The problem with "Use these resources" Nightwave challenges

[JeranTek]

There have been enough of these now that I feel compelled to talk about it.

Week 1 had "Fill 5 Ayatans"

Week 4 now has "Use 3 Forma" and "Gild a weapon".

The problem for me is not that I can't do them (although I personally chose not to play arbitrations to get the Ayatans but that's not the point of this post).

The point is that now I won't do anything in the game that isn't mandated by Nightwave.

Should I pull my Hildryn out of the foundry? What if a challenge in Week 5 is "Build a Warframe"? Since Hildryn is the only one I haven't mastered I'll hold her there until I see the end of this season.

I don't have any more weapons to build and master but I'm expecting "build 3 weapons" to come up in the near future so anything sitting in my foundry is going to sit there for a while.

I just earned a lot of cash on the credit weekend.

What if another challenge is "Get a mod to rank 10"? Now I can't finish ranking all my mods in case I need the endo to do that.

Nightwave is not only dictating how I should play the game, it's not only dictating when I should play the game. It's now encouraging me not to play the game or use mechanics in case they are challenges in future weeks.

[taiiat]

it's not dictating anything - you're dictating that you have to complete 100% of the tasks, when there isn't any benefit in actually completing all of them versus just completing the majority of them.

and if you're playing regularly where you might have used stuff before you're asked to, in that regular play you can compensate for opting out of a task by capturing some Fugitives.

Edited March 18, 2019 by taiiat

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Not true since there's prestige mode, which gives users the ability to actually farm wolf credits before the end of the season. Otherwise, you'll barely reach lvl 30 or might even miss your target if you ignored too many objectives. You're not forced, but are heavily enouraged to do so in fear of missing out on forma and exclusive cosmetics.

The fact that there's only a vague comment that you "only need about 60% of the tasks" isn't proof that you can ignore every challenge you don't like... Especially when you factor in the prestige mode being the only efficient way to farm wolf credits anyways, which are needed to afford the gazillion different helmets and cosmetics available there. If you're a newer player ,you pretty much have to 100% the weekly challenges if you want to get that 40% more XP needed to be able to spend it in prestige mode to get wolf credits.

Edited March 18, 2019 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[Steel_Rook]

Yeah, I wish DE would stop with the "inventory check" challenges. There's nothing challenging about them. Either you already have the stuff needed to complete the challenge when it comes out in which case it's trivial, or you don't in which case it's tedious. I was lucky this week, in that I happen to have a few weapons needing Forma (Baro's Prisma Grinlock, currently) and I built my first Moa yesterday so I'll have something to guild. I wasn't lucky the first week, however, as I'd already traded in a large stockpile of Ayatan Sculptures shortly before the challenge rolled out. That's not "challenging," it's luck of the draw as to whether it caught you at the right time.

Inventory challenges which can be completed the moment they come up if you just happen to already have the items in question should not be a thing, and DE really need to stop adding them in. I might hate the 60-minute Kiva Survival Weeklies, but at least those required actual activity performed after the challenges came out. Inventory checks just do what they've done to the OP - they make us paranoid about using our own consumable resources in case a challenge next week asks for them.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Stealth_Cobra said:

Not true since there's prestige mode, which gives users the ability to actually farm wolf credits before the end of the season. Otherwise, you'll barely reach lvl 30 or might even miss your target if you ignored too many objectives. You're not forced, but are heavily enouraged to do so in fear of missing out on forma and exclusive cosmetics.

The fact that there's only a vague comment that you "only need about 60% of the tasks" isn't proof that you can ignore every challenge you don't like... Especially when you factor in the prestige mode being the only efficient way to farm wolf credits anyways, which are needed to afford the gazillion different helmets and cosmetics available there. If you're a newer player ,you pretty much have to 100% the weekly challenges if you want to get that 40% more XP needed to be able to spend it in prestige mode to get wolf credits.

but u dont evne need the extra wolf creds....

what r u going to buy? more catalysts? cause thats the only thing to buy past the inital 300 wolf creds, and i alreayd had nitain from the old alerts system plus doing goul purge, and i didnt evne go for nitain most of the time 

yes we have eople thinking they need to get everything or everything twice, when thats simply them just not wanting to miss out on rewards they dont need

 

i get that to some people they may want or need, but do u need ALL of the alt helms?

