Arbitration suggestions, Darkmega Style

[Darkmega18]

Y'know... At first, I thought all the pros and top tier content creators were just whining, because they have everything and they're so buff and powerful nothing is fun to them anymore. But if the entire community is up in arms, they've probably got a point. So I figured, why not have at you yet another arbitration rebalance dump, done my way, in a way I'm 95% sure will have some interesting effects to it.

 

Part 1: Less time, more effort.

Points:

• Give rotations at normal rates
• But have those normal rates be doubled. AA BB CC then C to infinite
• But if enemies scale at normal rate for normal missions. and this is arbitration. Make them scale 50% to twice as harder as normal.
• Start enemies at a slightly lower level due to improved rate of scaling so that earlier players can get in and atleast get a rotation or two before they get wobbled.

Finally, a suggestion to clone the arbitrations into standard from above, and an even harder version, elite arbitration, that provides slightly less selected frame bonuses, enemies starting higher,  while having less A and B to be inline with normal ABCC-etc and providing the mission with sortie style elemental effects. No weapon limitation modifiers or other sortie bits that cause sorties to be salty. just the mission special effects or effects that could even be like rathuum. Like, reinforcement could make drones show up more often etc.

 

Part 2: Warrior Spirit and Unity (another look at revival)

Rather than using your new tower mechanism, I provide this idea that promotes stronger teamwork and struggling together, rather than the dodgy "Pick up the slack"/"carry mentality" of the current one. This one is more of a "We NEED to work together!" kind of deal.

How it works:

1. All tenno are applied with a buff called "Warrior Spirit" that is displayed as a percentage. consider it a form of life support or efficiency that doesn't kill the mission.
2. As tenno stay together in a group with their affinity radii overlapping they gradually generate warrior spirit for each nearby affinity radius (once the rounds have actually started. no waiting it out).
3. Killing enemies adds a small amount to everyone's spirit in the area. Defeating arbitration drones gives more.
4. If you stray from the group, your warrior spirit starts to decay gradually.
5. If you go down and you have warrior spirit you don't instant pop and instead get downed like normal and begin quickly draining spirit. the screen gets more and more washed out to grey as it declines.
6. Killing enemies while downed extends your spirit slightly, and being in affinity range also slows your drain at the cost of siphoning a little from others to sustain yours.
7. If spirit hits zero at any time other than while in the middle of being revived, you're ded, you're gone. and as a massive negative, everyone's spirit gets "Smashed" by a hefty flat amount (say 50% normal, 75% elite?)
8. Any overflow of percentage reduces that percentage of your current energy and applies a slow and weaken of that level of intensity to you that is non-purgeable. (so if you had 30% from struggling to revive the person but they went down. you'd get smashed to -20% (it won't actually go there. but the 20% under 0% will immediately turn into 20% slow with -20% damage for 10 secs and lose 20% of your total energy)
9. On the inverse, spirit can go up to 120% and keeping it above 100% provides you with your overflow percentage in movement speed and damage and armor multiplier shared to all in your affinity radius with a buff called "overflowing Spirit" up to a maximum shared and combined amount of 50% increased movement, armor and dealt damage by all means.

 

Part 3: More interesting Arbo-Drones

Rather than being the annoying little fly in bastards of battle flow destruction that they are, heres a look at an idea for how drones should work along with warrior spirit.

Drones are time delay area buffs and special effects. They can also overlap and aim to give you a bad time if not dealt with. Essentially they fly in start blinking a power effect aura over enemies over a few seconds. Like say a blinking effect that gets faster and faster until it solidifies. if not taken care of they become active and you have a bad time. All drones continue to be power immune however so the overpowered frames can't just one shot them passively or accidentally. The drones either have a solidifying aura effect or a pulse effect that happens periodically after another wind up.

Drone type ideas:

Nullify Drones (pulse): These guys float in and create a flashing nullifier shimmer around all enemies. If not destroyed in time they release a pulse that creates mini nully bubbles around all the enemies affected by them similar to how it works when the calldown beacons on The Vallis get out of hand.

Stonewall Drones (aura): Similar deal to what is out now. Enemies begin to flash, as the flashes go faster enemies become more resilient, until at max they're taking literally no damage. They don't affect other drones or themselves.

EMP Drones (pulse): they have a much bigger range but instead of affecting enemies they affect you! They make you glow darkish purple, and after the time delay an unblockable pulse of energy explodes outward from them knocking you down and giving you a hefty duration magnetic proc sure to annihilate your energy reserves, not to mention screw your shields and your vision.

Rage Drones (aura): Enemies glow a sinister red and gradually begin to build up more damage. When the effect solidifies their damage is almost doubled!

