Weekly Standing Caps -- Another Approach to Nightwave

[Kontrollo]

Proposal:

Instead of individual tasks in three tiers as there are now, there could be a lot more tasks, each with their own amount of standing gain, with each according to the effort that is expected of people. The total amount of achievable standing per week would be capped, and quite a bit below the total amount of standing that is offered.

Example: Right now we have 7x 1k dailies 7x 3k weeklies, and 3x 5k elite weeklies for a maximum of 43k. So if we say 43k is the maximum -- the cap -- we could now go and offer challenges in a variety of modes for a total of, let's say, 70k standing, and each challenge would be on a range between, say, 1k and 10k standing.

 

Pros:

• Granularity/Fairness: Standing gain would be more appropriate to the posed challenges.
  • As this would take difficulty into account, bigger ones could also just mean less time investment for similar but harder tasks.
• Choice/Enjoyment: People could really pick between doing a lot of small tasks or a few bigger ones.
  • People have less need to rush to completion or be abrasive because they'd have more leeway to avoid what they really dislike.
• Equality: Given enough effort per week to reach the cap, no one would be ahead or behind of other people.
• Diversity: Less liked modes like Archwing/Sharkwing, Salvage, Defection, Hijack, Lunaro and Conclave would have a place in this system, too. (Not meant to be a significant portion of the total, though.)

 

Cons:

• Tier separation/Clarity:
  • Right now we have these challenges: 1k daily, 3k weekly, 5k elite weekly. That's clear to anyone immediately.
  • With the suggested changes the UI would need a little more help because the rewarded standing would be more dynamic and appropriate to the individual challenges. Might be done with special symbols, colour coding, or filters.
  • There would be more tasks, which would make the UI more cluttered and possibly confusing.
• Satisfaction of completion: There would always be open tasks and probably a few half completed tasks when the cap is reached.
  • Some people dislike caps in general.
  • It's very hard to justify that the remaining tasks would not award anything at all. Especially to those who'd actively seek out the challenge of completing them.
• Potentially lower retention: Depending on how they're structured, having more options could lead to people completing everything faster, despite the goal/standing being the same as in the current system.
• Reworking the system: Requires more dev time again, no way around that. Especially also in terms of balancing the offered amount of standing.

 

Variants:

• Maybe keep the daily challenges as is, and only implement the cap for the weeklies.
• Keep tiers instead of having per-challenge standing. Suggestions here and here.

 

If you can think of more pros/cons, I'd be happy to add those to the OP.

 

I haven't actually come up with this by myself, most of it was a suggestion by @Remy_Lacroix here, and now that even the PvE challenges themselves have turned out to be somewhat controversial, this sounds more and more appealing to me.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Kontrollo
elaborate on cap cons / tiers variant

[Klokwerkaos]

I don't hate this idea entirely.  My problem as a min/max player is that there aren't enough challenges...

But let me ask you this... why should do all the challenges if I can't be rewarded for them?

Should I stop playing because I hit my cap?  DE won't like it if you say yes.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to give newer players a chance to get at least halfway through nightwave, or maybe more chances to earn cred for stuff they actually need that I couldn't possibly care about.  But what does that mean for the rest of us?  Why bother if we already cleared it?  Explain why this benefits me at all.  If you want to help out the newer players, that's great, but don't forget the vets in the process of the plan, DE already does enough of that.  What is the incentive for me to complete all these challenges?

Edited March 6, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[Kontrollo]

1 hour ago, Klokwerkaos said:

... But let me ask you this... why should do all the challenges if I can't be rewarded for them?

Should I stop playing because I hit my cap?  DE won't like it if you say yes. ...

Yes. That's exactly the idea and it's at the same time one of the proposal's strengths and a major weakness (which, in part, is having to explain it).

Having more options than achievable standing means you now can really just drop some challenges and not feel bad about it (even though quite a few of them already are optional in the long run with the current system). I've seen a lot of reasons why people dislike one challenge or another, and some talk about how that resulted in griefing, even. Be that:

• Too difficult
• Too boring
• Not enough time to play in one sitting
• Disliking the mode
• Too much time investment overall (maybe because RNG, see Ayatans)

And some of those were brought up for one and the same challenge.

With that problem out of the way, they could then add more challenges that have more niche appeal, and have the rewarded standing be tailored to the challenge, instead of this "one shoe fits all" approach we currently have.

 

Why would DE not like that, other than what I've outlined in the Cons? It would still be 43k standing per week, same as now.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Kontrollo
typos, clarification

[Klokwerkaos]

4 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Yes. That's exactly the idea and it's at the same time one of the proposal's strengths and a major weakness (which, in part, is having to explain it).

Having more options than achievable standing means you now can really just drop some challenges and not feel bad about it (even though quite a few of them already are with the current system). I've seen a lot of reasons why people dislike one challenge or another, and some talk about how that resulted in griefing, even. Be that:

• Too difficult
• Too boring
• Not enough time to play in one sitting
• Disliking the mode
• Too much time investment overall (maybe because RNG, see Ayatans)

And some of those were brought up for one and the same challenge.

With that problem out of the way, they could then add more challenges that have more niche appeal, and have the standing reward more tailored to the challenge, instead of this "one shoe fits all" approach we currently have.

 

Why would DE not like that, other than what I've outlined in the Cons? It would still be 43k standing per week, same as now.

