Do we really need more resource grinds?

[Els236]

In the title really and I haven't seen many people talking about it.

Do we really need more and more resources in this game? 

It was bad enough when Argons were released and everyone was like "wait, what, so these things we could spend hours farming will slowly disappear!? wtf!?". Now, since my return to Warframe in Feb 2019, there's now:

- 28+ resources dropping from the main star chart (including endo, kuva and others)

- 42+ resources dropping from the Plains Of Eidolon (including the conservation tags)

- 46+ resources dropping from the Orb Vallis (including the conservation tags)

That's over 116 different resources in the game, before including plant parts and special drops like Javlok Capacitors.... or even credits and platinum which themselves are resources.

 

Was Hexenon really a necessary addition? I mean, there's only like 6 things that even use it right now? What's the point?

Couldn't we have had it where Nitain was the resource for Jupiter, seeing as it's currently unavailable to new players and very rarely (if ever) drops from Ghoul bounties.

 

Feels like Hexenon was a tacked on addition because DE knew the new mods were pointless and had to give us some reason to actually repeat-play the new stuff, outside of the events for Glaxion Vandal.

What we really need right now (at least us "Veterans") is somewhere to dump our endless supplies of Ferrite/Nano Spores/Polymer Bundle/Alloy Plate, etc, not some new useless resource that never gets used after the initial release (or maybe only a year later when more content drops).

[BlackRoseAngel]

Ninjas farm free... 😴

[AnnaCurser]

i feel you. theres too many materials. i agree

[Firetempest]

Stockpiles help people burn though what limited content there is already. That's the way it is. As a company, a tool to increase engagement time is to artificially give yet more grind.

Otherwise you would have everything building on patch drop. found what one you actually liked in a hour of completion. Then complained there is nothing to do and no reason to do it.

[LSG501]

4 minutes ago, Els236 said:

Was Hexenon really a necessary addition? I mean, there's only like 6 things that even use it right now? What's the point?

Feels like Hexenon was a tacked on addition because DE knew the new mods were pointless and had to give us some reason to actually repeat-play the new stuff, outside of the events for Glaxion Vandal. 

 

No and most likely....or more likely it was added as a 'timegate' for the new items so we bought them with plat instead, Hex isn't exactly a high quantity drop...

I know what you mean though...each 'new' location we've had recently has their own special resources found nowhere else, there wasn't even any cross over between PoE and OV which would have at least made some sense from a farming perspective....

Then DE goes and makes the new materials a 'required' element to build the new things they want to sell for plat all while making all our previous resources essentially useless and basically left to gather dust.

[vomder]

Don't expect this to stop anytime soon, increasing the grind and time gating is the name of the game. Pretty soon you will need resources to craft resources the rate it's going.

[BlackRoseAngel]

Can someone explain to DE that there are other ways to make video game besides making it a boring as hell farmfest?

[LSG501]

Just now, vomder said:

Don't expect this to stop anytime soon, increasing the grind and time gating is the name of the game. Pretty soon you will need resources to craft resources the rate it's going. 

You could argue we've already reached that stage with amps,zaws and kitguns (not to mention double levelling)

[Tyanya]

10 minutes ago, Els236 said:

Was Hexenon really a necessary addition? I mean, there's only like 6 things that even use it right now? What's the point?

What's the alternative though?

Add new weapons and frames that rely on old resources? That means that vets that are sitting on mountains of mats build stuff instantly and newer player see an ongoing need to accrue 1000's of let's say Oxium, I see new resources as new tokens needed to build new stuff, the emphasis is always on new,,, new mod sets for example.

Without new, what is the drive to do new content?

Without Hexenon, why would you take part in the Disruptions once the leader event is finished? Just mod sets?

I'm fine with it personally, I honestly can't think of a viable alternative.

[Els236]

il y a 3 minutes, LSG501 a dit :

You could argue we've already reached that stage with amps,zaws and kitguns (not to mention double levelling)

@vomder

It's already here, as stated above, but it happens before that;

You mine Ferros, to then use it to craft Fersteel Alloy, which is then used in PoE weapons, which is exactly your point.

[Els236]

il y a 4 minutes, Tyanya a dit :

What's the alternative though?

