Feedback on the recent looting change with Nekros/Hydroid etc.

[Steel_Rook]

25 minutes ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Thought i believe even if we get all loot abilities removed the grind wouldnt be adjusted at all because DE.

That definitely is a real danger, yes. For all my wishful thinking that normalising loot buffs will lead to an increase in drop rates, there's every chance that nothing will actually change. We'll be stuck with S#&$ drop rates AND no loot buffs - the worst of both worlds. I know DE are legendarily stingy with their rewards out of some white-knuckle fear that we'll have too much fun and leave, but they've been decent at addressing tedious grinds some time after release. The Cetus economy changes are a decent example of this. Hopefully, this change leads to better drops...

[Zeclem]

removal of all loot based abilities would be dumb. ever heard of getting the right tools for the right job? by that approach we should make every frame do the same thing so everybody can be on the same page and make balancing the game super easy. yeah, noty. 

[Fallen_Echo]

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That definitely is a real danger, yes. For all my wishful thinking that normalising loot buffs will lead to an increase in drop rates, there's every chance that nothing will actually change. We'll be stuck with S#&$ drop rates AND no loot buffs - the worst of both worlds. I know DE are legendarily stingy with their rewards out of some white-knuckle fear that we'll have too much fun and leave, but they've been decent at addressing tedious grinds some time after release. The Cetus economy changes are a decent example of this. Hopefully, this change leads to better drops...

I would hope for such thing too but then i remember that we needed dataminers just to show us how certain droprates were extremely low on items what were never affected by loot frames.

[Xzorn]

9 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Normalise drop rate boosts, then rejigger drop rates. Simply rolling back the loot-buff-stacking change is the wrong way to fix the issue.

 

It's a shame most prolly don't get the overall concept they're not actually getting anything. It's like +%Magic Find except you can't exploit it by swapping gear before the death blow of a boss. If you just run around with Magic Find on you're kill rate drops so you're loot rate doesn't change and you don't gain anything.

Players shouldn't be forced into doing munchkin tactics on their loot drops. It's obnoxious and like I mentioned DE has already circumvented these tactics anyways. You can't +%Loot Eidolon shards, Arcanes or Kuva and most good rewards have been moved to "?" mission completes / rotations.

[Shadowplay_13]

DE pls turn it back. Allow multiple increased loot chances.

* we need to be able to farm, Endo etc

* You killed premade groups / playing with friends.

--> if u want to nerf it make it so Hydriod / khora get a chance on the killiing blow and afterwards Nekros / doggy on the body parts. Make it also so that if 1 nekros fails another can attempt it again.

 

 

 

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

For bigger clans who want to build impressive dojos this an absolute disaster.  We need literally 100s of k poly and plastics per room plus obscene amounts of oxium.  And don't get me started on colours or hema, that truly is a joke.

Having nekros/hydroid/speedva plus any other frame in premade farming teams was a great way for our clan members to get to know each other.  It required a bit of planning and communication with everyone working towards a common goal.  Not anymore.

Thanks de.  You've completely nerfed dojo decorating.  All because a tiny number of people got a handful of extra mods.

[Xaxma]

Should just buff Nekros and Pilfering mods to grant 100% - 200% chance to drop additional loot. 

Edited May 28, 2019 by Xaxma

[XaoGarrent]

All I'm gonna say is I am super glad I don't run a clan, and I am super glad I'm not a new player. I'm glad I got all the big grinds out of the way long ago.

Way to take another crack to the knees of new player experience, DE. Well, at the very least, I can feel comfortable giving people the advice not to bother with grinding out Vor on earth in the low levels in order to get base Hydroid for farming purposes.