If you give a player no reason to continue playing, especially those with the most time and money invested, they will stop playing.

The nightwave feature is designed to keep everyone playing, because the more they play the more shareholders see concurrent player count up and the more people play the more crap they buy, statistically speaking.

You're providing a solution to their solution.  See the issue?  If I can cap out my weekly in one day, I log in one day a week.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[Kontrollo]

Just now, Klokwerkaos said:

If you give a player no reason to continue playing, especially those with the most time and money invested, they will stop playing.

The nightwave feature is designed to keep everyone playing, because the more they play the more shareholders see concurrent player count up and the more people play the more crap they buy, statistically speaking.

You're providing a solution to their solution.  See the issue?

Hm, maybe it's not clear, but the idea is that this standing cap is per week. You get more options in what challenges to tackle every week, but you'd still have to participate in the rotations to reach the end levels, same as now.

How can I word that better? 🤔

[Klokwerkaos]

Just now, Kontrollo said:

Hm, maybe it's not clear, but the idea is that this standing cap is per week. You get more options in what challenges to tackle every week, but you'd still have to participate in the rotations to reach the end levels, same as now.

How can I word that better? 🤔

I get what you're saying, but let me be clear.  More options isn't just options, it's potential standing right now.  

That means, if I can knock out all of a week's worth of standing in two hours, I'm done for the week.  By having only as much standing as i can really earn available, I still have to complete dailies.  Why complete dailies if my standing is capped?  See the problem now?

Additionally, why should I do things that aren't earning me a reward?  There's no point.  it's why I don't bother with most of the game's content as is because there is nothing to earn or advance towards.

Nightwave is merely a bandaid fix for the larger problem of content draught.  What you're proposing will take away the urgency, and replace it with content draught again.

[Kontrollo]

1 minute ago, Klokwerkaos said:

I get what you're saying, but let me be clear.  More options isn't just options, it's potential standing right now.  

That means, if I can knock out all of a week's worth of standing in two hours, I'm done for the week.  By having only as much standing as i can really earn available, I still have to complete dailies.  Why complete dailies if my standing is capped?  See the problem now?

Additionally, why should I do things that aren't earning me a reward?  There's no point.  it's why I don't bother with most of the game's content as is because there is nothing to earn or advance towards.

Nightwave is merely a bandaid fix for the larger problem of content draught.  What you're proposing will take away the urgency, and replace it with content draught again.

Ah sorry, I get it now.

Yeah no. The idea is to not get any extra standing past the cap, simply because then some people would feel pressured into playing them, too (FOMO or variant, again). If you read the first page of the thread linked in the OP you can see why that is. And yes, I agree with the sentiment, but it is what it is.

It's more meant as a solution for how certain challenges are now "under attack" from several sides. It's too rigid. The overall pace of weekly challenges, however, would not change.

 

It's a valid point, but well, I don't know what could be done about it. Maybe some kind of weekly prestige thingie? Doesn't sound like a good solution to me, either. 😑

[Klokwerkaos]

Just now, Kontrollo said:

Ah sorry, I get it now.

Yeah no. The idea is to not get any extra standing past the cap, simply because then some people would feel pressured into playing them, too (FOMO or variant, again). If you read the first page of the thread linked in the OP you can see why that is. And yes, I agree with the sentiment, but it is what it is.

It's more meant as a solution for how certain challenges are now "under attack" from several sides. It's too rigid. The overall pace of weekly challenges, however, would not change.

 

It's a valid point, but well, I don't know what could be done about it. Maybe some kind of weekly prestige thingie? Doesn't sound like a good solution to me, either. 😑

And therein lies the problem.  I think DE already thought about this, long and hard.

I think they may tweak the system, fundamentally changing it in this regard though, seems unlikely.

By tweaks I mean like altering types of challenges and such, and standing amounts, numbers stuff.  Changing the way the standing is earned though (by time gate and DPS check), kind of defeats the purpose of what a battle pass is.  It defeats why it exists and it's intended inherent functions.

battle passes aren't new tech, they are well pioneered.  DE did a pretty good job with it too... but changing it to make it so people don't log in as much is taking away the reason for a battle pass.

People clammoring for it to be more like syndicates are failing to understand that they already tried engaging players with syndicates and it didn't keep them playing.  At first, sure, but the content gets phased out at this point.  part of the reason for the diversity is to breath life into the old content, which it does and does well.

[Kontrollo]

1 minute ago, Klokwerkaos said:

And therein lies the problem.  I think DE already thought about this, long and hard.

I think they may tweak the system, fundamentally changing it in this regard though, seems unlikely.

By tweaks I mean like altering types of challenges and such, and standing amounts, numbers stuff.  Changing the way the standing is earned though (by time gate and DPS check), kind of defeats the purpose of what a battle pass is.  It defeats why it exists and it's intended inherent functions.

battle passes aren't new tech, they are well pioneered.  DE did a pretty good job with it too... but changing it to make it so people don't log in as much is taking away the reason for a battle pass.

People clammoring for it to be more like syndicates are failing to understand that they already tried engaging players with syndicates and it didn't keep them playing.  At first, sure, but the content gets phased out at this point.  part of the reason for the diversity is to breath life into the old content, which it does and does well.

I agree, it's unlikely to change. But it might at least give a different perspective on what the problems actually are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Just to reiterate, the idea is that the overall weekly pace (required effort) would be kind of as now for everyone, just in different forms.

