Arbitrations Revisited

[Kazahr]

On 2019-04-18 at 8:04 PM, [DE]Connor said:

offering players a level of challenge they cannot find anywhere else in the game

(mmm.... no, arbitration start at lvl 60.. what a difficulty xD  it's like a sortie)

 

 

On 2019-04-18 at 8:04 PM, [DE]Connor said:

The most polarizing of these issues is Arbitrations’ lack of revives

and now, WHAT A CONTRADICTION ?????

 

don't do that pls DE... increase the lvl, don't give us a chance to revive, remove defense in arbitration, and adjust the buffs by warframe, for example, 300% strengh for Nekros... it's useless 

 

Give us a real endgame

 

✌️

 

[kgptzac]

The revive mechanism sounds fine on paper--for organized squads.  It is however a breeding ground for toxic and trollish behavior in random joins.  The design philosophy should not be to punish the surviving members even more after one person dies.  I'd suggest reviving would cost the player who died the reward for current round, and of course, limit it to one possible revive per round.

[mikakor]

idk if i've already already commented that, but if you're going to rework a bit the arbitration, you need to bring back the rotations at 5 minutes, 5 waves... and since the enemies will go up and scales faster, there won't be any reasons to cut our rewards by half, either. so it's all good. but 10 minutes rotations are just to make missions longer, not harder. that ain't fine.

[Plastic_Rogue]

I'm not very convinced on the idea of those revive mechanic. I think on public environments would only create toxic situations like refusing to pick up revive charges like "not going to put myself at risk to revive you noob". This could still leave the problem of people leaving early and host migration potentially screwing over the runs.

For the problems of revives, I would like to see the idea of reviving players each rotation you progress. Say for example that your team has 2 players down on a survival, when you reach the 10 min mark, those two player come back and try again. You could also give some slight penalties to players who die to prevent leeching, like no vitus essence if you die on that rotation for example.

Although a lot of people already commented about the real problems about arbitrations (rewards, rotation length and drones) I want to give my pont here:

What I would want arbitrations to become is a mode that offers more significant variation to a regular mission:

• More interesting enemies: If i'm going to face the same as I would face on a normal mission except with drones, I wouldn't bother that much. Now imagine if you could face different enemy composition like grineer mission with more heavy units and less light ones, or rarely used subfaction like nightwatch grineer or terra corpus added in the mix.
• Change rotation duration: My take on this would be reducing the rotations to the usual (maybe tweak faster ones like excavation or infested salvage) but at the end of the rotation, an asassin unit appears, focusing on taking down the player and preventing them for getting their rewards and continuing until you take it down. These units doesn't need to be exclusively units like the stalker or the G3, you could bring in units like rathuum executioners, index squads, the juggernaut, some toobmen, corrupted vor or some sentients. There's a lot of special units they could reuse and play around with each faction and environment. Also it would be a good excuse to buff zanuka and other assassins.
• Instead of drones, I'd like to see units new units that offers powerful buff to each enemey factions, like a drone that periodically cleanses status effects, or give infested auras to factions that doesn't have them. You could keep the arbiters model or add faction specific models like ospreys or carabus as long as they are easily recognizable and distinguishable.

 

TL,DR: Revive charges can still creat problems on public environments instead add more enemy variety, and shorter rotations with minibosses at the end of each. Players can revive at the end of each rotation with a little less rewards.

[mikakor]

1 minute ago, Plastic_Rogue said:

For the problems of revives, I would like to see the idea of reviving players each rotation you progress. Say for example that your team has 2 players down on a survival, when you reach the 10 min mark, those two player come back and try again. You could also give some slight penalties to players who die to prevent leeching, like no vitus essence if you die on that rotation for example.

i think it should be easier and way less toxicity inducing if the tokens could be taken at the towers at any time, at any rate, and... well, NOT obligated at the same time.

