All the things Nightwave replaced

[Steel_Rook]

I finally had a chance to toy around with the Nightwave system. Since the hot minute has passed and everyone's had their say of feedback, I don't think there's any room left for my unwarranted opinion. Instead, let's examine all the things we actually lost in the process of implementing Nightwave. And yes, I'm aware that we lost Alerts, but it goes a bit farther than that. The following is a slightly abstract list of all the things we don't have any more.

Quick Play:

In recent weeks, I've been playing Warframe in short, sporadic bursts in a way I tend to refer to as "Quick Play." What that entails is jumping into the game for an hour, hitting a button and playing two or three random missions that the game has chosen for me. Completely independent of their rewards, that's what the Alerts system did for me more than anything else. I didn't have to wonder about what to do, I didn't have to have a goal, I didn't have to be grinding for anything. I'd just open the dropdown and grab one of the three or four missions available at the time. This is broadly similar to Overwatch's "Quick Play" option (hence my nomenclature) or Payday 2's Crime.net, or really your average server browser.

Needless to say, I don't have that any more. Nightwave doesn't offer emergent, randomly-generated missions. In fact, it doesn't offer missions at all. It offers objectives that I then have to pick the appropriate mission to accomplish in. Sure, that puts the choice on me, but - and let me be blunt here - I can't always be arsed. This is why I still watch broadcast television and make extensive use of YouTube's "Recommended" section. Sure, I like having the option to finely-tune my experience, but there really is no downside to also having the option of pushing a button and having the game choose for me. That's why RTS games have a "Random" option for race/faction and Fighting games have a "Random" selection for fighter. The next best thing the game offers now is Invasions, but those have a whole heap of issues of their own from janky underdeveloped maps to missing containers to NPCs constantly following me around, blocking my shots and kill-stealing me. That's not to say Invasions are BAD - far from it. Just that they're no replacement for Alerts.

I get what DE wanted to do with Nightwave and I agree with the core goal of the system. However, I don't get why we had to lose Alerts in the process because Nightwave really doesn't replace their gameplay contribution in the slightest, nor does it attempt to.

 

Emergent Credits:

Before we start: Yes, I know the Index exists. On days I particularly hate myself, I might even farm it for cash. However, I personally prefer to earn my rewards WHILE playing the game in a fun, enjoyable fashion. When it comes to credits, I like earning my credits as I do other stuff, which Alerts did quite well. High-level alerts would commonly drop 10-12K Credits per run, which could easily net me 25-30K with a Credits Booster and whatever else I picked up throughout the map. Jupiter is particularly good about that due to the high density of lockers. Truth be told, Credits were really the only reward I cared for out of Alerts in the first place, other than maybe the extremely rare "Potatoes."

I don't have that any more. Nightwave might be great for attaining rare and exclusive rewards, far more so than even Alerts, but it's not terribly good for earning the basic, simple stuff that Alerts tended to help out a lot with. DE's own comment on the announcement thread concerned me, to be honest, as it claimed that minor resource caches were of no real interest to players. I can't speak for everyone else, but I certainly cared. Sure, maybe not about the Rubedo or the Polymer Noodles, but stuff like Cash, Tellerium, Void Traces and the like - I cared about those. And yes, I know that Nightwave's "fewer but larger purchases" setup doesn't lend itself to dime-a-dozen rewards like Cash and Ferrite, fair enough. But taking that income source entirely out of the game stings, and it's going to sting even harder for new players who aren't sitting on hundreds of thousands of everything and piles of 75% off Platinum.

Losing the Alert Credits bonuses isn't going to make the Credits Grind longer since since nobody grinds Alerts for Credits. However, it certainly makes the Credits Grind a lot more boring as what I'd argue was a meaningful avenue no longer exists.

