This is not a slight bump, this is a full stop. And those tokens expire.
I am MR26, all the Wolf rewards do not concern me at all, but just looking at those numbers lets me speachless.

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

by the by, one does not need to complete all of the Nightwave tasks to get all of the Rank Rewards before the Season ends. since the values of the tasks are known, if one completes a bit more than 2/3 of them, you'll get all of the Rank Rewards from the Season.
the tasks are going to vary, not all of them are going to ask you to like, do Eidolon Hunting. this Week, the majority of the Weekly tasks were Kill some Enemies, play this Gamemode a bit, complete a Sortie, Et Cetera. really tight to do in half a Week for a newer Player probably, but that kind of stuff is quite doable in a Week.

With he current point destribution, it is enough to miss 3 tasks to be excluded from the "exclusive club".

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

i would admit, Nightwave is not Solo friendly for newer Players. but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This will motivate players in his position to stick to the game.

[Im_a_fat_boy2]

Bring back the old alert system and integrate both as 1 system 

Best solution I say 

[Genitive]

9 minutes ago, Simca1640 said:

There is literally no other way to obtain the alert-only items besides the Wolf Cred store, though, so a new player is looking at a multi-year grind to get a decent collection of items compared to what used to take a couple months of casually doing a handful of alerts a day. Also, you don't socket ayatans, kill eidolons, do invasions, bounties in the plains, do sanctuary onslaught, or do sorties while progressing through the star chart. There's only like 5 acts that can be organically completed right now. Adding them all up, it's just barely over a rank worth of points.

When new players are going on Week 3 without even having gotten their first Aura mod, are people still going to be defending this as fair and a vast improvement?

You guys just don't seem to realize how heavily gated Wolf Creds are and how ungated Alerts were. You only needed planet access for Alerts, and even that was only if you didn't have a friend I think. For a decent rate of accumulating Wolf Creds, you need almost the entire game open to you and you need to be doing activities across the entire game.

As if there were multiple ways to obtain alert items previously. You had to wait and hope the thing you wanted wouldn't pop up at 4 AM. With alerts it was much more difficult to get auras for this particular reason. Now you do some challenges, get the creds and can choose (!) even 2 auras. You will wait a week at most to reach tier 3 to get your first 50 creds, provided you care enough to do challenges.

[George_PPS]

As a veteran, I suggest any new players to do multiple objectives in any single mission at the same time if possible. For example, doing/unlocking a star chart location while farming a particular resource needed and also bringing a weapon to level up. This will help you speed up the progress a bit. But some certain amount of time is needed to reach certain levels, and this game still needs some or a lot of grinding for different objectives you want to achieve or resources you want to farm for different purposes. 

[DisguisedKoala]

4 hours ago, Genitive said:

But you will unlock rewards anyway while progressing through the star chart. That's the point of this system.

People ignore the fact that tasks are easy and can be completed organically while doing other things. On top of that you get free equipment slots, forma bundles, and catalysts, which should be much more important for new players than alt helmets anyway.

There is also no risk that you will miss an alert and have to wait who knows for how long for the next one. I took me over a year to get Vauban.

There is a chance to miss an alert, but I am goin for Nekros Prime for a few months now. I only need 1 more Nitain, have a few days left. Then I will be away for like 10 days. I thought let’s be lucky (which works out quite fine nearly every time) and get that 1 nitain. 

Then, Nightwave. I can not get that Nitain in time any more. Before, I had days with like 2 nitains obtained. Now, you can only get 20 nitain per 1/2 months (1 season). 

This means I need to somehiw get it after those 10 days, and need to wait another 3 days before I can finally play Nekros Prime. Otherwise, I could play him immediately after the 10 days.

[lighthoof]

7 minutes ago, PapaErdogan said:

There is a chance to miss an alert, but I am goin for Nekros Prime for a few months now. I only need 1 more Nitain, have a few days left. Then I will be away for like 10 days. I thought let’s be lucky (which works out quite fine nearly every time) and get that 1 nitain. 

Then, Nightwave. I can not get that Nitain in time any more. Before, I had days with like 2 nitains obtained. Now, you can only get 20 nitain per 1/2 months (1 season). 