[JeranTek]

Yes. I need all the alt helms. Then again, I have all of them except Hildryn's. That's not the point.

Part of how I make Warframe interesting for me is to collect everything in game. I buy plat to support DE but I have several thousand lying around because I only use it for slots.

For me the challenge is not "Can I earn enough plat to buy all the pretty toys?" It's "Can I get the pretty toys within the confines of the in-game rules?"

@Steel_Rook I like the term "Inventory Check challenges". Thank you. I'll steal that in future.

[ShortCat]

9 hours ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

what r u going to buy? more catalysts? cause thats the only thing to buy past the inital 300 wolf creds, and i alreayd had nitain from the old alerts system plus doing goul purge, and i didnt evne go for nitain most of the time 

I would buy auras and gift them to newbies. Corrosive Projection anyone? https://warframe.market/items/corrosive_projection/statistics

And I thought time limmited availability of items was the main problem with old alert system. Ironic.

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

it's not dictating anything - you're dictating that you have to complete 100% of the tasks, when there isn't any benefit in actually completing all of them versus just completing the majority of them.

You are doing the right thing, calling those taks, because challange is not the appropriate word.

Whether you should do all of them or not is not at trial here, it is the said activity. Do you think "spend 3 Forma" or "build a modular weapon" are good tasks? Why? The nonargument "don't like it, don't do it" is self-explanatory.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

3 hours ago, ShortCat said:

I would buy auras and gift them to newbies. Corrosive Projection anyone? https://warframe.market/items/corrosive_projection/statistics

And I thought time limmited availability of items was the main problem with old alert system. Ironic.

You are doing the right thing, calling those taks, because challange is not the appropriate word.

Whether you should do all of them or not is not at trial here, it is the said activity. Do you think "spend 3 Forma" or "build a modular weapon" are good tasks? Why? The nonargument "don't like it, don't do it" is self-explanatory.

As seteve said, night wave is to try and get people to play content they otherwise wouldnt, and the only thing in alerts that people r complaining about is nitain because they have to play to get it now instead of speed running a low exterminate with ember ect

[Zanchak]

Honestly, I was pretty irritated to have to gild something. I have everything except the newest k-drive. If they want a frame or something at some point I will be doing this on that challenge because no.. I've done my grinding lol

[Steel_Rook]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

As seteve said, night wave is to try and get people to play content they otherwise wouldnt

And that's a good idea why, exactly? Serious question here, I'm not trying to be snide. When has the "eat your peas or no dessert" approach ever worked on full-grown adults? Because in my experience, it predominantly leads to resentment. Either I'm doing something I hate and thus not actually enjoying the game, or NOT doing something I hate and having a metaphorical finger wagged at me which is arguably even more frustrating. Doubly so when the conversation then devolves into "git gud scrub."

[taiiat]

7 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Whether you should do all of them or not is not at trial here, it is the said activity. Do you think "spend 3 Forma" or "build a modular weapon" are good tasks? Why? The nonargument "don't like it, don't do it" is self-explanatory.

i see no reason that almost anything can't be a part of Nightwave. so long as enough variety is provided. the expectation is already that Players don't do 100% of them.
because.
there isn't.
any benefit.
to doing all of them.

[MJ12]

20 hours ago, taiiat said:

it's not dictating anything - you're dictating that you have to complete 100% of the tasks, when there isn't any benefit in actually completing all of them versus just completing the majority of them.

and if you're playing regularly where you might have used stuff before you're asked to, in that regular play you can compensate for opting out of a task by capturing some Fugitives.

After you get past rank 30, every 10k rank gets you Wolf Credits, which can be used to buy reactors and catalysts.

So there is a significant benefit from completing 100% of the tasks. 