 

Secondary Objectives:

Do you remember those "Get 10 kills with your pistol" and "Use your first ability 5 times" objectives which popped up in missions on their own? I have a friend who really enjoyed those, partially for the Affinity bonus but in large part due to the completionist feeling of them. Sure, some of them plain didn't work ("Hack 1 console failed to trigger more than it worked"), some of them were uncompletable (the aforementioned pistol kills on a "Melee Only" Sortie mission... Or an Archwing mission), the rewards were pretty lame and they were subject to MASSIVE kill-stealing... They had problems, is what I'm saying. However, just jettisoning them into space and replacing them with seemingly nothing doesn't strike me as a good resolution. And yes, I know the "Kills while sliding" objective was turned into a Nightwave Daily, but that's not really the same thing. For one, it only happens once. For another, it's part of another system entirely and not a secondary objective for this one.

For whatever reason - be it UI space or just disregard - that entire system is gone now. In its place, Nightwave missions pop up, instead. That friend of mine from the previous paragraph? He was livid at this change, and I can't really blame him. Of all the things I've said here, "secondary objectives" are the drum I've been beating the loudest. Instead, what secondary objectives we did have are now gone entirely, replaced with major cross-mission dailies and weeklies, and I'm honestly not convinced the trade was worth it. Granted, Nightwave CAN spawn Fugitives and the Wolf of Walstreet or whatever his name is, but those are both rare events and very simplistic such, largely indistinguishable from being "assassinated" by whatever Syndicate hates you - usually New Loka.

Losing the janky mission-specific side objectives might not be major, but the mere fact that this wasn't even mentioned in any of the promo materials concerns me... Because it wasn't replaced with anything.

 

In conclusion:

I don't hate the Nightwave system. Not really a fan, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it that I can't cite for Syndicates in general. My problem with it, however, is that its introduction displaced a whole host of perfectly functional gameplay dynamics without really replacing them with anything of equivalence. It makes me wonder why Alerts had to be sacrificed in the first place, when they barely even relate to Nightwave but for some of their reward pool. Why, indeed, could we not have had BOTH? Because as the situation stands now, the otherwise perfectly fine system of Nightwave is still undermined by losing a system that - let's be fair - wasn't bad in the first place.

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

I agree, there was no reason to get rid of alerts just for NW.

Having both would open up some extra options.

With the gift of lotus alerts it proved that both do in fact work well together with zero problems.

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

Secondary objectives were nice but rarely did I notice it was there until I did it on accident

Credits are a problem with nw, definitely for new players. My solution is for each teir you get, you are rewarded 10000 credits and 10 wolf creds then if they introduced the ability to buy resources through nw it would allow new players to get these a lot easier.

I disagree with your first argument though, but that’s a matter of opinion. The new nw challenges have given me another thing to grind for, and actually makes me go out of my comfort zone

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I very much miss the resource alerts (Oxium, Tellurium, Nanospores, Neurodes, etc) I went out my way to complete those, even if I had a respectable stockpile at the time. They really helped me meet my solo-clan research goals. Now... blech...

I very much miss the secondary objectives. When leveling a new frame or weapons that I don't like to use (guns), I would enter a quick mission for the express purpose of completing the secondary objective for affinity on the weapons I wasn't using, to rank them up faster. Now, gone... (have to do spy missions for a reasonable replacement, and I really don't like spy missions - even though it's faster, it's less fun)

(For credits, I just run 5min survival in Gabii on Ceres for a 25k-ish bonus each time, extract and repeat. Though, when starting out, I ran every credit alert I saw.... really needed it.)

I have all the Nitain I will need, I think (about 100 stockpiled, and already built most of the stuff that needs it.)

Ran every alert that ever offered a cosmetic, so I have all the alt helmets.

So, the change doesn't hurt me personally, but I pity all the new players starting with only Nightwave to make crawling progress. This is a major loss for the new player experience, IMO.

 

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

I very much miss the resource alerts (Oxium, Tellurium, Nanospores, Neurodes, etc) I went out my way to complete those, even if I had a respectable stockpile at the time. They really helped me meet my solo-clan research goals. Now... blech...

