Rewards from Arbitration mission types are unfortunately skewed in speed of acquisition

[Andrew7811]

If there is one change I would like DE to make (I know there are other problems with arbitrations i.e. I don't like the exact implementation of the revive system) but the first change I would like to see is to change how often you get rewards on every mission type. I personally don't play defection because screw defection so I don't know how quickly you can farm Vitus Essence (and thus reward table rolls) from defection. What I can tell you though is that after playing through all the different modes, I find my self only interested in doing excavation arbitrations because with a proper group, it is trivial to farm 12-15 vitus essence in one hour in excavation while all the other game modes generally limit you to 5-6 vitus essence per hour (though sometimes I get 8 or 9 in one hour from interception if my group is so good that the enemies never capture any point the whole time). This means that excavation gives you at least twice the number of rewards in the same time period as the other modes except interception to some degree. I don't like the fact that I am basically waiting for the arbitration mission RNG to give my excavation before I become even remotely interested in playing arbitrations as the other modes don't feel nearly as rewarding

[[DE]Rebecca]

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

6 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Can we get this leveling of rewards applied to ALL missions?  There is a reason why I have 300k cryotic and its because excavation and survival have the exact same drop tables but in excavation you get rewards twice as fast (if not faster).  The excavation mission type dumps all over survival and defense and always has.

[Chroia]

24 minutes ago, (PS4)Agent_CHAR said:

Can we get this leveling of rewards applied to ALL missions?  There is a reason why I have 300k cryotic and its because excavation and survival have the exact same drop tables but in excavation you get rewards twice as fast (if not faster).  The excavation mission type dumps all over survival and defense and always has.

Expect Excavation to get nerfed.
It's what happened last time.

^{What? Me, still sore over someone fking over my favorite game mode (not to mention introducing nearly all the game-breaking issues into it that still suffers from as a direct consequence) and turning it into something else entirely explicitly in order to nerf your reward schedule?
Why would you possibly think that?}

Edited May 21, 2019 by Chroia

[Vortuna]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

If your solution is to straight up nerf excavation while simply not improving the other game modes, mostly survival and defense which needs more of a rework, I won't see any reason to play arbitrations as a whole anymore.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Vortuna
Spelling

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

40 minutes ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Very glad to hear it. I love variety in missions but sadly, as OP, I can't bring myself to play/enjoy anything besides Excavations, Interceptions and Infested Salvage regarding Arbitrations. And I like Arbitrations very much, I like the endo farm, the challenge, the boons, the spiciness of it. One of my favorite additions since sorties. But I just can't bring myself to endure 10m/waves for one single reward, at least when there are other less boring and more rewarding alternatives. So I'm looking forward to see how it pans out. Cheers!

Edited May 21, 2019 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[Lance_Lionroar]

15 minutes ago, Vortuna said:

If your solution is to straight up nerf excavation while simply not improving the other game modes, mostly survival and defense which needs more if a rework, I won't see any reason to play arbitrations as a whole anymore.

I mean, she just said they'll perform improvements. Dunno why you immediately jumped to conclusions about nerfs.

[ZizWing]

Besides being faster, excavation also has another major factor when it comes to long runs (in my opinion anyway). You're constantly DOING stuff. Kill attackers, find powercores, communicate with teammates at the other excavator. Run between the 2 if one has trouble getting cores. It's all just so much more engaging to do. In survival, defense and especially interception I feel like I am just waiting at least 30 minutes before enemies become mildly interesting to fight, only for them to scale into ridiculousness after an hour or more. They start boring, have a moment of fun and then become frustrating to continue. With excavation this scaling frustration also exists, but at least it is more fun to play right from the start... or... when the second excavator spawns anyway.

Also, I have never seen infested salvage pop up so I can't comment on that and defection is just something I am completely sick of after that event + harrow. I've heard defection can be alright with the correct team, but it's just not a mode for me.

If we had infinite time and resources (I know, nobody has this), I would like to see side objectives added to each mode (maybe except excavation) which allow you to speed up reward cycles OR act as secondary reward cycles. Things like the kuva survival objectives are a start. I'm not going to try and come up with reasonable objectives here since that takes a lot of time and effort to get right. But it's something I felt like mentioning.