[r21187]

omg they murder hydroid and next is wukong

 

DE hate the comunity? i mean they murder lecta secura ember and a lot of thing

 

maybe they just could delet the items they dont like or the comunity loves as they hate us so much

i just got a year from playing and i noticed how they nerf all that people love

 

dont know how veterans has lasted so much as they see all that they love getting nerfed to the ground

 

[Xepthrichros]

14 hours ago, r21187 said:

omg they murder hydroid and next is wukong

 

DE hate the comunity? i mean they murder lecta secura ember and a lot of thing

 

maybe they just could delet the items they dont like or the comunity loves as they hate us so much

i just got a year from playing and i noticed how they nerf all that people love

 

dont know how veterans has lasted so much as they see all that they love getting nerfed to the ground

 

Because some of these "veterans" are actually the ones asking for nerfs or defending DE when the nerfs are made.

[xZayziex]

So I want to talk about how, with this recent update, the loot abilities no longer have any synergy with each other and how the Chesa is made irrelevant by the Smeeta. For the specific notes on this nerfy-fix, see the quote below.

On 2019-05-22 at 4:31 PM, [DE]Megan said:

Fixes:

• Fixed Chesa Retrieve double dipping with Nekros’ Desecrate.
• Fixed Chesa/Desecrate double dipping with Hydroid/Khora.
  • **Added info: When we added the Nightwave challenge for the Silver Grove, we encouraged a return to content that normally would have been fine. A small handful of players found an exploit and as we looked into things, we thought we fixed the issue with the new Chesa behavior that could lead to problems. We didn't. We decided to cut a bit deeper. Ivara's looting ability is now the only one that stacks with other looting because it works while alive. If a target is dead, a successful loot now happens once, no matter the source. However, multiple can attempt to loot the same body. Yes... this is different from how it previously behaved, but this is the new intended behavior.

 

Ability Discrepancies:

• Retrieve has a 45% chance to get ONE thing from a container or corpse every 10 seconds

  • Even before the nerf, it was way better to bring a smeeta for the chance at a 120 second double pickup/affinity buff, an instance of a planet's rare resource, plus all the other buffs it can give. Looter abilities and kills per second also maximize the usefulness of the 2 minute buff, making the Chesa's maybe-once-every-10-seconds-loot-chance to steal from 6-12 things in the same timespan totally irrelevant.

• Strangledome depends on 5m-10m dome radius, 10m-28m grab radius and player's ability to kill per second with weapons or abilties

  • Has better chance to drop than Nekros' ability and Nekros can clean up corpses that Khora doesn't loot. But this is not more efficient than a team of Nekros and one Khora is enough to manage spawns with how Strangledome grabs enemies.

• Swarm depends on 5m-15m base radius and 14m-42m max radius, a max of 20 tentacles to capture enemies, and players' ability to kill per second with weapons or abilities

  • Guarantees a 100% drop chance with Pilfering Swarm but since it no longer stacks with anything except Ivara's Prowl it's better for spamming under spawns or camping. Camping can work well other Hydroids to increase tentacle amount and density, there's no double dipping here but more enemeis will be captured and more enemies can drop loot faster with more Hydroids.

• Desecrate depends on a range of 25 to 70 meters and 3 corpses consumed per second on top players' of kills/damage per second with weapons or abilities

  • Since dismembered body parts can count as more than one corpse, Nekros's ability is actually the most efficient as you only need a bunch of corpses or dismembered body parts nearby to loot. A party of four Nekros will maximize its use at the consumption of 12 bodies per second. So there's no need to camp, wait on anyone else, or manage spawns and, like with how Hydroid synergizes best with other Hydroids now, Nekros synergizes best with other Nekros.

• Prowl (with max range & duration + a max blind rage) depends on 8 meter range and 0.8 second steal timer PER enemy. (can be 11 meters and 1.21 seconds without narrow minded) and a whole mob can take 10-20 seconds to rob.

  • While Ivara's ability can double dip it doesn't really matter if Ivara can't steal from enemies in the Swarm or Strangledome (which hasn't ever worked for me) and can't steal from a group of enemies faster than Nekros, Khora, and Hydroid can kill them with their range (which doesn't need to be maximized to be efficient)

  • Because of limitations with range and duration, Ivara is better off wandering away from the group and stealing from spawns before they reach other teammates. However, in practice, this throws off spawns, especially in survival missions, where enemies spawn near Ivara and then take cover in the room. It's as if they are aware of her presence but unaware of her teammates causing total havoc in another room.