I very much miss the secondary objectives. When leveling a new frame or weapons that I don't like to use (guns), I would enter a quick mission for the express purpose of completing the secondary objective for affinity on the weapons I wasn't using, to rank them up faster. Now, gone... (have to do spy missions for a reasonable replacement, and I really don't like spy missions - even though it's faster, it's less fun)

(For credits, I just run 5min survival in Gabii on Ceres for a 25k-ish bonus each time, extract and repeat. Though, when starting out, I ran every credit alert I saw.... really needed it.)

I have all the Nitain I will need, I think (about 100 stockpiled, and already built most of the stuff that needs it.)

Ran every alert that ever offered a cosmetic, so I have all the alt helmets.

So, the change doesn't hurt me personally, but I pity all the new players starting with only Nightwave to make crawling progress. This is a major loss for the new player experience, IMO.

 

I agree but I have one thing. When I started a few months ago I hated alerts. They got me the stuff I need, but they boring and repetitive. And didn’t expand my star chart at all

[Steel_Rook]

28 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

Secondary objectives were nice but rarely did I notice it was there until I did it on accident

I personally tended to go after them. With an Affinity Booster, that was a free 10K affinity for fairly little work and it did break up the mission structure ever so slightly. As I said - a friend of mine went after them every time, and was pretty pissed to see them gone. My criticism was there's no reason to remove them, as they're in no way related to either Nightwave or Alerts.

 

28 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

Credits are a problem with nw, definitely for new players. My solution is for each teir you get, you are rewarded 10000 credits and 10 wolf creds then if they introduced the ability to buy resources through nw it would allow new players to get these a lot easier.

I saw your suggestion, yes. I agree, but I'm not sure 10K cretits per rank really makes up for the 12-15K credits per mission in the old Alerts system. I'd personally award credits for each challenge completed, to the tune of 5K per Daily, 10K per weekly, 20K per Elite Weekly. Something to that effect, kind of pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I'd like rewards to be on the challenges, not the tiers.

 

28 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

I disagree with your first argument though, but that’s a matter of opinion. The new nw challenges have given me another thing to grind for, and actually makes me go out of my comfort zone

For me, it's been the exact opposite. My playtime was already reduced to the point where I'd jump in just to do a few alerts and jump out. Nightwave did give my playtime a bit of a spike while I gave it a chance, but having seen the new missions for this week... Meh, I don't feel like bothering altogether. I'm not going to get the Umbral Forma and I already have everything else I want from the system, so no point in wasting my time doing activities I don't like. Worse - because Alerts are no longer in the game, I don't even have anything to DO when I log in, so I'm probably just going to cheese the system until the Primed Vigor drop in a few days and give it a break entirely.

I actually feel significantly worse about the system now that I've realised what it actually is: achievements. Nightwave is the Achievements Syndicate, more or less - which would be fine if it hadn't displaced the Alerts system.

 

4 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

I agree but I have one thing. When I started a few months ago I hated alerts. They got me the stuff I need, but they boring and repetitive. And didn’t expand my star chart at all 

A bit of a point of contention here: Expanding the Star Chart too quickly can be detrimental to a new player. When I was first starting out, I managed to speed my way up to Jupiter and Saturn, hitting a difficulty spike that damn near took me out of the game entirely. I ended up doing backlog content and repeatable missions to get regular versions of Flawed mods (Horner Strike and Flow being particularly memorable), as well as researching damage types to better combat the increased enemy strength. Alerts helped with that tremendously, giving me credits to upgrade my mods and resources I didn't have millions of at the time.

And I can understand Alerts being boring for you. To each his own. What draws me personally to Warframe isn't the loot but rather the basic gameplay, so a system which allows me to just run missions with very few strings attached IS what's been keeping me around. Losing that system in favour of challenges and achievements - both of which I find breath-takingly boring and the sort of thing I do on occasion INSTEAD OF enjoying the game - has removed a large chunk of what kept me coming back.