For example, to complete their weekly standing, people could choose between one big Survival to the tune of 10k vs. 4 short-ish and easier challenges awarding 2.5k each. Then no one would have a reason anymore to be against those endurance challenges. Too difficult? Too long? Too easy and boring? Do the 4 shorter ones instead.

 

P.S. I'm going to add the argument about the cap to the Cons in the OP in some way (expanding the 2nd point), but I'll have to think about how to make it concise.

[Klokwerkaos]

1 minute ago, Kontrollo said:

I agree, it's unlikely to change. But it might at least give a different perspective on what the problems actually are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Just to reiterate, the idea is that the overall weekly pace (required effort) would be kind of as now for everyone, just in different forms.

For example, to complete their weekly standing, people could choose between one big Survival to the tune of 10k vs. 4 short-ish and easier challenges awarding 2.5k each. Then no one would have a reason anymore to be against those endurance challenges. Too difficult? Too long? Too easy and boring? Do the 4 shorter ones instead.

 

P.S. I'm going to add the argument about the cap to the Cons in the OP in some way (expanding the 2nd point), but I'll have to think about how to make it concise.

Just try to keep in mind, the bottom line has to matter to DE and they aren't bad for thinking about that.

Concurrent players matters for immediate cash and investment.  

When you try to create a solution to that you're undoing what they just very purposefully did. 

All in all it's a good system because you can opt out of it entirely.  If it was mandatory content I'd call foul, but it's not, these are all things you can get in game or are unnecessary.

My solution was pretty simple.  Bring back the old alerts so new players don't feel so much pressure to do nightwave for rewards like nitain, and can also earn their way up with other resource bundle alerts (rubedo, oxium, etc.).

Then, getting the nitain is just like, "oh, cool, i got additional stuff to help!"

Not "I have to do this to be able to get anywhere."

outside of nitain to a new player, literally nothing else matters in the reward table to anyone other than "I feel like I want that" because you don't need umbral forma for anything, and everything else is cosmetic or otherwise easily attainable.  Nitain though, as I recall it's a real PITA to get outside of alerts.  If I recall correctly it was like forma in that it "could" drop at a stupidly low chance from challenge boxes on lua, I might be mistaken though, i haven't thought about nitain in a really long time.

 

[Kontrollo]

5 minutes ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Just try to keep in mind, the bottom line has to matter to DE and they aren't bad for thinking about that.

Concurrent players matters for immediate cash and investment.  

When you try to create a solution to that you're undoing what they just very purposefully did. 

Uh, but this proposal is with that in mind? It's not undoing it at all, it's essentially: Instead of 7 + 7 + 3 challenges you can pick from, say, 30 each week and get standing until you've hit the time/effort target. Everything else being equal.

 

10 minutes ago, Klokwerkaos said:

My solution was pretty simple.  Bring back the old alerts so new players don't feel so much pressure to do nightwave for rewards like nitain, and can also earn their way up with other resource bundle alerts (rubedo, oxium, etc.).

Then, getting the nitain is just like, "oh, cool, i got additional stuff to help!"

Not "I have to do this to be able to get anywhere."

outside of nitain to a new player, literally nothing else matters in the reward table to anyone other than "I feel like I want that" because you don't need umbral forma for anything, and everything else is cosmetic or otherwise easily attainable.  Nitain though, as I recall it's a real PITA to get outside of alerts.  If I recall correctly it was like forma in that it "could" drop at a stupidly low chance from challenge boxes on lua, I might be mistaken though, i haven't thought about nitain in a really long time.

Well, I forgot the first one earlier, but Auras, Nitain, Slots and Potatoes are what really count here (Formas aren't hard to get; Auras/Potatoes aren't that expensive, Slots are even entirely new as reward). And yeah, Nitain had some low chance in some caches, but it was called "Alertium" for a reason.

Anyway, I'm not at all against bringing back Alerts, either. Just arguing from the perspective that the new Nightwave system is supposed to be a permanent replacement, is all.

[lighthoof]

My proposal was capping not the rep itself , but the amount of challenges that can be completed weekly and providing options to the players
Leave the dailies as they are, give the ability to chose 7 weeklies from a pool of 15 and 3 elites from a pool of 7 to 10

[Stormdragon]

I like this idea, however, i'd keep the challenges split across the three currently existing tiers (daily, weekly and elite) but would add some sort of challenge slots that get filled with a challenge of the corresponding tier upon its completion in order emulate the current pace of progression. 

For example, DE could impmement a rotation of 5 dailies, 7 weeklies, and 7 elite challenges; but then, every time a player fulfills a task for certain tier it takes a slot from the corresponding tier. Daily slots amd challenges would keep the current refresh pace (which isn't actually daily) by enabling a single daily slot for 3 days before it gets grayed out and unable to be filled for the rest of the week once the challenges added when it got enabled expire (dailies can be tricky to balance given how the current system works)

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

That means, if I can knock out all of a week's worth of standing in two hours, I'm done for the week.  By having only as much standing as i can really earn available, I still have to complete dailies.  Why complete dailies if my standing is capped?  See the problem now?

We can already knock out nearly all of a week's worth in standing before facing a "refreshes in X days" message in the screen.