  • With pets, she synergizes best with a Chesa because they are both slower looters but Smeeta Charm buffs works better with Ivara's toolkit  and can net a double affinity, a resource boost for two minutes, plus rare resource instances—so why bring a Chesa?

  • With other warframes, she synergizes best with Pilfering Swarm or Pilfering Strangledome if the abilities are used in the choke point of a hallway with a dead end, where everyone hides around a corner in the dead end while Ivara stands at the start of the choke point and steals from the enemies. Not pub friendly nor exactly the most engaging gameplay, and only works in organized squads. This can also still throw off spawns if they aren't aware of other teammates.

 

Ideas to Synergize Abilities

• Desecrate should stack with Pilfering Strangledome and Pilferming Swarm

  • I don't think the nerf makes any sense as I always interpreted the stacking as Nekros using some kind of greedy necromancy ability to get more loot at the cost of health after an enemy dies while Hydroid and Khora are just stealing extra loot when enemies die. (On top of that, of course, Ivara steals from enemies before they die.)

• Retrieve should have X% chance for the Chesa to scavenge corpses, containers, and certain rare items every Y seconds or for one instance.

  • The scavenging can work where it Fetch vacuums extra loot from corpses, gathers plant extracts for y seconds, vacuums extra loot from broken/unbroken containers, and lets Chesa have a chance to hunt down one rare item (ayatan sculpture/ayatan star/syndicate medallions) for y seconds. (Players could follow the chesa during the buff to see where it found a sculpture or medallion whereas stars could be the rare resource instance Chesa's create.)

  • I feel this type of functionality dilutes the chances of it double-dipping a corpse by it having a chance to search for other things for tens of seconds or several minutes, depending on RNG.It happens so rarely it just is really inconsequential.

• Prowl's range and duration could be dependent on melee weapon range mods and attack speed mods on top of range and duration warframe mods:

  • There are plenty of abilities that are affected by mods on other weapons so I think that the frame who can totally ignore lasers and can fire a dashwire between two mountains on the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis can use the range and attack speed mods on a weapon to pickpocket fast and far enough to keep up with other looter frames.

 

Preventing double-triple-quadruple dipping on certain enemies

• If there are enemies that DE doesn't want players to get more than one drop from then they should just make it so that that enemy doesn't drop more than one or two things on death.

 

I think the goal should be to synergize frames and not to just nerf them to where they compete to be better at a specific role or nerf them to where using one warframe for a looting role, or a team of the same warframes, is more sensible than the rest. I love Ivara but the nerf makes me feel like I should trick out a Nekros for truly efficient farm runs with friends and clan members. Furthermore, players often build frames for their own playstyles (speedruns, solo runs, stealth runs, farming runs, endurance runs, and etc) and nerfing everything because a minority of people found the time and energy to cheese something is silly and disrespectful to the majority of people who just play how and what they want. At the end of the day, nerfing things won't stop people from cheesing certain parts of the game that they've always cheesed, it'll just slow them down while inconveniencing other players to the point they just go with the meta or give up on looting abilities and do their own thing.

Edited June 8, 2019 by KarazyX
I have added how Hydroid's ability to drop more loot is dependent on a max of 20 tentacles, their density and how enemies can bypass them; how Nekros's ability consumes 3 corpses per second; and the frames Ivara synergizes with best and why.

[Lazarow]

Reduced farming in a game about resource farming, makes complete sense DE!!

I do like what you proposed I think chesa should have  a higher chance for looting as it would be more worth to run chesa kubrow than a smeeta kavat then, with a 45% chance id pick smeeta over chesa most days, or reduce the looting time to at least 7 seconds so its more frequent

Edited May 29, 2019 by AwkwardLazarow

[(PSN)Onder6099]

Smeeta over Chesa for Loot? No, thank you. Would be also nice to know how Chesa synergies with Amalgam Ripkas True Steel Mod.

