Plains of Eidolon Remaster: Update 24.8.0

[master_of_destiny]

DE, I want to make this clear.  Your player base is asking for rewards, the choice at rewards, and the ability to have challenge.  The realization of this is Nightwave, the Wolf, and now Arbitrations.

 

You've missed the point, but I can see why.  Nightwave does offer better rewards, and the wolf credits offer the ability to choose.  The failure here is that to make these choices happen you've significantly altered progression and the ability to get the random drops needed to progress.  Specifically, Nitain and Reactors/Catalysts are something new players absolutely need, but instead of being able to get them infrequently you've made it a direct opportunity cost with the Wolf Credits.  More problematically, the credits disappear so grinding will arbitrarily have its value zeroed because you don't want another currency like ducats (which older players have in the thousands).

 

What about the Wolf?  Statistics look pretty wonky on these, and you somehow justify this as a grind wall that is acceptable.  I don't, and the math is crap.  Let's say you have 10,000,000 registered accounts.  At 6% spawn rates 600,000 people see the wolf.  This seems like a lot of encounters, until you figure that 9,400,000 don't see it.  Then you figure that for 99% of the 10,000,000 to have at least one spawn there'd have to be 75 runs per person.  If each run is 5 minutes, that's 375 minutes of runs, or 6 hours and 15 minutes of grind.  That final 5% would go down to 0.1%, again 10,000 people having never seen the wolf, after a total of 112 runs or 9 hours and 20 minutes.  Remember that quote about not putting things into this game that are grindy, and especially not as an event you want us to participate in?

 

None of the above even touches on drops.  Let's talk the 3%, 2%, and 1% drop rate shenanigans.  I don't want too many words, so let's just give the %, 50% drop rates, and 99% drop rates.  That should show us when half of the grinders get the item, and when it's ubiquitous (as in only 10,000 people are still sitting frustrated, which is somehow acceptable).

3%, 50%=23 runs, 99%=152 runs

2%, 50%=35 runs, 99%=228 runs

1%, 50%=69 runs, 99%=459 runs

So the Wolf spawns at 6%, the drop rate for parts is 35%, and the motor and bp share and 11.28% spawn rate.  6%*35%*11.28%= 0.23688%.  So, what's the likelihood that any single mission drops the motor or the bp?  

0.24%, 50%=293 runs, 99%=1942 runs.

But I hear you say the bp and motor are both 11.28%, so the combined drop chance is in fact 22.56%.  You'd have a point, but eventually you'll need one or the other.  At only a 50-50 chance, you've got to run a minimum of 293 different Wolf drops.  5 minutes each is 24 hours and 25 minutes.  Over 10 weeks, that's about two and a half hours of grind a week.  If you'd look at a 99% drop rate it's be 161 hours and 50 minutes.  That's either two and a half or 16 hours a week just grinding for the sledge.  Add on the hour survivals, 40 wave defenses, syndicate missions not spawning the Wolf, and other shenanigans and you're saying that I have to spend a whole day every week playing this game for the chance to get a single weapon.

 

So drop chances suck, and the new systems are less rewarding in exchange for the illusion of choice.  What about the Arbitrations?  The newest hotness has a forma cost of 4, a Nitain cost of 10, and an argon crystal.  You get it at either a 1.5, 2, or 2.5 percentage drop rate, with the missions rewarding these potential drops at half the rate of anywhere else.  Death is no longer permanent, but the debuffs for collecting revival tokens can be if the dead disconnects.  Worst of all, the broken scaling is still in full effect, with your one outlet (powers) arbitrarily disabled by the drones in the game mode.  What do you win?  After 30+ reward drops my winnings are endo, endo, endo, and endo.  The worst part being that an endo farm on Sedna yields better endo values, and the points required to grind Kela for the Saryn parts and unique mod drops.

Is Arbitration better.  One positive for revivals being possible.  One positive for adding new rewards and making costs for conversion of stars lower.  One negative for the rewards still being terrible.  Two negatives for the only new content being a statistically insignificant drop.  One point negative for the crafting cost being a transparent way to absorb forma and force expenditure of Nitain.  Three points negative for broken scaling to be the source of challenge.  1+1-1-2-1-3 = -5.  On my subjective scale, the changes have amounted not to growth, but retardation of any momentum that Arbitrations could have developed.