TL:DR;

Excavation makes me feel like I'm actively working towards speeding up my progress, while other modes feel mostly like a waiting game until enemies become relevant (damage/health) for your chosen frame. I would like to see extra objectives in other endless modes to actively pursue shorter reward cycles. This keeps the modes more engaging for a longer time period and in turn, could balance out the time vs rewards discrepancy we face.

[Kontrollo]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Nice to hear that.

And I guess maybe as a question for another dev stream or dev workshop, because I don't think there will be another reply: Any plans on the frequency of the different mission types or enemy factions? Maybe a little more structured rotation than completely random on all eligible tiles/nodes?

 

Because I found it odd at some point how little Excavations I was seeing and gathered a full week's worth of data on Arbitrations:

Spoiler

 

It's heavily skewed in favour of some mission types over others, and around half the time we're against Infested. I'd love to see it change more towards mission type popularity, and more equal distribution of factions.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Kontrollo

[(PSN)vinster]

With these months of data, can you please please please fix solo excavation power cell spawns, especially in Arbitrations, once and for all?!

With some map tilesets and spawn points, it is mind numbly frustrating during the 4th or 5th excavator sometimes to just sit there and twiddle my thumbs while waiting for the power cell enemy to spawn. 😕

Or can you just spawn the next excavator within 100m of the last one?  That way, the enemies can better track and follow you there quickly.

[Chroia]

12 minutes ago, (PS4)vinster said:

Or can you just spawn the next excavator within 100m of the last one?  That way, the enemies can better track and follow you there quickly.

Excavation used to work like that:
You'd get an excavator in each of the possible spots in the tile, sequentially, and then it'd start dropping them in the next tile, repeat.
This was specifically removed because it made Excavation "too rewarding".

Between that, and the removal of enemy teleportation (i.e. catch up to far away players) from specific game modes including excavation, and you have where we are today, with conga lines trying to manually traverse the hundreds of meters (in a straight line, which we all know isn't how most tiles actually are barring bullet jumping - which enemies can't do), cluttering the spawn slots for new spawns, and getting stuck on terrain or broken nav meshes until you backtrack and find them, as beautifully illustrated just recently.

[PookieNumnums]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Later this year includes dec 31st just sayin

[PookieNumnums]

1 hour ago, Andrew7811 said:

If there is one change I would like DE to make (I know there are other problems with arbitrations i.e. I don't like the exact implementation of the revive system) but the first change I would like to see is to change how often you get rewards on every mission type. I personally don't play defection because screw defection so I don't know how quickly you can farm Vitus Essence (and thus reward table rolls) from defection. What I can tell you though is that after playing through all the different modes, I find my self only interested in doing excavation arbitrations because with a proper group, it is trivial to farm 12-15 vitus essence in one hour in excavation while all the other game modes generally limit you to 5-6 vitus essence per hour (though sometimes I get 8 or 9 in one hour from interception if my group is so good that the enemies never capture any point the whole time). This means that excavation gives you at least twice the number of rewards in the same time period as the other modes except interception to some degree. I don't like the fact that I am basically waiting for the arbitration mission RNG to give my excavation before I become even remotely interested in playing arbitrations as the other modes don't feel nearly as rewarding

Imagine if they had the [balla]s to add a method of improving reward time turn around like what is slated for the new game mode. 

I mean.. 

Imagine if that was a general theme to warframe play as a whole.

 

I moisten at the thought. 

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

I hope we're not going to have to wait that long to get the rounds reduced to one like everywhere else rather than the two they are now before getting rewards....

Arbitrations needs that more than it needed revives, let alone the debuffs that go with them, and the faster ramping of enemies....

Edited May 21, 2019 by LSG501

[Tromeo]

2 hours ago, Andrew7811 said:

This means that excavation gives you at least twice the number of rewards in the same time period as the other modes except interception to some degree.