Add new weapons and frames that rely on old resources? That means that vets that are sitting on mountains of mats build stuff instantly and newer player see an ongoing need to accrue 1000's of let's say Oxium, I see new resources as new tokens needed to build new stuff, the emphasis is always on new,,, new mod sets for example.

Without new, what is the drive to do new content?

Without Hexenon, why would you take part in the Disruptions once the leader event is finished? Just mod sets?

I'm fine with it personally, I honestly can't think of a viable alternative.

 

No, I understand that, but in a couple more years time, we'll have so many resources and our mountains of alloy plate and nano spores are going to start breaking the integer limits lol. I was hoping there'd be a better way instead of keep introducing new materials, that then dilutes other materials on the star chart.

Essentially, what is the point of having mountains of alloy plate if it's never going to be used? Why didn't they nerf the drop rate of it already and then create more stuff like what the Sibear did for Cryotic.

EDIT: Also make said weapons "veteran only" by having some high MR rank, like 20 or something, so newbies don't feel forced to go out and farm 100k alloy plate/nano spores.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Els236

[LSG501]

Just now, Els236 said:

@vomder

It's already here, as stated above, but it happens before that;

You mine Ferros, to then use it to craft Fersteel Alloy, which is then used in PoE weapons, which is exactly your point. 

oh yeah, I completely forgot about needing to 'refine' minerals etc before we can use them in the foundry... 

Resource refining is actually more annoying than most things too because it's 'small numbers with short duration' which means back and forward all the time to start another off...

[ZeroBladeTV]

Just now, LSG501 said:

oh yeah, I completely forgot about needing to 'refine' minerals etc before we can use them in the foundry... 

Resource refining is actually more annoying than most things too because it's 'small numbers with short duration' which means back and forward all the time to start another off...

Foundry queue could fix that, but of course it will never come, as the grind fest must be addictive!

[Tyanya]

3 minutes ago, Els236 said:

 

No, I understand that, but in a couple more years time, we'll have so many resources and our mountains of alloy plate and nano spores are going to start breaking the integer limits lol. I was hoping there'd be a better way instead of keep introducing new materials, that then dilutes other materials on the star chart.

Essentially, what is the point of having mountains of alloy plate if it's never going to be used? Why didn't they nerf the drop rate of it already and then create more stuff like what the Sibear did for Cryotic.

They could always make a resource converter at a ratio of 10 = 1 or just get creative with specters or other consumables, if they dropped the credit price of tier 3 and 4 specters and made them scale with all content including open world that would give us a small reason to start eating into our resource stacks, but I am hard pushed for a clear and concise solution to the ever increasing stockpiles. ☺️

[k05h]

vor 31 Minuten schrieb Els236:

Was Hexenon really a necessary addition? I mean, there's only like 6 things that even use it right now? What's the point?

That is always the easy way to do it for DE in terms of game mechanics. 

It is just lazy mechanics. But it clearly hurts new players who get crazy confused with all those materials. And it hurts veterans who can farm all they want, a new ressource will devalue every prior farming. 

vor 32 Minuten schrieb Els236:

- 28+ resources dropping from the main star chart (including endo, kuva and others)

- 42+ resources dropping from the Plains Of Eidolon (including the conservation tags)

- 46+ resources dropping from the Orb Vallis (including the conservation tags)

I am currently working on a paper regarding resource inflation in Warframe. It is worse than you write. With Plains of Eidolon we got a 200% increase in overall resources Warframe and with Fortuna we got another 100% increase. We are currently at around 250 resources - depending on what you call a resource. - I mean we also have things like the "Javlok Capacitator" for exaclty one weapon. 

[TaylorsContraction]

The problem with adding new resources like hexenon as time gates is that it doesn't work for veterans. I farmed enough to build everything in about two days, plus two gold trophies. Could have been one day but I wasn't in a rush.

I've already begun my hexenon stockpile, so this resource is finished technically.

Also DE does have the resource blueprints for the rate stuff like orokin cells, neuroses, etc... but they aren't work using. The best resource sinks are relay rebuilding projects.