[(PSN)LeonidasxGGG]

Tbh permadeath was never an issue for me (I can always wait for rotation to be over, or leave and try again). Nor was the scalling (since rotations are so slow). So, this "revive" will only make the remaining players get 'debuffed', thus increasing the chance of failure. That is NOT a big problem since missions change so frequently.
My only "real" concern is just how long rotations take. Up till now, the ONLY mission players like to do for long time is Escavation, in particular, with Infested. With a squad of 2+2 every Rotation takes 6 minutes instead of the regular +10. To me, shorter rotations would be my biggest and most welcome change to Arbitrations.
Also, I don't like the "debuff" drones. If they at least dropped some kind of 'valuable' resource (maybe Kuva, Forma, wisps or relics... But that being said, a BIG plus would be if they could drop itens found in "rare" stashes: landing craft parts, boosters, etc.) THAT would make players wanna stay in-mission longer (actually playing). Otherwise they should just be removed... Which in turn, might also help make rotations faster.
Archgun Rivens ARE a good addition, and I hope all others (rifle, melee, etc.) could be added in the future too (real "Endgame" rewards).

Looking further ahead, I always believed that this game mode should never be in Arbiters of Hexis. My immediate question was: "If this Sindicate has this, what do the others offer?" Quickly realising that DE only put them there because they really didn't knew where to out them (on Relays), since Onslaught was already in Simaris and Clem was in Darvo.
They could have opened a new room in there (since some of them are closed), but I believe this could/should be moved to Iron Wake (that serves Zero purpose right now) and Palamino could have the itens in her establishment (since she only has 1 item there).
Also, still related to the drones issue and since this is considered "endgame", I believe they could be changed to Vonvalists (or Sentient-like, since these already carry some sort "immunity") and have the Operator destroy them. Thus using, the "full" capacity of your Arsenal.
I know, this would require a BIG change in the Lore (definitelly a change in name. Maybe" Sentient"... Something?) but I believe this would tie in much better with what we have (at least, so far) in Warframe.

[SSI_Seraph]

il y a une heure, deinonychus1 a dit :

This is something they've been mentioning repeatedly in devstreams and progress updates, so I'm repeatedly surprised with how it seems the majority of players don't know this: this is due to the AI/pathfinding code, which is so badly broken that they have to completely remake and replace it. The good news, however, is that Steve said the AI team is mostly finished, so coming soon^TM.

I'm talking about enemy density not AI, that's a whole other subject.

They mentionned both on dev streams. But they are still hesitant about what I was talking about.

[Mulchman]

22 hours ago, Hi_Im_Chuckles said:

Hell, put umbral forma in the vitus endor i guarantee you all veterans will be spamming arbitrations then.
Releasing umbral forma crossed the point of no return meaning there is no reason why we shouldnt have more.

I'd no life Arby's if Umbral Forma were in there but knowing my RNG it would take 30+ runs to even get 1. (I still don't have the Ephemera after 40 rotation C reward cycles (I typically only do solo survival so I can pause it due to kids).)

[(PSN)Silenceform]

I appreciate your efforts to improve this game mode but these ideas are flawed and makes Arbitrations overall worse :

Permadeath is great because you have to be careful all the time and increase this feeling to be " truly alive " compared to standard missions where your playstyle can be much more reckless.

I think the common problem with Arbitrations is that you have to change your mindset from " playing casually " to " playing carefully ", i have seen so much players putting themselves in danger for not paying attention on what they are doing, taking bad decisions or taking too much risks for a low reward e.g shooting from a open areas instead of shooting from cover, being greedy trying to kill a dangerous enemy in close quarter thinking they can kill them before they get killed, staying alone somewhere in the level and get outnumbered by enemies or even taking self damaging weapons for Arbitration missions. You can't afford yourself to play like the other game mode, Arbitrations is all about teamplay, communication and self awareness. Don't ruin the unique design of Arbitrations by adding a resurrect system, players have to adapt to this game mode and not the opposite.

This revive system will also add more problems in Arbitrations without resolving existing ones :

- Another way for players to leech or to be carried by others.

- Opportunities to troll other players in public squad, bringing more toxicity into the community.

- Carrying Resurgence points when you don't want to.

- Further incentivise to bring Waframes for Arbitrations like Rhino in situations where you need to carry Resurgence points to revive another player.

- Not solo player friendly because this adds extra difficulty for them in the long run for nothing in exchange.

And here is what really needs to be improved in Arbitrations :

- A " Extract now " prompt at the extraction point when the first rotation is complete in order to get out without delays for Survival, Excavation and Defection missions in order to avoid " i died because the timer didn't reach 0 " moments.