This means I need to somehiw get it after those 10 days, and need to wait another 3 days before I can finally play Nekros Prime. Otherwise, I could play him immediately after the 10 days.

That's purely the problem of giving no advance warning to the players, not the system itself , IMHO

[(XBOX)Sir Dwar]

As someone who's played a little over a month, I feel I have to echo the OP's sentiments. Nightwave feels a lot less rewarding for someone still building a collection. I have a nice collection of alternate helmets, melee weapons for mr grinding, aura mods, and precious resources like Kubrow Eggs, Oxium, Tellurium, etc. On top of the potatoes and nitain extract I got from the alerts. I even lucked out and manage to piece together all 3 Vauban Parts. Now, though? I would never waste wolfcred on one of the helmets or weapons, and having to choose between Nitain Extract, Potatoes, and any mods I haven't gotten already is rather disheartening, and I'm actually in a place where I can just barely get to rank 3 in a week. Plus, I've lost access to the easiest source of credits I had since I'm still wary of the index. And while the grind to build vauban is no longer luck-based... It's still a month long endeavor, and that's not great. And Kubrow eggs? Gone entirely from the rewards. Because spending hours smashing the dens of wild animals in search of an egg is fun.

 

Now, the old alert system was flawed, yes. And Nightwave has promise. But the rewards system needs a lot of tweaking, or its going to turn off new players.

[Steel_Rook]

I haven't had the chance to play with the new system, but it sounds like a good idea done badly. The problem with Alerts - and the reason I used to call Catalysts/Reactors P2W - was that what you get is an absolute crapshot. Sure, for a new players literally everything is of some value, certain items are of substantially more value, more so as compared to a veteran player. I see Reactors and Catalysts as absolutely vital, and a new player isn't going to have had time to amass a backlog of those, meaning they're playing at literally half the strength. That starts to be a problem pretty quickly - as early as Jupiter, if not sooner. Thus, a deterministic system where a player can go after an Aura or a "Potato" and avoid all the ugly helmets for Warframes they don't own or all the resources they don't need is - I feel - superior.

In theory, anyway. In practice, it sounds like prices are jacked up high enough that the actual inflow of rewards has greatly diminished, and I'm not sure that balances out. The credits rewards are the ones most concerning to me, because Alerts were a really good source of credits for pretty much all players who don't feel like dying of boredom grinding the Index. As well, they offered a quick-and-easy means of jumping into the game, doing a few things and jumping out. That hurts veterans more than newbies, since that used to be the majority of what I did after clearing the Star Chart.

[Educated_Beast]

I have sympathy for what you are saying, but also keep in mind the aura mods are 10p at most.  The price of these may even drop more now, not sure.  You can always buy some of these easily to allow credits spent elsewhere.  

 

If you don't want to buy plat, just running void missions will allow you to trade for plat easy.  

 

I get what your saying, especially about credits and forcing players into one repetitive mission (I get absolutely nothing from bounties - I have all cosmetics, arcanes, etc.; I also get nothing from invasions as I have all weapons, fieldron, etc).  Must suck to want to clear star chart but forced into 8 bounties and 9 invasions limiting forward advancement for the casual drastically!

Forcing me into those missions ruins it for new players as I am speed running them as fast as possible to get it over with.  

A Max if 3 of any one type repetition is enough.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Educated_Beast

[TheSkunkyMonk]

7 hours ago, taiiat said:

for Statistical items - soooo Auras Potatoes and Nitain, basically - you're getting the same or more of the stuff that actually makes a difference to your Gameplay in the time period of a Nightwave Season (so seems to be a month or maybe two, after this first one which is extended from normal) than you would have previously.

Im getting less, in the 3 days gone I have just managed to get to rank 3 that gets me a stack of 15 nitain since I can't be wasting my credits on that trophy yet. I could of probably had 4 each day on alerts not to mention the mods that pop up and other resources I might need all for a considerably smaller time investment and while doing the missions and tasks I enjoy in the game inbetween the alert pop ups which also helped to break up the gind.

I might end up with the same in the end but completing the Nightwabe tasks takes away all the time I have todo the things I actually want todo instead of taking 5 minutes to grab that aura and resource that I needed. I didn't mind items rotating on alert that was part of the fun! Now they still rotate only it takes longer again, I would of seen more selection of rewards on the old alerts in the past days than I have with the credit section of nightwave.