DE knows how many of each resource players have in total. Just require 50% of that to rebuild a relay, allowing all players to contribute. These kind of projects can help clean up resource piles but something will also be needed to either stop the problem from recurring, or make the sink itself recurring.

Players that donate can be awarded something nice like piles of kuva, or riven mods or cosmetics, or rare mods like primed chamber.

[LuckyCharm]

Tbh there really should be more resources like argon crystals. At least with those it requires me to run a mission or two before i build anything new that isnt given a new resource to grind for. 

Hexanons going to go the same way as all the rest too, like someone said, theyve already started their stockpile. Once i get my guns built my pile of the stuff will start accumulating too. 

Ps: de please release a gear item that makes use of ferrite and alloy plate. Kthx

[Cephalycion]

No. But is DE going to add more? Yes.

[SnuggleBuckets]

I get why new resources need to be added, it's free to play after all and they need engagement with the actual game, not just the added gear.
And I do like the core gameplay loop, the new weapons, once I had the resources to craft them, were immensely satisfying to use.
Doesn't change the fact that there is a problem with the accumulated resource clutter, in how it's implemented.
They add new resources that are limited often to specific narrow activities, this was especially bad when the Plains of Eidolon first came out, you'd hear people shouting that it felt too separate and isolated from the rest of the game, the starchart, and the reason for that was the ecosystem was totally cut off.
You can't find the minerals to mine anywhere else but on that one map, even though the solar system should in principle share many of the same materials, they are absolutely tied to that one activity. They ended up doing slight tweaks, but never too many for the Plains.
The addition of Thumpers on the Plains was a pretty nice thing, personally I like the fight with them, but more importantly they drop rare fish parts and minerals/gems, among other things, so you can slightly get something from fighting and not exclusively from fishing or mining.
The Fortuna update improved slightly by at the very least having containers around the Orb Vallis also contain stuff you could get from mining and fishing, but again that was it, the rest of Venus didn't even get a super low chance of dropping anything from the rest of Orb Vallis in low quantities, and the same for Earth and Plains.

No cross pollution, limiting people to very specific activities they needed to engage with, when in general before you could choose your method, you planet, your mission of choice, of where and how to farm for resources.
Jupiter remaster was pretty fun for me, and I passively got the needed resources for Fulmin+Cyanex+Komorex(?), but that just me, I fully understand the overall problem of gating it off to Jupiter only.
Hey, at least it's not tied only to the Disruption gamemode, I seem to recall some resource or other being tied to one gamemode that I absolutely hated, that was the worst, there have accumulated over the years quite a few gamemodes I just avoid because they don't engage me positively, so I sympathise with everyone who has issues with the Plains or Vallis or Jupiter even if I sort of like them.

[peterc3]

On 2019-06-01 at 12:22 PM, k05h said:

And it hurts veterans who can farm all they want, a new ressource will devalue every prior farming. 

This is why they do it. You don't need to write a paper to figure this out.

[Teridax68]

Resources in Warframe are a mess, and every new resource that gets added tends to generate only a very short-term benefit while adding to the game's long-term problems: Hexenon may have been somewhat effective at holding us back from getting the newest update's shiny toys for a few days, but after a few rounds of Disruption the resource turns into yet another dud, one of the many useless bits of junk that drop and are incapable of serving any function until some other Hexenon-dependent item gets eventually added.

Because of this, there's much I can agree with to the OP: I think the game needs an overhaul to its resource and crafting system, and in so doing have far fewer resources, if we are still to rely on resources as a progression gate at all. In the meantime, I would absolutely love a reason to dump the literal millions of resources I've accrued over the years, one that hopefully doesn't revolve around building an item, which would screw over and discourage newcomers.

In general, the newbie/veteran difference in accrued resources is one of the core reasons why resources as a progression gate don't work in a game like Warframe: unless they decay like Argon (a mechanic no-one likes), resources will keep on stockpiling if there are only limited ways of expending them usefully, which means that there inevitably comes a point where players end up with so many of any resource that that resource cost ceases to matter. Even when a new resource gets introduced, like Hexenon, it affects newcomers far more than veterans, as veterans are better-equipped to farm the resource more efficiently. Thus, if the aim is to slow down our progression, and in particular slow it down for veterans, resources as they currently exist are not an appropriate way of going about it. Moreover, the most recent bevy of resources has had a tendency to force players to tunnel-vision on specific missions or locations, contributing to a perceived lack of content diversity through enforced repetition that itself is much more conducive to burnout than a more diverse spread. This too is an intractable flaw with resources, which are made to be consistently found in the same places. If the game is to have a progression model adapted to its breadth of content, it's going to have to find another way to make us "work" for our new toys.