The only thing that keeps players coming back is stuff such as the artificial longevity from having weeklies asking for missions with their own daily caps like "complete 10 syndicate missions" where each maxed syndicate offers three missions but only up to 4 of them can easily be maxed at once but most people will probably have 2 or 3 (having 5 or all 6 might be possible, but the micromanaging required for it is probably too much. Not really in the mood to do the math and prove in theory, let alone in practice); or dailies that aren't actual dailies since these last 3 days each.

[Steel_Rook]

3 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Should I stop playing because I hit my cap?  DE won't like it if you say yes.

DE already like it if you say yes. Literally all of the Syndicates in this game have daily Standing cap, and even Focus has a daily cap on it. If you did what I did and ignored Foruna when it came out, then had to grind out to Old Mate when Orb Heists came out, you might have noticed that that would take a good couple of weeks regardless of what you did, and that you could hit your Daily Standing with Solaris United in maybe an hour of play. So yes, you absolutely should stop playing when you hit the cap, and DE intend for you to do that. Not only that, but this is already the case even with Nightwave itself, though the "cap" there is the amount of challenges available in a week.

 

1 hour ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Just try to keep in mind, the bottom line has to matter to DE and they aren't bad for thinking about that.

Without wishing to be rude - yes they are. Very much so. These are the same people who thought it was a good idea to sell Orokin Catalyst and Reactors exclusively through the Cash Shop with no means of earning them until player backlash forced their hand. These are the same people who thought a real-money slot machine to randomly swap around your Kubrow's appearance was a good idea, until they realise it actually WAS a slot machine because somebody "hit the lever" hundreds of times. Because of course that's how it was going to pan out. Just because DE came up with it doesn't mean it's a good idea, which the levels of negative feedback that Nightwave is gathering strongly suggest and which DE themselves have already admitted might not have been done all that well. You can blame the players if you want, but that only goes so far before it hits the bottom line.

 

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

The nightwave feature is designed to keep everyone playing, because the more they play the more shareholders see concurrent player count up and the more people play the more crap they buy, statistically speaking.

Warframe's play model isn't based on extended play sessions. It's build on the standard Chinese MMO "endurance" system, where players are encouraged to play for shorter periods of time, but come back every day. It's why the game is so aggressively intrusive about inserting itself in your daily schedule. Damn near everything has a cooldown or a timer on it, from research to building to crafting to dailies to weeklies to everything else in-between, including Nightwave's challenge release schedule. Players spend more money through familiarity, and familiarity doesn't happen by keeping players in the game. It happens by getting players to keep coming back. Farmville made bank by pulling players in for short sessions over and over again and deliberately time-gating all of its mechanics in much the same way, and most of the mobile games of today do the same thing. The concurrent players stat is a bragging right at best.

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

16 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

Proposal:

Instead of individual tasks in three tiers as there are now, there could be a lot more tasks, each with their own amount of standing gain, with each according to the effort that is expected of people. The total amount of achievable standing per week would be capped, and quite a bit below the total amount of standing that is offered.

Example: Right now we have 7x 1k dailies 7x 3k weeklies, and 3x 5k elite weeklies for a maximum of 43k. So if we say 43k is the maximum -- the cap -- we could now go and offer challenges in a variety of modes for a total of, let's say, 70k standing, and each challenge would be on a range between, say, 1k and 10k standing.

 

Pros:

• Granularity/Fairness: Standing gain would be more appropriate to the posed challenges.
  • As this would take difficulty into account, bigger ones could also just mean less time investment for similar but harder tasks.
• Choice/Enjoyment: People could really pick between doing a lot of small tasks or a few bigger ones.
  • People have less need to rush to completion or be abrasive because they'd have more leeway to avoid what they really dislike.
• Equality: Given enough effort per week to reach the cap, no one would be ahead or behind of other people.
• Diversity: Less liked modes like Archwing/Sharkwing, Salvage, Defection, Hijack, Lunaro and Conclave would have a place in this system, too. (Not meant to be a significant portion of the total, though.)

 

Cons:

• Tier separation/Clarity:
  • Right now we have these challenges: 1k daily, 3k weekly, 5k elite weekly. That's clear to anyone immediately.
  • With the suggested changes the UI would need a little more help because the rewarded standing would be more dynamic and appropriate to the individual challenges. Might be done with special symbols, colour coding, or filters.
  • There would be more tasks, which would make the UI more cluttered and possibly confusing.
• Satisfaction of completion: There would always be open tasks and probably a few half completed tasks when the cap is reached. Some people dislike caps in general.
• Reworking the system: Requires more dev time again, no way around that. Especially also in terms of balancing the offered amount of standing.

 

Variant: Maybe keep the daily challenges as is, and only implement the cap for the weeklies.

 

If you can think of more pros/cons, I'd be happy to add those to the OP.

 

I haven't actually come up with this by myself, most of it was a suggestion by @Remy_Lacroix here, and now that even the PvE challenges themselves have turned out to be somewhat controversial, this sounds more and more appealing to me.

No, I want to be rewarded for doing all the hard challenges. With a limit I can just do the easy challenges and be limited. Instead make more, easier challenges, and on top of elite add mythic which can add 10000 standing

[Kontrollo]

8 hours ago, lighthoof said:

My proposal was capping not the rep itself , but the amount of challenges that can be completed weekly and providing options to the players
Leave the dailies as they are, give the ability to chose 7 weeklies from a pool of 15 and 3 elites from a pool of 7 to 10

Yes, that would accomplish mostly the same thing...