Rad Drone (pulse): Big area like the emp drone, but when he gets close you glow teal! Let him charge up and you'll get irridiated for a time... and you know what that means... Friendly murder by accident time.

Restoration Drone (aura): When this drone comes in range enemies glow green. Their HP and shields will gradually start to regenerate at a quicker rate. Until at maximum power their health amounts and shield amounts get multiplied x2!

Reflection Drone (aura): When enemies are in range they'll glow yellow. If the aura solidifies enemies will be like as if they have shatter shield on. Your projectiles will do almost nothing with a lot of the damage being redirected to an ally or yourself if you're also in range of the drone. Don't doot yourself with that tigris, sniper or overpowered kitgun. :3

I can probably go on, but I won't. Drones could also be given some great endo dropping potential.

 

Part 4: Worthwhile rewards. "Power to the tenno"

Of course, no-ones gonna do it without some itemized rewards, cool mods and fancy gear. So howabout this.

Each ranking of level gives more vitus. 1 at A, 2 at B, 3 at C.

Crank the vitus costs of some stuff at the arbitration guy and add in stuff that people will find useful and a definite draw to play the gamemode more.

• Forma (or atleast blueprint) for 40
• reactors and catalysts for 60
• Aura forma blueprint, like 60? it IS like 4 forma and stuff to build :V.
• Lenses? 10 a pop.
• Relic Batches, 20 a pop? skewed to give vaulted relics during an unvaulting?
• void traces, 20 for 1?
• Endo 1000 batches, 5?
• 3 day Boosters of all kinds 100?
• High level Arbitration mods? 100 each to get them via grind if you don't luck out from the drops?
• [new item idea] Relic transmuter! Can be used to turn 3 of a lower tier relic into a higher tier relic which is automatically equivalent or better of the refinement of the relics that went in. (randomized. like on normal missions. do 3 rad relics, you get 1 rad meso. Do flawless you get a flawless out. etc) Used from relic refiner

 

Then in game, have similar drops of niceness.

• 1% reactors/catalysts. go up by 0.5 of a percent each time.
• Forma's 3%? 1% raise each time.
• 100 void traces 5%ish? few percent and +50 each tier.
• LEGEND CORES?! 😮 0.1% up by 0.05% each tier.
• Anasa maybe?
• Rivens only at rank C. A completely random one. Not ungodly rare, but not common either.
• Nitain?
• some kind of special drop that can be turned into focus like the synthetic eidolon shard but styled to the arbiters and their teachings?

 

Overall, a lot less chances on endo, but keep em. but let people just get their endo out of the arbitration guy for their hard earned vitus if they're hurting?

 

Part 5: Let em know what they're getting themselves into.

Make a codex entry about arbitration that you can look up similar to how the index has a narrated codex teaching how to play it. thats it for this spot. it'll also explain the warrior spirit buff and the drones and their effects.

 

 

Thats all I got. What do you think?

Edited May 1, 2019 by Darkmega18

[Genitive]

7 hours ago, Darkmega18 said:

Part 1: Less time, more effort.

I agree that rotations should be more frequent, but I don't see the point of doubling them. It would be fine if they stayed ABCCC..., but with frequency as in other game modes. Scaling also could stay normal, but enemies should start at higher level. Or even better, they could be replaced with elite variants, like in Orb Vallis, if DE were willing to create an elite variant for more units in the game.

7 hours ago, Darkmega18 said:

Part 3: More interesting Arbo-Drones

There should be more drone types, but please no nullifiers. Instead of taking away from the player, they should buff enemies. And I was thinking about something more simple, like drones that give enemies specific damage types. Or we could have drones that affect the environment, e.g., drone that generates fog or magnetic clouds in an area until we destroy it. Also, why not add drones that support players? When you find and activate one, you get increased resources drops for as long as it is alive.

There could also be mini-bosses every rotation.

7 hours ago, Darkmega18 said:

Part 4: Worthwhile rewards. "Power to the tenno"

To add to your ideas, arbitrations could have secondary objectives every wave, like bounties. For example, don't allow enemies to capture any radio tower for the duration of the wave, or kill X enemies on a minute.

I like your ideas for rewards, although I'm not sure about relic transmuter. Sounds unnecessary. I don't know.

[Darkmega18]

6 hours ago, Genitive said:

I agree that rotations should be more frequent, but I don't see the point of doubling them. It would be fine if they stayed ABCCC..., but with frequency as in other game modes. Scaling also could stay normal, but enemies should start at higher level. Or even better, they could be replaced with elite variants, like in Orb Vallis, if DE were willing to create an elite variant for more units in the game.