- When you die in Arbitrations, the HUD should still show basic informations from the missions like the number of wave done and the health of the operative NPC, ABCD towers with the progression bar between Tenno and Opponent, the number of Kavor squads evacuated and those who died rather than just the health of the remaining players that are still alive.

- Defense missions are the worst in term of amount of time played per reward. Either reduce the amount of enemies per wave or reduce the number of waves to get a reward to every 5 waves.

[Haardrock64]

No revive is what makes this game type so special. Revives means its just another game mode that makes no difference from the rest. Revives feels like another victory of the 'bite size community' over DE. If you want to enhance arbitrations please put in some better rewards (not everybody can put  endo to a good use...), the missing rewards are the reason why i dont play this game mode.

[(XBOX)Thang Hung]

I didn't read the 14 pages of comments before mine , I just wanted to leave my thoughts though.

Why on earth would I ever lower my health to help someone whom I never met nor played game with? There is zero benefit to me to revive some random player. This feature will never be used. 

*Disclaimer:

I would probably use it as I mostly play Inaros but, I bet $10 that in off chance I go down.... and that would be the last time I go out of my way.

[(PSN)kyoshiroevil]

Can you also fix those host migrations, i lost 20k endo this week because of people leaving => not being able to reach extraction in time => host migration => connection lost...

Also french support team is the most useless i’ve ever seen: never helping in any of those cases.

[ConsumerJTC]

But people wanted the increased spawnrates since the beginning.

Pros for all basically.

[(PSN)DeZaruu]

After some further thought, I will say this:

Arbitration has issues not mentioned yet, and one of them is a major one - it makes sorties feel like a total waste of time given the rewards. Sortie 9/10 times the darn statue, or Endo - but you can also just do a Survival/Excav Arbitration and as the ABCC... rotation goes on, you'll have 10K endo in no time.

Solution? You seriously need to revamp sortie rewards. Endo/Sculptures (and Forma) just... Gotta go already,

But then there's the connected issue; you DON'T need endo for eternity. I still need it, but I also just started in June last year - but someone who played 2+ years really don't need sculpture after sculpture, endo upon endo.

But here's the thing - I'm not sure if your game currently has enough different categories of items to sustain all these modes honestly

Forma: Fissures, Adaptor: Simaris

Catalyst/Reactor: Nightwave and Sortie

Skins: Mix of everywhere

Endo: You can sneeze and find it

Credits: Everywhere

Riven: Sortie

Honestly, I feel you gotta make a group of items you can ONLY get via arbitrations/sorties. And not just a few visuals and weird bps I've never heard anyone use - you gotta rethink your entire list of item categories and decide what should be from where.Elite Onslaught has special visual mods and weapons, so I suggest this:

Arbitrations have a new wave of weapon variation - you can call 'em Arbitrator (e.g. Arbitrator's Braton, Arbitrator's Plasmor, etc).It can be weapons from any type, but you change them up to be significantly different. Example:Arbirator's Plasmor look similar to the Arca, but got three-horizontol barrels instead, modified for speed, etc. Or a dagger made into a polearm, etc. And they are ONLY from Arbitrations via crafting (Vitus Essence could buy bp). 

Same for a Warframe, Sentinel or Kavat - take an existing Warframe and modifity it in their style, have abilities kind of altered and tinker with it. Hell I'll give your their passive for free: has no bleedout, but doesn't pay affinity to revive.And something else to it..Could even go wild with it and have Ability slots; there's a total of eight abilities, you gotta pick and choose the four you want as you build it. Could be some from other frames, but modified slightly - let 'em make a Chimera.

And then there's the "earn a revive".. I gotta be honest, I will not revive someone and risk my rewards, when it literally doesn't affect me if they are dead or alive So make the revive something THEY earn - find some way to measure activity (kills can be a factor, healing/buffing allies can be another, etc) and if reached, you get a revive. This way it doesn't become "plz revive", but "Hey, I gotta be active and do stuff, otherwise I've no second wind"

Plus; if you revive the rotation resets for you (and you alone).

And some nicer Operator visuals... Give me a cape, and some new cleaner designs for their outfits (your redo of the Operator stuff a while back, turned some textures into.. plastic or whatever it is, give us maybe something metallic, which still looks nice and clean, even have some frame-inspired ones.