 

7 hours ago, Stormdragon said:

I like this idea, however, i'd keep the challenges split across the three currently existing tiers (daily, weekly and elite) but would add some sort of challenge slots that get filled with a challenge of the corresponding tier upon its completion in order emulate the current pace of progression. 

For example, DE could impmement a rotation of 5 dailies, 7 weeklies, and 7 elite challenges; but then, every time a player fulfills a task for certain tier it takes a slot from the corresponding tier. Daily slots amd challenges would keep the current refresh pace (which isn't actually daily) by enabling a single daily slot for 3 days before it gets grayed out and unable to be filled for the rest of the week once the challenges added when it got enabled expire (dailies can be tricky to balance given how the current system works)

... however, the reason tiers are not part of the proposal is simply because it would be more flexible this way.

To elaborate: we have 3 individual rounds of ESO in one challenge, which from a rewards standpoint is equivalent to a Hydrolyst (Tridolon), or half of a 60 minute Survival (I count the two as part of the same thing, just awkwardly implemented through tiers). Obviously not that great.

But I don't have a strong opinion on this one, keeping tiers would definitely be fine, too, when done right.

 

7 hours ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

No, I want to be rewarded for doing all the hard challenges. With a limit I can just do the easy challenges and be limited. Instead make more, easier challenges, and on top of elite add mythic which can add 10000 standing

I don't quite follow. This would give room for more hard challenges for those who like doing them, but without locking up a significant amount of standing behind them, as the two survival challenges this week did.

 

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Warframe's play model isn't based on extended play sessions. It's build on the standard Chinese MMO "endurance" system, where players are encouraged to play for shorter periods of time, but come back every day. It's why the game is so aggressively intrusive about inserting itself in your daily schedule. Damn near everything has a cooldown or a timer on it, from research to building to crafting to dailies to weeklies to everything else in-between, including Nightwave's challenge release schedule.

It wasn't always like this. In the game's earlier days, pretty much everything was RNG, and playing 20+ minutes in an endless mission was as normal as rushing captures.

Standing & caps were introduced by request, because doing the same thing over and over for a very low chance to eventually get whatever you're looking for is not better, just more annoying. Having standing bars means there's steady progression instead of pure luck.

A big reason for caps is to at least somewhat pace the people, because they have a tendency to rush through everything when possible (that's how Focus caps got introduced initially). *insert cake comic from that other thread*

[Klokwerkaos]

15 hours ago, Stormdragon said:

I like this idea, however, i'd keep the challenges split across the three currently existing tiers (daily, weekly and elite) but would add some sort of challenge slots that get filled with a challenge of the corresponding tier upon its completion in order emulate the current pace of progression. 

For example, DE could impmement a rotation of 5 dailies, 7 weeklies, and 7 elite challenges; but then, every time a player fulfills a task for certain tier it takes a slot from the corresponding tier. Daily slots amd challenges would keep the current refresh pace (which isn't actually daily) by enabling a single daily slot for 3 days before it gets grayed out and unable to be filled for the rest of the week once the challenges added when it got enabled expire (dailies can be tricky to balance given how the current system works)

We can already knock out nearly all of a week's worth in standing before facing a "refreshes in X days" message in the screen.

The only thing that keeps players coming back is stuff such as the artificial longevity from having weeklies asking for missions with their own daily caps like "complete 10 syndicate missions" where each maxed syndicate offers three missions but only up to 4 of them can easily be maxed at once but most people will probably have 2 or 3 (having 5 or all 6 might be possible, but the micromanaging required for it is probably too much. Not really in the mood to do the math and prove in theory, let alone in practice); or dailies that aren't actual dailies since these last 3 days each.

Dailies are required to cap standing, thereby making them somewhat mandatory.  You're just wrong on this, not sorry.

[Stormdragon]

1 hour ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Dailies are required to cap standing, thereby making them somewhat mandatory.  You're just wrong on this, not sorry.

Are you serious? How are dailies mandatory when doing some really quick math you can realize that dailies can be completely dismissed and still reach the highest tier rewards.

For instance:

-To reach the max rank you need "just" 300K standing on a chapter (30 ranks of 10K each, assuming the progression model remains)

-Each week offers (7dailies×1K + 7weeklies×3K + 3elite×5K) = (7+21+15)K = 43K standing on the current system.

-Each chapter is intended to last 10 weeks -> 43K × 10 weeks = 430K total standing available on each chapter. (430K > 300K)

-Doing every single challenge on a chapter will provide a surplus of 430K - 300K = 130K standing.

-Daily tasks offer only 7K × 10 weeks = 70K of those 430K, which is less than tje surplus from doing everything.

-Not doing a single daily task grants (430-70)K = 360K standing at the end of a chapter, which is still 60K standing more than that required to reach the rank 30 rewards.

So as you can see, daily tasks can be completely dismissed, which allows for anyone to play warframe once a week and still be able to get all of the Night Wave rewards.

[Steel_Rook]

13 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

It wasn't always like this. In the game's earlier days, pretty much everything was RNG, and playing 20+ minutes in an endless mission was as normal as rushing captures.