[Lythandra]

I agree with everything in this post. I also greatly enjoyed the secondary objectives to rank up as I have to play solo the majority of the time due to me having bandwidth limitations as WF uses quite a lot of data.

The system does seem more dead now with no alerts. The alert system did need some adjusting but this is worse. 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Lythandra

[Coverop]

I agree with OP.

 

The Nightwave system is an "OK-ish" design that has some variety of challenges that you can accomplish anywhere.

Alerts did not have to die because of the Nightwave mechanisms.

 

 

Navigation seems more dead than before.

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

27 minutes ago, Coverop said:

I agree with OP.

 

The Nightwave system is an "OK-ish" design that has some variety of challenges that you can accomplish anywhere.

Alerts did not have to die because of the Nightwave mechanisms.

 

 

Navigation seems more dead than before.

I agree

Though to be honest I feel that NW was to bring in that annoying Nora night

[Takkik]

The event by itself is interesting, but that don't fix the problems (and introduce new ones). I'm a returning players (played only when the game started before), I really miss the old alter system for the quickplay/quick cash. You don't know what to play, just do some alerts and you could get some bonus at same time.

 

What the new system don't fix is the access to the rare rewards from the alert. The wolf credits are unlocked only at some specific milestones. You can only get the milestone with daily/weekly challenge (the capture rewards are a joke really). The event store is changed each week (thanks for the auras, can't buy them now...). And the credits have a limited lifespan.

Should have kept the alerts, but reward credits that you could spend on a permanent store. That would have gave more control to the player and ease the progression. Event > add new challenges and new alerts with themed content. More fun that capture the same three guys for a bad reward. Event store with just thematic stuff and not important stuff for the progression.

 

Main problem for a new player : the game become more & more time gated. So when you join, you play with these guys who can one shot everything, but even if you put 500h in the game, you will never achieve that because everything is behind a time gate : daily limit for factions, daily limit for MR, weekly limit for the new system etc... Why not just let people play the game and progress at their rythm instead of imposing a momentum?

[(PSN)wintersfrozen]

8 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

I very much miss the resource alerts (Oxium, Tellurium, Nanospores, Neurodes, etc) I went out my way to complete those, even if I had a respectable stockpile at the time. They really helped me meet my solo-clan research goals. Now... blech...

I very much miss the secondary objectives. When leveling a new frame or weapons that I don't like to use (guns), I would enter a quick mission for the express purpose of completing the secondary objective for affinity on the weapons I wasn't using, to rank them up faster. Now, gone... (have to do spy missions for a reasonable replacement, and I really don't like spy missions - even though it's faster, it's less fun)

(For credits, I just run 5min survival in Gabii on Ceres for a 25k-ish bonus each time, extract and repeat. Though, when starting out, I ran every credit alert I saw.... really needed it.)

I have all the Nitain I will need, I think (about 100 stockpiled, and already built most of the stuff that needs it.)

Ran every alert that ever offered a cosmetic, so I have all the alt helmets.

So, the change doesn't hurt me personally, but I pity all the new players starting with only Nightwave to make crawling progress. This is a major loss for the new player experience, IMO.

 

That oxium grind just got a lot more time consuming.

[(XBOX)TheRealInta]

You also can't just pop into an alert mission on public and join other gamers. With nightwave you have to search the nodes on the planets for open squads, which is very tedious 

[Warhydra]

On quick play, they should just put Kuva and Nightmare missions on the alert tab, it would serve similar purpose. 

Also a bunch of secondary objectives are now daily task, not just the sliding one. (Hack console, kill with primary/secondary/melee, pick up mods, etc). The advantage is that you know what the objective is before hand and can therefore prepare ahead of time. 