There should be more drone types, but please no nullifiers. Instead of taking away from the player, they should buff enemies. And I was thinking about something more simple, like drones that give enemies specific damage types. Or we could have drones that affect the environment, e.g., drone that generates fog or magnetic clouds in an area until we destroy it. Also, why not add drones that support players? When you find and activate one, you get increased resources drops for as long as it is alive.

There could also be mini-bosses every rotation.

To add to your ideas, arbitrations could have secondary objectives every wave, like bounties. For example, don't allow enemies to capture any radio tower for the duration of the wave, or kill X enemies on a minute.

I like your ideas for rewards, although I'm not sure about relic transmuter. Sounds unnecessary. I don't know.

extended tiers is so that by time you reach C rank and go C to oblivion mode due to my version's reduced starting values but increased scaling the enemies will be around a similar level to a rank C of the old version, while still preserving the feeling of arbitration's standard longevity (where all tiers are doubled in time) only you're constantly getting rewards to get strong, the whole point of arbitrations as far as the arbiters are concerned, so it feels more fulfilling. and so cause the rewards go faster, the enemies scale faster so it's basically "Original arbitrations condensed and more lucrative". also, elite version makes it go back to standard ABCC-infinite.

 

Nullifiers. enemies with nullifier cannons, and purging magnetic bullets everywhere! (lolnope). and most of them do buff enemies, but the fact is that the drones are essentially enemies and they're trying to get your ass kicked. and nothing gets your ass kicked faster than making people who rely too much on abilities rather than skilled gameplay get shat on. it's not like you can't just pop the bubbles with your spinny spears or extreme range and rapidfire weaponry. and it's not like they'll keep coming back provided you kill the drone.

But some super eximus arbiter mini-bosses could be fun. although good luck when one gets a toxin buff and you get falcon punched.

 

I'd say the bonus objective would escalate the warrior spirit buffs and potentially provide bonus vitus at the end of that rotation for further speed farming for the skilled.

 

yeeeeaaah, relic transmuter was a stab in the dark, wasn't expecting it to be all that amazeballs.

y'know what'd be cool though? A transmutational widget thingy that can be applied to a mod that makes that one mod able to be throttled up and down so you can eleminate having to have multiples of your favorite mods that may typically be a bit hefty on the slots when it comes to fresh weapons or frames. even though I know that people have been asking for throttleable mods for ages. :V

Edited May 2, 2019 by Darkmega18

[Bristoling]

Seriously, I'd rather have total immunity like it is now rather then all the enemies turning into small nullifiers. Lets be honest, drones just have to go, they aren't fun at all to play against.

But, why suggest EMP draining both energy and shields? Shields aren't OP, far from it, and most of the shield heavy frames probably use Quick Thinking just to stay alive. Maybe I don't want to play Rhino/Nidus/Inaros on every Arbitration. If you want to make it difficult, make it equally difficult for everyone, and propose a drone that causes frames to lose their buffs on getting hit (Iron Skin, Vex Armour, Shatter Shield etc.), so that everyone can be pissed off. Last thing we need is something like this passing and making squishy frames even more squishy...

I agree that rotations have to be changed, getting 1200-2000 Endo for 10 minutes of Sortie + level enemies doesn't feel like a reward. 

Vendor changes? Sure, I'd be great if one could get more forma or Catalyst or whatever else. But I'm afraid DE might not want to do it since Forma for example is a great Platinum sink.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Bristoling

[Darkmega18]

because these drones are BIG effects that people really need to be worried about, but only after a delay, and they give ample warning when they're about to trigger so the effects need to be BIG. like profit taker's emp body slam, that more often than not kills like half my energy and obliterates my shields along with halving them cause magnetics.

This little arby drone though, rather than just rearing up and swinging his booty like profit taker he has to charge up over like close 6 seconds. sure, the emp could just be a really nasty magnetic proc, while something to ruin a tanks day could be a viral corrosive proc. doesn't mean a friendly well picked hyldryn couldn't completely purge the procs or you couldn't just stand on some fuzzy carpet for a bit from oberon, so it's smart plays and reactionary. Bringing stuff to not only nuke the enemy, but do what you can to keep everyone going. Teamwork, put past in that warrior spirit revival/rescue idea to go with it all.

Even, heck, you could make the drones explosion's cause effects for the opposite teams. so if it procs magnetic on you periodically like the drone in question, blowing one up could instead electrical stun and magnetize enemies instead. break a rage drone, everyone could get 50% more overall damage for a bit in the burst. Nully guy exploding could just give overshields or even an ability efficiency buff or something. Just things that stop people from zoning out and single stratting it all like I more than often see. gotta vary it up, and create some of that dread filled difficulty based excitement (funstration, if you prefer).

Edited May 3, 2019 by Darkmega18