 

1 hour ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Can't we just get rewards for 5 min in survival or 5 waves defenses now?

well I guess you can balance by requiring 4 extractors too...💩

 

[Lokime]

and 'easy' fix would be to give double rewards every rotation (10 minutes in survival = 2 Vitus + 2 rng rewards)

[OvisCaedo]

Well, I'm glad that months of data were able to finally reveal that excavation cycles are faster than survival. There was absolutely no way of knowing this, given that both were brand new game modes that had never existed before arbitrations came out!

Edited May 22, 2019 by OvisCaedo

[Tromeo]

According to the study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes journal, a good dose of sarcasm is healthy because making and understanding sarcastic comments forces the brain to switch to abstract thinking, which boosts creativity.

[Hypernaut1]

Unfortunately the answer may not just be to increase rewards across the board. That has diminishing returns, the faster, easier we get rewards the less rewarding and trivial it becomes. 

If they just increase difficulty level, then cheese tactics become paramount. 

[Yousho]

6 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

Permit me to have a little moan. Typically I think you guys do a great job, and this game is genuinly an amazing piece of work which I truly love. 

But it does genuinly concern me that somebody didn't realise that just doubling the reward requirements across the board world very, very obviously result in exactly this. As much as hindsight is 20/20, it's a bit odd that you ever needed to collect data to know that this would be the result, for much the same reason that I don't need to collect any data to know that feeding my beagle the same as my labrador is going to result in a fat beagle. It's just hard to imagine that DE ever expected anything else.

 

[Cimbro94]

8 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

To be completely honest rate of acquisition on mission types is well known since years. Mission types are old like 4+ years. I don't see how this could not have been put into the thought process of arbitration rewards, being it only 1 mission at a time.

[dwqrf]

Il y a 9 heures, Andrew7811 a dit :

 I personally don't play defection because screw defection so I don't know how quickly you can farm Vitus Essence (and thus reward table rolls) from defection.

Defection can be REALLY fast with some Stims. And it can be really easy with any supportive warframe, like a pair of Oberon buffing the desertors at their spawn.

 

I definitely think it's faster than excavation. But people hate it for some random reasons.

[RAZORLIGHT]

11 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We have months worth of data on this that exactly confirms this and we are using it to measure out improvements to the next round of Arbitrations changes that should come later this year.

later this year sounds... well pretty late

[Voltage]

5 hours ago, Yousho said:

As much as hindsight is 20/20, it's a bit odd that you ever needed to collect data to know that this would be the result, for much the same reason that I don't need to collect any data to know that feeding my beagle the same as my labrador is going to result in a fat beagle. It's just hard to imagine that DE ever expected anything else.

They do this to many different aspects of the game. Ephemera drop chances are being changed down the road, Plains of Eidolon getting the Fortuna treatment, etc. DE has the ability to map out what it's like to mine hundreds of Sentirum, Wisps, Nyth, Fish, Eidolons, ESO, Nightwave tasks, Wolf kills, anything, and yet they release stuff they end up changing later to give people more stuff for the same or less effort. I believe DE has a vision for what they want the pace to be for acquisition (overlooks stuff once in a while), but they are constantly challenged by a vocal percentage via Reddit/Forums that want the pace picked up in the name of "reducing grind" (reducing gameplay).

Edited May 22, 2019 by Voltage

[Vortuna]

14 minutes ago, Voltage said:

They do this to many different aspects of the game. Ephemera drop chances are being changed down the road, Plains of Eidolon getting the Fortuna treatment, etc. DE has the ability to map out what it's like to mine hundreds of Sentirum, Wisps, Nyth, Fish, Eidolons, ESO, Nightwave tasks, Wolf kills, anything, and yet they release stuff they end up changing later to give people more stuff for the same or less effort. I believe DE has a vision for what they want the pace to be for acquisition (overlooks stuff once in a while), but they are constantly challenged by a vocal percentage via Reddit/Forums that want the pace picked up in the name of "reducing grind" (reducing gameplay).

Some of us play for that amazing endless experience like in here.

But most of the time we get modes like survival or defense which is only about 6 rotations where people leave only after 4 or so. How is months of data gathering confirming that we're fine with 10 minute rotations?