[Megatomus]

Definitely a pointless nerf, while abominations like Hema mutagen costs still exists.

Just when I am enjoying playing with Pilfhora and excited for Atlas Prime, DE pushed the Nekros Farming meta on us, if I decide to join squads for that purpose.

Confining Atlas, Ivara, Hydroid and Khora to loot effectively only in solo mode, on a cooperative game where players are expected to contribute somehow to the team, this was a bad move.

[Vulture051]

On 2019-05-26 at 3:18 PM, EvilChaosKnight said:

Are you sure you aren't confusing them with NanoSpores or Plastids?
Without boosters the avg. earn rate for Mut Samples is about 1 per minute.

You're right. I have 1053 of them and haven't used one in at least a year though so my point still kinda stands.

[Himodor]

On 2019-05-27 at 12:14 PM, Steel_Rook said:

Agreed. Powerful loot-enhancing abilities don't actually give you more loot. Instead, drop tables are adjusted for the most optimal farming anyway, meaning everyone else gets saddled with S#&$ drop rates. I'd personally like to see either a decrease or a straight-up removal of loot-boosting abilities and a corresponding rebalance of loot drops now that those buffs are gone. Stuff like this is why I'm a proponent of normalisation. The smaller the difference between your average player and min/maxers is, the more finely-tuned content can be to a broad section of the playerbase.

This is precisely why Wolf happened. He had to be over-tuned massively to account for people with Rivened out min/maxed guns else he'd be trivial, but all that ended up doing was making him abominable for everyone else. A lot of drop rates currently seem to have been set with Nekros/Hydroid/Khora/Nidus in mind, leaving everyone not playing those comps to suck eggs and pray to RNGesus. I mean, does anyone seriously believe that Toroid drop rate was designed around a random pubbie team just needing a few of them? Because I don't.

Normalise drop rate boosts, then rejigger drop rates. Simply rolling back the loot-buff-stacking change is the wrong way to fix the issue.

Excellent point. When I have to use Titiana as my leveling frame because dingbat keeps appearing and I can CC his invulnerable henchmen, and even then the pistols that rip up mobs on Sorties barely scratch the guy, on a level effing 20 defence mission, Something is seriously wrong. If they were balancing for the "I roled this Riven 100 times and its still junk!" crowd then no wonder the thing was a nightmare.

 

On 2019-05-27 at 12:33 PM, Darth_Predator said:

While this can be easy with Hydro, Khora and Chroma, Nekros will require some sort of replacement, cause just making it "Desecrate now generates only health orbs" will be a bit underwhelming. While I'll be ok with that cause despoil -> desecrate -> orbs -> health conversion -> profit, it may require some sort of additional effect or rework of the ability altogether. Or just rework of the entire frame /shrug

If the trade-off for removing those abilities will be less f***ed up resource acquisition, I'll not oppose it. Though I'll miss my cat's random rare resources finds.

I think you have to look at it from a slightly different perspective. Namely, what do people actually want from the powers. When I do a 20 minute dark sector survival, I'm after loot, sure, but that's covered by the resource drop boost anyway. What I'm really after are the Health and Energy orbs and, most especially, extra life support. You keep Nekros spitting those out from corpses and people will still bring Nekros on long survival runs.

Similarly with Ivara, when I'm prowling and occasionally soloing survivals with her, I'm not actually looking for the loot. Ya its nice, but what I REALLY want are energy orbs to keep my Prowl running and run my other powers. You have prowl spit out energy orbs and possibly live supports, and her prowl will still be very viable.