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, MJ12 said:

After you get past rank 30, every 10k rank gets you Wolf Credits, which can be used to buy reactors and catalysts.
So there is a significant benefit from completing 100% of the tasks. 

if that is the case (Citation Needed, since it wasn't in the Announcements when it was deployed) - then that's perfection already, reinforcing my own suggestions for Nightwave in the first place.

whereas there are many Tiers of tasks, which span across all types of content in the game. which would mean anyone can selectively opt out of completing any particular task, and still complete the Ranking for the Season. and if there was still benefit to going above and beyond the call, then those hardcore Players could do more, and therefore earn more. other Players that wanted to earn above and beyond the call, would then be encouraged to do the same, if they want extra.
that would be perfect.

[Chaemyerelis]

Doing all of them gets you your desired reward faster and we all like fast rewards. Also as others have said you get more credits to spend.

Ultimately its not "forced" but there's definitely incentive do them all till you get the reward you want. Or to even do some that are poorly designed because you skipped others that were also poorly designed and don't want to miss out on your desired reward. 

Also this system is time gated toward rewards in a system where we don't know the length of the time gate. Or at least I don't know it so I don't even know how many more tasks I can skip.

The old system was better, sure nitain was a pain at low MR levels but before you know it you're swimming in nitain. All they had to do was add to the old alert reward pool and/or add more alerts. Now when I play I need to manage my time like I'm at work or something.

On the bright side at least Nora Night makes me want to fight the power. ✊🏼

[SordidDreams]

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

When has the "eat your peas or no dessert" approach ever worked on full-grown adults?

Um, Warframe is a game for children.

[ShortCat]

14 hours ago, taiiat said:

i see no reason that almost anything can't be a part of Nightwave. so long as enough variety is provided.

Weak argument. "Play 10 conclave matches", "play 15 Lunaro matches" or "build and sell a primed Frame" would also provide enough variety, wouldn't it? My question still stands, do you personaly think these particular tasks are well designed? Why?

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

if that is the case (Citation Needed, since it wasn't in the Announcements when it was deployed)

There will be prestige ranks and each should grant 15 Wolf Creds (it was stated by a DE stuff in comment section under one of Brozime's videos on YouTube, brilliant community management btw.)

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

then that's perfection already, reinforcing my own suggestions for Nightwave in the first place. 

whereas there are many Tiers of tasks, which span across all types of content in the game. which would mean anyone can selectively opt out of completing any particular task, and still complete the Ranking for the Season. and if there was still benefit to going above and beyond the call, then those hardcore Players could do more, and therefore earn more. other Players that wanted to earn above and beyond the call, would then be encouraged to do the same, if they want extra.
that would be perfect.

Perfection?!

• People who are able to finish the entire season and climb those prestige ranks usually do not need items from the Cred shop. While newbies, who can maybe collect 20k a week won't be able to use the shop at all. Wolf Cred acquisition is completely backwards.
• Weekly rotations lock loot behind huge timewalls, one loot circle takes several weeks. This issue is enhanced, if you happen do be low on Creds, due to low gains. All auras jumped in prices on the market, becasue influx got even more limited and time gated than it was with alert system. To profit from NV you need to be there at the right time, but on a much larger scale. As such, punishment for not participating scales up accordingly. Wasn't that a major complaint with alerts in the first place?
• Seasonal system is terrible for any player, who is not playing on a daily basis. There is a number of people in any game, who play intensively for 1 or 2 weeks after an update, do all the new stuff and leave untill the next update. Such players are loyal, but not devoted. NV has timegates on everything and is not suited for players with tight time schedule or people who just happen to join mid season. Nightwave makes picking up the game more difficult; "hop in and hop out" approach is punished.
• NV tasks are just a check list and show how little thought went into those. Something like "Deal X*MR damage in a single shot" is way more interactive and can be equally difficult for every player. In this regard are Riven challenges supperior. Often enough tasks will just exclude a portion of the plyerbase with a simple inventar or MR chack. Just like with Wolf Creds, newbies are often totally screwed, while veterans are bored to death in those 3 Exterminate or Capture missions - I feel not engaged by any of the so-called challenges. Nightwave entirely misses the needs for both extremes on the player spectrum - advanced players as well as newbies.
• Terrible community management! Incomplete and deceiving information flow. No information on season end date. Bits of information are scatetred all over the Forum, YT, Twitch or Twitter, not presented in one announcement. I am tired to explain fallacy in all "60% challanges" posts.