[TaureTavari]

DE please listen to this, because I'm not just sharing my own opinion, but these are issues echoed time and time again by so many people, and they simply go ignored. Now we see Arbitrations being changed, and so the excuse for not addressing the issues is thrown out the window.

The coming changes are NOT good. Forever the complaints of Arbitrations taking far too long and being too unrewarding have been bounced around constantly. Rotation lengths are doubled for rewards, or more than doubled in the case of Excavations (albeit it's still the fastest of the lot). Arbitrations Drones vastly slow down the progress of already slog missions such as Defence. High level enemies slow it down further. The rewards for time invested are minimal.

Take into consideration who is doing Arbitrations. People that have cleared the Star Chart and unlocked every farming node possible. High level players with the appropriate gear to effectively survive and complete Arbitrations, and it takes approximately 10 minutes or more to get a single Reward and a single Vitus Essence. There are Arbitration rewards that cost up to 20 Essence, and more will be coming. The time sink for this stuff is dreadful, especially when the only worthwhile rewards are Adaptation, of which once one is obtained the incentive to play disappears, and Endo - though farming Sedna is much faster and much easier.

Permadeath wasn't an issue. It gave the necessary challenge, and actually made it kind of exciting at times given the pressure. Now that is removed, and in its place a system that not only doesn't solve the unresolvable issue of people bringing inappropriate frames to Arbitrations, but now actively punishes allies for not reviving them. The burden is now a super burden.

For those that dislike permadeath, well okay, both that and the now revised changes have their upsides and downsides - ultimately both can be lived with. The problem is that DE are attempting to balance this decrease in difficulty by adjusting the scaling of enemies. A fine idea you might think, until we return the primary and most prevalent criticism of Arbitrations - they are too slow. TOO SLOW. 

The adjusted scaling, which makes it so that enemies scale as they do in regular missions will drastically increase the time taken for particular modes, or decrease the reward potential. Before it took about 40-60 minutes to reach level 140, which was fine because Arbitrations reset on the hour, so there was no need to waste the time trying to go any higher and battling the uphill struggle of time to kill vs rewards gained.

Now it will take far less time to reach such high levels, which means the longer you stay in an Arbitration the longer it takes to get a reward. Staying an hour will net less rewards than it already did, not to mention increase the risk of failure. Defence will take ages, Survival will have reduced LS drops as a result of enemies taking longer to kill, Excavation will be riskier (Excavators dying faster earlier), Interception... well, that's the same at least.

DE have tried to fix the Host Migration issue, which is impossible. People will still be abandoning left and right just as they always do, because if there is a poor start, you ditch and run again in the hopes of finding a faster team (if running public) because otherwise you will spend 30-60 minutes getting minimal rewards.

DE have exacerbated the time:reward ration problem, and now Arbitrations are going to be even less worth it. Oh great, some new comsmetics and AW Rivens - sure, those are incentive to play Arbitrations, but all that means is players feel forced to slog through the dull mess of the current and even worse oncoming state of Arbitration missions.

Instead of making them easier but less rewarding, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they were meant to be, address the real concern, which is that they are far too unrewarding. As many have suggested, remove the halved reward system, or address the Arbitration Drone concerns (why have 300% Power Strength buffs when 70% of enemies are being made immune to abilities).

Address the issue that the only Frames appropriately affected by Power Strength are Defense frames, Support and buffers like Chroma or Mirage. DPS frames that use abilities suffer tremendously, CC frames are nigh useless in most cases. Arbitrations set their difficulty boundary by removing the effectiveness of most abilities... is that really the only solution? To remove a core aspect of gameplay that makes a crowd of Warframes totally useless for these missions?

These are secondary concerns that can be addressed, but as has been repeatedly called upon, increase the ratio of rewards for time invested.

[Tempest]

More possibilities and rewards are always a plus, but I really dislike the rest. I always thought Arbitrations main thing was to be unforgiving with slight tweaks on common mission types, sometimes even forcing the player out of their comfort zone because the 300% buff was too good to not consider switching weapons or frames.