Really great tip about Health Conversion, btw. *plots a new Nekros build*

I in general agree with your overall point that rebalancing loot tables for people that are not triple looting corpses is the way to go. The Change here does not bother me at all.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Himodor

[(PSN)CodyXSavageX]

Nekros/Chesa is post death

Ivara is pre death

Hydroid/Khora is on death

If the loot abilities occur at the same death condition they shouldn’t stack

However if we can’t make enemies drop loot from a new drop table more than once I disagree with the decision at least allow us to “double dip” abilities and lock us from the “triple dip” I’d be fine with that

 

 

[Maganar]

On 2019-05-24 at 12:21 PM, DrBorris said:

It feels like an over-correction. DE saw people stacking like 8 loot abilities on a single enemy and it was  broken. There is a reasonable line and people past it. Rather than just cap off the extreme fringe farming strategy that most people did not even know about, they swung so wide they hit a big chunk of the loot farming meta.

[...]

I agree with what you're saying but I want to expand upon your sentence at the beginning here with my own thoughts.  All of what follows is meant as feedback toward DE and not directed at you - just quoting you for reference on that first sentence you wrote.  I agree with your proposal that splitting the loot system into several "bonus drop checks" instead of simply "Ivara and then everyone else is one, exclusive check" might be a way to solve the underlying issue, but I want to segue into a deep concern of mine about the underlying philosophy here.

Here's the thing though about "people stacking 8 loot abilities" - DE just released two major game-changers in the looting meta in sync: Khora augment and Chesa (reworked precept).  That was the final push that took things over the edge: and it was two recent additions to the looting meta that DE themselves put out there as incredibly boring recycled abilities (Khora augment being a weaker Pilfering Swarm and Chesa precept rework being a recycled Desecrate).

DE could have given us something new and exciting with this augment and precept; instead they gave us two more recycled and very boring abilities.  Then, as soon as people used them, DE gets flustered and decided to nuke the entire looting meta - literally remove the entire concept of loot stacking.

Meanwhile in a corner wearing dunce caps, Nekros and Hydroid have had exceptionally lackluster kits since their releases (which just about go back to the dawn of time) that have never been addressed - "well they can loot and who else can do that?" as the only justification.  It gave them a niche role (since their overall design was unimpressive to most players including myself), and now that role has just been imploded.

What we're looking at is a core issue in DE's mentality in regards to looting and "unpopular" warframes/pets.  A warframe is unpopular (Hydroid)?  Just give it the best looting power.  A pet is also unpopular because its precept is bad and/or has been overwritten by a new mod (Chesa)?  Just give it the best looting power.  Etc.  People need loot.  They'll start using it - for loot if nothing else.

That's the mentality, and it doesn't fix the core issue - these things aren't fun or appealing to pick.  Hydroid never became exciting.  No one gets super proud of their Chesa and goes ham polarizing it with Forma unless they've just about polarized every other item they own.  Looting power is just tossed on as a bandage on a flesh wound to "give them a place" and now DE is tearing the bandages off.  Of course it's going to hurt when half the skin comes with it.

Chesa is now worse off than before - if you actually care about looting, you'll take Hydroid for the 100% drop rate and Chesa does nothing (at least it would pick stuff up between Defense waves before?  ...which was borderline nothing, but at least SOMETHING until Fetch was introduced).

I'm getting distracted, but all of the above does have a bearing on the situation so I'm not deleting it.  I will get back on track though.  The point is this: if DE doesn't want people to stack looting, then they sure as heck better start coming up with better "identities" for warframes, ability augments, and pet precepts than "well it can loot hurr durr."  That no longer helps anyone if the loot can't stack.  AND they better change a lot of the existing ones.  DE CREATED this many forms of loot multiplication in the game.  If they didn't want that much potential to stack, they never should have made that many and instead should have come up with more compelling reasons to play the warframes and use the pet in question a long, long time ago.  It's hypocritical they would release such boring, recycled content.... then nerf (that is not a fix!) as soon as people decided to stack it with the existing content (since all of this recycled content is nothing new, the only fresh application was to stack higher than ever before).