Edited April 27, 2019 by Warhydra

[Els236]

il y a une heure, Warhydra a dit :

On quick play, they should just put Kuva and Nightmare missions on the alert tab, it would serve similar purpose. 

 

Copy-paste the relic tab, but instead have Kuva siphons/floods and nightmares in it.

great idea!

[(NSW)Hatemachine]

Instead of complicating NW with more, why not use the systems they already have & had?

Nightmare mode, these events refresh every few hours, or each day, they impose their own unique challenges, present viable & sought after rewards grant access & reason to unlock the star maps, play missions you normally wouldn't, spy & defection in my case & allows players to choose to engage in nightwave.

The missions could even correlate to the unfolding story, Interception mission, grants a chance to call the wolf or to increase the odds of an encounter since your stealing incoming classified radio transmissions, defense missions preventing the tech thats made the wolf from falling into Grineer hands, assassinate to take out escapee ringleaders.

The wolf becomes an assassin who will actually leave once the target thats been hunting him & beating up his crew gets a firm understanding of what a Meat grinder feels like on slow & painful mode.

They have systems in place that people found acceptable in terms of challenge, difficulty, rewards & accessibility, instead of cooking up whole new ways to introduce bugs, grind & tedium, just adapt what you have & expand on it?

[Showerwalker]

I honestly can't count how many ideas were given to the dev at this point, but here's another, because fk it, probably just for voicing my stress at this point.

• Shorten the 30 ranks down to a manageable size, a lot of the rank up rewards aren't desirable by all and would be better in the cred-shop (this would also improve the 'commitment' problem, so you aren't locked out if you joined at week 5)THEN have interesting tasks or fights as additional rank up requirement, say final rank require you do 3 lvTooDamnHigh assassinations (what happened to tactical alerts?) Then you can justifiably put bragging right cosmetics, or what have you behind them. Or if need be, make each major rank-up accessible after each episode, for thematic purposes, late-joiners would still have a easier time, and no one can binge grind it all.

 

• Wolf Creds, the total available creds throughout the season should be generous, because not everyone can get every one of them. Bring alerts back, same format, reward small amount of wolf creds instead. Give more and better daily/weekly challenges (please put some effort into making them) and also give player the choice between choosing Creds or Rep as rewards, some people REALLY just want the creds. rank-up rewards or shop item, give player the freedom.

 

• Elite challenges, controversial, but Fortuna style bounty went pretty well didn't it? so they can still be accessible challenges for new players, but harder challenges if some players look for more rewards, or have no friends actually please don't that again.
• Lastly alerts were the major source of income of endo, credits and rare resources for newer players (the main customer of the old system I'd argue), those should be accessible in the cred shop. other wise it would incredibly unfair, and it would make wolfcreds resetting more reasonable.

Edited April 28, 2019 by Showerwalker

[Cephalycion]

If alerts do make a comeback alongside the next nightwave, then the wolf cred shop and wolf creds in general must be removed in order to balance out the reward table.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

11 hours ago, Cephalycion said:

If alerts do make a comeback alongside the next nightwave, then the wolf cred shop and wolf creds in general must be removed in order to balance out the reward table.

Not necessarily ... Alerts could be brought back on a slower schedule with longer windows (6-12hrs, Lotus at 24) with increased rewards (higher creds, larger resource bundles). People who still can't take part in Alerts regularly can make progress earning their reward table through the cred shop. Keeps the best of both worlds.

 

[Steel_Rook]

18 hours ago, Warhydra said:

On quick play, they should just put Kuva and Nightmare missions on the alert tab, it would serve similar purpose. 

I won't lie - I've been using Kuva Siphon missions as my de-facto replacement for Alerts. As a holdover it sort of works, in that the game "chooses" missions for me by spawning Kuva Siphons on particular nodes without fundamentally altering the underlying mission. They're not a decent replacement for Quick Play, however, as the planets available to run mission on change on a fairly slow rotation and the missions themselves don't change after finishing them. And for me personally, the loss of "Quick Play" is probably the most serious issue since I all too often find myself wanting to play Warframe but not having the energy to make decision after decision about what mission to attempt. Eventually, I end up replaying the same few nodes and it gets really old, really fast.