Maybe entirely new mechanics are needed? Different drones, maybe a new Arbiters of Hexis enemy that is some sort of miniboss and spawns in intervals of 10 minutes, and if killed within a specific circumstance would allow you to revive a single ally since you're "worth it"?

[sleepychewbacca]

10 minutes ago, TaureTavari said:

DE please listen to this

Might want to post this in Feedback instead of GD. The Devs don't look here. 

[Lutesque]

10 minutes ago, TaureTavari said:

Permadeath wasn't an issue. It gave the necessary challenge, and actually made it kind of exciting at times given the pressure.

Perma Death changes nothing... Warframe simply isn't challenging to begin with once I found a frame that could survive a Plasmor cannon to the face it business as usual only double the wait for crap I don't want.

17 minutes ago, TaureTavari said:

Address the issue that the only Frames appropriately affected by Power Strength are Defense frames, Support and buffers like Chroma or Mirage. DPS frames that use abilities suffer tremendously, CC frames are nigh useless in most cases. Arbitrations set their difficulty boundary by removing the effectiveness of most abilities... is that really the only solution? To remove a core aspect of gameplay that makes a crowd of Warframes totally useless for these missions?

Well yeah. This isn't anything new.... DE always disables Warframe abilities on a whim whethrr its energy reduction, Bosses, or Nullifiers their varienty.

In any case theres only one change I want.... Add Adaptation to the Arbitration Honors shop.... let me buy it and never do this Cancerous game mode again.

[Dr_Wonderful]

11 minutes ago, sleepychewbacca said:

Might want to post this in Feedback instead of GD. The Devs don't look here. 

Devs look in feedback? I thought they only listen to youtubers with 100k+ subscribers

[sleepychewbacca]

1 minute ago, Dr_Wonderful said:

Devs look in feedback? I thought they only listen to youtubers with 100k+ subscribers

Well, in the hope they do see it. 

If the Devs listened to every demand made, this game would be a bloated monster of unplayable proportions. 

[trst]

Except Arbitrations don't follow the standard reward structure of other endless types with repeating C rotations and rare drop rates being increased in C rotations.

They're also primarily an Endo farm and the only reliable way to farm ayatans. Even if Rathuum farming is technically faster it requires specific farming frame setups in a full squad to do efficiently where Arbitrations only require you to not die and can be done solo.

 

While yes I do agree that adding a psudo-revive system doesn't really improve anything I don't think the time they take needs to be reduced, at least not without restructuring the reward system to function like normal endless modes.

 

[DreisterDino]

Seriously, Permadeath was the only thing that made the gamemode stand out imo....

It was the only thing that made me really play that gamemode different, because i wasnt allowed to die.

 

Now it will feel just like any other gamemode, no matter how clunky and weird the revive mechanic will be.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

well, I got Adaptation on my first ever arbitration so..

[Marvelous_A]

Arbitration defense and survival are the most unrewarding and boring missions we ever have in this game

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

12 hours ago, CaptainMeowth said:

"this community doesn't know what they want"... by the guy who quote a bunch of peoples who want the same thing.

And know that even I, sometime, do survival of 20 minutes, and sometimes even more... 😮 *shocked* Why ? Because when I do that, I CHOOSED to. With arbitrations, you MUST do more for LESS rewards... The problem is that simple.

Turn up the difficulty all you want, but turn down the duration.

 

 

...oh and, this topic has nothing to do with void keys, or any pseudo "glory day"...

Please don't make us said stuffs we've never said, thank you.

I quoted a small few people, which isn't even a drop in the ocean of players of Warframe, for one thing..

And I quoted you all saying the same thing BECAUSE it's such a hard turn from previous sentiments on similar threads in the past. 

If you want to do 20 minute survival, do it.  If you want to do less, don't do Arbitrations.  Simple as that.  

Stop demanding the game be made more mundane just to suit the "I want instant gratification with as little time/effort invested as possible!" attitude.

Arbitrations are SPECIFICALLY there to cater to the crowd that DOES want to invest as much time as possible and push as hard as they can.  It's NOT there to be a casual stroll through the Warframe Supermarket when you need a few things.  That's what the other 99% of the game is there for.

And this is coming from me, someone who hardly does Arbitrations on a regular basis.  I still understand the purpose of them.