[ShortCat]

On 2019-06-01 at 5:43 PM, Els236 said:

Do we really need more and more resources in this game? 

I absolutely agree, there are too many resources and we will get more. It is fairly obvious why DE adds new currencies on monthly basis at this point - we have large stockpiles and will burn through every new item the moment it arrives.

On 2019-06-01 at 5:43 PM, Els236 said:

It was bad enough when Argons were released and everyone was like "wait, what, so these things we could spend hours farming will slowly disappear!? wtf!?".

Argon as well as Nitain (while it was tied to alerts) are actually some of the better created resources in the game, bacause those are not as easy to stockpile compared Morphics or Alloy Plates. If you think resources should be more valuable, they should be harder to acquire. However, considerring marked text in your post, you also are part of the problem.

As for solutions: 

• "Community events" like relay reconstractions, which act as massive resource sinks and are carried mostly by veterans with massive stockpiles.
• Change resource acquisition: killed enemies do not drop resources, instead those can be found more frequently in lockers or containers. This would make mods like Master Thief usefull and detach resources from kills, which is the main cause for stockpiling.

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Resources in Warframe are a mess, and every new resource that gets added tends to generate only a very short-term benefit while adding to the game's long-term problems: Hexenon may have been somewhat effective at holding us back from getting the newest update's shiny toys for a few days, but after a few rounds of Disruption the resource turns into yet another dud, one of the many useless bits of junk that drop and are incapable of serving any function until some other Hexenon-dependent item gets eventually added.

What else could work, though? Genuine question here. You have a few issues to content with. Newly introduced rewards need to be earned in some fashion that's not affected by a player's existing resource stockpile. Newly-introduced content needs some system to funnel traffic through it and - by extension - away from content people are already familiar and comfortable with. Creating a new resource obtained from new content and used to earn new rewards is simply the path of least resistance, though I won't deny that it causes issues downstream.

About the only alternate way I can think of is a two-stage rolling release. New content at first releases as an event, with new rewards accessible only through this event. The event lasts for, say, two weeks to a month. After that, the event ends and all event resources are voided. The new content is added as a permanent feature (or left in, if it already was), the new rewards are added to the drop tables of both new content and some legacy content, and they now need to be crafted from legacy resources. Again - a two-step process. This ensures that people who want the rewards NOW have to play and grind the new content, but also ensures that two years later there isn't a then-seemingly-arbitrary bottleneck for a few specific items.

I agree that the bloat of new resources and the stockpiling of now-useless old resources is a problem. I just can't really think of an easy way to address it.

 

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Because of this, there's much I can agree with to the OP: I think the game needs an overhaul to its resource and crafting system, and in so doing have far fewer resources, if we are still to rely on resources as a progression gate at all. In the meantime, I would absolutely love a reason to dump the literal millions of resources I've accrued over the years, one that hopefully doesn't revolve around building an item, which would screw over and discourage newcomers.

Resource bloat aside, these kinds of pointless stockpiles are the result of a resource system with no built-in resource sinks. The problem, though, is that you can't really create effective resource sinks without bottlenecking people to only specific sections of content. For instance, I had a MASSIVE issue gaining Polymer Bundles simply because I rarely played on the planets where they dropped. Yet at the same time, I was using quite a few Polymer Bundles to build Squad Energy Restores. So right there, one of the game's few resource sinks was actively degrading my enjoyment of the game. But again, this isn't an easily solvable issue.

The core issue here is that DE want to enforce some amount of "resource progression," where new players don't have access to, for instance, Neural Sensors until they reach at least Jupiter. By design, this means that Neural Sensors only drop from Jupiter and the Kuva Fortress. Any kind of resource sink which requires Neural Sensors then requires players to grind those two locations even if they don't necessarily want to. There are some solutions to this, but none of them are particularly simple...