1 hour ago, Educated_Beast said:

I have sympathy for what you are saying, but also keep in mind the aura mods are 10p at most.  The price of these may even drop more now, not sure.  You can always buy some of these easily to allow credits spent elsewhere.  

 

If you don't want to buy plat, just running void missions will allow you to trade for plat easy.  

 

I get what your saying, especially about credits and forcing players into one repetitive mission (I get absolutely nothing from bounties - I have all cosmetics, arcanes, etc.; I also get nothing from invasions as I have all weapons, fieldron, etc).  Must suck to want to clear star chart but forced into 8 bounties and 9 invasions limiting forward advancement for the casual drastically!

Forcing me into those missions ruins it for new players as I am speed running them as fast as possible to get it over with.  

A Max if 3 of any one type repetition is enough.

Thats the problem older players cant see past, youve already got everything and dont need the things on alert so this nightwave is good for you, the real solution is to just keep the usual alerts as they were and keep nightwave just how it is and let them run side by side. Absolutely no harm and that way it would actually be a benefit as we could pick up the parts we are struggling to get on alert from nightwave with our wolf creds and we'd still have access to the same alerts and resources you did when you were on your mastery grind.

I do like the new rewards on the tier list, no complaint their but we need the Alerts as they were before as well so new players get the same opportunity as old, and the only reason not to that I can see is because bosses want a new fountain.

Thats what it really boils down to with this update, it wasn't about helping it was about upping the the grind and time investment as they know it will get more people buying plat.

I hope this does get changed and the devs see how damaging it is to the players on the mastery grind or maybe they already knew this.

Saddest part for me now is I have nothing satisfying to break my grind up with and my hours played are dropping fast, lol to think I just bought a Rage pack as well, quite apt though.

Oh and if you are listening devs, fix the first Profit Taker mission stage 2 bug, its hardly a big one but it is crippling my progression and I can get the rewards I want from the pool!

Wonder if I am the only one who still clicks the alert tab hoping something will pop up. Even https://hub.warframestat.us/timer

has a unhappy face for where the alerts used to be.

[tarfeef101]

If you like collecting stuff, you should be thrilled to get slots for free. 

[taiiat]

7 hours ago, ShortCat said:

This is not the case though. A new player won't be able to finish enough tasks to get to the Wolf Creddits node this week. And if we look further, after Tier 6 gaps between Wolf Creddits nodes require 40k standing a week, while one week offers 43k worth in standing.

 

Did you take a look at the pricing? One weapon BP costs 50 Wolf Creddits, same for a helmet. 50 is the most you can get in 1 week. 300 over the period of 10 weeks! And the most valuable itmes in the loot pool, potatoes, go for 75, what do you think people will aim for? This is not a slight bump, this is a full stop. And those tokens expire.
I am MR26, all the Wolf rewards do not concern me at all, but just looking at those numbers lets me speachless.

er, all Nightwave Ranks are 10,000 Standing. from start to end.
i reiterate, one can reach Rank 30 while having completed a bit more than 2/3 of all of the Tasks during that Season.

of the ~52,000pts per Week that are available, and cutting it short and calling it an 8 week Season (when it should actually be slightly longer), that means that the max pts is.... 416,000 vs the 300,000 you need to get max Rank in that Season.
those numbers hits 72.1% of tasks. so you need 37,500 pts per week if every Week you'll complete the same percentage of tasks.

 

Wolf Creds expiring is something i was going to inquire about, as that would make an impact on the system in the long term. if they are going to, that will significantly reduce the amount of Wolf Creds that Players would have in the long term - that would be a 'problem' from my perspective. as that remainder would otherwise add up to a lot, for sporatically active Players.

the Weapon Blueprints should also drop from Enemies anyways, just like Gorgon and Boar, Et Cetera. they shouldn't be an important part of a multiple month long term task system, they simply aren't relevant enough to the game for that to make sense. but that's a different matter.