 

I'm not going to touch on melee.  I'm not touching the new broken items on the Plains (read: Loki's invisibility is literally useless when enemies look right at you despite being invisible, and Dargyn can shoot you with impunity depite being invisible, etc...).  I'm not touching the Eidolons suddenly doing more damage, without it being in any patch notes I can see.  I'm also not touching on the fact that Limbo seems to be in the process of getting nerfed into the ground because enemies suddenly seem to be able to disregard the cataclysm+stasis bubble as a basic feature.  No, I'm explaining the items which are insulting to the investment of veterans, and actively making the new player experience detrimental for keeping new players.  If that isn't enough to highlight the problem, the 100ish pages of Nightwave feedback at 16 pages of feedback from this change should make it clear there are issues.  Barring that, the youtube content about warframe is finally aligning again.  Whenever that happens, it's likely because you've made something very good (Railjack and PoE), or a mistake of epic proportions (moderators, "exploits" possible through bad coding).  

I'll give you one chance to guess where I believe this falls.  If it's missing still, I'd suggest Tactical Potato.  Arbitrations are still a poorly rewarding non-starter of a game mode six months later, and these changes have not moved us forward.  

[b4timert]

Im starting to suspect more and more that DE does not test thing for PUBS and even if they do everyone know each other or know someone that know them so they won't do things that will make the other testers angry. Thus they are not considering troll's.  

It also feel that All DE test is done under optimal lag/ping so they don't have all those ping related bugs since it feels like they never get fixed and are always there when something new is implemented im looking at the exploiter orb here that thing is riddle with bugs and there still is ping related operator bug that was there since the beginning that hasn't been fixed yet.

[BrazilianJoe]

Wolf still spawning at end of missions. 

Was doing a Crossfire Neo Relic, all enemies were killed, had the green beacon, was at reward selection screen, and got that super rewarding Wolf scream, along with the whole team screaming NOOOOO and extracting. 

[DreisterDino]

I just want to leave a suggestion for another revive-mechanic that is hopefully less toxic while encouraging Reviving in a positive way.

I took most of the Feedback that has been posted here into consideration and used a nice idea i have seen somewhere as the foundation:

 

 

[RAZORLIGHT]

PLEASE DE could you finally fix that issues, there are several frames affected

or atleast give us information, that you acknowledged this issue.

[Zebiko]

This update is too big for just arbitration changes.

[Konachibi]

22 minutes ago, RAZORLIGHT said:

PLEASE DE could you finally fix that issues, there are several frames affected

or atleast give us information, that you acknowledged this issue.

I almost always get that same issue with Garuda's Dread Mirror, normally when I recast it while it's still active.  It is a huge nuisance not knowing when my frontal shield is going to disappear.

[Taiepii]

Any plan to improve the diversity of Warframe selection ? 

I mean there is the 300% strength bonus on random selection but here is a big problem.

If you want to play a frame like Titania, Atlas, Excalubur, Valkyr .... Well you can't cause Arbitration drone will ( real term ) "piss you off". Ever tried Titania ? you have to get out of you ult every time you see a drone. Super annoying process.

 

[Ikusias]

18 hours ago, Taiepii said:

Any plan to improve the diversity of Warframe selection ? 

I mean there is the 300% strength bonus on random selection but here is a big problem.

If you want to play a frame like Titania, Atlas, Excalubur, Valkyr .... Well you can't cause Arbitration drone will ( real term ) "piss you off". Ever tried Titania ? you have to get out of you ult every time you see a drone. Super annoying process.

 

Also drones nullify is orders of magnitude worse than actual nullifier units in the rest of the game:

who got the fun idea of making them totally immune to damage from abilities? titania's dex pixia can damage nullifier bubbles but can't touch at all nullifier drones

[Gigamicro]

On 2019-04-24 at 4:20 PM, [DE]Drew said:

• Fixed equipping Castanas (in default Skin) placing a larger version of one of the projectiles between the Warframes legs.
•  

Finally, I can use my Castanas without Mag looking uncomfortable while crouching!