One option would be to drastically cut down the number of resources, then have all of them drop from all planets. Have one type of Common, one type of Uncommon, one type of Rare respource, then simply gate specific item blueprints behind unlocking specific planets. You know how the Sedna Junction unlocks the War Within quest? Well, why not also have the Jupiter Junction unlock the Volt blueprint for crafting? That way, you keep the implied progression by tasking players with reaching certain planets before they can have certain items, but you also make it so all of the resources drop from all of the planets. And because everything drops from everywhere, you can then introduce either resource conversion for Credits or some such, or just lean into the consumables like World of Tanks does.

I don't know if this is a good way to go about things, but I also can't really think of a lot of good ways to do this that don't have problems of their own.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

This game seriously needs two star systems to pair these constant incoming farms out..or we need the Thanos Snap getting rid of 50% of the nodes and resources we don't use or play on anymore...

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

What else could work, though? Genuine question here. You have a few issues to content with. Newly introduced rewards need to be earned in some fashion that's not affected by a player's existing resource stockpile. Newly-introduced content needs some system to funnel traffic through it and - by extension - away from content people are already familiar and comfortable with. Creating a new resource obtained from new content and used to earn new rewards is simply the path of least resistance, though I won't deny that it causes issues downstream.

Resources are certainly a simple way of gating content, but as both of us note, the system accumulates problems over time to the point of becoming unsustainable and bloated, as is the case now.

To start, part of your concern, which I agree with, seems to lie with gating new content specifically, and with that, I think the simple solution would be to just implement some event-specific points system, as is the case now with Disruption score, and as was the case with the Thermia Fractures event. Simply giving out rewards based on score, and then releasing those items into the wild (or just keeping them exclusive to that event if it's recurring) could neatly address the question of spreading out the most recent bits of content over a longer duration, in a manner that doesn't clog our drops when otherwise not needed. If one wanted to take things a step further, this score could be turned into standing for a time-limited syndicate, which would allow us to purchase the items we most want first.

As for the rest, I honestly think the way forward for loot in Warframe should be to just cut out the middle man and have us obtain weapons and warframes in ways that don't rely on resources. Frames I think should be unlocked through proper quests, and weapons should be unlocked through appropriately-scaled challenges, e.g. like a cross between Sorties and riven mod challenges: at its most basic, a checklist of things to do, with a fully-built weapon reward in the end, would be a step above our current resources and crafting, because one wouldn't be able to just press a button to obtain the weapon instantly (besides pay for it with plat), just because one did some missions already in the past.

Quote

One option would be to drastically cut down the number of resources, then have all of them drop from all planets. Have one type of Common, one type of Uncommon, one type of Rare respource, then simply gate specific item blueprints behind unlocking specific planets. You know how the Sedna Junction unlocks the War Within quest? Well, why not also have the Jupiter Junction unlock the Volt blueprint for crafting? That way, you keep the implied progression by tasking players with reaching certain planets before they can have certain items, but you also make it so all of the resources drop from all of the planets. And because everything drops from everywhere, you can then introduce either resource conversion for Credits or some such, or just lean into the consumables like World of Tanks does.

That could indeed be one other way of going about things: personally, I'm not a fan of rarity tiers, at least not for resources, as they ultimately all boil down to the same, but you could certainly implement the following:

• Each planet or unique location could have exactly one specific resource, which you could only find by going to that planet.
• Each game mode could also have exactly one specific resource, which you could only find by playing that game mode (e.g. Cryotic for Excavation).

With this very simple two-dimensional resource system, any crafting recipe requiring resources would be just a slightly disguised way of saying: "play X of these mission types, and play on these planets Y times", with occasional potential for optimization. If you wanted to take this a step further, you could then have very specific enemies drop their own unique resource (e.g. Oxium for Oxium Ospreys, Javlok Capacitors for Prosecutors, Sentient cores from Sentients), so that you could also have the player seek out particular enemies across the System to kill. This alone would not solve the problem of resource sinks (you'd need to come up with some afterwards, or make all of these resources decay over time), but would at least enable far better control over where and how the game can direct the player through its crafting recipes.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Teridax68