A separate issue not related to your post:

All of this is to say nothing of the fact resource values in this game are currently balanced around the formerly possible loot stacking - that now is not.  That is going to massively increase the new player grind, which is something DE has said they are worried about being too large and that Nightwave was supposed to help fix (and it is a step in the right direction but with some unfortunate backfiring involved).  I don't understand how they think they can do something like this and not harm new players trying to onboard.  I'm utterly baffled DE can't see the long-reaching consequences of this change and why they would be so heavy-handed on the nerf when they've claimed to worry about things like new player onboarding.

[Himodor]

Yes, you have a point about the New player experience being impacted. How many new people did the unkillable Wolf chase off? Getting splattered over and over by something you cant even damage would have risen toe "screw this" meter to the red zone.

As for Nightwave, I had to explain to people over and over tha (a) no I cant taxi you to a Sortie (B) You cant kill the exploiter orb without Max SU standing. No I cant taxi you. (C) No you cant just kill a Hydrolyst without at least having completed the War within. No we cant carry you so you can get the rewards. And if I have to explain to you what a Hydrolyst is then it's pretty clear you probably wont be able to kill one.

They decided to put those challenges out there where new players could see them. Hell I could not complete killing the Exploiter orb myself. I saw new people getting very VERY frustrated by the fact that they could not complete these challenges. (One guy kept asking everyone to taxi him to a sortie And the exploiter orb even after beeng told that he could not be taken to one. Someone finally tried to taxi him and of course he was bounced.) By adding gated content to Nightwave DE shot itself in the foot. I mean they could have added "kill a Terralyst" and that would be at least doable.

But ya, he amount of resources that new people need to get really going needs to be seriously looked at, and thats the core of the problem. I mean I have a million and a half Nanospores, I'm not going to be impacted no matter what they do, And I was surprised the other day when someone new said that it was difficult to get Nanospores. Thats the level we are talking here.

[Azamagon]

On 2019-05-27 at 10:01 AM, Xzorn said:

I personally don't think loot based abilities should have been a thing in the first place.

We're not actually gaining anything globally by their existence. DE considers them when they assign drop chances and you might have noticed most of the new high end drops cannot be affected by loot abilities nor Vacuum. It would be better to replace them with something and normalize drop rates so that these farming metas have a more broad spectrum. Instead of mandatory bring X-Y-Z +%Loot frame it becomes more about what group comp will maximize performance for the task at hand.

This ^

[Steel_Rook]

6 hours ago, Maganar said:

Meanwhile in a corner wearing dunce caps, Nekros and Hydroid have had exceptionally lackluster kits since their releases (which just about go back to the dawn of time) that have never been addressed - "well they can loot and who else can do that?" as the only justification.  It gave them a niche role (since their overall design was unimpressive to most players including myself), and now that role has just been imploded.

What we're looking at is a core issue in DE's mentality in regards to looting and "unpopular" warframes/pets.  A warframe is unpopular (Hydroid)?  Just give it the best looting power.  A pet is also unpopular because its precept is bad and/or has been overwritten by a new mod (Chesa)?  Just give it the best looting power.  Etc.  People need loot.  They'll start using it - for loot if nothing else.

I like to refer to this as "balance of extremes." It involves creating a thing - a Warframe, a gun, an ability - which is objectively terrible to the point of nobody using it... Except one single aspect which is supposed to make it all worth it. Overwatch had Roadhog who was everywhere and extremely popular... Up until they nerfed his Hook one-shot combo, and he became pointless until a massive amount of rebalancing. Payday 2 had the original Minigun which was very powerful in theory but slowed you down, had no ammo pick-up, was hilariously inaccurate and generally had no real selling points. Consequently, few people used it. Even as far back as City of Heroes you had Instant Healing, which made Regeneration overpowered... Until it was redesigned and all of a sudden Regen was "awful."

In my experience, balance of extremes never works, or at least doesn't work well. It creates niche items which are hard to balance and constantly teeter-totter between "too powerful" and "too weak." Trying to fix an underperforming Warframe or Cat by throwing in a single out-of-context highly desirable ability is the wrong way to go about it. You still have a Warframe people don't want to play, except now they feel pressured into playing it because of that one thing. As I said, I'm fine with making loot-boosting abilities mutually exclusive, but this has to come with additional changes beyond itself. That's the problem with balance of extremes.