 

[Ulvra]

Aye I sat up at 1 am to peek at the new nightwave when it hit and made a feedback post on it saying much the same minutes afterwards. My issue with these types of acts is that it rewards inaction. Essentially I am punished because I loved DE's content and already did it all. Now that I know there's a fill 5 ayatan act out there I am not filling my ayatans until nightwave tell me to or I have to go trade them in for endo, even though I can easily go and pick up more.

I could follow the ayatan and forma one if the requirement was set down to say 2 ayatans and 1 forma, for the ayatans because it makes it doable for people who don't have arbitrations unlocked yet too while still being a challenge, for forma I still don't like it at 1, but I could live with it as that since content keep arriving and there's probably at least one place I could always fit aforma, but not necessarily three, plus newer players might be in trouble even having that much forma lying around.

For the gild challenge though as I said in the big thread, it's a no for me. Still going to do it, but to me it's really bad design because it punishes those who play with the new content. I was "lucky" that I hadn't done all the amps yet, so I went out and caught Squeaky 13 times in a day, caught some rare fish and got to that next amp I wanted finally, but I've already done all zaws, one and twohanded, all kitguns and all moas and I really don't want to make an arbitrary duplicate because an act tells me to.

And to the "you don't have to do it all" chimers, don't bother, we're not in the same mindset so this statement is old, stale and not valid in my mindset or that of others like me.

[Steel_Rook]

16 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Um, Warframe is a game for children.

It has swearing, violence and heavily suggestive themes. It's also rated Pegi 18 and ESRB M 17+. I'm going to need a citation for that claim.

[taiiat]

6 hours ago, ShortCat said:

While newbies, who can maybe collect 20k a week

that is the entire point of providing sufficient variety. there is no reason there cannot be Weekly, Elite Weekly, uhh.... Legendary Weekly.... for the sake of discussion there's an easier way to describe this.

easy, not so easy, medium, harder, hard, very hard, legendary

or however many tiers you want. there can be a lot of options, and thusly, making it easy to hit par, while also providing content to the more hardcore Players. everybody wins in such a scenario.

 

3 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

It has swearing, violence and heavily suggestive themes. It's also rated Pegi 18 and ESRB M 17+. I'm going to need a citation for that claim.

it might be rated as for Adults, but the game treats Players as if they're incompetent children. the tone of the game, clashes with whatever sort of official rating.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Steel_Rook]

52 minutes ago, taiiat said:

it might be rated as for Adults, but the game treats Players as if they're incompetent children^{[citation needed]}. the tone of the game, clashes with whatever sort of official rating.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to have to ask you to back that up with something. Because - again - the game has blood, guts, tits and guns. I fail to see how it treats players like children.

[(PSN)JustitiaCaelum]

9 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Weak argument. "Play 10 conclave matches", "play 15 Lunaro matches" or "build and sell a primed Frame" would also provide enough variety, wouldn't it? My question still stands, do you personaly think these particular tasks are well designed? Why?

There will be prestige ranks and each should grant 15 Wolf Creds (it was stated by a DE stuff in comment section under one of Brozime's videos on YouTube, brilliant community management btw.)

Perfection?!

• People who are able to finish the entire season and climb those prestige ranks usually do not need items from the Cred shop. While newbies, who can maybe collect 20k a week won't be able to use the shop at all. Wolf Cred acquisition is completely backwards.
• Weekly rotations lock loot behind huge timewalls, one loot circle takes several weeks. This issue is enhanced, if you happen do be low on Creds, due to low gains. All auras jumped in prices on the market, becasue influx got even more limited and time gated than it was with alert system. To profit from NV you need to be there at the right time, but on a much larger scale. As such, punishment for not participating scales up accordingly. Wasn't that a major complaint with alerts in the first place?
• Seasonal system is terrible for any player, who is not playing on a daily basis. There is a number of people in any game, who play intensively for 1 or 2 weeks after an update, do all the new stuff and leave untill the next update. Such players are loyal, but not devoted. NV has timegates on everything and is not suited for players with tight time schedule or people who just happen to join mid season. Nightwave makes picking up the game more difficult; "hop in and hop out" approach is punished.
• NV tasks are just a check list and show how little thought went into those. Something like "Deal X*MR damage in a single shot" is way more interactive and can be equally difficult for every player. In this regard are Riven challenges supperior. Often enough tasks will just exclude a portion of the plyerbase with a simple inventar or MR chack. Just like with Wolf Creds, newbies are often totally screwed, while veterans are bored to death in those 3 Exterminate or Capture missions - I feel not engaged by any of the so-called challenges. Nightwave entirely misses the needs for both extremes on the player spectrum - advanced players as well as newbies.
• Terrible community management! Incomplete and deceiving information flow. No information on season end date. Bits of information are scatetred all over the Forum, YT, Twitch or Twitter, not presented in one announcement. I am tired to explain fallacy in all "60% challanges" posts.