Alerts, for all their issues, could at least spawn on all planets and all mission types, including Infinite ones. I can't remember the last time I've played Defection, and I actually LIKE that mode. Nothing interesting ever spawns there. Never seen a Kuva Siphon Defection, nor a Nightmare Defection (though I might have missed that last one). I really do feel we'd all benefit from a Quick Play mode where we supply some basic parameters and let the game pick a mission for us based on them. Maybe I want something in the 30-60 level range that isn't Interception or Defence. I could obviously find a mission like that for myself, but doing this over and over again gets so tedious that it saps my will to bother.

Honestly, I'd be fine if Alerts were reintroduced into the game, except each would give something like 200-500 Nightwave Standing depending on the level with the ability to choose our own level. As I said before, the Nightwave system itself isn't bad in concept. The problem is that it's a system of disembodied challenges which replaced a system of missions. And I'd personally really like to have some way to play random missions again.

[Cephalycion]

6 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Not necessarily ... Alerts could be brought back on a slower schedule with longer windows (6-12hrs, Lotus at 24) with increased rewards (higher creds, larger resource bundles). People who still can't take part in Alerts regularly can make progress earning their reward table through the cred shop. Keeps the best of both worlds.

 

I don't think game balance works this way. If you are adding one avenue of obtaining a certain reward, you have to remove an equally significant avenue of obtaining that reward if you don't want the rarity of the reward to decrease.

However, if DE wants to decrease the alert reward rarity, then yes, keeping both alerts and the cred shop would be ok. But I doubt this is the case.

Edited April 28, 2019 by Cephalycion

[Nitro747]

On 2019-03-01 at 6:57 PM, Steel_Rook said:

 

Quick Play:

In recent weeks, I've been playing Warframe in short, sporadic bursts in a way I tend to refer to as "Quick Play." What that entails is jumping into the game for an hour, hitting a button and playing two or three random missions that the game has chosen for me. Completely independent of their rewards, that's what the Alerts system did for me more than anything else. I didn't have to wonder about what to do, I didn't have to have a goal, I didn't have to be grinding for anything. I'd just open the dropdown and grab one of the three or four missions available at the time. This is broadly similar to Overwatch's "Quick Play" option (hence my nomenclature) or Payday 2's Crime.net, or really your average server browser

 

 

90% of the game content is "quick play", you can still "quick play" while completing challenges and stuff

 

On 2019-03-01 at 6:57 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Emergent Credits:

Before we start: Yes, I know the Index exists. On days I particularly hate myself, I might even farm it for cash. However, I personally prefer to earn my rewards WHILE playing the game in a fun, enjoyable fashion. When it comes to credits, I like earning my credits as I do other stuff, which Alerts did quite well. High-level alerts would commonly drop 10-12K Credits per run, which could easily net me 25-30K with a Credits Booster and whatever else I picked up throughout the map. Jupiter is particularly good about that due to the high density of lockers. Truth be told, Credits were really the only reward I cared for out of Alerts in the first place, other than maybe the extremely rare "Potatoes."

Those allerts would reward you more or less the SAME amount of credits that any other mission type rewarded. Complaining about not being able to complete those 10k credits alerts anymore is quite laughable to be honest and these days we have a lot more options to get a lot of credits, not just with the index. 

On 2019-03-01 at 6:57 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Secondary Objectives:

Do you remember those "Get 10 kills with your pistol" and "Use your first ability 5 times" objectives which popped up in missions on their own? I have a friend who really enjoyed those, partially for the Affinity bonus but in large part due to the completionist feeling

Yes, I do, and they were pointless at most. Earning 1k affinity for killing TEN guys with a pistol and nothing is basically the same. Not only that but these are essentially what daily challenges are. Kill 150 enemies with melee, gas dmg, etc. Except this time its an actual "challenge" and it actually provides an actual reward.