I have nowhere near enough seniority to speak to the game's earlier days beyond what I've heard or seen in that one NoClip documentary so fair enough. My point was more aimed at the game's current design, which is intrusively habit-forming by obvious intent. I suspect this might have started as a means of preventing players from burning themselves out (the stated goal of "endurance" systems in all F2P games), but its current implementation seems to have drifted very far from that. Right now, long play sessions and focused grinding are deliberately discouraged via time-gated caps, with players intended to play shorter play sessions but keep coming back day after day. As someone who fell behind and had to "fast-track" Solaris United standing, that's exactly the effect it had. I did a bit of mental math and figured out I'd need about 10 days or so to clear all the levels, which was a few days shorter than my paid leave off work - provided I got maximum standing per day.

I have nothing against Warframe promoting longer play sessions, or at the very least for it to STOP REMINDING ME that I've been "playing over an hour" and to please "consider taking a break." Rather, my argument was that promoting excessively long play sessions is not some no-brainer route to financial success in a game replete with mechanics designed expressly to discourage long play sessions.

 

4 hours ago, Stormdragon said:

So as you can see, daily tasks can be completely dismissed, which allows for anyone to play warframe once a week and still be able to get all of the Night Wave rewards.

I don't think you'll see a lot of people skipping Dailies. They last for three or four days (so not really "daily") and they're largely trivial to achieve. I don't see a lot of people doing Weeklies and Elite Weeklies but somehow missing literally all of the dailies. However, you are correct - Dailies are by far the least significant contributor to standing progression.

[Kontrollo]

16 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

... My point was more aimed at the game's current design, which is intrusively habit-forming by obvious intent. ...

... Right now, long play sessions and focused grinding are deliberately discouraged via time-gated caps, with players intended to play shorter play sessions but keep coming back day after day. As someone who fell behind and had to "fast-track" Solaris United standing, that's exactly the effect it had. ...

... Rather, my argument was that promoting excessively long play sessions is not some no-brainer route to financial success in a game replete with mechanics designed expressly to discourage long play sessions.

And mine was that we've come a long way, and it's not just something that's being imposed on us, it's something that has been requested, too.

I haven't had that impression, and I had a lot to catch up last year after a long break. But that might've been because I already had a high MR? However, you don't have to grind one "syndicate" exclusively then break until the next day, there's a lot of other content -- case in point: levelling Warframes and weapons are worthy endeavours, not only to raise that cap but also to have fun trying out new things. Why did you have the impression you "had to fast-track" it anyway? I'm still not done with Vox and the Vent Kids by now.

Sorry, I guess that just doesn't match my experience, but of course I've been working up to it over years.

 

P.S.

Spoiler

16 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I have nothing against Warframe promoting longer play sessions, or at the very least for it to STOP REMINDING ME that I've been "playing over an hour" and to please "consider taking a break."

Don't quote me on this, but I think I've seen it mentioned somewhere that this is just a requirement in some regions, but not others.

 

16 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

They [dailies] last for three or four days (so not really "daily") and they're largely trivial to achieve.

He mentioned that earlier by the way.

[Steel_Rook]

8 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

I haven't had that impression, and I had a lot to catch up last year after a long break. But that might've been because I already had a high MR? However, you don't have to grind one "syndicate" exclusively then break until the next day, there's a lot of other content -- case in point: levelling Warframes and weapons are worthy endeavours, not only to raise that cap but also to have fun trying out new things. Why did you have the impression you "had to fast-track" it anyway? I'm still not done with Vox and the Vent Kids by now.

I'm not really sure if you're referring to Vox Solaris or Nightwave with "Syndicate," so I'll try to tackle both.

While yes, doing other things is fine and dandy, Nightwave is time-exclusive. If I miss a week, that's a substantial chunk of possible standing down the drain. The exclusivity creates pressure to complete as much as I can in as little time as possible, or else not bother trying. And I'll freely admit that Nightwave isn't the only time-exclusive - that's essentially what the prime Vault is... Except for two things. First, Prime items are tradable, meaning I can just buy them if I don't want to grind - just got a Frost Prime that way the other day. Second, Prime Vaults are not cumulative. If I wanted to not be lazy and actually earn a Frost Prime, I could work on every piece during every week independently. If each piece were only available for one or two weeks before being rotated out, I'd probably be here complaining about it. As it stands, though, the entire three or four months or however long this lasts is uninterrupted, unstructured time. It's the "schedule" of Nightwave which creates issues for me.

As to Vox Solaris - what I did was run two bounties then hunt animals for the rest of the daily cap, and then after that go do circles at the Pearl for Vent Kids standing. That took me a couple of hours, by which time I was usually sick of Warframe for the day. I might go do other stuff, but there's only so much time I have to devote to the game. The days of spending 8-hour sessions in it (which is how I amassed 1000+ hours in ~150 days) are long gone. If I skimp on Vox Solaris standing for the day, that tacks on days to getting to Old Mate, and I want to get to Old Mate because DE decided to gate Atmospheric Archguns behind Profit-Taker Orb bounties. I want to have an Atmospheric Archgun before my vacation time is over so I can play around with it, meaning I need maximum standing every single day, meaning I don't get to do a lot else in Warframe for the day.

The reason I say all of this is by design because this is by far the most common design of F2P games, especially on the mobile market. Forcing players in to short but daily sessions is a far more reliable means of retention than forcing players into excessively long sessions which start to eat up significant chunks of the day and require actual planning around. That's the whole point of daily caps, daily missions, rested XP, Endurance systems and all the other means to both get you out of the game and get you back into it tomorrow. Heavy hour-long marathons and potentially multiple of them are absolutely not a great tactic for player retention, is my point.