[ShortCat]

33 minutes ago, taiiat said:

of the ~52,000pts per Week that are available, and cutting it short and calling it an 8 week Season (when it should actually be slightly longer), that means that the max pts is.... 416,000 vs the 300,000 you need to get max Rank in that Season.
those numbers hits 72.1% of tasks. so you need 37,500 pts per week if every Week you'll complete the same percentage of tasks.

Where do you get those 52k? 7x1k dailies; 3x5k elite weekly; 7x3k weekly tasks = 43k standing weekly. How many task one can complete is hard to tell at this point, as we know only the first round. We could be lucky this week, or not.

50 minutes ago, taiiat said:

Wolf Creds expiring is something i was going to inquire about, as that would make an impact on the system in the long term. if they are going to, that will significantly reduce the amount of Wolf Creds that Players would have in the long term - that would be a 'problem' from my perspective. as that remainder would otherwise add up to a lot, for sporatically active Players.

My biggest concern are the Wolf Cred nodes. Those are placed at 3 - 6 - 12! - 16 - 20 - 24. Not only do gaps become wider, total amount of available items with current exchange rate is terrible. I am not concerned that casuals won't reach last evergreen nodes, the system is actively hinders newer players from progressing within it and by this they will also get less Wolf Creds. Nightwave should be a replacement for old alerts remember. Gain for begginers is abysmal, not to mention creddit alerts were usefull at the begging. So were the ressource alerts with Orocin Cells, Neurodes or Oxium. Where are equivalents for those?

Frequently, I see people saying it is ok for new players not get the last ranks in a season. OK. How far should they be able to progress over 10 weeks and what do they actually get after this time?

56 minutes ago, taiiat said:

the Weapon Blueprints should also drop from Enemies anyways, just like Gorgon and Boar, Et Cetera. they shouldn't be an important part of a multiple month long term task system, they simply aren't relevant enough to the game for that to make sense. but that's a different matter.

I like the idea to turn them into drops, espcielly in current version. However I would not call them unimportant, as those free weapons are the ones a begginer will use to grind first MR.

 

[Paperwick]

Conceptually I love the new system, but I agree that the alert rewards should be reinstated and that these two systems be kept apart. I'm not a new player but I am a fairly casual player, so I can't invest enough time to make the Nightwave secondary shop work for me. It railroads a lot of my progress because of how it blocks out nitain and previously easy to acquire items. It's very frustrating. 

Also, it kind of kills an aspect of the game I enjoyed which was joining into alert missions to play with new people. It was a nice pace joining into alert missions on public because everyone was there for one purpose, instead of the roulette which is public on any non-fissure or alert node. Ideally we can kept Nightwave and the Alerts. I enjoy them both a lot separately, but this Fortnite approach to gameplay only works for cosmetics or platinum-gated items imo. 

[Simca1640]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

the Weapon Blueprints should also drop from Enemies anyways, just like Gorgon and Boar, Et Cetera. they shouldn't be an important part of a multiple month long term task system, they simply aren't relevant enough to the game for that to make sense. but that's a different matter.

Yeah, another concern of putting these old Alert weapon BP on Nightwave store is that it creates a 'noob trap'.

Back when I was a few planets in and had a very limited selection of weapons, I would have been tempted to spend 50 Wolf Cred on one of these BP because I didn't know any better. Doing that would have been a huge mistake, given that I also was extremely limited on mod slots and the Reactor/Catalyst for 75 would have served me 100 times better.

[taiiat]

5 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Where do you get those 52k? 7x1k dailies; 3x5k elite weekly; 7x3k weekly tasks = 43k standing weekly.

i'd have to make an extra sanity check and think for a while, but it's possible that i put a decimal in the wrong place for the normal Weekly tasks.
but that's why we write down the thought process, for sanity checking!

[Nanology]

Why Tridolons are so detrimental to new players.

Why Sorties are so detrimental to new players.

Why Weekly Catalysts and Reactors Alerts are so detrimental to new players.

Why am I so detrimental to new players.

🙂

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

Best way to solve this is to bring back Alerts as they was before while keeping NW.

Gift of the lotus proved that both systems can and do work flawlessly together.

What you cannot get by one method you can get by another.

Like for example umbra formas and five NE can only be found in NW store while a single NE is found in the Alerts and so on.