 

Jesus, sometimes it looks like you guys are looking for stuff to complain about nightwave...

[Steel_Rook]

13 hours ago, Nitro747 said:

90% of the game content is "quick play", you can still "quick play" while completing challenges and stuff

Only if you deliberately ignore what you were quoting. I was pretty clear in my definition of Quick Play that it specifically referred to random missions selected predominantly by the game. That option no longer exists. I now have to pick my own missions one at a time every time. Quick Play reduces gameplay to a single choice - do I want to keep going. Lack of Quick Play introduces a choice at every juncture - what do I play next. Almost every single time I sit down to play with friends, that very question ends up eating several minutes at a time of back-and-forth about who needs what from what type of mission. If we decide on running Void Fissures it's even worse, as we need to sync up who needs what Prime components from which Relics and whom we're going to try and help currently.

None of the above issues were present when playing Alerts. We'd simply pick a random Alert and go. That's no longer possible with Nightwave.

 

13 hours ago, Nitro747 said:

Those allerts would reward you more or less the SAME amount of credits that any other mission type rewarded. Complaining about not being able to complete those 10k credits alerts anymore is quite laughable to be honest and these days we have a lot more options to get a lot of credits, not just with the index. 

Alert rewards were offered in addition to Credits picked up in missions. Whether you find it laughable to you is irrelevant, because an easy and convenient option to gain quick credits is now gone with nothing to replace it.

 

13 hours ago, Nitro747 said:

Yes, I do, and they were pointless at most. Earning 1k affinity for killing TEN guys with a pistol and nothing is basically the same. Not only that but these are essentially what daily challenges are. Kill 150 enemies with melee, gas dmg, etc. Except this time its an actual "challenge" and it actually provides an actual reward.

Whether they were pointless to you is irrelevant. They have been removed from the game, and with them went the whole concept of secondary objectives. While Daily Nightwave challenges might be similar, they're also daily and not specific to the given mission. Not only that, but they're finite, easily finished within a single mission leaving no proper secondary objective in subsequent missions for the day.

 

13 hours ago, Nitro747 said:

Jesus, sometimes it looks like you guys are looking for stuff to complain about nightwave...

Jesus, sometimes it looks like you guys are looking for Nightwave threads to attack...

[Nitro747]

29 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

None of the above issues were present when playing Alerts. We'd simply pick a random Alert and go. That's no longer possible with Nightwave.

 

Alert rewards were offered in addition to Credits picked up in missions. Whether you find it laughable to you is irrelevant, because an easy and convenient option to gain quick credits is now gone with nothing to replace it.

 

Whether they were pointless to you is irrelevant. They have been removed from the game, and with them went the whole concept of secondary objectives.

It is still possible, you can play fissures or basically anything else. Alert rewards like what? 300 plastids? SYNTHULA? It is not irrelevant because those rewards were pointless and didn't benefit anyone in the community. If anyone wanted 300 plastids they'd just go to any void fissure or farm team in Uranus and get 100 times more plastids + other rewards. Removing that to put a system that rewards the players with crazy stuff like Arcane Energize is an obvious benefit.

"easy and convenient option to gain quick credits" - I seriously don't need to explain basic math and how 10k credits as a reward for a mission is in no way "easy and quick" compared to all the other options and even normal missions.

"whether they were pointless to you is irrelevant" - Nope, they were pointless. Period. No one played those alerts. No one except you maybe. DE has the statistics to back that up. Those missions didn't benefit anyone except maybe MR1 players. The current system benefits all. There was no concept of "secondary objectives" either, you just can't call the "kill 10 enemies with a pistol" to get 1000 affinity a secondary objective.