[Kontrollo]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Spoiler

I'm not really sure if you're referring to Vox Solaris or Nightwave with "Syndicate," so I'll try to tackle both.

While yes, doing other things is fine and dandy, Nightwave is time-exclusive. If I miss a week, that's a substantial chunk of possible standing down the drain. The exclusivity creates pressure to complete as much as I can in as little time as possible, or else not bother trying. And I'll freely admit that Nightwave isn't the only time-exclusive - that's essentially what the prime Vault is... Except for two things. First, Prime items are tradable, meaning I can just buy them if I don't want to grind - just got a Frost Prime that way the other day. Second, Prime Vaults are not cumulative. If I wanted to not be lazy and actually earn a Frost Prime, I could work on every piece during every week independently. If each piece were only available for one or two weeks before being rotated out, I'd probably be here complaining about it. As it stands, though, the entire three or four months or however long this lasts is uninterrupted, unstructured time. It's the "schedule" of Nightwave which creates issues for me.

As to Vox Solaris - what I did was run two bounties then hunt animals for the rest of the daily cap, and then after that go do circles at the Pearl for Vent Kids standing. That took me a couple of hours, by which time I was usually sick of Warframe for the day. I might go do other stuff, but there's only so much time I have to devote to the game. The days of spending 8-hour sessions in it (which is how I amassed 1000+ hours in ~150 days) are long gone. If I skimp on Vox Solaris standing for the day, that tacks on days to getting to Old Mate, and I want to get to Old Mate because DE decided to gate Atmospheric Archguns behind Profit-Taker Orb bounties. I want to have an Atmospheric Archgun before my vacation time is over so I can play around with it, meaning I need maximum standing every single day, meaning I don't get to do a lot else in Warframe for the day.

The reason I say all of this is by design because this is by far the most common design of F2P games, especially on the mobile market. Forcing players in to short but daily sessions is a far more reliable means of retention than forcing players into excessively long sessions which start to eat up significant chunks of the day and require actual planning around. That's the whole point of daily caps, daily missions, rested XP, Endurance systems and all the other means to both get you out of the game and get you back into it tomorrow. Heavy hour-long marathons and potentially multiple of them are absolutely not a great tactic for player retention, is my point.

You got that right, I put "syndicate" in quotes because all of these are syndicates in terms of mechanics, but not part of the original six.

 

And here is where I think your problem lies: with what has been confirmed (and let's not go into the math again), you need 3/5th to 2/3rd of completion to reach the highest level -- and what you get out of it is "only" cosmetic.

Of course you could argue for that Umbra Forma at 29, but then I'd tell you even that isn't really important -- I think the best reward is at level 25.

That's beside the point, however. Here's where I really want to put the focus on:

• There's plenty you can miss and still complete it.
• You don't need to complete it for good rewards. And even if you complete it, you can show off your dedication with that end reward, but nothing more.

Almost everything in this game works on a model of timed exclusivity. If you can't get it now, there'll be another way in the future (already confirmed here, too). You should really just take a step back and reevaluate whether these rewards are even worth your dedication or not.

I definitely agree there's quite a bit of room for improvement (hence this thread and other feedback I put together), but if you feel forced into doing anything at all here, that's really more of a "you problem".

 

That said, I'm aware I'm biased because it's definitely easier for me than others to complete these challenges.

But maybe go ahead and look at it from the standpoint of someone who has only 4 hours on weekends (= already missing four dailies), then see how far they can go when missing X weeks with Y% completion. It's really not that big of a deal.

With all that out of the way, thanks for sharing your experience, that has got me some valuable insight.

 

P.S: As for the last part, here's another anecdote: People got bored when they levelled all weapons and Warframes, so they asked to be able to do something else. DE introduced Focus so there was something to do with that Affinity that otherwise would go to waste. People went ahead and found ways to do it "efficiently", to the point that they blew through the Focus system in much shorter time than intended. So DE introduced Focus caps and that Focus pickup thingie (still not a fan of that). It all can be summed up nicely with this post here, really.

[Steel_Rook]

1 minute ago, Kontrollo said:

Almost everything in this game works on a model of timed exclusivity. If you can't get it now, there'll be another way in the future (already confirmed here, too). You should really just take a step back and reevaluate whether these rewards are even worth your dedication or not.

Well... They aren't, and that's the problem. Because progress through the system is so dependent on extensive, persistent activity in Warframe, it ends up being functionally binary. Are you willing to commit to that amount of work? If so, great! All or most of the rewards should be fairly easy to get for you. If not, then sod it - don't even bother. Do something else and let the system sit unused. I personally see very little middle ground, and which side of the debate you fall on tends to depend on how much time you spend in the game. Sure, you can do "some" challenges and get "some" rewards, but the system is designed to pressure people into habit-forming activities and that tends to have a significant backlash effect.