 

BRAVO! I agree. Nightwave, at its current state, is definitely a step down from alerts in terms of item acquisition. Longtime players wouldn't need anything from it (haven't spent a single wolf cred myself because everything in the cred store is so overpriced and I have most of them anyway), while new players can't get even a fraction of what they could have gotten with alerts, especially with a tracker. 

On top of not knowing the date of when the series is ending, what's worse is this: we likely won't get any changes until another 6 weeks have passed. I just don't understand why nothing is being addressed to stop the community division and the potential damage to the game. 

Also about the 60% fallacy, I don't know why people still believe that. 43000 for 1 week means 430000 in 10 weeks. And the 300k we need to at least max out is 70% of total standing. You CANNOT just miss 30% of the acts, especially if you are skipping the "elite" acts. 

[ShortCat]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

-snip-

On 2019-03-19 at 11:48 AM, ShortCat said:

Do you think "spend 3 Forma" or "build a modular weapon" are well desgned tasks? Why?

 

 

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, ShortCat said:

-----

it doesn't matter if a task is 'well designed' because in this game, things aren't allowed to be. without giving a giant list of options, things can't be 'well designed' because that implies it having some level of difficulty and mastery of the game systems to complete it.
but since everything has to be able to be completed while AFK.... then the game has to continue to do so.

sooo..... comically easy tasks that amount to little more than 'play the game a bit' end up being a necessity.
in order to have 'well designed' tasks, ones that actually ask something of the Player, bland, uninteresting ones will also need to be there, so that people can hold W and hit par.
it's kinda depressing and limits what the game can do, but it is what it is.

[Leyers_of_facade]

A bandaid solution would be to show all 10 weeks of challenges from the very beginning. Potentially players can pick which ones they want each week among the 100 in total. 
It doesn't really fix the issue, but it would make it easier for people to plan the 60% they need. At least this way, people can plan out which challenges they can drop without too much of a consequence.

[NezuHimeSama]

On 2019-03-18 at 4:00 PM, taiiat said:

it's not dictating anything - you're dictating that you have to complete 100% of the tasks, when there isn't any benefit in actually completing all of them versus just completing the majority of them.

and if you're playing regularly where you might have used stuff before you're asked to, in that regular play you can compensate for opting out of a task by capturing some Fugitives.

A minimum participation requirement and no information on future tasks means that any missed task today could mean not getting all the rewards tomorrow.

Nightwave is broken by design, and desperately needs to be fixed.

34 minutes ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

A bandaid solution would be to show all 10 weeks of challenges from the very beginning. Potentially players can pick which ones they want each week among the 100 in total. 
It doesn't really fix the issue, but it would make it easier for people to plan the 60% they need. At least this way, people can plan out which challenges they can drop without too much of a consequence.

Alternatively, have nightwave seasons not expire, and put the challenges on rotation, so people can do the ones they want when they want to, and get all the rewards when they have time. Let players pick which nightwave season they want to tackle rather than the game picking for them, and have switching take some 24h(rushable with plat)

That way, you want to keep up with your nightwave seasons to not fall behind and have to choose between working on the new rewards or the old rewards, but nothing is ever completely missed out on, and you always have the opportunity to go back and finish it between nightwave seasons if you want.

 

Sadly, they'll probably "fix" it either by saying the players are wrong, like they did with second jump momentum, or by making the challenges even more mundane and uninteresting. That, or they'll barrel on ahead and point to short term player participation rates as a sign they're doing good.

Edited March 21, 2019 by NezuHimeSama