[Nitro747]

Also, I'm not even mentioning the fact that those alerts were 100% randomized, making it literally impossible to plan if and when you want to get the hoard of 10k credits and 300 plastids...

[Steel_Rook]

To give you the benefit of a doubt that you're not just looking to pick a fight...

7 minutes ago, Nitro747 said:

It is still possible, you can play fissures or basically anything else.

No. Already addressed this here:

44 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Only if you deliberately ignore what you were quoting. I was pretty clear in my definition of Quick Play that it specifically referred to random missions selected predominantly by the game. That option no longer exists. I now have to pick my own missions one at a time every time. Quick Play reduces gameplay to a single choice - do I want to keep going. Lack of Quick Play introduces a choice at every juncture - what do I play next. Almost every single time I sit down to play with friends, that very question ends up eating several minutes at a time of back-and-forth about who needs what from what type of mission. If we decide on running Void Fissures it's even worse, as we need to sync up who needs what Prime components from which Relics and whom we're going to try and help currently.

None of the above issues were present when playing Alerts. We'd simply pick a random Alert and go. That's no longer possible with Nightwave.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Nitro747 said:

"whether they were pointless to you is irrelevant" - Nope, they were pointless. Period.

Yes, it is irrelevant because:

On 2019-03-01 at 11:57 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Instead, let's examine all the things we actually lost in the process of implementing Nightwave.

The whole point of this thread was to catalogue all of the things that Alerts allowed me to do that Nightwave no longer does. Whether you personally liked any of the gameplay we lost is not relevant to the discussion, because it doesn't change the fact that we lost those systems. If talking about them makes you uncomfortable then I'm sorry, but I'm not here to argue the merits of Nightwave. I'm here to catalogue what I lost, regardless of whether you approve of how I used to play the game or not.

 

12 minutes ago, Nitro747 said:

"easy and convenient option to gain quick credits" - I seriously don't need to explain basic math and how 10k credits as a reward for a mission is in no way "easy and quick" compared to all the other options and even normal missions. 

Well, if you don't feel the need to make an actual argument then why are you here in the first place? Moreover, yes - gaining additional Credits while playing content I already enjoyed is easier and more convenient than farming for credits, regardless of which is more efficient. Efficiency isn't my prerogative here - it rarely is. The convenience of being able to play the game the way I enjoy playing it while still making progress is. I don't know to what you're referring that's going to give me a bonus 10K credits per mission that isn't the Index, but it's not going to be running random missions as the fancy strikes. Which I could do before, and now cannot.

 

15 minutes ago, Nitro747 said:

There was no concept of "secondary objectives" either, you just can't call the "kill 10 enemies with a pistol" to get 1000 affinity a secondary objective. 

I don't see how you're going to stop me from calling it that. But the specific nomenclature doesn't matter. Again, I'm not arguing which is necessarily better. I'm arguing that a system existed, and it doesn't any more. You can tell me about how much more you like the new system 'till the cows come home, but that's not going to magically re-write history.

 

13 minutes ago, Nitro747 said:

Also, I'm not even mentioning the fact that those alerts were 100% randomized, making it literally impossible to plan if and when you want to get the hoard of 10k credits and 300 plastids...

All Alerts offered a bonus credits reward on top of their resource rewards. I've no idea why you're so stuck on "300 Plastids!!!" like it's "Would you kindly..." but you'll note that I've not argued about resource anywhere in the OP. I argued about Quick Play which you either disregard or don't understand what I'm talking about, Credits which you've so far refused to address beyond "NO U!" and Secondary Objectives which you've similarly just hand-waved. Alert Credit rewards were not random. They scaled to the level of the Alert.

 

Look, if you're going to entirely disregard what I'm saying and just wag your finger at me, then I'm not entirely sure if there's any point in making this responses again. When I start having to repeat entire paragraphs of what I've already written, the effort begins to not be worth the return.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Steel_Rook