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

Should DE roll back these changes ?   Absolutely definitely, no question.  

Will they?  Don't hold your breath.

If you saw the way Steve and Scott mumbled there way through the question from Rebecca on this during the last dev stream it should not inspire hope.

[Tenegkhun]

This was probably done to slow the acquisition of Hexenon, but impacts the entire game. I went to farm some with double boosters as Khora, ended up in party with thre Nekros. We all stayed a little away from each other so our abilities wouldn't conflict, and then would occasionally hop over to the other's location to scoop up resources. But therein lies the problem; this change runs counter to the very base design of the game. Being forced to stay out of range of one another pushes teammates out of affinity range.

[Maganar]

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I like to refer to this as "balance of extremes." It involves creating a thing - a Warframe, a gun, an ability - which is objectively terrible to the point of nobody using it... Except one single aspect which is supposed to make it all worth it. Overwatch had Roadhog who was everywhere and extremely popular... Up until they nerfed his Hook one-shot combo, and he became pointless until a massive amount of rebalancing. Payday 2 had the original Minigun which was very powerful in theory but slowed you down, had no ammo pick-up, was hilariously inaccurate and generally had no real selling points. Consequently, few people used it. Even as far back as City of Heroes you had Instant Healing, which made Regeneration overpowered... Until it was redesigned and all of a sudden Regen was "awful."

In my experience, balance of extremes never works, or at least doesn't work well. It creates niche items which are hard to balance and constantly teeter-totter between "too powerful" and "too weak." Trying to fix an underperforming Warframe or Cat by throwing in a single out-of-context highly desirable ability is the wrong way to go about it. You still have a Warframe people don't want to play, except now they feel pressured into playing it because of that one thing. As I said, I'm fine with making loot-boosting abilities mutually exclusive, but this has to come with additional changes beyond itself. That's the problem with balance of extremes.

That's a good way of putting it.  I'm part of the crowd that dislikes the entire concept of loot-enhancement existing and factoring into the balance equation (yes, I understand energy and health orbs are part of loot enhancement - I am an Ivara main! - but I wish it stopped there instead of extending to resources), but which accept this is a looter shooter so that sort of stuff is going to exist.  But if it's going to exist, it can't be this extreme.  Like you've said, this creates an extremely niche identity based entirely around a single function.  Niche warframes, weapons, and pets are fine, of course - but when the niche application is "it's compatible with a single particular mod" or "you spam one ability and ignore the rest of the kit," then you have a broken design that is unappealing to play and justified exclusively by something that can wildly swing between overpowering and useless.

My distaste for looting abilities is best summed up with this other post:

On 2019-05-27 at 4:01 AM, Xzorn said:

I personally don't think loot based abilities should have been a thing in the first place.

We're not actually gaining anything globally by their existence. DE considers them when they assign drop chances and you might have noticed most of the new high end drops cannot be affected by loot abilities nor Vacuum. It would be better to replace them with something and normalize drop rates so that these farming metas have a more broad spectrum. Instead of mandatory bring X-Y-Z +%Loot frame it becomes more about what group comp will maximize performance for the task at hand.

If DE is already making looting abilities non-functional on important things, and now nerfing looting abilities as a whole.... why have they been so gung-ho about adding them?  Why can't ordinary resource costs be rebalanced around an inability to boost drops?  This is what we should really be seeing, and looting abilities should be replaced with +% chance of health orb drops (for Nekros and such) or +% chance to steal energy orbs (for things like Ivara).

Edited May 30, 2019 by Maganar

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Remember Viver?

Remember when D.E. nerfed Excal and Trinity because of what people were using them for on Viver?

Remember how only a small part of the community actually used that thing on Viver?

Remember DE reverting the nerfs and just removing Viver after community backlash?

Don’t punish everyone for the misdeeds of the few. Fix the issue without making things worse.