The reason I brought up the Prime Vault is that - despite fundamentally disagreeing with timed exclusivity - they're a decent way to deliver timed-exclusive content. The difference here is in horizontal vs. vertical progression. Progression through unvaulted items for the 10 or so weeks they're available is almost entirely horizontal. There's a lot of stuff to earn, but there's no hierarchy to it. I don't have to earn a Frost Prime Chassis before a Systems will drop, and only then will a Blueprint drop. I can earn all of the rewards in any order at every point during the active period. Nightwave's reward system is almost entirely vertical. Most of the rewards are earned through a rigid hierarchy and in a fixed order, meaning I have to put in a S#&$-ton of work earning garbage I don't want, just so I can eventually get to the one or two things I might care about. I don't want sigils. I don't want Glyps. I don't want emblems. I'm sure some people do, but this is the stuff companies put in loot boxes to pad out the drop tables and make the actually desirable rewards rarer. And yet I have to spend time and effort earning all of that crap to get to the high levels. None of that is the case with the Prime Vault, and I thought that worked fine.

I don't actually HATE Nightwave or really have that significant of a problem with it. I don't like that we lost Alerts since they were the majority of what I did, but I can do other things or just straight-up play other games. However, I find that Nightwave itself has SUBSTANTIAL issues in its core reward structure which WILL alienate players with increasing regularity the longer the system goes on. I know from experience that pressure from a game only goes so far before motivation collapses, and that collapse can cause damage to good will extending FAR beyond the initial system causing it. Once you make a player feel disenfranchised, even minor issues they might have been able to overlook (like how the new Corpus Lockers SILL don't have a "locked" vs. "failed to unlock" distinction) start feeling far more significant when good will isn't there to make us look past them. And while I'm not there yet (still on the fence, new melee system helps), I have a friend who straight-up stopped playing Warframe after Nightwave was introduced and is even now substantially less active despite me talking him into playing it some more.

Slap fights with people talking about "crybabies" and "whiners" aside, my primary concern with Nightwave is that it's so aggressive in incentivising persistent activity that it's going to bring about substantial backlash sooner or later. Yes, the new activities are good for getting back into the game after a lapse and it's even had that effect on me to a point. However, I've been playing MMOs for 15 years now, and I'm well familiar with the subtleties of burnout. I can see it coming both personally and from community feedback, and I know just how easy it is for reward systems to delay but simultaneously exasperate it. My gut is telling me that Nightwave is a bubble. It's going to generate a lot of activity short-term and look like a great success but REALLY burn some people out probably mid-way through the season. I've seen it before in a variety of titles, that's what this smells like to me. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm overstatement, but that's my concern.

[Kontrollo]

Look, I'm honestly growing a bit tired of this. So excuse me for what follows.

 

9 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Well... They aren't, and that's the problem. ...

I've seen you spend so much time on this forum already, you obviously care. From what I've seen, the time it took you to write in this and other threads you could've easily completed all of this and past week's challenges by now.

First, you say your problem is: "The exclusivity creates pressure to complete as much as I can in as little time as possible, or else not bother trying." and now they aren't worth your dedication? Can you make up your mind already?

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

... Because progress through the system is so dependent on extensive, persistent activity in Warframe, it ends up being functionally binary.

No and no again, and it can't be stressed enough: NO.

It's just you. You're holding yourself hostage here. You really need to take a step back and look at it differently. The level rewards are incentives to take part in this system. If you feel like you're being strong-armed into it, you're doing it wrong.

You'd have a point about horizontal vs. vertical if there was a real game changer at the end of it, like a new Warframe or The Ultimate Weapon™️. But it's just fluff. Even the level 25 reward can be obtained by doing something else.

Which I guess leaves us with that Umbra Forma? It's new and shiny, of course, but in no way necessary, either. What little we get out of it is for one Warframe or melee weapon out of ~60 or over a 150, respectively.

 

Sorry, but I'm not going to address the rest of your post. I'd be happy to go back and talk about the proposal, but otherwise I'm done here.

[Steel_Rook]

6 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

I've seen you spend so much time on this forum already, you obviously care. From what I've seen, the time it took you to write in this and other threads you could've easily completed all of this and past week's challenges by now. First, you say your problem is: "The exclusivity creates pressure to complete as much as I can in as little time as possible, or else not bother trying." and now they aren't worth your dedication? Can you make up your mind already?

There's no incongruity here. For one, using "time spent" as the only meaningful metric is heavily misleading, because the central resource here is motivation. I'm motivated to post on forums because it's something I do for fun. I'm not motivated to do 60-minute survival in much the same way I'm not motivated to sit for 60 minutes in a que at the DMV. Spending more time isn't going to help accomplish activities that I'm not even going to attempt. Secondly, you're conflating my "caring" about discussing the subject of Nightwave with my caring about... Nightwave. Game design is something of a passion of mine, so discussing it comes much easier with much more motivation than slogging through Elite Sanctuary Assault or yet another droll bounty.

Finally, there's no incongruity between recognising that an activity heavily pressures me into something and my refusal to be pressured into it. Just because Nightwave demands persistent activity doesn't mean I'm going to give it that, and just because I personally find myself demotivated by Nightwave (rather than motivated) doesn't mean the system isn't attempting to pressure me. To give you Minority Report example - rolling a ball along the desk but catching it after it drops off the edge doesn't change the fact that it was going to fall. Make of that what you will, but remember my prediction in a couple of months.

 

15 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Sorry, but I'm not going to address the rest of your post. I'd be happy to go back and talk about the proposal, but otherwise I'm done here.

If it frustrates you to that extent, then simply ignore me and I'll go away. If need be, slap me on Forum Ignore - it's pretty easy. Because if we've gone to the point of sidestepping arguments as "this is a you issue," then there really is nothing to discuss as that's not a discussion.